‘IF YOU TWO are ready, we’ll wait for you in the restaurant—the camera’s all set up in there. I’d say take your time, but our guide just let us know that they’re expecting the visibility to be bad later. Something about the clouds coming down. Long and short of it is that we need to get cracking if you’re going to make it up there safely.’
‘No problem. We’ll meet you there in a minute,’ Mauro said. The car journey had been a special kind of torture: he had been in that enclosed space, filled with the scent of sea salt and rosemary from Amber’s hair, but completely unable to reach out and touch her. Screw the mountain roads. He would have pulled over into any layby that they’d passed if he’d thought that he could wind his fingers through her blonde waves and drag her close. If he’d thought for a second that that would have been a good idea.
If only she hadn’t made everything so much more complicated by asking about his relationship with Louise. If he’d been able to go on believing that another commitment just wasn’t possible, then he wouldn’t be second-guessing himself and his decisions. He’d just have to get through it. Stick with it for two more days and then she would be going back to London and he wouldn’t have to spend all his energy resisting her any more.
‘Mauro,’ Amber said, walking towards him, ‘why do I have the feeling this isn’t going to go well?’
He turned his lips up in a smile that he hoped was reassuring. ‘It’s going to be fine. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’ But his words did nothing to smooth the lines on her forehead.
When they sat down in the restaurant, Amber painted on a fake grin, and he knew that she was going to play nice for the cameras. As the interview went on she smiled and flirted, and hinted at some of the fun that they’d had together, all the while steering clear of anything that might be considered the truth. He could feel his muscles growing tighter and his pulse starting to pick up. With every lie, the truth felt further away. The magic of that night at the vineyard was diluted, until, one lie soon, it would be as if it never happened. It would be taken from him. And it was her fault that he was feeling like this—if she’d not asked about Louise, made him reconsider everything that he’d thought about the place for relationships in his life, he’d have been able to walk away from her the same way he had from every other woman for the past ten years. He was almost sure of it.
It felt like a betrayal.
He managed to hold his tongue the whole time the camera was rolling, smiling in the appropriate places, albeit with a fair amount of subtle prompting from Julia. But the whole while, he just wished that they could talk, properly. That she didn’t have to worry about protecting herself, because he would never hurt her. That maybe, if they were both brave enough, they could stop denying what was going on between them and take a chance on making a relationship work.
As soon as he heard the words, ‘That’s a wrap, guys,’—or maybe he just imagined them—his hands were on his pedals, powering himself out of the restaurant and out onto the surface of the volcano, leaving the whole team following in his wake.
‘Mauro!’
Amber called him from the door of the restaurant, but he was too riled. They were meant to be acting as if that that kiss had never happened, and if she made him speak to her now there was no way he could do that.
He could hear rapid footsteps behind him as she picked up her pace to catch him up, but he didn’t break his rhythm on the pedals. Powering himself forward, grateful for every minute he’d spent in the pool and in the gym keeping his arms and his upper body in shape.
‘Mauro, would you wait up?’
But there was no need, because she’d already caught him up. Goddamn this gravel and the slow going.
‘What did I do?’
He glanced at her waist, where she still wore the battery pack for her microphone.
‘Nothing,’ he said as levelly as he could. ‘You heard Ayisha. The visibility’s going to be bad later. We need to get going, that’s all.’
Amber glanced over her shoulder. He followed her gaze and saw that Piotr had caught them up. Hell. Were they going to have no privacy at all today? All this, the interviews, the camera trailing them, the microphone still clipped to Amber’s shirt, it all served to show him what a farce all this was. How fake the whole week and everything in it.
How much of the kiss with Amber had been real? Perhaps she had been faking with him as well. Except he knew that couldn’t be true. There had been a connection and a bond between them that was impossible for him to have imagined. And if that hadn’t been real, then there would be no reason for things to be awkward—and they definitely were awkward.
But enough was enough now. He’d smiled through the interviews. He’d provided the villa and the resources and the activities. He’d even kissed her, for God’s sake. What more did they all want from him? He just wanted to get on, get up this mountain, and then get on with forgetting that he’d ever met her.
