“Couldn’t you have called or texted first?”
“I wanted to surprise you. My flight here was delayed, so I’ve only just checked in to my hotel. I didn’t want to wait until breakfast to see you, in case you set off somewhere early. So, I took a taxi here.” He stepped forward and looked all around him. “This place looks...rustic.”
Ginny pursed her lips. “I’m guessing you didn’t come here to discuss Italian architecture.”
Adrian nodded. “Can we go inside to talk?”
She glanced over her shoulder. Nico and Loretta might still be awake and she didn’t want either of them to find a stranger sitting in their dining room. She could hardly sneak Adrian upstairs to her bedroom without anyone hearing. “No, it’s too late,” she said.
“Too late?” he asked, with fear rising in his voice.
Ginny reassessed her words. Adrian must have assumed she was referring to their marriage, and she welcomed his worry.
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” he said with his shoulders sloping. “I should have told you I was coming, or waited until later to see you. Do you want me to leave?”
Yes, Ginny thought without saying it. Then she reconsidered. Hadn’t she been longing for some kind of big gesture from him? Didn’t this show he really cared? “We can sit outside, at one of the tables for a while,” she said. “There are blankets if we get cold.”
“Thanks. I left my jacket at the hotel.”
They sat down opposite each other, both of them unsure who should talk first. Ginny wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and looked up at the fairy lights hanging from a tree. They looked like clusters of fireflies and speckled their faces with a golden glow.
Adrian smiled tentatively. “You look beautiful,” he said.
Ginny brushed salt dust from her forearms. Something tingled inside her at his compliment, even though she didn’t feel attractive at all. “Thanks,” she said.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve bought you something for our anniversary,” he said, passing the present to her.
Ginny hesitated. “I didn’t get you anything...”
“That’s understandable.”
She took the gift and peeled off the paper to reveal a simple silver photo frame. Angling it to get a better view, she saw the photo was of her and Adrian sitting on their sofa at home, laughing together.
“The frame’s sterling silver,” he said. “I tracked down the photographer who did our magazine shoot and asked to see the shots he didn’t use. I thought you’d like this one.”
Ginny studied the picture and wondered if she and Adrian had been truly happy when it had been taken, or if they’d been acting like that for the camera. It was difficult to tell and she hated how his recent behavior had forced her to put their relationship under a microscope.
“And you look really hot in the picture,” he added.
A surprised laugh escaped from Ginny’s mouth. Adrian’s sense of humor was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place and it had been missing for quite some time. “You don’t look too bad yourself,” she said.
He pulled a face. “I look rough and have for some time. You’re the one who still looks great. You have a good job and lots of friends... I envy you sometimes.”
It was rare for him to open up to her like this. Ginny’s first instinct was to deny it all, to tell him she’d been replaced at work by Kizzi and felt superfluous, in a bid to make him feel better. But why should she, after what he’d put her through?
Adrian wriggled his shoulders and relaxed back into his chair. “I think this time apart from each other has been good for us,” he said. “We both needed it.”
Ginny’s feelings toward him had been thawing, but then blew away in an instant, as if a snowstorm had blasted in on a sunny day. She blinked at him hard, questioning if she’d heard him correctly. “I think you mean it’s whatyouneeded,” she said, lowering her voice to a hiss. “Iwas happy as we were.”
He surveyed her for a few moments before leaning forward. “Were you honestlyreallyhappy?” he asked her. “Or did you feel the same way as I did, like you were always running for a train that was pulling away from a station, leaving you feeling stranded? We’ve been married for a long time, we live together, and eat and sleep together, yet it feels like there’s been a big gap between us for a long time.”
Although his words stung, Ginny knew he was right. She could admit to feeling unsettled and unsatisfied, but she hadn’t resorted to joining a dating site. Their conversation suddenly felt too heavy for this time of the morning and she wanted to crawl upstairs to bed. “You’ve had plenty of opportunities to discuss this with me,” she said stiffly. “I’m on holiday and I’m tired. We all went out to a beach bar in Rimini this evening and I’m—”
“We?” Adrian chimed in. “Do you mean the strangers you invited on holiday? What are they like?”
There was a hint of jealousy in his voice and Ginny gave it a silent cheer. She decided to tell him about her new friends. “Edna’s eighty and has been feeling lonely since losing her daughter and husband. She’s been springing to life since showing us how to sew. Curtis is a property developer in his late thirties who’s been hiding a heart of gold. Heather’s a bouncy primary school teacher who’s struggling with her mum’s health issues, and Eric’s a shy carpenter mourning the loss of his dog.”
The corners of Adrian’s mouth twitched upward. “His dog? I thought you’d invited people with broken hearts.”
