Chapter 33
Life swallowed Toni up as soon as she set foot back on British soil.
Between taking Cilli to his football camp, arriving at work on time and the many summer day trips she was coordinating on the Dorset coast for Great Heart Adventures, there was no time to process the past two weeks.
Only the occasional, panicked twinge hinted at the turmoil that was waiting for her when she slowed down again.
All her free moments were full of memories. In the shower, the minutes flew by as she lost herself in thoughts of the isola, from the forest to the wild coves – and Gabri’s house.
She was dreading the debrief with Sophie.
Medical appointments kept her colleague in Bath most of the week after the wedding, which Toni was thankful for.
Andreas, too, was busy driving between Weymouth and Bath, leading cliff-climbing tours one day and rushing back from the hospital the next for an afternoon potholing group.
Toni was starting to believe she might be left to recover from her ground-shaking holiday fling in her own time when Ginny Weller, the perky wedding planner from I Do with a subtle piercing below her lips, arrived for her weekly climbing lesson on Thursday evening.
Kira, Great Heart’s blue-haired climbing instructor and Ginny had bonded over a disastrous winter wedding at New Year’s and it usually made Toni smile to see the growing friendship between the two polar opposites.
But when they approached the reception desk together, Kira silently questioning and Ginny bubbling with eagerness, Toni suspected she might not be left alone after all.
‘Please tell me you can come for a drink with us. It feels like ages since we caught up and I want to hear allllll about Elba,’ Ginny gushed.
Toni pictured how they’d react if she told them allllll about her relationship with Gabri and almost laughed.
She considered fudging an excuse, but her parents had already collected Cilli from football and would have stayed for a few hours anyway and it would probably be suspicious if she refused all of these requests for the rest of her life.
‘Sure. I’ll meet you at the Admiral when I’ve closed up?’
She was surprised to find Sophie with Kira and Ginny when she stepped through the mullioned door of their local an hour later.
Sophie still wasn’t showing – she mustn’t be as far along as Gabri’s ex-wife, was the thought that surfaced first. Toni kind of understood why Gabri was wary of children.
They brought out so much emotion that no one knew how to adequately deal with.
Ginny and Kira had already got started on a bottle of wine. Ginny held it in Toni’s direction, eyebrows up. ‘I decided to crash at Kira’s tonight, rather than drive home. We need wine for this discussion.’
‘Which discussion?’ Toni asked, trying to swallow her panic.
Six months ago, they’d gathered around this exact table and performed an intervention to get Kira to see that she’d fallen in love.
The similarities made Toni’s hair stand on end.
She would not meet the same fate – or at least, she couldn’t afford to admit it.
‘Sophie’s wedding!’ Ginny announced, and Toni blew out a relieved breath.
‘What’s this? I thought you’d convinced Andreas to wait so you can celebrate properly when…’ She made a vague pregnant-belly gesture.
Sophie looked neither like a glowing mother-to-be nor a blushing bride. ‘Apparently “illegitimate” children are a legal problem in Italy,’ she said flatly. ‘If we’re not married, then Andreas has no parental rights unless we get a lawyer to sort things out.’
‘Yikes,’ Ginny said with a lively grimace.
‘Are you having the baby there?’ Toni asked, hoping all of this didn’t mean she’d be required to travel to more weddings in her own future. She was done with other people’s symbolism and time away from Cillian.
‘I’m going to spend the first part of my maternity leave there,’ Sophie explained. ‘Andreas does a lot of work over the winter and if I’m here, either he’ll be turning down work, which we can’t really afford, or I’ll never see him.’
‘That’s complicated,’ Toni commented in dismay.
‘From what I’ve seen, falling in love involves a lot of commuting,’ Ginny commented drily, giving Kira a nudge. ‘Why aren’t you off to Woking tonight?’
Her boyfriend was a member of a London opera company, but he’d rented an apartment in Surrey so it was easier to see Kira, while still being able to commute to London.
‘Mattia’s in Japan for a festival,’ she explained with what would have been a pout if Kira had been the type to pout. ‘But driving to Woking isn’t quite like flying to Italy. Mattia and I at least attempted to solve our geographical challenges.’
Toni fiddled with the stem of her wine glass, annoyed she was thinking about another geographical challenge. The distance between Weymouth and Elba was only the most obvious reason a relationship with Gabri would never work.
Although he’d seemed to think the only problem was that Toni still wasn’t ready. She wasn’t, but… well, they’d got as far as they’d got, which meant something.
‘Anyway, Sophie needs to get married – fast,’ Ginny continued. ‘But no compromises. You can’t have a simple wedding when you work for I Do Destinations. Everything you’ve been dreaming about, we’re going to make it happen.’
‘Ginny, I can be reasonable about this. I know exactly how long these things usually take to arrange, not to mention all the other weddings on the books right now.’
‘We’ve got the three of us,’ Ginny said expansively, ‘plus Reshma and Tita. What can’t we achieve?’
Toni shared a glance with Kira and they burst out laughing. ‘Have you forgotten I burned my blouse at the last wedding?’ Kira asked.
Sophie buried her face in her hands. ‘I will never forget that! The priest fired the extinguisher at you and you still had powder on your face when you got changed – into my clothes!’
‘I am a bad luck charm for weddings,’ Kira said emphatically.
‘What about when you get married to Mattia?’ Ginny prompted.
‘That boy is only twenty-eight years old. He’s too young to marry,’ Kira said with her chin in the air.
It was a milder answer than Toni had expected from her.
Until recently, no one at Great Heart had known Kira had had her heart broken at nineteen.
