Chapter 41
41
JACQUES’S HOME, THE OUTSKIRTS OF SAINT-CHAMBéRY
‘Why are there so many chickens? Are they in battery cages? Because that could be another story. Heart-warming reindeer, mute guy doing evil deeds keeping the other nature cooped up.’
Orla was wondering if Frances was halfway down a bottle of Baileys already the way she was rattling out her responses over the Zoom link. Having emailed off her words, she had got a request from her boss for an online meeting and Orla had decided to take it to Jacques’s barn now he had entrusted her with the pin codes for barn and house, but not what she was now calling ‘the memory room’. And she hadn’t actually told Frances that Jacques wasn’t mute…
‘No!’ Orla said quickly. ‘They’re all roaming free. Outside usually, too far yesterday actually. It’s very cold here though so they’re inside and they don’t lay eggs in the winter. Look.’ She turned her phone to the barn so her boss could see Jacques’s fowl strutting around the space.
‘Ugh, disgusting. Granted it’s not as disgusting as that place you showed me in Padang Bolak but literally, ugh.’
Orla laughed. For someone who worked on a destination magazine Frances only had five-star, pristine locations on her mind. Everything else was on her personal to-don’t list.
‘Show me the reindeer! And hurry up, because Sonil has training in twenty minutes.’
She looked into the camera again. ‘Oh, did you finally agree to the time-management course?’
‘No,’ Frances said, frowning. ‘Training for the Cadbury’s Heroes eating contest.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Two days ago I took him to my personal dentist and now he can widen his jaw an extra centimetre.’
Orla had no idea what to say about the degree of effort going into this.
‘Show me the reindeer!’ Frances reiterated.
‘Right, yes,’ Orla said. She turned her phone around again and this time focussed on the four-legged animal who seemed to have its head permanently in a trough of food since Jacques had set that up. ‘Well, here it is.’ She did a bit of a pan up and down the reindeer’s body, ending at the head end and those crazy blue eyes. ‘Do you see its eyes and how blue they are?’
‘Is it AI?’ Frances asked.
‘No, it’s how reindeers’ eyes are in the winter. It’s all to do with how they adjust to poor light. In the summer they’re a golden colour and in winter they’re like this.’
‘Well, I want that. Surely the science is there! And you’re saying we have to put up with coloured contacts?’
‘I… hadn’t really thought about it.’
‘It’s a bit sad looking though, isn’t it? Mouth’s a bit droopy. Is that froth around its nose?’
‘It’s cold here,’ Orla reminded her. ‘Well, not actually as cold as it was when we first arrived. Then it was almost too dangerous to be outside according to the locals. But they are resourceful, you know, they light fires, everywhere, and do crazy things with bean bags and make excuses to have community events.’
‘It sounds terrible ! I bet you’ll be glad when it’s pumped the kid out and you can get back to civilisation.’
Orla swallowed, her eyes going to the window of the barn. It was like a beautiful painting, the scenery outside framed to perfection – white glistening ground, tall spruces, sunshine through the clouds and those icy mountain peaks in the distance. Yes, perhaps it was barren in some ways, but it was also peaceful, with Saint-Chambéry only a short drive away. She shook herself. What was she doing? Daydreaming? She lived in London – a hive of what was hot right now, business, busyness, more baristas per square foot than anywhere else in the world – or that’s what it felt like. And she was striving for somewhere even more metropolitan – New York. She regrouped.
‘They’re called calves,’ she told Frances.
‘What are?’
‘Baby reindeer.’
Frances took a sharp breath. ‘Don’t say “baby reindeer” to me, I’m still so traumatised from the Netflix series I had to delete an email from someone in the Glasgow office just because they were called Martha.’
She turned the camera back to her face. ‘Listen, Frances, if the reindeer takes a while to have the calf… I mean, if it doesn’t give birth in the next… four or five days then… I might have to come back to the UK before it’s born.’ She held her breath. She had never tried to amend any plan before, never backed out on a story before its conclusion.