Amber glanced again at the camera, and then studied his face for a few long moments. Her expression hardened, and something twisted in his guts as he realised that he had hurt her. And it didn’t matter that she had hurt him first. He had promised her that he wouldn’t and now he had broken that promise. He reached for her hand, and pulled her gently towards him. From the corner of his eye he could see that Piotr and Ayisha had suddenly pulled off their headphones and found some very interesting buttons to press on their equipment and were showily paying no attention at all to the two of them.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘Let’s just forget it and go have fun. I’ve been waiting to show you this all week. Does that sound OK?’
She nodded, and he let go of the breath that he’d been holding.
‘OK, then.’ He indicated a path. ‘We need to head that way. We’d better make it a fast walk if we’re going to make it up there on schedule.’
He looked up at the sky, and let the sun warm his face. It was much cooler up here, at about eighteen hundred metres, and would only get colder the higher they climbed. It was a beautiful day, though. There were just a few clouds in the sky at the moment, a clear bright white against the rich blue of the sky. With the black of the lava all around, the contrast was striking. They headed away from the cable-car terminal and towards one of the paths up the mountain, along with the other rucksack-carrying, walking-shoe-wearing climbers.
His hand cycle drew a few curious glances, and they stopped a couple of times to chat to the other walkers. They trod on for an hour or so, until he realised that Amber was struggling. She’d said that she had done some walking before, but he knew that the altitude could make even an easy stroll difficult if you weren’t used to it. Her face was flushed, but she didn’t seem out of breath.
He tried to interpret the expression on her face. Her eyes were fixed forwards, deliberately not looking at him as they made their way higher and higher. When he glanced over his shoulder he couldn’t see Ayisha—true to her word they must have been hanging back a way behind them. They were both still wearing microphones, though, so any feeling of privacy was just an illusion.
‘So what do you think?’ he asked eventually, not sure how long they could keep walking without making any conversation at all.
‘About what?’
He laughed, despite himself. ‘Uh, about the volcano?’
He could already feel the cool of the altitude biting into his fingers. Amber had pulled on another layer since they had left the cable-car station, and the clouds were thickening above them. The other hikers had gone on ahead, what with four working limbs, and without the encumbrance of an all-terrain cycle, they seemed to be making better time than him. He glanced at the compass app on his phone, just to make sure he was still on top of their navigation and was pleased to see they were dead on course.
‘Are we on track?’ Amber asked, and he nodded.
‘Just keep heading uphill,’ he said with a smile.
They walked on, but the clouds on the horizon were starting to concern him. And the day that had started in bright sunshine was rapidly turning darker. Another couple of hundred metres passed without either of them saying a word, and he could tell from the sound of Amber’s rapid breaths that she was starting to find the terrain hard going.
‘Do we need to stop?’
He hadn’t meant for the words to sound interrogative, but they had, he realised too late.
‘I’m fine,’ she bit out.
‘Really,’ he softened his voice. ‘It’s no problem if you need to take a break. I could do with a breather too.’
She snorted and he shrugged his shoulders. OK, so he didn’t need to stop, but that didn’t mean that he minded if it was what she needed.
‘OK, then, how about if I said I’d like to stop and admire the view?’
It wasn’t a lie: the view really was worth stopping for. They’d long ago left behind any signs of life; the few straggling plants that had valiantly fought for survival further down the mountain were nowhere in evidence here. But the contrast between the barren rock, the bright blue sky on one side, and the wall of white cloud on the other was unlike anything he had ever seen anywhere else on the planet. He stopped when they reached the top of the hillock they were climbing, and looked around him to get his bearings. He knew from experience that mountains could be deceptive, with one false summit following another, and when he looked around him he realised that this hike might not be as simple as he’d planned. This wasn’t the summit, but he couldn’t see the higher peak either. The wall of white was in front of them now, as the clouds rolled down.
He turned and looked back, and could still see the path. They could turn around and head straight back. But it was a long way down, and there was no guaranteeing that the clouds wouldn’t catch up and overtake them long before they reached Rifugio Sapienza. The funivia terminal wasn’t far—the safest thing to do would be to just keep going. And yet when he looked for the path, he just couldn’t see it. They’d have to rely on the compass, the map and his memory of this trail.
‘Mauro...’ Amber’s voice was full of trepidation. ‘Please tell me you know where we’re going.’
