Chapter 32
32
The photos were going to be spectacular.
Sophie watched as the photographer, a young woman called Rachele who seemed entirely comfortable in her harness and via ferrata kit, unpacked her drone from her backpack and positioned Lily and Roman in a dramatic position on a ledge.
The background of the lake, the rocks ranging up into thin air, the world in 360 degrees and three full dimensions was stunning enough, but Lily and Roman, so small against the landscape, still filled the pictures with such joy.
To say that Reshma would be pleased was an understatement.
But Sophie was still unsettled – she had been since the strange conversation last night about Rory and the murky motivations behind the beginning of her relationship with him. Why was Andreas suddenly so keen to dig into her heart? He’d been watching her all day with a spark in his gaze that she couldn’t interpret.
After the adrenaline and emotion of the occasion, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to calmly wave goodbye to him tomorrow, not knowing when she’d see him again. Possibly never, if the worst were to happen on Manaslu.
As they prepared to set off again, he drifted casually to her side. When he leaned close to say something quietly into her ear, her skin prickled. But his words weren’t a gruff confession of his own feelings – she’d be dreaming, if she ever expected that from Andreas Hinterdorfer – or even another of his brusque compliments that sank straight under her skin.
‘The clouds are coming in faster than expected.’
Alarm straightened her spine. ‘Do we need to change plans?’
He shook his head. ‘There are only showers forecast and rushing would be more dangerous than getting wet, but we can’t dawdle.’
She blew out a deep breath. ‘What did I say about adventure weddings being a bad idea?’ They hadn’t even managed the wedding part yet.
The group kept moving laboriously along a rocky track. Sophie didn’t want to know how hot it was, but the air was heavy and sweat gathered on her upper lip. She glanced continually at the enormous cloud that seemed to be exploding upwards over the lake, but it was a single weather system with blue sky all around. Perhaps it would miss them entirely.
Staring at the weather was only a moment of inattention, but it was enough that she missed a sudden movement up ahead and then a shriek made her freeze in alarm.
By the time she pushed through the wedding party to find out what had happened, she found Lucia on the ground, clutching her knee as blood oozed through her fingers. The bridesmaid hiccoughed loudly, half sob and half something else, her eyes glazed.
‘I’m sorrreeeeee,’ she wailed, staring at Lily.
The bride crouched next to her friend as Sophie rushed for the first aid kit. Andreas was already on the job, kneeling next to Lucia and opening the bulky case from his pack. He cleaned the wound with a vial of distilled water and began the process of dressing it.
‘What were you even doing, man?’ Sophie heard one of the groomsmen behind her.
‘Nothing! I only nudged her. How was I supposed to know she’s wasted?’ It was Tom, Lucia’s ex, who earned a dark look from Andreas when he overheard the conversation.
Lucia burst into tears. ‘I’ve ruined your wedding,’ she said between gasps. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. But I slept with Tom again last night and now I feel like shit because I know he’ll never love me and I don’t know why I—’ Another hiccough cut her off. ‘So I packed a little bottle of vodka and I know I’m the biggest idiot who ever walked the earth?—’
Sophie dropped to her knees next to her. Drunk bridesmaids were one of her areas of expertise. ‘Here, Lucia, have some water. Nothing’s ruined but take some deep breaths and no more vodka – for Lily’s sake.’
‘Fuck, it hurts,’ Lucia said with a grimace. ‘How am I supposed to get down?’
Swallowing her own panic, Sophie looked to Andreas. His expression was blank, but she recognised the little flex of muscle in his jaw and when he glanced at the sky, she felt the ripple of unease he was being careful to hide.
‘There’s nothing broken,’ he declared, wrapping a bandage tightly around Lucia’s knee. ‘When she sobers up, she’ll make it down.’
‘But it hurts !’
‘Come on, you heard what he said!’ Tom snapped.
‘God, I have the worst taste in men,’ Lucia said darkly.
‘I heard that!’
‘He’s not even very good in?—’
Sophie interrupted, ‘Oh! Look at the—’ Her words trailed off as she noticed what she’d thoughtlessly gestured to: the swelling cloud rapidly approaching, expanding upward and growing darker every second.
Then a crackle of light flashed through the fuzzy particles at the top.
Andreas leaped to his feet and clapped his hands twice for attention, his expression calm, but grim – his speciality. ‘Allora, we need to keep moving.’ A quick glance was all the warning he gave her. ‘With the chance of lightning overhead, we can’t continue or descend right now and we need to take shelter.’
Gasps and murmurs of alarm rippled through the guests. Roman took Lily’s hand and squeezed.
‘What about the wedding?’ Adelaide asked. ‘And the others?’
‘Safety comes first,’ Sophie said, swallowing the lump in her throat. ‘We’ll contact Kira. I’m sure they’re fine.’
‘Where are we going then? Where can we take shelter up here without going back down?’ Roman asked.
‘There are tunnels dug all through this mountain,’ Andreas supplied. ‘One more short climb and we’ll reach the entrance. We’ll be safe in there until the storm passes.’
