Page 48 of An Italian Wedding Adventure

The sheets rustled as she propped herself up on one elbow and peered down at him. The dim glow through the shutters illuminated only patches of her face. ‘You don’t need to apologise,’ she said, her voice even. She was fully awake now. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything about Manaslu.’

He liked her remorse even less than his own. ‘I should have told them already. I just didn’t want?—’

‘That reaction from your mum. I get it. I really do.’

‘She’s right, though,’ he added softly. ‘I don’t even know why I put them through it. Did you know the death rate for Gasherbrum is 9 per cent?’ His voice trailed off. ‘Nine in every hundred people who attempt it never come back.’ Miro had been one of them. ‘When we lost Miro—’ His throat closed. It was a miracle he’d got the first four words out, that a concerningly reckless part of him wanted to keep talking.

‘You had to tell Toni.’

He crumbled, pulling away from her unconsciously. ‘I had to tell her over the phone, from the hospital and then… bring him back to her.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault, was it?’

He shook his head.

‘You did what you could.’ The conviction in her voice faded the longer he was silent.

Rubbing a hand over his face, he replied, ‘I don’t feel guilty. It’s not as simple as that. He was killed by falling ice – a risk that’s always present and impossible to predict. We all take responsibility for ourselves on the mountain. In the death zone, you even have to leave the bodies. I managed to get Miro down with ropes and a plastic sheet for a sled, but I would have left him if I’d had to. He would have left me, if our positions had been reversed.’

The wobble in his voice alarmed him and he willed Sophie not to touch him. He wouldn’t cope with that undeserved tenderness right now.

‘If you don’t feel guilty, why the turmoil?’ she asked, thankfully matter-of-factly.

He paused, hesitating one last time before admitting the truth – the reason she should stay well away from him. ‘I don’t feel guilty because I understand the choice he made. I’ve made that choice hundreds of times myself. I can’t control the elements, but I go up anyway. I just don’t know if it was fair to Toni.’

‘Ah,’ she said softly, although he was bewildered by what she thought made sense in his admission. ‘You’re scared of yourself.’

‘What does that even mean, Sophie?’ he harrumphed.

‘Would you prefer it if they didn’t love you? If you could just go up a mountain and no one would miss you?’

‘Of course not!’ But it would be simpler.

‘You feel responsible for their worries.’

‘Iamresponsible for their worries – as they constantly remind me. I could just stay down.’

Her reaction was not what he’d expected. ‘No, you couldn’t.’

‘You’re right. I couldn’t.’ He stared at her, what he could see of her face. He thought she was frowning, but something in her tone, in the way she defended him, reminded him of the old Sophie. ‘Nothing really makes sense to me in the valley,’ he admitted. ‘People. They don’t make sense to me.’

‘I’ve seen you, Andreas,’ she said, a smile in her voice this time. ‘Not right up high, but I’ve been with you in the valley and up a mountain.’

‘But with my parents, they don’t see me up a mountain. I used to climb with my father, but we did the same routes, the ones he learned on when he was a boy, the routes he taught me when he was young. It’s not the same as the split-second decisions, the confrontation with the fragility and resilience of life.’

‘That could be the name of your biography.’

He scrunched his brow. ‘What biography? I want a climbing route named after me and that’s all.’

‘That’sall?’

‘I’ll leave my invisible footprints on the mountains, the bits of my soul. But I’m a disappointment to my parents. I’m a disappointment to just about everyone. Even my sponsors want me to post on Insta-whatever and I disappointthem.’

‘You didn’t disappoint me.’

Although her words crawled into a dark space inside him and nestled there, his first reaction was a snort. ‘Sophie, I turned down your marriage proposal. There’s no bigger disappointment than that.’

‘I meant today,’ she clarified. ‘You really don’t have to apologise. I wanted to meet your family when we were together for the wrong reasons – as a statement you didn’t want to make. But I know, now, that nothing’s perfect. My eyes are open. No disappointment, just enjoying this between us for a little while, having my nosy questions answered. You’re not responsible for me and I won’t expect commitment.’

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