Chapter 21
21
‘Tommy, don’t touch it. It’s broken. You know it’s broken.’
‘Right, so that’s what you and Orla were doing last night in the kitchen? Trying to make it work?’
Jacques appreciated his brother’s eyebrow raise less than he appreciated the fact Tommy was preparing to start the coffee machine again. He was really going to have to get it out of the kitchen once and for all. Why was he holding on to it? Yes, he might have told Orla one reason but the truth was because it had been Katie’s.
‘You have the wrong idea,’ Jacques said, getting two mugs out of the cupboard and setting them aside.
‘About the machine? Or about Orla?’
‘Both.’
‘Yeah,’ Tommy said. ‘Not sure I believe you on either count. You were up at 5a.m. and you’ve already chopped logs this morning.’
‘It’s called a routine,’ Jacques answered. ‘Some of us have them.’
‘Is that right, Hunter? Or is he lying to us both? Hey?’
Jacques shook his head as Tommy began to fuss over Hunter until the dog was whipped up into a frenzy and began spinning around in a circle chasing the tea towel Tommy was swinging in front of him. He hadn’t slept particularly well and as soon as the smart home monitor told him the outside temperature was warmer than it had been in the past couple of weeks, he had gone out for a run.
‘Good morning. Bonjour and all that,’ Erin greeted, sashaying into the kitchen and heading straight for the coffee machine.
‘ Bonjour, ma chérie ,’ Tommy replied, standing up straight and putting the tea towel down on the worktop.
‘Did you call me a cherry?’ Erin exclaimed. ‘Because that’s pretty presumptuous and also none of your business.’
‘What?’ Tommy asked.
‘Tommy said “good morning, my dear”,’ Jacques translated.
‘Huh,’ Erin said. ‘Bad joke seeing as we have issues with a deer that hasn’t turned up.’
She side-stepped Tommy, took one of the mugs Jacques had got down, slipped it on to the machine, pressed two buttons and the machine set to work.
‘What the hell!’ Tommy exclaimed in awe. ‘How did you do that?’
‘Do what?’ Erin asked.
‘Get that thing to spurt actual stuff that looks like coffee into a cup without it showering everyone or doing nothing at all. Never really knew which one was worse but none of them got me coffee where it should be.’
Erin shrugged. ‘Life skills I guess.’ Her phone made a noise and she tipped it over so it was screen down on the countertop.
‘OK, Jacques, I put Erin in charge of making all coffee from now on,’ Tommy announced. ‘I drink a lot of coffee by the way.’
‘I can tell,’ Erin replied.
‘Yeah? Well, what do you think my go-to is?’
‘Judging by your constant high energy, I’d say triple espresso.’
Jacques couldn’t help but laugh and straight away both of them looked at him as he began to cut bread into slices at the table.
‘Wow, you bossed the coffee machine and you got my brother to laugh this early in the morning. Grand feats,’ Tommy said.
Erin’s phone made another noise.
‘Sounds like you’re in high demand,’ Tommy remarked. ‘Maybe it’s the universe calling, asking you to fix global warming.’
The phone dinged again.
‘Wow,’ Tommy said. ‘Either you’re going viral, or you have a stalker.’
‘I’m in a talking stage with someone. It’s three months now.’
‘Sounds like he’s the one doing all the talking. Jacques, where’s the eggs?’
‘Damn it!’ Jacques remarked. ‘I meant to get some from Delphine yesterday.’
‘What happened to your chickens?’ Tommy asked.
‘It’s cold, Tommy. They are in the barn. They do not lay in the winter.’
‘You have chickens?’ Erin said.
‘I do,’ Jacques answered as he put bread into a small basket.
‘Orla loves chickens.’
‘Really?’ Jacques said. This was interesting. Someone who had seen many different animals from every part of the globe loved common farmyard poultry?
‘Our mum used to joke that if Orla never got married she would be a chicken lady rather than a cat lady.’
Erin’s phone dinged again.
‘Make it stop! It’s distracting,’ Tommy said.
‘A bit like your voice,’ Erin snapped back.
‘Morning.’
Hunter barked good-naturedly at Orla entering the kitchen.
‘Good morning,’ Jacques replied.
She was wearing jeans and a cream-coloured jumper, her hair down today, sitting just past her shoulders. It was a different look to the one he’d seen her in last night – dressed in pyjamas, staring out of the window. He’d thought, for a moment, that she’d been looking at him but it was more likely that she had been gazing at the moon.
‘If you want coffee,’ Tommy began. ‘Erin will make you one. If she doesn’t have to message Kim Jong Un and get him to stand down on whatever button he’s threatening to press.’
Erin’s phone erupted twice in quick succession.
‘See!’ Tommy said, as if his point was proven.
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Erin replied. ‘He talks more crap than Barney Walsh on Gladiators .’
‘I have no idea who that is.’
‘Do you have any headache tablets?’ Orla asked. She had gravitated towards Jacques at the table.
‘You have a headache?’
‘That’s why I asked for the pills.’
‘OK,’ Jacques said. ‘Come with me.’
‘I have to not take them in the kitchen?’ she asked, looking confused.
He smiled and beckoned her away from the noise of the coffee machine, Erin’s phone and Tommy and Erin’s bickering. He led the way down the hall until he was pushing open the door to his gym.
