Chapter 48
48
Orla’s heart was in overdrive. Very much like the truck she was having to drive because Jacques had been drinking. She was panicking. For her sister. For her ability to keep this vehicle in any way steady on the layer of snow. She didn’t even know if she was going the right way. She didn’t know much apart from a rather short text Erin had sent to Tommy. Why had her sister texted Tommy? Why hadn’t she come to her? OK, she might not be 100 per cent on board about the Burim situation but she would never want Erin to be afraid of telling her anything!
‘There is a rabbit!’ Jacques yelled suddenly.
Orla swerved, gasping for breath as they narrowly avoided the animal. ‘Is there any location on her phone yet?’
‘No.’
‘Have you looked again?’
‘I am looking.’
‘You need to refresh it.’
‘Orla, please, keep your eyes on the road.’
‘Please keep your eyes on the phone. She never has it off. She must be hiding her location! And that’s dangerous because she doesn’t know around here and there’s literally nothing here except wilderness and wild animals and what if I’m not even driving the right way? What if she’s gone walking the other way, further from Saint-Chambéry and civilisation?!’ She could feel hyperventilation was only a few pants away.
‘Listen to me,’ Jacques said. His voice was firm yet calming. ‘Right now it doesn’t matter what way she has gone.’
‘What? Of course it matters! She has an insubstantial coat that has probably got worse after the hot wash it needed when she was sick! It’s still cold, it’s dark… she can barely navigate her way out of her bedroom some days.’
‘Orla, she’s going to be fine,’ Jacques said, his hand on her shoulder now. ‘The reason it does not matter the way she is gone, is because as soon as we get to Saint-Chambéry we can ask others to help. Then we can come up with a plan and send more people different ways.’
That made sense. Except when he said “others” he really meant the village stalwarts of Gerard and Delphine and Delphine had too much going on without being called on to assist in the search for Erin.
‘OK,’ Orla said, her breathing steadying a bit. Then the thoughts came thick and fast. Should she call her mum or her dad? No. Not yet. She didn’t know anything. How far could Erin really have got in an hour?
‘Tell me about this guy, Burim. What is his last name?’
Orla was distracted by the question, eyes on the sloping ice road but mind revolving like the whisks of a KitchenAid. ‘I… don’t know.’
‘Tell me what you do know,’ Jacques said.
A quick sideways glance and she saw Jacques had his mobile phone in his hands. ‘What are you doing? Are you putting something on social media?’ That was a good idea. Except her Auntie Bren was on Facebook more than LadBible and she would see it and tell Orla’s parents.
‘I do not have social media,’ he reminded. ‘But I know a lot of people. Tell me what you know.’
Think, Orla, think . ‘He has brown hair… I think… not dark brown, not light brown. He wears Lacoste underwear.’
‘Does he have a car?’
‘I don’t know. Wait, his dad has… an old Mercedes.’
‘Job?’
‘Him or his dad?’
‘Both.’
‘I actually don’t know.’ She sighed, racking her brain. ‘He lives in Albania. He goes to the gym. He wants to be a boxer. He likes avocado. Argh! Why is all that so important to Erin and so no help in helping us?’
‘It’s OK,’ Jacques said, reassuringly. ‘We will find her.’
‘ Chocolat chaud .’
Delphine was pressing it into Orla’s hands before she even really knew it. The café/supermarket was a hive of activity now with Jacques in the centre of everything dividing up sectors on maps and briefing everyone as to what Erin looked like and what colour her coat was. It felt suddenly real. Her sister was missing. Yes, it hadn’t been that long but as every minute ticked by Orla was becoming more and more concerned. And she knew this was her fault. She hadn’t listened long or hard enough, hadn’t paid attention to the details, the depth of Erin’s feelings for Burim. Because she’d made assumptions about the ‘situationship’ based on her own experience of them. An experience she was starting to realise that she had driven into non-existence.
‘Orla, you must drink this,’ Delphine insisted, taking Orla’s fingers and wrapping them around the mug.
As divine as the hot chocolate smelled and as much as she was shivering from both the cold and nervous fear, she knew she couldn’t stomach it. But she looked up at Delphine and gripped the mug as instructed.
‘She will be just fine,’ Delphine said, pulling a chair out and guiding Orla down into it.
‘I can’t sit,’ she said, catching herself hovering above the seat.
‘You must sit,’ Delphine ordered. ‘Because when that girl gets back here she will need you to stand to straighten her hair or check that her skirt is not higher than her underwear.’
‘But I can’t rest and drink chocolate when there are people over there, strangers , preparing to do their utmost to find my sister.’
‘ S’il te pla?t . For only a moment. Jacques has it under control. And these people are not strangers. When you come to Saint-Chambéry a part of you belongs to Saint-Chambéry.’ Delphine smiled. ‘And the village looks after its own. That is how I know that Erin will be just fine. She is going to be the Queen of the Brouette this year.’
Orla swallowed. ‘But, Delphine, you know we have to leave soon.’
The woman sat down too and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Did I not just say that the village looks after its own? Perhaps this is a reason that you have not been able to get on a flight already or that Erin has gone to find her love.’
Love . Erin couldn’t be in love. They hadn’t even met. But, right at this moment, Orla didn’t care about anything except making sure her sister was safe.
‘You know,’ Delphine said. ‘Don’t you?’
Orla didn’t know how to respond. Was she talking about her illness? Noble being male? Jacques struggling with the fall-out from his job? Saint-Chambéry might look after its own but it certainly also held many secrets. She stayed quiet, hoped Delphine would elaborate.
‘Jacques told you, about my cancer.’
‘Well, I?—’
Delphine sighed, letting go of an uneasy breath and reaching for a trail of tinsel on the back of a chair, running it through her fingers. ‘I knew he would. If he felt about you the way I believe he does.’
‘It isn’t like that,’ Orla defended. ‘I made him tell me. Erin actually?—’
Delphine waved a hand again. ‘It does not matter. Everyone will know soon enough. But you are wrong, you know, about it not being like that. I see how Jacques is with you. How you are together. It is that relationship that everyone seeks but is so very rare.’
Orla swallowed and her eyes went back to Jacques. He was next to one of the large Christmas trees, writing things down on pieces of paper he was handing out, pointing towards the exit door, his expression deep seriousness.
‘You are alike, but you are also different. You are both independent creatures. But, for both of you, this is a form of protection. Him because it has been built into his nature by his job and the horrors he has seen there. For you because you have been let down when you have been vulnerable and you refuse to acknowledge your sadness so you spend time trying to mend other people’s.’
A fixer . Why did the people in this village seem to know more about her than she wanted to acknowledge herself?
‘Jacques, he holds himself at such a distance from everything. In the time that he has been here the pieces of him have only been given to me little by little.’ She sighed, her eyes on the tall, broad man taking charge of this situation. ‘But inside of him is this balloon of pure goodness. Once it was big and buoyant and now circumstances have let it shrink and it is like all the air has gone. But it does not go away, it is still there, the goodness, it just needs to be reinflated again.’
She was still shaking. Thinking about Erin out in the cold, thinking about her frozen emotions, thinking about how she had led herself down this work-focussed, solitary path, only indulging in company when there was a problem to be solved…
‘Drink the chocolate, Orla,’ Delphine said again. ‘There is nothing that cannot be made better with something sweet.’
Orla put her lips to the cup and took a sip. Erin would be fine. Please let Erin be fine .