Chapter 22
‘Do you think maybe we should have got a manicure instead?’ Mattia joked.
Ginny pressed a hand against the golden stone at her left, partly in awe and partly to prop herself up as she got her breath back after the steep ascent through the pine forest to the foot of this monstrous rock.
It was difficult to believe they were in one of the most populous countries in Europe, when here there was only rock, rubble and sky, craggy Dolomite peaks in all directions.
‘Where’s the café?’ she replied to Kira’s boyfriend with a grin. ‘I thought we’d be sitting together drinking a Campari spritz while the others climbed.’
The weather had confounded her with a perfect autumn day – full sun, only a handful of textured clouds to augment the depthless blue.
To one side the forested hill fell away, speckled with yellow larch, to a lake that shimmered aqua.
She’d thought the turquoise of the Lago di Anterselva by the hotel was uniquely and impossibly beautiful, but it seemed this part of South Tyrol was dotted with wild lakes of all hues.
They’d passed another on their way to this spot, as well as glimpsing the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the distance, the legendary three peaks that dominated the landscape of the northern Dolomites.
But from where Ginny stood, the only way was up. She wasn’t much of a fan of ‘up’ right then, although it was probably preferable to ‘down’, if down meant falling. She was relieved no one had turned an ankle on the hike to get there.
‘Stop worrying about your manicures,’ Kira called out from where she was already unpacking equipment.
Whenever Kira got near a climbing wall, Ginny could do nothing but stare in awe at her friend.
She was abrupt and even a little awkward in conversation, but on the wall, Kira was capable and fearless – which was probably why Ginny had started learning this foolish sport to begin with.
When she took another glance at the weathered, ancient rock above her, she reconsidered that decision, another of her life choices she was seriously questioning.
‘You’re both ready for the easier routes here,’ Kira insisted. ‘I’ll set you a top rope. I have to go up to get things ready for Rhys anyway.’
Ginny stood with Mattia, both of them pretending they weren’t trembling, as Kira shimmied up the rock, a coil of rope looped around her torso, her body bending and contorting like a spider as she slipped her safety line into the anchors as she went.
‘Sometimes I don’t understand how she’s my friend,’ Ginny mumbled, shifting her helmet between her hands.
Mattia didn’t answer for a long moment, watching his girlfriend inch higher and higher. Then he just said, ‘I think it’s hot.’
Ginny chuckled but choked it off when an uncomfortable thought occurred to her. She glanced over at Rhys to find him already fitting his helmet. She wondered if he’d been wearing one the day of his accident.
‘Doesn’t it scare you?’ she asked Mattia.
His smile faded. ‘A bit. But I know how seriously she takes her safety and even more so the safety of others. It only looks so effortless because she’s that good. As she likes to tell me, a higher proportion of people are injured in car accidents than climbing accidents.’
Ginny thought of the weeks after Sophie and Andreas had got engaged last year, when he’d been on an expedition in Nepal. Andreas was a mountaineer as well as a climber, navigating the dangers of altitude and extreme temperatures. She didn’t know how Sophie had kept her head.
Her feet propelled her forward until she stood next to Rhys. He looked up from securing his harness, wary, as though questioning why she was talking to him in public.
‘How high is it?’ she asked.
‘All the way to the top is over a hundred metres, but that’s a difficult trad climb. The sport routes here are just over thirty metres, a hundred feet or so. Like the gym.’
It definitely wasn’t like the gym. The brightly coloured handholds in the gym gave her clear goals and parameters, but the bare rock was a puzzle she had no idea how to solve.
Ginny watched as Kira reached a point high up and sat back in her harness, unclipping equipment to set the rope.
On the ground, Laurie stood with his feet planted, the belay rope attached to his harness.
‘You shoot from above?’ Ginny asked Rhys.
He nodded. The clink of his equipment was louder than he was.
‘That’s wild,’ she commented.
‘This is nothing,’ he muttered. ‘A stag-do photo shoot.’ His mouth lifted into a slight smile as he clicked a lens into place on the camera and stowed both securely in a padded bag.
‘Then I really don’t know what I’m doing here.’
The warmth in his gaze startled her. It was the same face, the same eyes she’d always admired, but the ‘look’ was different. ‘I’ll show you when you take your turn on the wall.’
She could only shake her head.
The sudden pressure of his hand on hers made her jump and he let go immediately, with a furtive glance at the others. His thumb brushed over her wrist before he returned to his equipment, snapping the camera bag to his harness.
‘Take a risk, Ginny. You’ve prepared for this in the gym. You’re ready. The views are amazing.’
She was not ready, not to pit herself against this rock. ‘I don’t take risks.’
Another deep look. It was terrible how he could affect her lungs with nothing more than his eyes. ‘Looking for a long-term partner is a risk – the biggest risk.’
Identifying the hint of bitterness in his voice, she wondered whether she’d ever fully appreciated that risk.
‘Well, I’m not doing that right now either,’ she replied lightly.
Kira abseiled down smoothly, her rubber climbing shoes dancing off the rock, and then Rhys approached the wall.
She expected him to tie in to the rope as she’d been taught and then dig his fingers into a crevice for purchase, but, instead, he slipped two metal grips onto the rope, clipping a safety sling into each.