‘O-K,’ Orla said, following him inside. ‘I was not expecting something like this. It looks like a fitness suite just… without the weights. Are those gymnastic rings?’ He watched her checking out the punch bags, and the martial arts equipment on the walls. But it wasn’t all fight club in here. There were yoga mats and exercise balls he used to get mindful.
‘Welcome to my dojo,’ Jacques said, bowing towards her.
‘OK, so you do karate?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Taekwondo?’
‘No.’
‘Judo?’
‘No.’
‘OK, I am running out of martial arts names now.’
‘What I practice doesn’t really have a name,’ Jacques informed her. ‘But this is where I come when I need to get away from noise. Or if I have a headache.’ He pointed to the floor which was soft matting. ‘Take a seat.’
‘This isn’t my first rodeo at a dojo, you know,’ Orla said, dropping down onto the floor. He watched her cross her legs and appear to get comfortable.
‘No?’ He knew. She had interviewed sumo wrestlers.
‘I interviewed some sumo wrestlers last year. It is one of the craziest professions ever. Did you know they aren’t allowed to drive? One wrestler had a bad accident and after that they were all banned from driving.’
‘I did not know that.’ He did know that. From her article. He sat down behind her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I am going to cure your headache.’
‘Honestly, just some Nurofen will be good.’
‘Close your eyes.’
‘You’re not going to touch my ear again, are you?’
He smiled to himself and then he placed his fingertips at either side of her neck. OK, he hadn’t really thought this through. Touching the curve below her jaw, how soft her skin was, how that was sending prickles across the back of his own neck. He steeled himself. ‘Are your eyes closed?’
‘Is it a pre-requisite?’
‘Well, you should know that I was able to get you across a table last night, so I can also make you close your eyes if you’d like to do it that way.’
‘Wow,’ Orla said. ‘Is that what they call a slightly veiled threat? OK, I’ll close them.’
He inhaled slowly and then pressed his index finger and thumb lightly on her trapezius muscles. He focussed, keeping his breathing even and then gradually applied a little more pressure.
‘Ow,’ Orla said.
‘Shh.’
‘Did you shush me?’
‘Does it really hurt?’ Jacques asked. ‘Or does it just feel different?’
Who was this man? And how was he managing to do all these weird things with her? Weird and ever so sensual . Sensual had been out of her dictionary for so long she’d started to wonder if Susie Dent had banished it. Did his touch really hurt? No. It was intense, but oh-so tingly and pleasurable in all the right ways. And the tension in the base of her skull was definitely lessening.
‘This room is the most personal room in your house,’ she remarked.
‘Orla, you’re meant to have your eyes closed.’
‘They are. I can recall things I’ve seen no more than three minutes ago.’
‘What do you mean “personal”?’
‘There are things in here. Things you use.’
‘There are things I use in the rest of the house.’
‘That everybody has. A table. Chairs. That bloody coffee machine.’ She carried on. ‘You made this room what it is. With things you use because of what you like to do when you’re not doing whatever everyone else does. Still no photos though.’
‘Are photos important to you?’
She hadn’t expected that question but she was ready. ‘They obviously aren’t important to you.’
‘Photos are just memories on paper,’ he answered.
‘And what? You don’t like to look at them?’
‘Perhaps I don’t need images hanging behind glass to remember.’
She had never thought of it that way.
‘Let me ask you something,’ Jacques continued. ‘When you interview someone for your magazine, do you always need all your notes to make the article?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I think some things you do and some things that people say, they stick with you so hard that you don’t need to write them down to recall them.’
She thought about Luis eating his bowls of soup for his lost loved ones. She hadn’t needed to refer to any notes to remember the look on his face, to recall the sadness in his voice, to smell the humidity in the air of that restaurant. And it was those things that had made her story stand out. Sounds, smells and sensations sold stories, not the hard facts. She needed to remember that.
‘I bet you have many photos where you live,’ Jacques continued.
‘The pictures of people I care about make me happy.’
‘Disagree.’ She felt his fingers move gently up her neck.
‘It’s true.’
‘And in these pictures of the people you care about, are they smiling?’
‘Of course!’
‘So it’s their smiles that make you happy. You don’t need physical paper evidence of what their smiles look like. You feel it. You know it by heart.’
And as his fingers traced her hairline at the back of her neck, it was no longer her head that was aching. His words, spoken in that deep, slightly husky tone, were suddenly sliding up to the locked gates of her heart and demanding the key. He was right. Everything he’d just said was so absolutely true.
Then, suddenly his touch left her and she snapped her eyes open. He had stood up, was pacing towards the window. She watched him, hands on his hips, lengthening his torso. But it was his mind she wanted more of an insight into. There was a depth to Jacques Barbier, an emotional intelligence he kept hidden for some reason. Article or no article, while she was here she needed to know what made this man who he was.
‘It’s warmer today,’ he commented, looking outside. ‘Still minus figures, but we could go out.’
‘Is there anywhere to go except Saint-Chambéry that doesn’t involve a full-on road trip?’ She got to her feet.
‘You need a story, right? In case the reindeer does not arrive.’
‘I do,’ she agreed.
‘I might have something,’ he said. ‘If you have boots.’
‘I have boots,’ she confirmed.
‘Good,’ he answered, nodding. ‘Then we shall go.’