Page 53 of Italy and Forever

But from where Ginny stood, the only way was up. She wasn’t much of a fan of ‘up’ right then, although it was probably preferable to ‘down’, if down meant falling. She was relieved no one had turned an ankle on the hike to get there.

‘Stop worrying about your manicures,’ Kira called out from where she was already unpacking equipment. Whenever Kira got near a climbing wall, Ginny could do nothing but stare in awe at her friend. She was abrupt and even a little awkward in conversation, but on the wall, Kira was capable and fearless – which was probably why Ginny had started learning this foolish sport to begin with.

When she took another glance at the weathered, ancient rock above her, she reconsidered that decision, another of her life choices she was seriously questioning.

‘You’re both ready for the easier routes here,’ Kira insisted. ‘I’ll set you a top rope. I have to go up to get things ready for Rhys anyway.’

Ginny stood with Mattia, both of them pretending they weren’t trembling, as Kira shimmied up the rock, a coil of rope looped around her torso, her body bending and contorting like a spider as she slipped her safety line into the anchors as she went.

‘Sometimes I don’t understand how she’s my friend,’ Ginny mumbled, shifting her helmet between her hands.

Mattia didn’t answer for a long moment, watching his girlfriend inch higher and higher. Then he just said, ‘I think it’s hot.’

Ginny chuckled but choked it off when an uncomfortable thought occurred to her. She glanced over at Rhys to find him already fitting his helmet. She wondered if he’d been wearing one the day of his accident.

‘Doesn’t it scare you?’ she asked Mattia.

His smile faded. ‘A bit. But I know how seriously she takes her safety and even more so the safety of others. It only looks so effortless because she’s that good. As she likes to tell me, a higher proportion of people are injured in car accidents than climbing accidents.’

Ginny thought of the weeks after Sophie and Andreas had got engaged last year, when he’d been on an expedition in Nepal. Andreas was a mountaineer as well as a climber, navigating the dangers of altitude and extreme temperatures. She didn’t know how Sophie had kept her head.

Her feet propelled her forward until she stood next to Rhys. He looked up from securing his harness, wary, as though questioning why she was talking to him in public.

‘How high is it?’ she asked.

‘All the way to the top is over a hundred metres, but that’s a difficult trad climb. The sport routes here are just over thirty metres, a hundred feet or so. Like the gym.’

It definitely wasn’t like the gym. The brightly coloured handholds in the gym gave her clear goals and parameters, but the bare rock was a puzzle she had no idea how to solve. Ginny watched as Kira reached a point high up and sat back in her harness, unclipping equipment to set the rope. On the ground, Laurie stood with his feet planted, the belay rope attached to his harness.

‘You shoot from above?’ Ginny asked Rhys.

He nodded. The clink of his equipment was louder than he was.

‘That’s wild,’ she commented.

‘This is nothing,’ he muttered. ‘A stag-do photo shoot.’ His mouth lifted into a slight smile as he clicked a lens into place on the camera and stowed both securely in a padded bag.

‘Then I really don’t know what I’m doing here.’

The warmth in his gaze startled her. It was the same face, the same eyes she’d always admired, but the ‘look’ was different. ‘I’ll show you when you take your turn on the wall.’

She could only shake her head.

The sudden pressure of his hand on hers made her jump and he let go immediately, with a furtive glance at the others. His thumb brushed over her wrist before he returned to his equipment, snapping the camera bag to his harness.

‘Take a risk, Ginny. You’ve prepared for this in the gym. You’re ready. The views are amazing.’

She was not ready, not to pit herself against this rock. ‘I don’t take risks.’

Another deep look. It was terrible how he could affect her lungs with nothing more than his eyes. ‘Looking for a long-term partner is a risk – the biggest risk.’

Identifying the hint of bitterness in his voice, she wondered whether she’d ever fully appreciated that risk.

‘Well, I’m not doing that right now either,’ she replied lightly.

Kira abseiled down smoothly, her rubber climbing shoes dancing off the rock, and then Rhys approached the wall. She expected him to tie in to the rope as she’d been taught and then dig his fingers into a crevice for purchase, but, instead, he slipped two metal grips onto the rope, clipping a safety sling into each. A moment later, he was sliding efficiently up the rope using the grips and a foot sling.

Ginny watched in dismayed awe. She hoped to God Kira had tied that knot well. Yes, the rock face was only as high as the wall in the gym, but there was no padded landing here and Rhys had already fallen once. She couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like for his girlfriend, assuming they’d been together at the time – and how it had all gone wrong for them. She hoped, for the sake of the faceless woman, that she hadn’t witnessed the fall.