Page 89 of Italy and Forever

Glancing up at his mam, he asked, ‘Do you think you could help me? I’m going to touch up some of the photos from the wedding, but I’d like a second opinion on which ones are best – and you’ll have to reassure me that the faces still look right after I’ve applied the fixes.’

‘Of course! I’d love to. Let me grab a chair.’

He should have gone through these photos with Ginny, but Lesley was a diligent replacement and he was glad to be spending time with her before he left. As though she could read his mind, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze an hour later when they’d picked out the best shots.

‘I’ll miss you, Rhys bach. I hope you find everything you want in Canada.’

He’d need to know what he wanted for that to happen.

‘This girl doesn’t know what she’s missing out on,’ she said as she left the room.

He couldn’t agree with that statement, but his eyes were drawn back to the wedding photo on the screen, the image of the young woman in the shiny olive-green dress, her head tilted up as it so often was. That was before she’d found out he was moving to Canada. He should have told her earlier – told her that was the reason he wanted to keep their relationship short and casual.

There had been a thousand reasons why the two of them would never work, but, staring at the light on her skin, he suspected none of them would have mattered. He had to remind himself that she’d insisted they keep things casual as well.

With a gulp, he realised that if he’d had the slightest idea that she might return his feelings, he would have tried to make it work with her – dates and gifts, long-term planning and romance and all of that stuff he thought he didn’t want. They were supposed to have a moment, nothing more. But there had been more intimacy in those moments than in the past six years of his life.

Restless, he took himself off to the photography studio where he sometimes rented the darkroom. The canister of film from the Minolta was an unremarkable little object to inspire so much excitement in him, but he couldn’t help thinking these photos would reveal something he needed to see.

Working blind in the dark to cut the film off the cassette was second nature to him now, as was setting the timer and shaking the tub of developing chemicals. There was a film dryer at the studio, so he didn’t have to wait long to peer at the negatives on the light table. With the loupe to his eye, he skipped straight to that day in the meadow at San Valentino.

The photo she’d taken of the village and the mountains was nice, although he would have brought out the background more sharply. The shot of the vulture was miserable – little more than an out-of-focus smudge against a pale sky with a wonky hint of forest in one corner.

So much for perfect moments.

But he stilled when he reached the reckless close-up he’d shot of her. Her eyes and lips glowed in the negative and the framing was even stranger than he remembered. Only half of one eye visible and mostly blurred. The focal point was the angle of her jaw, leading to her earlobe with all of those earrings. Just from looking at the image with opposite colours, the surge of memories was disconcerting – tactile memories.

It made him think of Ginny naked, even though they hadn’t reached that stage of intimacy until the evening.

Hesitantly, he moved the loupe to the next photo, the one she’d snapped of him. The stranger looking back at him wasn’t a surprise. He looked scruffy, with a day or two of stubble and his hair windswept. His skin was weather-worn.

He wondered what she’d think of her portrait of him.

With a sense of urgency, he scanned the negatives so he’d have a digital copy. He’d develop physical photos as well, but negatives were prone to damage and these were shots he wanted to preserve, although what he would ever use them for, he didn’t know.

He’d give them to Ginny, although the prospect made him pause.

She didn’t need him, would find her way to happiness soon enough, he was certain. He would never do anything to make her feel guilty or obligated to him. But perhaps there was one gift he could give her: herself. She didn’t need everyone to like her to be special. She already was. With no expectation of ever hearing from her again, he could show her how he saw her.

37

When he arrived at the address Tita had given him from the files at I Do, the house was exactly the kind of place he would have pictured Ginny growing up in: a small pebble-dash terrace, painted off-white, in a row of ten or more identical homes on a quiet street in a residential area in Glastonbury. But it had a bright pink door with a welcoming wreath made of autumn leaves – probably collected from the trees on the green at the end of the road. A pumpkin with a drawn-on jack-o’-lantern face sitting by the door clashed horribly with the pink.

There was a dwarf apple tree in the front yard and a neat metal storage box with a gleaming lock – he guessed for a bicycle or two. The doorbell buzzed when he pressed it, setting off a sudden panic.

What if she was there? He didn’t know how often she visited and he was hoping to be out of the country – at least back in Wales – by the time she found out what he’d done. As his flight was the following day, chances were good he’d already be gone before she even learned the photos existed.

When he continued to wait, he worried that no one would be home, although that was still better than Ginny being there. At last, he heard scuffling steps inside and a man opened the door, average height, hair thinning and a little round in the middle but robust and energetic, with a pair of prominent ears that made him marvel at the power of genetics.

‘Hello?’ His tone wasn’t unwelcoming and he inclined his head in a way that was familiar from his daughter. The recognition burned in Rhys’s chest.

‘Hello,’ he began, swallowing his nerves. ‘Are you… Ginny’s father?’

‘I do have that privilege,’ he said with obvious pride.

‘I, er… I worked with her on a wedding and I wanted to bring her something.’

Ginny’s father unfortunately worked out quickly that this wasn’t the straightforward request he’d made it out to be. ‘I think you’d better come in. I’m Greg, by the way.’