Holiday with the Best Man

‘Every day. In the summer it’s like aural sunlight; in the winter, especially if it’s foggy, it’s a little spooky,’ he said.

‘I can see why Venice is one of your favourite places,’ she said. ‘It’s amazing.’

They walked hand in hand through the narrow streets, enjoying all the bustle around them and stopping to buy a piadina from one of the street vendors to keep them going over lunchtime. Grace stopped to take photographs of the figures outside some of the mask shops—the terrifying plague doctor with his hooked beak, and the pretty harlequin—and took a selfie of Roland and herself standing on a bridge with a gondola gliding behind them. ‘Do you mind me being horribly touristy?’ she asked.

‘Not a bit.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, I’m enjoying seeing how much you like Venice.’

‘It’s gorgeous,’ she said. ‘I know I keep saying it, but it’s like... Venice is just like nowhere else I’ve ever been.’

‘If you don’t mind us doing a whistlestop tour,’ he said, ‘we can go take a look at the basilica and the Doge’s Palace.’

‘But you’ve seen it all before,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘You know I never pass up the opportunity to look at architecture. And besides, you can’t come to Venice and not see the quadriga—the four horses. They’ve been in Venice for more than eight hundred years.’

Grace thoroughly enjoyed their tour of the cathedral and the palace, especially as Roland turned out to be a mine of information about the buildings. And she loved the fact that he took a selfie of them on the loggia of the basilica, next to the replicas of the four bronze horses.

Right now, she thought wistfully, this felt like a honeymoon. Though she knew she was being ridiculous. Roland hadn’t given her any signals that he wanted their relationship to continue past their agreement, let alone anything more. They’d known each other for only a few weeks; it was way, way too soon to fall in love.

Stop being greedy, she reminded herself. Just enjoy every second of this and stop wishing for something you’re not going to get.

‘I thought we’d have dinner early,’ he said, ‘because there’s something else you absolutely have to do in Venice.’

‘Bring it on,’ Grace said with a smile.

Roland found a little tucked away restaurant. ‘My Italian’s a bit scrappy,’ he said, ‘but I can get by. What would you like to eat?’

‘A Venetian speciality,’ she said.

‘Let’s ask the waiter what he recommends,’ he said. ‘But for pudding I’d say it has to be tiramisu in the area where it was invented.’

The waiter recommended sarde in saor—sardines in a sweet and sour sauce—followed by polenta e schie—tiny Venetian shrimps on a bed of white polenta. And the tiramisu was the best Grace had ever, ever tasted.

‘This is perfect,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

But the best was what Roland had arranged for after coffee.

‘I wanted to eat early,’ he said, ‘so we’d get to see the sunset.’

And then she discovered where he’d planned their viewpoint to be: from the seat of a gondola.

Their gondolier wore the traditional black trousers, striped jersey and straw hat; he guided them through the narrow waterways, using his pole to propel them and pushing his body against it to help them turn the odd corner. To Grace’s delight he actually serenaded them in a mellow tenor voice.

The sunset itself was the most romantic thing she’d ever seen: the sun sinking, the sky turning shades of orange and apricot with the domes and towers of the city silhouetted against it, and the turquoise waters of the Grand Canal changing to reflect the deep tones of the sky.

She was too moved to say a word; she leaned her head against Roland’s shoulder, drinking in the view and enjoying his nearness. He held her close, and again this felt so much like a honeymoon.

The gondolier took them through the narrow waterways again, which had turned almost inky to reflect the darkened sky; reflections from little globe-shaped lamps flickered on the water. ‘This is so pretty,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said, and stole a kiss.

They lapsed back into companionable silence; then, as a covered walkway rose in front of them, Roland said, ‘This is the Bridge of Sighs. It’s traditional to kiss underneath it.’

What else could she do but kiss him as the gondola glided underneath the bridge?