Chapter 15
15
SAINT-CHAMBéRY
‘Burim says it’s fourteen degrees with him and he doesn’t want me to be cold. He says if I was with him I would never be cold. He says if I was with him it would be perfect.’
Orla was getting to know that Burim used the word ‘perfect’ a lot. Erin had sent him a photo of the crêpes she had eaten for lunch and they were ‘perfect’. She had also sent him a photo of a snowmobile parked outside Gerard’s bar after Burim had sent four ‘wyd’ messages in two minutes because she had left him on seen for ten minutes – the snowmobile had been ‘perfect’ too. But all the intensity was a throwback to her conversations with Henry. He’d always liked her Insta stories and commented on them. Turned a photo of the latest awful toilet she got to encounter on her travels into something much more positive… and more often than not, sexy. She missed that. She missed having someone interested in her day. It wasn’t the same as your mum putting a ‘love you my beautiful angel’ comment on FB when the focus of your post was meant to be the jackaroo who was sheep-shearing… She needed to say something about Burim.
‘Are there actually going to be beanbags at this bar or are they made up like the reindeer?’
Erin had jumped in with the comment before Orla could say anything.
‘I don’t know,’ Orla said, putting her hands around the mug of mulled wine Gerard had insisted they both had when they’d arrived in this cosy cabin of a pub. ‘Do you think the reindeer is made up?’
‘Didn’t you question it before you accepted the assignment?’ Erin asked like she was the elder and wiser sister in this situation.
Orla swallowed, the tall stool she was sitting on which was facing a roaring fire pit where other customers were warming their hands, making her feel like a child in a highchair. She hadn’t questioned anything much at all. Frances hadn’t let her. Or was it more a case of there was so much drama going on with her family that this mute man/reindeer combo hadn’t sounded all that bad on the face of it. But here with her sister she had no choice but to be the grown-up.
‘I don’t think the reindeer is made up,’ Orla replied with a dash more confidence than she really felt.
‘No?’ Erin said. ‘Because, Wolf, the really tall, really fit-looking but old dude told you? I mean he’s not Ryan Gosling, but I would.’
Orla tried to pick the bones out of the sentence as her cheeks grew as warm as the coals in the fire pit looked.
‘Oh shit! You do think he’s fit!’ Erin exclaimed, at a louder level than the merry Christmas music being piped around the space.
‘What? No! I don’t even know who you’re talking about,’ Orla answered rather patchily. ‘But anyway, what’s Delphine’s reason to make something like that up?’
‘Well, you might change your mind about her when I tell you what film she wanted to choose to watch in the cinema room earlier,’ Erin said, jabbing the slice of orange in her drink with the accompanying cocktail stick. ‘She lets everyone see “sweet, caring, shop owner” when really she drinks coffee that must be eroding her gut lining and wants to watch Reservoir Dogs .’
‘It’s one of those films everyone’s watched,’ Orla replied. But something in Erin’s words was spiking her journalistic instincts that perhaps something was amiss.
‘She’s watched it seventeen times. She told me. She knows all the words. It freaked me out. It’s the only time I’ve wanted to actually say I’m not actually old enough to be watching this according to the guidance rating. So, if you’re asking me if I think she’s capable of making some shit up about a reindeer then yes and it’s a possibility she’s masterminded all the unsolved heists in France.’
Orla smiled, shook her head but made a mental note. Sometimes she did love the way her sister’s mind raced away with itself. It reminded her how her own imagination had been at that age. She’d thought back then that nothing was insurmountable, that the world was hers for the enjoying. When had she stopped thinking that way? Had she stopped thinking that way? She swallowed. She was in a good position with her career, she just needed to move that into a great position. And as for relationships, well, they weren’t everything .
‘Oh, here she is,’ Erin announced. ‘Madame Loves-A-Big-Weapon.’
‘Shh,’ Orla said.
She looked to the door where Delphine was arriving, a large box in her arms.
‘Pretty cruel if they’ve made the reindeer squash itself into that, pregnant belly and everything,’ Erin said, giggling.
Now Orla was doubting that Erin’s mulled wine was quite the non-alcoholic version Gerard had said it was…
‘Oh yeah, I forgot, the reindeer doesn’t exist.’
‘Stop saying that,’ Orla said, a little annoyed.
‘If it doesn’t exist,’ Erin continued. ‘Does that mean we have to go home? Because I know I said it was cold and a bit shit but home is more cold and more shit so…’
‘Erin, I don’t want you to worry about home, OK? I know about things now so let me work on it.’
