A Stormy Spanish Summer(53)

‘Happier even than you dreamed of being at sixteen?’ he teased her gently.

Fliss laughed. ‘At sixteen I didn’t dare dream of being married to you, Vidal.’

In several hours’ time they would be boarding the private jet that would be taking them to the private tropical island where they were going to honeymoon, but right now the two of them were making a special pilgrimage, retracing together the steps taken all those years ago by her mother and her father, accompanied by young Vidal.

From the Alhambra they had strolled to the Generalife, the famous summer palace with its much-photographed water garden and its long canal and fountains bordered by beautifully tended flowerbeds. Sunlight danced on the jets of water thrown up by the fountains, and when Vidal stopped walking alongside one of them Fliss looked at him expectantly with love in her eyes.

‘It was here that I saw your father take your mother’s hand,’ he told her softly, reaching out to take hold of Fliss’s hand.

As she looked into the heart of the fountain it was almost possible for Fliss to imagine that she could see the shadowy images of those two young people.

‘Our love will be deeper and stronger for knowing their story,’ Vidal promised. ‘Our happiness together is what they would both have wanted for us.’

‘Yes,’ Fliss agreed.

It might normally be forbidden, but Vidal had magically made it possible for officialdom to turn a blind eye so that there was no one to object when, very gently and carefully, Fliss opened her closed palm to allow the petals from some of the white roses from her wedding bouquet to fall into the water, where they floated gently.

‘A release of the past and a welcome to the future,’ Fliss told Vidal.

‘Our future,’ he responded, taking her into his arms. ‘The only future I could ever want.’