Page 85 of An Italian Wedding Adventure

‘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 likethis?

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.

---