A moment later, he was sliding efficiently up the rope using the grips and a foot sling.
Ginny watched in dismayed awe. She hoped to God Kira had tied that knot well.
Yes, the rock face was only as high as the wall in the gym, but there was no padded landing here and Rhys had already fallen once.
She couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like for his girlfriend, assuming they’d been together at the time – and how it had all gone wrong for them.
She hoped, for the sake of the faceless woman, that she hadn’t witnessed the fall.
He arrived at Kira’s anchor point efficiently and dangled, clipping the grips back onto his harness, both hands now free to manage his equipment.
Ginny wasn’t sure if it was reassuring to see he was firmly attached to the rope or even more terrifying that he wasn’t holding on.
With the strap slung over his head, he peered at his camera, then lifted it to his eye – taking a test shot, Ginny guessed.
A moment later, the lens was pointed at her and, although she couldn’t see or hear at this distance, she felt the moment the shutter clicked, capturing what must have been a look of horror on her face.
He lowered the camera and grinned at her, giving her a wave as he swung on the rope a little, on purpose she was sure.
Despite the possible questions it would raise with their audience, there was only one way Ginny could respond to that. She lifted her middle finger.
‘Good to see you’ve learned how to deal with the team at Great Heart,’ Willard said with a chuckle. ‘Shall I belay you?’
She shook her head. ‘Someone else can go first. Mattia!’ She gave Kira’s boyfriend a firm nudge.
‘Hey!’
She found herself at a loose end as the first members of the group went up. Kira belayed Tash, while barking encouragement to Mattia, who was on his second attempt at the easy route where she’d set a top rope. Andreas was already most of the way up to where Rhys was perched.
Ginny could have belayed someone, Kira had thoroughly trained her, but everyone here was more skilled than she was. She might have taken photos, except Rhys was up there with his bird’s-eye view and it didn’t seem necessary, which left her with only her usual hobby: overthinking.
‘Do you feel afraid, when you go up there?’ she asked Willard.
‘Oh, yes,’ he answered immediately. ‘But the first time you do something is a special kind of fear. I can understand that the rock looks daunting, but it becomes a friend over time.’
‘A friend? That’s an odd way to describe a rock face.’
‘Why? It’s sturdy and dependable and you can trust it, when you’ve got to know it. You might find all of us at Great Heart will trust a rock before we’ll trust a person.’
‘With my dating history, I suppose I get that,’ she joked.
‘Indeed,’ Willard said softly. ‘But we’re no different, you know, Great Heart and I Do.’
She studied him, but he was carefully watching Mattia, struggling up the wall on the end of Will’s rope. ‘I’m not sure I agree,’ Ginny said. ‘You’re all sceptics and cynics whereas we stay hopeful.’
‘That’s certainly your great strength, Ginny,’ he said, making her wonder what her boss had told him about her. ‘But do you understand what an adventure it is to promise to spend your life with someone?’
She opened her mouth to insist that of course she did. She’d planned over forty weddings. She’d seen cold feet and hyperventilating grooms and fainting mothers-in-law. But for all her serious dates and earnest searching, she’d never come close to that decision herself.
She’d imagined her own wedding countless times, with a faceless groom who didn’t matter to the illusion. But visualising the process leading up to that moment? Her skin crawled.
I don’t take risks.
‘We all take marriage very seriously,’ Will continued, ‘which is why I’ve never done it myself,’ he added with a wink. ‘Isn’t that right, Andreas?’ he called out to the groom, whose feet had just touched down on the ground again. ‘Marriage is a risky adventure?’
‘Terrifying,’ Andreas confirmed without hesitation.
‘But he’s a pro with risk assessment and mitigation and he has a cool head and a determined heart. He and Sophie will have a rare kind of happiness, I think.’
‘He can certainly trust Sophie. She loves him.’
She could see from the faint blush on Andreas’s cheeks that he’d heard her.
Ginny sighed, crossing her arms as a chill breeze gusted.
Perhaps that was her role: creating happiness for others.
She certainly couldn’t imagine the courage necessary to grow a love strong enough for the trials of getting married.
Oh dear, she really was starting to sound like the cynics of Great Heart.
‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?’ Will prompted, when she ran out of conversation.
Ginny nodded as she stared out over the dwarf mountain pines at the green-and-gold valley.
‘It’s more beautiful from up there.’ He gestured with his chin at the wall.
She laughed. ‘Nice try.’
‘Come on, Ginny,’ Andreas called out from where he was coiling a rope, preparing to belay Laurie. ‘You didn’t drag yourself up here for nothing and put yourself through hours of classes with Kira.’
Thinking of her classes at the Great Heart gym made her emotions swim.
She looked forward to her weekly lesson and thinking of her bond with Kira brought unexpected tears to her eyes.
When she looked up at the arresting vertical of rock, she found Rhys looking down at her, watching, as he had on occasion at the gym.
She wondered what he’d seen then and what he saw now.
Then Andreas delivered a challenge she couldn’t back down from. ‘You’re the representative of I Do Destinations here today. You’d better show us what you can do!’
With a gulp and a deep breath, Ginny accepted that the only way was up.