One of the groomsmen groaned.
‘We knew this was a possibility,’ Lily began, but Sophie shook her head.
‘We’ll hold the ceremony today, one way or another,’ she assured the bride. She was just wary of the ‘another’.
‘And you’ll have a story to tell your children,’ Andreas added grimly as he hauled Lucia to her feet and ushered everyone ahead with a firm hand. Sophie eyed him pointedly and he winced. ‘I mean hypothetical children,’ he added, making Sophie inwardly groan. ‘It’ll certainly be… an adventure,’ he commented with a sigh.
The first drops fell while they were making their way painstakingly up another climb. Although fingers of gravity dug into her and her feet slipped on the damp rock, she gritted her teeth and moved briskly from foothold to foothold, no time to indulge her fears.
The group was restless, while Andreas grew calmer and calmer until he was drawing out his instructions in his smoothest tone, as though speaking to a herd of spooked deer. Sophie helped Lucia, who hobbled along as best she could, and tried not to take it to heart when Lily glanced back for reassurance, her face pale.
Another flash – closer this time – greeted them as Andreas unclipped his straps from the cable. Gesturing to the hiking trail, he urged the rest of the group ahead as the crack of thunder rent the air above them. Sophie was the last up and he pushed her ahead of him with a hand on her back.
The rain came down in earnest, the dirt between the stones at their feet turning quickly to mud and the trickles of sweat becoming rivulets of cool rain.
Rounding a corner, Sophie saw the members of the wedding party disappearing one by one through a narrow crack in the rocks and into a dark doorway: the entrance to the Gallerie di Guerra, the tunnels dug by the Hapsburgs during World War I.
At another flare in the sky, she hurried towards the shelter, water sluicing off her helmet and her heart beating an irregular rhythm as the darkness swallowed her.
The stone wall was rough under her fingers, the air musty. For a moment, she felt only stillness, heard only the agitated breathing of the ten other people taking shelter in the narrow tunnel and the rain pelting down. In any other situation, the sound would have been soothing, but this was supposed to be Lily and Roman’s wedding day.
Now the group was safe for the moment, all of Sophie’s other feelings rushed over her. The event was an abject disaster. One bridesmaid was bleeding and drunk. The location for the ceremony was currently being doused in heavy rain and probably struck by lightning. They were trapped in a century-old tunnel dug by soldiers who were treated as artillery fodder and the bride with her recent brush with pneumonia was soaking wet!
To top it all off, Sophie had to say goodbye to Andreas again tomorrow because he didn’t believe in weddings anyway and given everything that had happened, maybe he had a point!
With a muted click, a beam of light appeared. Not from Andreas, where she would have expected it, but from the other end of the long tunnel.
‘Andreas?’ Kira’s voice carried on an echo.
‘We’re here.’
‘Oh, thank God!’ came the voice of Lily’s mother, then the light bobbed wildly as the other group approached. Another torch clicked on, ranging across the group and then flashing in her eyes.
‘We’re fine, Mum,’ Lily assured her mother shakily.
More pale faces appeared, with rustling as headlamps were fetched from packs. Everyone looked grim and ghostly and bedraggled and Sophie had never seen such a sorry sight at one of her weddings. Even the emotional reunion with the other guests only seemed to make the unfolding disaster bleaker.
What bride pictured her wedding day like this ?
Pressing her hands to her mouth in an attempt to stifle the sob she felt rising in her chest, she only partially succeeded, the sound coming out of her nose in an ugly snort instead.
‘Sophie!’ Lily exclaimed. One of the lights bobbed urgently in her direction.
Shaking her head wildly, she fended off her client with a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m fine,’ she choked. ‘I’m just so, so sorry.’ Another snort and an odd squeak that she couldn’t believe had come out of her own mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she said again with a cough and tore away from Lily’s concerned grasp.
She barrelled straight into Andreas.
‘Sophie!’ His voice made everything worse. He’d made her question everything – what her job meant to her, her hobbies, why she’d married Rory and mostly, what had really happened between them eight years ago. When he spoke her name in his rough voice, she couldn’t help wondering what she meant to him, even though that made her the same sad fool she’d been when she’d asked him to marry her.
‘I just need… a minute,’ she managed between frantic breaths, pushing past him.
‘Not there! We don’t want you to get lost.’
Sophie froze, peering at the pitch-black void in front of her with a new rush of fear. Andreas’s headlamp picked out the handwritten sign she’d missed:
Pericolo, galleria senza uscita
A tunnel with no exit felt like a bad metaphor for marriage.
It wasn’t the celebrant who was supposed to be an emotional wreck on the wedding day. Leaning one arm on the dank, stone wall, she sucked in a breath through her nose to try to stop wheezing.
‘God, what am I even doing here?’ Unclipping her helmet and slipping it off, she dropped her rucksack to the ground with a thunk and fell back against the wall. ‘How did I ever think I could do this – with you ?’