He turned to look at her and saw genuine concern in her face. Cracking a smile for the first time since they’d escaped the cameras, he told her that everything was fine. ‘It’s no more than half an hour from here. We’ll have to trust the compass and the map, but we’ll be fine.’
The tension lifted from her face, but a crease appeared between her eyebrows as they both heard the shout from behind them.
‘Aiuto! Sono caduto!’
They both whipped around at the sound of the shout, but could see nothing behind them except for a wall of white.
‘Che succede?’ Mauro called back. ‘Serve aiuto?’
All they heard in response was a groan of pain.
Amber looked down at Mauro. ‘What did you say? What’s happening?’
‘I’m not sure. Someone shouted for help, it sounded like he said he’d fallen, but I don’t know more than that.’
‘We have to go back,’ Amber said.
‘It might not be safe.’ But another loud groan from the injured man decided for them. ‘He’s probably on the trail,’ Mauro said. ‘And he can’t be that far behind or we wouldn’t hear him.’
‘What about the crew? Won’t they have caught up with him?’
‘It depends whether they turned back. I couldn’t see them behind us last time I looked, and I don’t know how far behind they were. But I think we have to assume that if he’s shouting there’s no one else there to help him.’
Amber turned on the spot, taking in the blank whiteness on all sides, before setting her face in an expression of resolve. ‘Well, then. Let’s get going.’
‘Still no signal,’ Mauro said, checking his phone as they were making their way back down the path. ‘Normally I’d say one of us should go on ahead to get help, but with the visibility like this we need to stick together. At least until we find him and know what we’re dealing with.’
They retraced their steps along the trail, the shouts of the injured man getting louder and more desperate as they grew close, and as he came into view it was obvious why.
The man was sitting on the ground, cradling his arm, which was bent at an ugly angle. His face was a ghostly white, bordering on grey, and his forehead was clammy with sweat. Amber dropped to her knees beside him, and murmured soothing words as she pulled an emergency blanket out of her daypack.
‘It’s OK,’ she told him. ‘We’re here, and we’ll get you some help. You’re going to be fine.’ His expression didn’t change from that of shocked terror. She brushed the hair from his forehead as she sat beside him, and he flinched away from her touch.
‘Can you tell me your name?’ she asked gently as she shook out the blanket. ‘Do you understand English? Mauro, can you translate?’
‘No...need,’ the man replied, shivering. ‘Enzo. My name is Enzo.’
‘OK, Enzo,’ she carried on, in the tones one would use with a spooked horse. ‘You’re looking a bit chilly, a bit cold. I’m just going to wrap this around you to keep you warm. Is that OK?’
‘Amber,’ Mauro whispered behind her. ‘Did you see his arm? We need to support it in a sling if he’ll let us.’
‘Mm hmm,’ she said, in the same soothing tone. She appreciated his help, but she didn’t need it. She could see exactly what Enzo needed, and how to help him. ‘Not just now, Mauro.’
‘Here we go then, Enzo.’ She wrapped the blanket around him as gently as she could, keeping her hands well away from the nasty-looking kink in the bones of his left arm. ‘All done,’ she said. ‘You’re doing really well. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Me and Mauro are going to take care of you until Mountain Rescue arrives, and everything’s going to be fine, OK?’ She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘OK?’
Waiting until he met her gaze, she smiled, and then turned back to her bag. ‘Now then, something to warm you up.’ She pulled out the flask of coffee that they had packed back at base camp and poured a cup. Holding it up to Enzo’s lips, she encouraged him to take a couple of sips. ‘That’s it,’ she said with another smile. ‘You’re doing great.’
Finally, she turned to Mauro, who was still behind her.
‘What?’ she asked when she saw him smiling.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just...that was pretty amazing. That’s all.’
She went to dismiss him with a wave of her hand, but then stopped herself. ‘Thanks. But that was the easy part. We need to decide what to do next. What do you think—do we sit and wait?’
‘I’m not sure that we can,’ Mauro said. ‘Did you see the colour of his hand? It looked to me like his circulation was compromised. The forecast had this fog sticking around until nightfall. There’s not a good time for someone to find us, so I think we’re going to have to get ourselves found instead. Do you think he can move?’
‘Not like this.’ She turned her back to the injured man and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘You saw how much pain he was in when I was just wrapping that blanket around him. You’re right about needing to get that arm in a sling, but he’s not going to like it. Are you sure that there’s no other way?’
