The first time I met my partner, I tried to keep this part of me a secret

Dating is not for the faint-hearted. Particularly in the modern world of dating apps and social media. As we prepare for the big meet-up or reveal, we worry if our online profile will stand up to real-life scrutiny and the reality of an actual face-to-face encounter.

In many cases, the act of turning up to a cafe, bar or restaurant to meet someone we’ve only ever spoken to online brings out our insecurities and makes us feel vulnerable. We worry if we look right or are funny, smart or outgoing enough for our online “perfect match”.

Imagine how those insecurities might get amplified when you turn up to a first date on a grown up’s red trike!

Caro Llewellyn and her partner, Maurizio Esposito.

When I was first introduced to my life partner, Maurizio Esposito, he was executive chef of Melbourne’s top fine-dining restaurant, Cecconi’s on Flinders Lane. I had recently arrived from the US and lived about 100 metres away from the restaurant. My friend Marisa said, “You must meet him! He’ll look after you.” I was rake thin and in need of looking after, so was happy to visit the restaurant, and it quickly became my refuge.

After long days at work, I often found myself sitting alone at a beautifully starched white linen table for two, being fed the most divine Italian food I had ever eaten. Maurizio and his brigade of extraordinary wait staff and chefs made me feel welcome. No one ever commented or made me feel self-conscious about my walking stick and considerable limp from multiple sclerosis.

Of course, not commenting on my walk should have been a given, but it wasn’t. Every cab I got into, or waiting in line at the market, I would be questioned or commented on. “Are you a cripple?” a man once asked as I was waiting for a coffee. Instead, Maurizio and his team never batted an eyelid, but whenever someone noticed me coming slowly down the steep staircase to the entrance, they jumped to hold the door and greeted me with open arms.

We talked until it was closing time and then he said he’d walk me home. I panicked and made an excuse, but he insisted.

Six months later, when Maurizio finally asked me out on a proper date, I wasn’t worried about him seeing me with a walking stick. But I did worry he’d never seen how I got around town on my big red trike. So on the evening of our first date, I made sure I arrived early and hid my wheels behind a tree about 20 metres away from the restaurant where we had planned to meet.

It was a magical evening. He ordered me champagne and fed me oysters which he’d come to know were one of my favourite foods from eating at his restaurant. We talked until it was closing time and then he said he’d walk me home. I panicked and made an excuse, but he insisted. “I’m Italian, of course I must walk you home. My mother would kill me if I didn’t,” he said, laughing.

I realised I was trapped. There was no way out. I’d have to get on my trike, and he’d have to see everything. Which is exactly what he did. He saw me, all of me. My big trike – the whole kit and caboodle. In fact, when I ran over his foot within the first couple of minutes, he felt me, too. Despite my fears that a middle-aged woman on a three-wheeler would turn him off, it just seemed to make him like me more.

I’d had my suspicions, but it took a few years before I realised Maurizio had been hiding a disability of his own. He was among the three million Australians who lack the literacy skills they need in everyday life.

The author on her red trike.

I had assumed Maurizio’s unpunctuated and sometimes a little hard to follow text messages were simply because he always had his hands full in the kitchen. Other times, I thought he was just making jokes about being a first-generation Italian-Australian who only started speaking English when he went to school.

But over time I observed him get flustered whenever there were written instructions or directions to be followed. Suddenly, the kind and gentle man I had been getting to know would lose his temper and become withdrawn. But it wasn’t until my birthday that the full extent of his disability dawned on me. Maurizio gave me a beautiful Italian reading light with a card attached, which when I opened said, “I love you with all my hat.”

Maurizio had been called stupid all his life, so no wonder it was something he tried to hide. Like the man asking if I was a cripple, people can make cruel assessments and assumptions when you don’t conform.

The character of Giancarlo in my new novel, Love Unedited, is based on Maurizio; for a long time, the book’s title was I Love You With All My Hat. In part, the novel is about the bravery it takes to navigate life when every single word you read on a signpost or a map or a menu is incomprehensible. Imagine how hard it is to be at the top of the culinary world – to have opened Otto at Woolloomooloo for the Sydney Olympics, run Melbourne’s famous Stokehouse for the Van Haandel Group, and so many other iconic restaurants – when you can’t read a recipe.

Maurizio’s kids sometimes used to joke that we were an unlikely pair: me, a writer and reader, and Maurizio, a chef challenged with dyslexia. Yet over time we have both realised that when you find someone who loves and accepts you – sees and values you, all of you for who you are – the recipe only gets richer.

Love Unedited (Picador Australia) by Caro Llewellyn is out February 25.

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