‘Allora, you’ll see what I meant. Perhaps I would have gone to some more effort for a woman—’ He cut himself off.
‘You don’t need to make an effort for a friend,’ she pointed out.
He made an unconvinced grunt. ‘My mother would disown me.’
‘It sounds like you have a complicated relationship with your mother.’
‘You have no idea.’
Although the town was only five minutes behind them, signs of civilisation were already sparse. The trees twisted into a tunnel over the road, interrupted only by the occasional trailhead and a handful of driveways. They were a world away from the beachside hotel where the wedding was due to take place next week, even though it was on the same island. The wayGabri sat back in the driver’s seat with a sigh made her suspect he was happier out here in the wilderness than anywhere else.
He wrangled the car around a hairpin curve. She had no idea how other vehicles could pass and hoped it was rarely necessary. The road surface deteriorated, the car juddering over cracks. They were heading back downhill now and the forest thinned out ahead. Toni saw brush and shrubs – and when they emerged into the slanting evening sun, the turquoise and silver Tyrrhenian Sea.
‘Oh my God.’ She couldn’t help saying it. ‘Is the view from your house anything like this?’ They were still high above the water. A wisp of cloud clung to the hillside in the distance, but otherwise, the wide view was vivid blues and greens. She couldn’t see a single building, although a lonely electricity wire was strung above them, which hinted at habitation somewhere nearby.
A moment later, Gabri pulled the car to the side of the road and set the brake, shooting her a grin. ‘Thisisthe view from my house.’
Still unable to see anything except wild nature and the open sea, Toni watched him doubtfully as he got out of the car and fetched her suitcase. Apparently, this really was their destination. There were two other cars parked, as well as a pair of motorini, and ahead, the road just stopped.
He hefted her heavy suitcase and set off into the trees as Toni scrambled to follow.
‘What do you have in this thing?’ he asked lightly, shifting the suitcase to his other hand as he navigated what turned out to be a stony path across the steep hillside.
‘If I’d known we had to trek out toyour house, I would have brought a different bag.’
His whole body seemed lighter as the path crunched under his trainers. Toni caught a glimpse of a wrought-iron gate ahead,a rendered wall, steps lined with flowerpots in a riot of colours. A copse of pines rose behind. The air was scented with salt and herbs and the tang of geraniums and for the first time, she felt some alignment between the person she’d met online and the man hurrying home.
He stopped at the gate, his face alive with a smile, putting her suitcase down to gesture expansively. Up the hill were terraced gardens with olive trees, lemons, flower bushes buzzing with insects and all manner of scented plants. There were even a few prickly pears. She saw a table and chairs set under a pergola and a small building, pale orange with wooden shutters.
But the real highlight was to her right. Not only could she see the water, now golden in the last rays of the sun, but also the coves and cliffs of the island, the coastline, carved over millennia with grooves and fingers of rock plunging straight into the sea. A small bay to the east caught her eye, the shallow water aqua and turquoise.
She loved to walk the length of Chesil Beach on a fine day, Cillian’s hand in hers, when he allowed it, but that cove promised a secret moment, a plunge into warm water under baking sunshine – something different and new.
‘I can’t believe this is where you live.’
His smile grew lopsided and infectious. ‘I’m sure I told you I had a sea view.’
‘Perhaps you did, but this is more than a view. We’reinthe picture.’ She flung an arm out so wildly that her foot slipped on a loose stone and before she knew what had happened, Gabri was steadying her, his fist clutched in her dress. Her hands fell for a moment to his shoulders and that was enough to send her heart leaping uncomfortably and she pulled away, trying to shake off the lingering sense of the warm pressure of his hands at her waist and the scent of citrus and herbs on his skin.
‘Come and see the house,’ he said, his voice soft.
He nabbed a watering can from the bottom step, filling it from a tank concealed behind wooden slats. As they made their way up the cracked concrete steps, he paused by each pot to water the flowers.
‘I recognise geraniums, but that’s a lot of flowers,’ she commented.
‘Did you expect anything less?’
Her own chest felt lighter as she shared his smile. For all the shocks, this wasGabri– in person and not somewhere on the Internet. ‘Different – yes. But less – no. I did imagine that you lived surrounded by flowers, but not… such wild ones.’
‘Only wild things keep their magic.’
The statement hung in her thoughts as she followed him up the stairs into a paradise of bushes and blooms and sunshine. A grapevine with wide leaves and budding bunches grew twisted up and over the pergola. The tang of thyme and sage rose from the plants growing amongst the rocks on the far side. The rosemary was blooming, covered in tiny flowers of pale purplish blue.
The house itself was just as wild, with the render cracking, leaving some sections of stone exposed. The wooden shutters were warped, the paint chipped.
Looking out of place to one side was a toolbox bursting with cables, some stripped down and others still in their plastic casings, as well as several different kinds of pliers. Protected by a plastic box in one corner was a futuristic battery, gleaming white, a glowing green LED on the front.
‘It’s become another hobby,’ Gabri explained with a shrug when he saw where she was looking. ‘This place was only used as a holiday home, but I live here all year, so I decided to implement some electricity solutions for the heating.’