She swallowed, she had yet to respond to her mum’s text. Her dad had sold something precious. It was unforgiveable. Where did you start with that? But she didn’t want Erin to be thinking or feeling like home was cold and shit. Home should always be warm and welcoming, somewhere you could rely on to be a safe space. Except as soon as Baby Erin had arrived Orla was planning an escape to somewhere new, out into the wider world. Not because home didn’t feel safe, but because she’d always had a wanderlust and, as she’d got older, she still found it difficult to understand how her mum could be ultimately satisfied with a sedentary life on the outskirts of London. When Erin’s packets of Pampers had filled every spare space, a ten-year-old Orla had started putting pins in a world map on the back of her wardrobe door. She wanted to see everything. She wanted to go everywhere. Home should be solid, there waiting, there to catch you if you fell…
‘We can’t go home yet,’ Orla decided to say. ‘Even if there’s no reindeer.’ What was she saying? When had she made this choice? And she kept on talking. ‘Because where Orla Bradbee goes stories follow.’
‘Isn’t that meant to work the other way around?’ Erin asked.
‘Did you ever read my article on the man who only ate soup?’
‘Is this a joke?’
Orla shook her head, repositioning herself on the stool. ‘No. I went to South America to see what was supposed to be this phenomenon of the sky. It’s called Catatumbo lightning.’
‘Cata-what?’
‘Catatumbo. Anyway, when I get there the locals tell me that it’s not going to happen for at least three months because there has been this terrible drought. So there I am, at this restaurant in the midst of Venezuela wondering where I’m going to find a story from this expensive trip and there’s this old man sitting on his own eating soup.’
‘That’s not that weird,’ Erin said with a sniff. ‘I swear Danica only eats Hula Hoops.’
‘He ate five bowls. One after the other. And I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. I thought, what makes someone eat five bowls of soup at a restaurant that was well-known for so many other great delicacies.’
‘How did you spin that into a story?’
‘I asked the waiter about him and he told me his name and that he came to eat at the same time every day. So, the next day, I came back and I watched him eat the same amount of soup as he had the day before and then I went to speak to him.’ She took a sip of her drink.
‘Well, what did he say?’ Erin asked.
‘He said he ate a bowl of soup every day for everyone he’d lost in his life. His mum, his dad, his two brothers and his wife. And he intended to do that every day for the rest of his life.’
She swallowed as she concluded. She had never forgotten Luis and what warmed her heart the most was that after her story went to print people visited the restaurant and joined him for lunch. He now had friends all over the world.
Erin was quiet until finally she spoke up. ‘I don’t think Dad is drinking a certain number of pints to represent people he’s lost.’
‘No,’ Orla said with a sigh.
‘But he’s going to be OK, right?’
This was her sister being as transparent as it got and she needed to reassure her fully in this moment.
‘Yes!’ Orla said quickly. ‘Of course he’s going to be OK! Mum’s not going to let him be anything else! You know how she is! She will decree that things must change and that’s exactly what will happen. And, I told you, I’ve got this now, too.’
She wanted to cross her fingers. She wanted to manifest it into being but all she really had was hope…
‘Beanbags!’
It was Delphine. Shattering the moment and slapping down two beanbags amid the drinks on the table. They were horseshoe shaped, like nothing Orla had seen before. And Delphine was off and away again, without explanation or further conversation, delivering more odd shapes to other tables. Orla went to pick one up.
‘Wait! Don’t!’ Erin said, phone poised in the air. ‘I want to take a photo for Burim. He’ll probably make an innuendo about the shape.’
Ah, yes. She mustn’t forget that as well as their parents being in crisis and there being no reindeer for her end-of-year-potentially-profit-saving story for Travel in Mind , her sister was in a talking stage with a Moroccan she didn’t know the age of, who sent photos of himself in his underwear…
‘So, Erin?—’
‘ Bonsoir .’
How Orla had missed the approach of someone so tall with a chest so broad it could definitely handle a whole family-sized charcuterie sharing platter, she didn’t know. But Jacques was now standing by their table looking particularly fine in a navy-blue long-sleeved top over black jeans. His beard looked newly neatly trimmed and those dark, deep brown eyes were set on her. It was then she realised her fingers had been grazing the symmetry of the beanbag.
‘ Bonsoir . Hello,’ Orla said quickly.
‘Ah,’ he continued. ‘You have the horseshoes. Not the best shape I would say but, not the worst either.’
‘There’s different shapes?’ Erin remarked, sitting up tall and seeming to scan the rest of the tables for evidence.
‘They symbolise the history of the village. There are wagon wheels, pentagons like the shape of the lake here, sausages like?—’
‘OK,’ Orla said quickly as Erin sniggered. ‘We’re getting it.’
‘Good,’ Jacques replied. ‘So, you will have to move now.’
‘Move?’ Orla queried.
‘The beanbags are thrown at this firepit,’ he told them.