She’d been a firm romance denier ever since – until sensitive, starry-eyed Mattia had stolen her heart.
‘I’m sure you’ll help to plan Sophie’s wedding anyway, even if we have to keep you away from the candles.’ Ginny turned to Toni. ‘Reshma said your wedding went off perfectly, so you’ll help.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘And Cillian can be ring bearer.’
Toni would help, of course. For Andreas, she’d do a lot more than help plan another wedding, even if it was so soon after the trauma of the last one. But she didn’t quite muster the necessary enthusiasm in time.
‘What?’ asked Ginny. ‘I haven’t heard much at all about that wedding.’
‘It went off perfectly,’ Toni repeated. When Kira, Ginny and Sophie just watched her, expecting more, she sighed, staring up at the ancient beams in the ceiling.
‘The wedding was fine. I was not. I’ll help you, Sophie, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do another wedding for…
well, a long time. Especially not on the island. ’
‘Why? Was it—?’
It was clear, the moment Ginny realised why Toni had struggled. She’d been killing conversations for nearly a decade. It was a familiar problem.
‘Actually, no, it wasn’t that,’ Toni said.
Sophie’s earnest look made her wonder how much Andreas had told her.
Probably everything, which was a surprise from her stoic friend.
‘I mean, yes, I know more about how marriages end than how they begin and it was the first time I’d attended a wedding since my own. That milestone wasn’t fun.’
‘But you said that wasn’t the problem. What happened?’ Sophie asked.
Aside from falling irrationally in love with the stubborn, idealistic, frustrating florist?
‘It was difficult having Cillian there but being so busy myself,’ was what she settled on.
That was true. ‘There’s no satisfactory solution.
’ Also true. ‘If he comes with me, it’s complicated.
If I go alone, it’s also complicated. I just don’t think it’s the best job for a mother. ’
It was Toni’s turn to choke on her words. Whirling to face Sophie, she opened her mouth to qualify her statement, but Sophie shook her head.
‘Don’t worry. I’m aware of the practical difficulties before me, although it’s disappointing to hear you don’t think it worked at all. Your mum was there to look after Cillian, right?’
‘Yes, but they were both outside of their comfort zones.’ They weren’t the only ones.
With a sigh, she spilled the story. ‘Cilli ran off on the night of the wedding. He wanted to watch the turtle nest in case the eggs hatched. Reshma was on her own for the whole reception, while I was in my cabin, barely holding off a panic attack. Reshma was too kind. It was a disaster! The entire two weeks were a disaster.’
She’d silenced all three of her companions now.
Sophie was the first to recover. ‘But you found him, right?’
Toni spoke carefully, hoping nothing would be revealed by her tone, even though saying his name felt like awakening a dragon. ‘You know Gabri, the florist? Well, he and some members of the hotel staff went out looking for him and Gabri worked out where he’d gone and brought him back.’
‘Gabri is a man?’ Kira asked.
Ginny luckily saved Toni from explaining.
‘Gabriele is a masculine name in Italy. But I thought he was a woman for at least a month when I first worked with him! When I called him on the phone and this person answered with this husky Italian accent, I was ready to tease “Gabri” about her sexy boyfriend, until I realised. I felt so silly.’
Sophie squeezed Toni’s arm. ‘It must have been terrifying, Cillian going off by himself. I’m so glad Gabri helped.’
Toni just nodded, hoping the conversation steered itself out of dangerous territory, because she was fighting the urge to keep talking about him, ask what they thought of him – although that information would do her zero good.
‘But why did you say the entire two weeks were a disaster?’ Kira asked with a frown. ‘You haven’t even shown me any photos. That time you and Cillian went to the Isles of Scilly, you basically sat me down for an entire home movie.’
‘Where did you stay again?’ Sophie asked. ‘We have arrangements with several hotels. Maybe I could have got you better rates if you’d asked—’
‘And I could have given you beach tips,’ Ginny piped up. ‘There’s this hidden cove on the western end— Why didn’t you ask us?’
Toni froze. She was too tired for this – too emotionally tired.
‘I was staying with a friend,’ she answered, her voice devoid of all strength.
‘Oh, that’s okay then. I didn’t know you knew anyone on the island,’ Ginny said. ‘If they live there, they probably know all the best—’
Sophie placed a hand on Ginny’s arm to stop her flow of speech. ‘What friend, Toni? What’s that look on your face?’
Toni groaned, letting her head fall to the scarred table. ‘It’s embarrassing to admit, but just like Ginny, I thought he was a woman. This whole time, I thought he was a woman. I thought I was going to stay with a woman!’
She allowed a moment for that to sink in.
‘But just to prove I’m not a complete idiot, he thought I was a man!’ Toni rushed on when the other three simply gawked at her.
Ginny’s mouth was open so far, Toni wouldn’t have been surprised to see a fly buzz in. Kira’s eyes were flying saucers.
Sophie was the only one with a reasonable reaction. ‘But Gabri is lovely. I can see it might have been awkward at first, but he would have looked after you, I’m sure.’
Toni bit her lip against the sting of memories. Yes, Gabri had looked after her, with good food and philosophy and his infectious appreciation for the smaller things in life – and then with kisses and touches, tender as well as arousing.
‘You don’t have to be embarrassed about that,’ Ginny insisted. ‘I just said I made the same mistake.’
A chuckle escaped Toni – a touch hysterically.
‘You did not make the same mistake, Ginny,’ she said drily.
The words were rising in her throat like sparkling wine getting ready to pop the cork.
‘The mistaken identity, yes, but I’m guessing I’m the only one who salivated over his shirtless body in the morning and then jumped into bed with him on the third day! ’