Page 79 of Italy and Forever

He was the one person she’d been with who was never supposed to be the groom in her naïve dreams. But the faceless hypothetical guy of her future was suddenly gone.

She didn’t even particularly want a wedding – any wedding. Oh, she was supremely happy for Sophie, perhaps happier than she’d been for any of her brides over the years. She loved her beautifully printed order of service and the pew bouquets and the wedding favours they’d finished off together.

But she didn’t want to be the one in the white dress.

All she wanted was what she had – or what she had had over the past few days. Secret looks and shared smiles, soft midnight conversations with everything laid bare, a quiet presence at her side and in the car with her.

Her eyes stung in earnest as her heart looped in her chest. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. It had crept up on her so quietly, lulling her into a false sense of security and then bam! It was done. She was in love with him – awfully and marvellously in love.

‘Shit,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You fool.’ But she couldn’t even take herself to task for doing the predictable thing and falling for him. That part had happened so differently from how she’d expected, she didn’t know how she could have known – or stopped it.

The sense of unease rippling over her skin brought back the words of the hypnotherapist and her feelings from the last time she’d stood and studied this tree, where love had been photographed over two generations. She was terrified. She didn’t know if she wanted this, at least not without the storybook guarantee of a happy ending.

But when she looked at Rhys, hunched behind his camera, the familiar sweep of hair over his forehead and his keen eyes taking in the scene in his own unique way, that wasn’t quite true. She didn’t want this to end, but she couldn’t imagine never knowing him, never coming close to him the way he’d allowed her to.

One thing was certain: she needed to rewrite her bridesmaid speech.

‘Where’s Ginny?’ he asked Toni when they arrived at the reception venue.

Rhys hated milling groups of people at the best of times, but milling groups of people that stopped him from being near Ginny – and working out whatever was going on that made him need to be near her – were pure hell.

Delicate emotions had glowed on her face all afternoon, especially during the ceremony. And after the ceremony, she’d thrummed with something, not upset, exactly, but if he hadn’t known her body so well, he might have been worried she was stressed. Although it would be fair enough if she were stressed. The wedding was an enormous event.

‘She said she had to fine-tune her speech,’ Toni answered. ‘I’m supposed to hold down the fort, although this fort doesn’t look like it needs holding down.’

They were standing in the courtyard of the fortified castle on a hill above Bruneck, enjoying drinks and canapés under the ancient sundial, crenellated walls extending high above them. Two iron sculptures of eastern origin from the museum collection stood guard near the scarred wooden door.

He’d decided to take a break from shooting. The light was terrible and he’d already filled a memory card, meaning he had more than five thousand images to sift through. He wasn’t used to any of this and when Ginny had disappeared, he’d felt adrift in a way that concerned him.

‘Maybe Laurie will know where she went,’ Toni said with a perplexed smile, watching as the tall adventure guide sipped from a bottle of beer while apparently listening to Willard and Oswald, but he was probably just wondering when dinner would be served. ‘Although I still don’t quite understand that development.’

‘Neither do I,’ he replied without thought.

‘What do you need her for, anyway? Maybe I can help?’

He’d forgotten he needed a pretext for talking to her. He couldn’t just say he wanted to look at her again and imagine his hands around her waist.

‘Oh, no, it’s fine,’ he managed. ‘I just wanted an idea of… where the, uh… the speeches…’ He made a hand gesture and hoped it was enough to end the sentence.

‘I’ll tell her to find you if I see her, but I’m sure she’ll make her presence known soon.’

He nodded thanks.

‘Has it been too bad, photographing the wedding? I don’t think Ginny knows about your… you know.’

‘She does now. But it’s okay. It’s been okay. The larger groups are difficult, but I don’t imagine it’s much easier for photographers who can remember faces. Going through all the pictures and touching them up will be a challenge, but Ginny said she’d help with that, like she did last time.’

He could suggest they look through them together. It could be one last reason to see her. He’d accepted the idea of going home to Wales before he left for Canada, ripping the plaster off cleanly, but one more opportunity to sit with her and soak up the strange comfort of being near her could be a nice memory to consolidate all of the others.

Or maybe that was just an excuse.

‘Honestly,’ he began, ‘I’ve found… something here. I think I never imagined I’d be able to take portraits – not before the accident and certainly not afterwards. But now I’ve been forced to…’ He wasn’t sure what he wanted to communicate – or admit. ‘There’s more to people than their faces,’ he finished flippantly.

Toni studied him warmly. ‘I can’t wait to see the photos. I’m sure they’ll be something special.’

The photos of Ginny certainly were. She was the one. Not romantically. He didn’t believe in one soulmate. But she was so open and expressive that she’d taught him how to photograph people, just by being his subject.

His skin prickled with the awareness of how much she meant to him, months of fascination developing into something tangible over the past week. He rubbed a hand over his hair in an attempt to gather his spiralling thoughts.