Richard

The months pass slowly. Every day feels longer than the last.

I throw myself into my work what else is there to do? Her absence is felt in every room. She's infiltrated Villa Bijou and Saint-Égaré. Her ghost is everywhere.

Every instant I'm not elbow-deep in work, I'm working out, hard, blindingly one-minded. I sail too. I spend days on the water, gliding, ignoring the island. Ignoring the memory of her laugh, her shy dark eyes, her cool hand in mine. My wall flower. Mine.

No — never mine. If Georgina felt anything for me, it was destroyed the day I attacked her brother and cast her off like a forgotten line. Did I ever truly possess her, for how badly I wanted to?

Work is worse than unfulfilling. It's vacant and cold, and the only time I begin to feel something again is when I remember her work — the philanthropy. I picture Georgina in the jungle, in the mountains of some cold foreign country, camera against her eye, shy smile on her lips. This was what she cared about. Charity and d