Chapter 11
11
It was official. This morning Orla felt like Heidi. It might have been the French mountains she was looking out at from the window of the room above Delphine’s café-shop, but this setting was definitely giving all the Swiss vibes from the white-topped peaks to the chalet-style buildings all around. It would have been peace and serenity in this loft-style room, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she had got little sleep. It had taken actual coffee to bring Erin down from the high of at least three cups of mulled wine and then it had taken what had seemed like hours to connect to Wi-Fi. And there had been fifty-five notifications on Erin’s phone. Thirty-two of them from Burim, which her sister had been highly delighted with, proudly claiming he was ‘so down bad’. Thirty-two sounded excessive to Orla, but she did remember the high excitement and that fizzing sensation in her stomach when a new notification arrived from Henry. He had sent photos from the bookshop where he worked – the cloth-bound classics she liked – his beautiful hands around Lewis Carroll’s finest. It had been different to the other connections. They had more in common – or so she’d thought…
Her phone made a noise. An iMessage rather than something from Insta and she picked it up from the windowsill, looking at the screen. Mum . Usually her mum’s name on the screen of her phone would make her feel warm, comforted, a little nostalgic even. But as circumstances were, currently all she felt now was concern. And, as she had managed to get a message through last night that she and Erin were here in France and safe – excluding any mention of car crashes, the freezing climate and Erin getting pissed – who knew what this was going to be? There was only one way to find out. She pressed on the message and read.
Dad sold your grandma’s eternity ring. I have no words. That’s a lie. I do have words. Right now I don’t know whether I want to help him or let him drink himself into the ground. What time is it in France? Have you eaten frogs legs yet? Don’t let Erin sleep without her retainer in. Don’t worry about me.
The ‘don’t worry about me’ was something her mum always used in texts as a joke, but today the humour wasn’t hitting. Orla was worried. About her mum and her dad. She hovered her thumb over the keyboard, wondering whether to reply or make a call.
‘What time is it?’
Erin’s voice made Orla jump and her phone dropped to the wooden floorboards. She couldn’t afford for her phone to be broken! They had sparse enough means of communication as it was without losing the scrap they did have. ‘I don’t know. I…’
She picked up her phone, thankfully unscathed, and looked at the time on the screen. ‘It’s almost eight o’clock.’
‘Are you sure?’ Erin asked, as if the question was life defining.
‘That’s what my phone says.’
‘Yes, but is it on French time or English time?’ She was out of bed now, her phone in her hand.
That was a good point. Did these things update automatically?
‘I don’t know.’
‘And how many hours ahead is France from England? Or is it behind?’
‘One,’ Orla replied confidently. ‘One hour ahead.’
‘Oh, that’s the same as… aww, it must be nine o’clock there because I’ve got my morning photo.’
Orla watched the biggest smile take over her sister’s face as she gazed at the screen of her phone all bed hair and big eyes. Her sister was in another world, or perhaps just another country, very much oblivious to anything in this room, including the cold. Orla shivered as she looked at Erin’s tiny bed shorts, inappropriate given the fact that the small heater-cum-air-conditioning unit mounted above the window was only giving out a breath of raised temperature.
‘He’s eating avocado again,’ Erin continued, eyes still on her screen. ‘He has an avocado obsession. He’s always using the emoji too.’
Orla made a mental note to google what using the avocado emoji in messaging meant. There was always a double meaning. You thought your talking-stage guy was being cute and really he was telling you deeper stuff about himself – or you – than you could ever imagine. She had shivered when she found out the taco emoji wasn’t an invitation to the Mexican restaurant…
‘Can I see?’ Orla asked, stepping closer.
‘Ugh! No!’ Erin exclaimed in horror, hugging the phone to her chest. ‘Why would I let you see a photo of my guy half-naked.’
‘Half-naked?!’
‘OK, Mum, calm down. He’s wearing what he wears to bed. Like, Lacoste trunks.’
And did Erin share similar photos with Burim? Snaps of what she wears to bed? These small barely-there shorts? Less than that? But Orla had to play it cool…
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Well, maybe when he shares a photo and he’s dressed, I could… you know… see what he looks like.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it would be nice to see the guy who’s messaging you every minute and… making you smile.’
‘He does make me smile,’ Erin replied with more smiles.
The expression on her sister’s face now was so like the little girl who used to make salt and vinegar crisp sandwiches for her Barbie doll parties. It was different to the pouty moody expression she seemed to wear on all her social media posts lately. But was that a good or a bad thing? Henry’s messages had made her look like that. Henry had talked about actually meeting. Who said that if they didn’t mean it?
‘And he’s so fine,’ Erin said, fingers tapping on her phone, the noise of acrylic nails on screen protector sounding like an old-fashioned typewriter.
Before Orla could make any response there was a brief knock on the door before it opened wide and there was Delphine, bustling in without waiting for an invitation.
‘ Bien ! You are awake!’ Delphine announced.
‘And not dressed!’ Erin exclaimed, making a dive back for the sanctuary of the blanket layers.
‘Breakfast is downstairs in the café,’ Delphine said, picking up the remote for the climate control and pointing it at the machine. ‘Your table is the one with the winter irises in the centre. Would you like tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee,’ Erin said quickly.
‘Could I have tea?’ Orla asked.
‘I will make coffee,’ Delphine replied, putting the controller back down on the thick windowsill.
‘Do you have avocado?’ Erin wanted to know.
‘ Avocat ,’ Delphine said. ‘The French practically invented it.’
‘Oh, that’s good! I can take photos!’
‘But we do not have here,’ Delphine said firmly.
Orla watched her sister deflate.
‘I could order, with my next delivery, if you like.’
Erin offered their hostess a smile. ‘Yes, please.’
‘ Bien ,’ Delphine said. ‘So, breakfast will end in thirty minutes and then I will take you to see Wolf.’
‘Thirty minutes!’ Erin exclaimed.
‘Delphine, we haven’t had time to shower yet and?—’
Orla’s sentence was cut off by the firm closing of the door as Delphine departed as swiftly as she had arrived.
‘Fuck,’ Erin said, scrabbling back out of the bed. ‘It takes me forty-two minutes to do my make-up on a good day.’
As her sister began to tip the contents of her airport liquids bag onto her bedside table, Orla really hoped she wouldn’t have to wait forty-two minutes for a coffee she was going to wish was tea.