Chapter 36
36
‘Hi, Mum.’
It was early and Orla was sitting on Jacques’s sofa, her laptop on the coffee table and a couple of hundred words on screen. Late last night, after she’d gone to bed, but been unable to switch off, there had been an email from Frances asking for an update and some ‘teaser content’, as her boss had called it. When Erin’s phone finally ceased dinging at around 2a.m. and the teen insisting she didn’t want to ‘get into it again’ after their fractious chat before Noble turned up, Orla had chosen sleep and an early wake-up call to get these words down. Except concentration wasn’t her strong suit when her mind was churning over other things – her mum and dad’s stories that didn’t match up, Burim, the fact she had kissed Jacques in a room full of police intel… She’d chosen to tackle one of her parents as soon as she knew her mum would be awake.
‘What’s happened?’ Dana said without a pre-greeting. ‘Is it Erin? She hasn’t tried to pierce her ear again, has she? I’ve told her she’s not to get a nook or a rook or whatever it’s called. And when did the world start naming bits of the ear anyway? In my day you just had the lobe you got pierced and the rest of it was just called your ear.’
‘Erin’s fine,’ Orla said, getting to her feet. ‘She’s still asleep.’
‘Of course she is,’ her mum replied. ‘Because she will have been up until all hours doing a thumb workout with that foreign boy. Is she sending him photos? Because I told her if she sends him photos of her in her underwear she will see them come back to haunt her on one of those sites some of Prince Andrew’s friends were into.’
‘Mum, I spoke to Dad.’ She walked to the window, taking in the view.
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I did,’ Orla said. ‘He was on a bus. With a dog.’
‘Ah, so that’s what the code words for the pub are now.’
Orla shook her head. ‘No, Mum, he wasn’t at the pub and… what he said has got me worried.’
‘Talking nonsense was he? Three sheets to the wind already?’
‘No, he didn’t sound like he’d been drinking.’
‘Well, he’s well-practised at pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, isn’t he?’
‘Mum, stop,’ Orla ordered. ‘Dad’s worried about you .’
‘Like feck he is! That man worries about one person and one person only and that’s himself. Always has. Always will.’
‘Mum, he told me that you’re pushing away your friends and that you’ve stopped going out. And he said he didn’t do anything with the jewellery.’
‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’
‘Why would he say that?’
‘To throw the spotlight on someone else. To distract attention from what he’s up to with whoever he’s up to it with.’
‘Mum, tell me the truth! Please,’ Orla pleaded.
‘No one wants the truth, Orla. You should know that with your writing. What people actually want is a version of the truth that’s a little bit more palatable. Because if you hit people with out of the ordinary, they back away faster than a Tyson Fury opponent.’
‘I want the truth, Mum. I want your truth.’
She looked out at the bright, white snow clinging to the pine trees and listened to the silence down the line to the UK. Until…
‘You want the truth, do you? Well, here it is. Some days I want to kill him and that isn’t right, is it?’ Dana asked, her voice full of emotion. ‘I mean, how can you be married to someone for this long and be constantly thinking about the best way to implement his demise?’
‘I… don’t know.’ She swallowed. Her mum couldn’t be serious, could she? Suddenly Orla was overwhelmed with an acute sense of fear and her usually methodical mind was battling to look for a logical explanation.
‘See! You didn’t really want to hear that, did you?’
‘No, Mum, I did want to hear it.’ No matter how unsettling this situation was she didn’t want her mum to shut down letting this emotion out now it was unlocked. ‘Keep going. Talk to me.’
Dana sighed. ‘The doctor says it might be the menopause. Might be . How can you get up every day and function on a “might be” I ask you!’
‘You’ve told the doctor about all this?’
‘First time after I really considered putting slug pellets in your Dad’s cottage pie.’ There were tears now. More tears from the person who rarely cried. ‘How could I be thinking these things? Wanting to do these things?’
‘Mum, I don’t think it’s uncommon to have those feelings during the menopause.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Well, because I’ve researched it for the piece I wrote on Chinese women.’
‘Oh yes, the Chinese women who float through middle-age like elegant, exotic butterflies with perky tits and perfect arses.’
‘I don’t think I wrote it quite like that but they do experience fewer symptoms of the change, yes.’
‘So none of them are thinking about pushing their husbands off the ladder when he puts up the Christmas lights. Or wondering if arsenic will be untraceable when mixed in cranberry sauce.’
This was bad. She swallowed. ‘Mum, you need to talk to the doctor again.’
‘So he can offer me those anti-depressants again? The ones that space you out so you don’t complain about anything? Make you think that that Lee Mack’s actually funny?’
She felt so helpless when she was so far away and looking at the wintry wilderness outside Jacques’s home only made it more apparent just how great the distance was between them. She needed to be back in the UK.
‘Mum,’ she said. ‘We’re going to be back before Christmas.’
‘Really?!’ Dana replied, her voice going up a few octaves and her joy evident.
‘Yes,’ Orla said firmly. ‘I don’t care what I have to do to make it happen… Help a reindeer give birth, get the magazine to order a private plane, whatever happens I promise Erin and I will be back for Christmas Day dinner.’
‘Oh, Orla love, that will be grand. I mean, don’t you worry about me, but your dad and Auntie Bren will be delighted and?—’
‘But I want you to be truthful with me now,’ Orla interrupted.
‘O-K.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Does Dad have a drink problem? Did he really sell Granny’s things?’
There was a silence on the other end of the phone until eventually Dana responded. ‘No.’
‘Which one?’ Orla asked.
‘Both,’ her mum said. ‘But don’t get angry with me. He has a volunteering job and lots of new friends and he doesn’t need me any more and I sold the things because when he leaves me or I kill him I will need money for solicitors… or bail… or a hitman.’ More tears and rapid breathing ensued.
‘Mum, it’s OK,’ Orla said, wanting to be there in person to comfort her. ‘We are going to sort all this out when I get back.’
‘But you shouldn’t have to sort everything out. I asked you to help with Erin and I didn’t want to do that when you have your career to think about. Work is important and there’s Time magazine. Your dream.’
‘Mum,’ Orla said, watching as a group of chickens sprinted across the snow, heading towards the track Jacques’s truck had carved over the past few days. ‘Family is more important than anything else. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me? People are more precious than things.’
She heard her mum sigh. ‘Life before loot, your granny used to say.’
‘Well then,’ Orla said. ‘That’s settled. Christmas all together and we will get you feeling much more like your old self in no time.’
‘If there’s a choice I’d much rather feel like Sharon Osbourne than myself. Could there be a pill for that, do you think?’
The next thing to go past the window was Jacques and he was running.
‘Mum, I’ll come to the doctors with you and we’ll discuss all the options. I’ll call you again, OK? Let you know when I’m coming home.’
‘OK, love and, really, don’t you worry about me.’
With those words ringing in her ears, Orla headed for the front door where she had left her boots.