Page 63 of Italy and Forever

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

Moving slowly, she came to sit next to him, her bare legs hanging off the bed. Her shoulder pressed into his arm, her hip to his, he could have believed he was part of her.

‘That’s okay,’ she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. ‘But I would like to understand.’

‘Even if it’s a red flag?’

‘Especially if it is,’ she replied gently, peering up at him. ‘I don’t need to rehabilitate you in my mind when this is just casual, right? I think it’s good for me to come to grips with shades of grey.’

He snaked an arm around her, feeling faintly ridiculous, like a teenager making that yawn-and-stretch move in the cinema. But Ginny practically purred when he gave her a squeeze and left his arm there.

‘I think we were good together,’ he began, his thoughts swimming. ‘Her name’s Annie,’ he said as an aside. ‘We got together when I was twenty-nine, did a few long trips together, but she was putting off her law career, so, at some point, I had to go away and she couldn’t come with me.’

‘Wow, she’s a lawyer?’

He nodded. ‘Corporate solicitor. We were always keen to keep some things for ourselves, so it worked out okay that I was away, sometimes for a couple of months, on an assignment. I imagined things continuing that way. I didn’t want anyone else and neither did she. We circled back to each other when we needed to, but we had our space.’

‘I’m not very good with space,’ Ginny mumbled.

Rhys glanced pointedly at their thighs, squashed so close together they could have been conjoined. ‘I’ve worked that out.’ In that moment, he didn’t mind.

‘What happened then? She decided she did want more?’

He shook his head. ‘My accident happened.’

‘Oh no.’

‘We’ve been over this. I’m okay now. You don’t need to get upset for me.’

She nodded with a sigh. ‘I know. What I feel is irrelevant at best and possibly unhelpful, but it was awful thinking of it today.’

‘Today?’

‘Yes, when you were dangling from a rope!’

He turned to her. ‘That’s what my job is – or a big part of it. You can’t get the shots I get without being up there yourself.’

She swallowed visibly and he tried not to let it mean something that she was worried about his safety.

‘What did Annie think about it?’

‘She does some climbing – well, she did back then. Maybe you wouldn’t be so worried if you knew about the knots and anchors and fixed lines.’

Ginny wasn’t reassured. ‘Did you use knots and anchors and fixed lines when your accident happened?’

‘Yes,’ he had to answer. ‘One of the cams wasn’t placed properly and it ripped out. Someone else had set the line for me and I didn’t check it.’

‘Are you… going to tell me it could have been much worse?’ Her eyes were red at the edges.

‘It could have been,’ he insisted.

‘Was she there? Did Annie see you fall?’

‘Annie wasn’t there when I fell. She was still in the UK.’

She breathed out through pursed lips – in relief? For his ex-girlfriend? Surely even Ginny couldn’t be so empathetic. But she proved him wrong again.

‘Good. I imagined today that she’d witnessed it and… I don’t know how I would have coped.’