‘Our other option is to wait till morning. What do you think?’
‘Too cold,’ she said immediately. ‘And he’s in too much pain. We have to move.’
‘Agreed.’
She turned to Enzo, wondering how much he had heard, but, from the glazed expression on his face, his distress and panic were going to be as much of a hindrance as his physical injuries.
‘OK, Enzo. We have a plan to get us all to safety, but we’re going to have to move. Do you understand?’ She glanced up at Mauro to translate, but it wasn’t necessary.
‘No, not moving,’ Enzo said with a shake of his head and a panicked expression. ‘Hurts.’
‘A sling,’ Amber said. ‘If we can strap his arm tight and immobilise it, it should keep the pain to a minimum. Is there one in the first-aid kit?’
‘No, but we can make one from a spare shirt, if he’ll let you.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘He’s going to have to trust me. OK, Enzo. I know you’re scared, but we really need to get ourselves somewhere warm and safe. It’s not far. Mauro knows exactly where we’re going, but we need to go soon, before it starts to get dark.’
‘My arm...’
‘We’re going to make you a sling, and make sure your arm won’t hurt while we move. Can you do that for me?’ she asked, brushing the hair off his forehead again and turning his face up to her. ‘Can you trust me? We’re going to do this together.’
She pulled a spare T-shirt out of her pack and showed it to Enzo. ‘OK, here we go. Just a T-shirt. Nothing to be worried about.’
With Mauro murmuring instructions behind her, she eased the neck of the shirt over Enzo’s head.
‘There we go. Now we need to put your hand through here,’ she said, indicating the armhole as Enzo shrank away from her. She sat back on her heels, giving him some space. ‘I don’t need to touch,’ she said gently. ‘The armhole is right there by your hand. Do you think, when you feel ready, you can get your fingers through it?’
Behind her, Mauro spoke a few words of quiet Italian, and she guessed that he had translated her words. Enzo looked up and met her gaze, but made no signs of moving.
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘You can.’ She laid a hand on his uninjured arm. ‘I know you can do this.’
Slowly, carefully, he moved his hand into the armhole, and with frequent glances at his face, to make sure that he was OK, Amber eased the rest of the fabric around his elbow, taking some of the weight off the injured limb.
She grabbed a bandage from the first-aid pack and gently wrapped it around the sling, so that the broken arm was pinned to Enzo’s chest. He finally let out a sigh of relief as she finished and Amber was relieved to see some colour returning to his face. She replaced the blanket around him, and turned to talk quick and low to Mauro.
‘How far to the station?’
‘The route we were going to take? Thirty minutes. There’s another route that should only take ten, but...’
‘But?’
‘It’s steep.’
‘I can manage.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘Oh.’ She looked at his cycle. It had never even occurred to her that he had planned their route to take his disability into account. She had got so used to him being able to do anything that she could that she had almost forgotten that his way of seeing the world was different from hers.
‘There are a couple of steps. Nothing that you and Enzo wouldn’t be able to manage, but I can’t get the cycle up them.’
‘I can send Mountain Rescue back for you,’ she said, and it wasn’t until the words left her mouth that she realised that she’d come to a decision.
‘I’m not letting you go alone. It’s dangerous, Amber.’
She glanced over at Enzo. ‘Do you really think he can walk for thirty minutes? Show me on the map. I’ve a compass on my phone. I can do it.’
They both looked over at Enzo. Although some colour had returned to his face, it was still creased with pain and he was cradling his injured arm like a baby bird.
‘He’ll have to wait, I’m not letting you go,’ Mauro said.
She couldn’t suppress a small smile at that. ‘We’ll be fine. You know it’s the right thing. I know that I can do this, and I’ll send a team back for you.’
‘We...not get lost,’ Enzo said from behind them. ‘I climb many times.’
‘There you are,’ she said, leaning in close so that Enzo couldn’t hear them. ‘Please, I’m going to go quickly. For his sake. I’ll see you back at the funivia in no time.’
Mauro nodded, knowing that she was right and—more importantly—that they didn’t have a choice. He forced a smile, tugging on the front of her jacket. With one firm hand on the nape of her neck and the other on her back, he stole a quick, hard kiss on the lips.