“I’m just not feeling all that great,” she says in answer to Noah’s question. “I think I might be coming down with something.”
“I can always bring you back if you don’t feel up to it,” he says.
“We can always bring you back,” Paige chips in. “I’m not sure that Noah’s got it in him to last the whole day.”
“I feel okay, actually,” he says. “I’m looking forward to a drink.”
Paige tenderly cups his face in her hand. “Well, just take it steady,” she says. “No more scares. I don’t think I could go through that again.”
Noah smiles. “Sorry to give you such a fright.”
Paige takes his hand. “Just don’t make a habit of it,” she says.
Rachel feels like she’s playing a bit part in somebody else’s movie. She’s never seen Paige like this and if it wasn’t so ill-timed, it’d almost be funny.
The car tips forward as it descends a steep track; the imposing cliffs on either side feel as if they’re closing in on them, creating a pinch point that makes it look like the end of the road drops straight into the sea. Rachel briefly wonders what would happen if the brakes failed, and can’t stop herself from putting the window down, just in case: she’s seen enough films to know that it’s often the only escape once a car’s submerged under water.
“O-kay,” says the driver as he mercifully stops just short of the end of the dust track. If he’d gone just a few meters farther they’d be on the decked terrace in front of them, the only thing that seems to separate land from sea. He makes a point of pulling up the handbrake, hard.
“It’s here,” he says, gesturing to the left, toward a simple wooden shack of a restaurant with whitewashed paneling and a corrugated-iron roof.
“How the hell did they find this place?” asks Noah to no one in particular as he pays the cab fare. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s as if we could just dive off the side and straight in,” says Paige, in awe as she steps out and looks at the sea as it glistens in the afternoon sun. “It’s so freeing.”
Perhaps it’s a reflection of Rachel’s inner turmoil that she doesn’t share Paige’s sense of liberation. Instead, she finds the ominous cliffs suffocating; the black-winged Alpine swifts menacing as they circle overhead.
She’s tempted to ask the driver just to take her back to the villa, knowing that the next chance she has of getting out of here, her life may well be very different.
Noah leads the way across the flower-festooned terrace toward an uneven wooden staircase, ravaged by the salt water at high tide. The juxtaposition between the optimism of the cerise bougainvillea and the rickety platform that looks like it might collapse at any moment sends shivers down Rachel’s spine.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” asks Rachel as she steps from the relative security of the platform onto the precarious staircase. It had looked like the steps could lead to nowhere but the sea, yet as soon as Rachel’s at that vantage point, she can see a tiny crescent of golden sand, a sheltered cove protected by rock formations that rise out of the water, forming an arch at one end and a bank of caves at the other.
Just shy of the water’s edge is a white gazebo that looks like a dainty bird’s cage, set in front of six rows of chairs, each festooned with bright-pink flower garlands. It looks stunning, but Rachel refuses to say that, as if doing so will somehow condone what Ali’s doing.
She spots her parents-in-law: Bob, and Val in her big hat, beaming from ear to ear as they chat with Will and Jack, so immensely proud of their two boys. How would they feel if they found out one of them was betraying the other in the worst way possible?
A red carpet meets them at the bottom of the stairs and thankfully accompanies them, high heels and all, down the aisle. Rachel can’t wait to see how Ali manages to negotiate the unlevelled sand hidden underneath in those lace stilettos of hers.
“Rachel, you look gorgeous,” says Val. “A vision in yellow.”
“Thanks, Val, you look lovely too,” says Rachel, smiling as she ducks under the broad brim of her mother-in-law’s hat to give her a kiss on both cheeks.
“She’ll have someone’s eye out with that at some point today, I’m sure,” jokes Bob.
Rachel laughs. “You’re looking very dapper as well, Bob. You okay?”
He kisses her as if he’s still unaccustomed to it, even though that’s how they greet each other every time. He goes in for two when she’s pulling away after one, and there’s that awkward moment when neither of them is sure what to do. “You’re matching the sunshine today, kid,” he says, by way of filling the split-second silence.