‘What?’ Frances asked, sitting forward on her office chair, eyes very close to the camera.
She swallowed. She just had to be straight with her. She was needed at home. She had made a promise to her mum to be there for Christmas Day. She’d never asked anything of the company before and she had dropped everything to fly over here in the first place.
‘I really need to be home for Christmas, before preferably. My parents are going through something right now and I need to spend some time with them. I have taken loads of photos and videos of Saint-Chambéry, there’s a lot more to the village and its traditions than we could have realised, the little shop and café are run by Delphine who contacted you about my coming here and it’s so quirky and there’s this bar that does its own cider and there’s an ancient wheelbarrow and I’ve been ice fishing and I’ve fed foxes and?—’
‘Your parents are going through something?’ Frances had said the word ‘parents’ like the consonants and vowels were foul-tasting food stuff on her tongue.
‘Yes,’ Orla answered. ‘And I wouldn’t say something unless I believed it was crucial I go back.’
‘So, your parents are how old?’
Orla could already sense this was not going down well. And she knew Frances didn’t really want to know her mum and dad’s dates of birth.
‘Frances, I wouldn’t be asking this if it wasn’t really important to me.’
‘And why did your sister have to go to France with you again? Because couldn’t she have stayed at home and looked after your ageing parents?’
Orla sighed and tried not to take this personally. Frances had no empathy, and she didn’t even understand how it worked in others. ‘Erin is sixteen.’ And she knew what was coming next the second she’d said that.
‘At sixteen I was running my own car wash business.’
How many times had the staff heard about her entrepreneurial beginnings? Car washes, manicures, making clothes out of recyclables…
‘I know,’ Orla said. ‘But not everyone is as motivated and inspirational as you. Sadly.’
‘No,’ Frances said. ‘And it’s a shame to hear that coming from someone I thought I was going to write a recommendation for Time magazine for.’
Wow . Orla bit the inside of her mouth and tried desperately to not show on her face how that dig had affected her. This was not a reflection on her professionalism. This was unfortunate timing, the like of which she had never had to face before. And she wasn’t going to let Frances insinuate that this was anything other than a difficult situation for her family and one her employer should have a bit more sympathy over.
‘It’s OK,’ Orla stated, firmly yet politely. ‘You don’t need to write me a recommendation for anything. So, I will book my flight back and if the reindeer doesn’t give birth before the gate closes at Grenoble then I will work with what I have so far and make the best article I can.’
‘I don’t want the “best article I can”! I want this reindeer, on video, pushing that whatever-the-baby-is-called out into the world in its full gory. I want this being served on “for you” pages the way they serve up people having their deep-rooted blackhead spots removed!’
Noble grunted and Orla didn’t disagree. This was turning into the kind of vulgar reporting she, thankfully, never got involved in.
‘Oh… Frances… I… you… losing… signal.’ Orla shook her phone around and dipped her head a little as she hid her lips, allowing her to make static noises.
‘What’s going on? Can you hear me? Orla!’
‘Sorry… I… don’t…’
With one extra loud noise of her scraping her boots hard on the floor of the barn, Orla cut the call and took a deep breath. OK, that could have gone better. But actually, it could also have gone worse so she was taking it as a win.
She rubbed Noble’s fur, taking solace in the warmth of its body and leaned in as the chickens ran around her feet.
‘I am sorry about that,’ she breathed. ‘Us talking about the birth of your beautiful little one like you’re part of a reality TV show.’
Noble moved its head and it was then that Orla saw it. She swallowed. This couldn’t be right. A sick feeling started to rise up in her stomach as she made a closer inspection.
‘Hold still, lovely,’ Orla said, trying to get a good view of the base of the reindeer’s antlers. She didn’t like what she saw. And then her eyes moved down to its throat, and it gave her all the confirmation she needed.