After a second, Shay nodded. ‘I hope he makes you happy.’
‘He does.’ And now her heart was thudding against her ribs, because whilst it wasn’t a lie, it suddenly felt like one.
‘Got any more?’
‘Of Aaron? Loads!’ She brought up the next one, of Aaron striking one of his Hollywood poses, then hastily slid past before Shay could pass comment.
‘Actually, I meant photos of any more boyfriends.’
‘No.’ Was it embarrassing that there hadn’t really been any others? Her dating history had been patchy to say the least.
‘Not even the first one?’ said Shay.
She turned sideways to look at him. ‘You mean you? We didn’t have mobile phones back then.’ It had been just before they’d become affordable for teenagers. Somewhere in the back of a drawer was a box containing random photos taken at parties using cheap disposable cameras, but that was as far as it went.
‘Nothing at all from Venice?’
She shook her head. He’d had copies made of those magical snowy night-time photos, and she’d treasured them, keeping them safe in the back of her purse so she could gaze at them whenever she wanted . . . until she and Shay had broken up and he had abruptly left town, and it had been just too painful to remember the night it had all begun in St Mark’s Square.
‘Let me guess, you tore them into a hundred pieces and threw them away?’ He was watching her, half smiling now, because he knew so well what she’d been like.
Didi smiled too. ‘I was going to do that, but Layla persuaded me not to. So they stayed in my purse. Until a few weeks later, when she took me to Cheltenham on a shopping trip to try and cheer me up. While we were queuing in Burger King, someone accidentally tripped and fell against me. Well, I thought it was an accident, but when we went to pay, my purse was gone from my bag.’
‘Were you devastated?’
‘It was OK, Layla paid for my burger.’
Shay laughed. ‘Well thank goodness for that.’
She’d always loved his laugh, had loved being able to make him laugh. After a moment she said, ‘But yes, of course I wished I hadn’t lost the photos. They were a part of our past.’
Shay took out his phone, keeping the screen angled away. When he showed it to her, there it was, the photograph that had existed only in her mind for the last thirteen years. It was slightly yellowed and worn around the white edges, with a diagonal crease across the bottom left-hand corner, but otherwise exactly as she remembered. There they were, two teenagers, standing pink-cheeked and sparkly-eyed alongside a snowman just a couple of hours old, laughing at each other whilst the elderly Italian man took their photo and snow fell like fat swirling feathers around them.
Seeing it again was surprisingly emotional. For a long moment Didi had to concentrate hard on willing her eyes to stay dry. When she trusted herself to speak again, she said, ‘I never thought . . .’
‘You didn’t think I’d keep them? I almost didn’t,’ Shay admitted. ‘I left them behind when I went to Australia. Then eighteen months later, while Dad was out of prison, I asked him to send me my five-year diary. When it arrived and I unlocked it, there were the photos.’
She remembered the diary, fat and padlocked, which he’d kept beside his bed. He had filled it with little cartoons, random thoughts, addresses and phone numbers, funny stories and plans for the future.
‘So I kind of followed you all the way to Australia.’
The creases deepened at the outer corners of his eyes. ‘You did. It was good to see you again. After that, I took you along with me wherever I went.’
Didi was touched to hear it. And now, thanks to technology, there were digital copies of the photos that would last forever. Tapping a key on her desktop, she pointed to show him her email address. ‘Can you send them to me?’
Shay nodded, and a couple of seconds later the photos arrived in her inbox.
Just like that, and just as they could have done all those years ago whilst they’d been on opposite sides of the world, if only they’d been speaking to each other.
Didi swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Did you hate me?’
‘No.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I didn’t hate you. I just realised you didn’t completely believe me, and that was the worst part of all, the biggest kick in the teeth. I couldn’t handle it.’
It was terrible to hear him say it and she couldn’t even attempt to defend herself, because it was the truth. His departure had broken her heart and she couldn’t blame him for disappearing.
Oh, but how different their lives might have been if the thing that had driven Shay to leave had never happened.
Chapter 18
It had taken the others on the Venice trip less than a morning to work out what was going on. So much for believing they were being discreet.
‘What’s up?’ Layla had demanded as they ran upstairs to collect hats and coats before heading out for their trip on a vaporetto. ‘You were being all weird during breakfast and now you’re looking all . . . zingy.’
If she looked zingy, she felt even zingier on the inside. ‘It’s the snow, it’s exciting! It’s your birthday and we’re in Venice! Who wouldn’t be zingy?’
But Layla wasn’t the only one who’d noticed something was up. The more normal Didi tried to be, the more impossible it became to remember what normal felt like. And Shay Mason had evidently found it just as tricky. All it had taken in the end was for their covert glances and resultant fleeting smiles to be intercepted by the rest of the group. By lunchtime their cover was well and truly blown and the inevitable torrent of teasing ensued.
Nothing more had happened that weekend, but everyone continued to be aware of the electricity crackling like invisible fireworks between the two of them.
‘See?’ Layla was gleeful and as proud as if she’d engineered the situation herself. ‘Aren’t you glad I invited him now? I told you he was nice!’
And when they flew home on the Sunday afternoon, as the snow was melting in Venice, the situation between Didi and Shay was unmistakably heating up.
So that had been the start of it, and the following months had turned out to be the best of Didi’s life, a giddy whirlwind of first love, revising for A levels, brilliant sex, more revising, loads more sex, spending every possible minute together and basically feeling sorry for everyone else on the planet because they couldn’t possibly be as happy as she was.
It just didn’t get better than this. Didi had never expected to meet the love of her life at the age of eighteen, but it had happened anyway and there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it. She loved Shay Mason with all her heart and every atom of her being. Nothing was ever going to tear them apart.
If her parents had been less than thrilled when they first discovered that their only daughter was involved with Red Mason’s son, any concerns were soon allayed once they got to know him. Shay was warm, intelligent, charming and trustworthy. He took his father’s reputation in his stride and was even able to joke about it, which in turn enabled other people to relax and stop worrying about mentioning the elephant in the room.
By mid June, A levels were behind them and school was over. With his pick of unconditional offers, Shay was all set to head off to university, but in the meantime he took a job at the hotel, helping out wherever he was needed, either as a porter or behind the bar. Everyone loved working with him; he was cheerful and efficient, calm in a crisis, capable of dealing with any problem that arose. So when Dominic, the assistant manager, was knocked off his bike by a van and was signed off work for six weeks, Didi’s parents decided to offer Shay the position.