Page 7 of Italy and Forever

To her chagrin, Kira chuckled. ‘That’s a good description. But I’m sorry it went so badly tonight.’

It had gone badly; she hated it when people disliked her.

‘I’ll get over it in time for the wedding,’ she assured Kira. Now all she had to do was convince herself.

Rhys stepped up to the door of the pretty Bath stone building in a leafy part of town near the river Avon. A tasteful plaque announced the offices of I Do Destinations, with gold swirls and a little stylised plane. Andreas’s words were echoing in his head: Just explain it to her. She’d continue to ask until she understood why he shouldn’t be the one taking wedding photos.

He wasn’t looking forward to this conversation.

She thought he didn’t like her and she certainly didn’t like him, especially not after he’d set her hair on fire last week at the Admiral. It surely wouldn’t hurt her feelings any further if he explained that he couldn’t remember what she looked like.

It annoyed him that he thought of Annie as he stood on the doorstep, hesitating. Memories of her were less frequent now, but the twinge of grief remained: for his old life, for the way he’d hurt her.

That grief and the prospect of explaining his condition to someone he didn’t know well was probably behind the attack of memories about Annie. It was nothing to do with whatever seemed to draw him to Ginny, despite everything suggesting he should run the other way.

Forcing himself to open the door, he found a neutral and tasteful reception room on the other side, with vases of fresh flowers and a couple of wedding photos printed on large canvases. The couples were in soft focus or turned away – for anonymity and to emphasise the location, he assumed. He could probably take those sorts of shots without a problem.

‘Hello. It’s Rhys, isn’t it? Are you here to see someone?’

He turned to the woman sitting at a small desk to one side, wisps of greying hair around her head. He wouldn’t forget Tita any time soon – she’d given him a strong sales pitch when they’d first met, trying to get him booked in before she’d even finished introducing herself.

‘Hi,’ he began. ‘Yes. Ginny.’

‘Uh, she might be on a call, but I can check for you. How about you go through to the meeting room? There’s no one in there just at the moment.’

‘Thanks. Which way is it?’

In the meeting room, he took a seat on the sofa Tita indicated, clenching his hands into fists to stop himself from fidgeting. This must be where the clients sat to pin down the endless details. Although he’d suspected Annie would have liked to get married one day, he’d never imagined making such a big deal out of it. She’d married someone else a few years ago, and now they had two kids.

She’d probably been waiting for him to pop the question before the accident and now it seemed too late in his life for all that fuss. He turned forty next year and he only seemed to be growing less certain of how to bond with other people.

There was a photo book open on the coffee table in front of him and he ran his fingers absently over the full-page close-up of a bride with the shadow of a dimple giving her a joyfulness that filled the photo.

The portrait was so different from the shades of rock and earth, the birds and wild animals he usually photographed and framed. The curve of her cheek caught his eye and he admired the depth of the image, the skill to capture the emotion of the moment. That was where he failed. He was so overwhelmed by all the faces, like pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t put together, that special moments like this just passed him by.

He was startled when someone bustled into the room. ‘Oh, hi, Rhys.’ Blonde hair tied back, emerald engagement ring on her finger. It was Sophie. ‘I didn’t realise you were coming.’

‘I just need to… talk to Ginny.’

‘Oh.’ Her tone suggested she knew why. It was strange to think how much Andreas must tell her, when he’d always been a cranky, close-lipped type. ‘You know, I completely understand if you don’t want to be our photographer.’

‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’

She sat down next to him and he hoped she wasn’t going to say anything further. But Sophie gestured in front of them. ‘These turned out beautifully. I was just showing them to a client.’

It took him a moment to realise she was talking about the photo book on the coffee table. When she turned the page, he instantly recognised the frothy white lace of the bride’s veil and the slant of the dance-floor lighting that had been a pain to work with.

Flipping back to the page before, he noticed the clip in the bride’s hair, another familiar detail. Christ, he’d taken that picture, last winter, in Tyrol. How was that even possible? He remembered trying to frame a few close-ups, but he’d been convinced they all looked like candid-camera disasters.

He’d been so uncertain that he’d just dumped all of the files onto Ginny to tidy up, not even sifting through them beforehand or touching anything up. He’d been terrified he’d smooth some detail and the person wouldn’t look right any more.

‘Ginny doesn’t know about your accident, does she?’ Sophie asked.

He shook his head. ‘There never seemed to be the right moment.’ And now she might think he’d kept the truth about his brain injury from her on purpose. He didn’t want to talk about it, so he changed the subject. ‘Do you know what kind of photos you want? A staged shoot? Locations? Just out of curiosity.’

‘Of course,’ she said wryly. Her gaze dipped and she bit her lip as though he’d triggered a nerve. A hand lifted to her stomach. Although the pregnancy had only just started to show, her body language had changed right from the beginning. With his brain trained to notice non-facial cues, he’d caught one glimpse of her and guessed right away, although he would never have said anything.

‘I haven’t really thought about it. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? I love weddings. I should be obsessed with my own, but… The anxiety haze is real and all the change is…’