‘I believe so.’ He smiled at her. ‘Orla, you look so beautiful tonight.’
‘Even though I’m a beanbag loser?’ she asked.
‘A beanbag second place,’ he reminded.
‘I don’t mind,’ Orla insisted.
‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘Because you let Sebastian win.’
She shook her head but there was a smile on her lips. ‘The pentagon slipped out of my hand. You were right about those shapes, you know.’
He shook his head and smiled again.
‘So, why the church?’ Orla asked. ‘Is church important to you?’
‘Thischurch is important to me,’ Jacques admitted. ‘This was the very first place I came in Saint-Chambéry the day I found myself here.’
‘Really?’
He nodded. ‘I had been driving and driving for hours, across borders, with no care for a map, no plan, no idea, just a head full of messed up thoughts and terrifying versions of my future and my truck just stopped right outside here.’ He sighed. ‘It had fuel, there was nothing wrong with it that I could identify, but it did not want to go any further. So, I got out and I pushed the door, and I came inside.’ He shivered as the memories washed over him. ‘And when I stepped onto those old stones it felt like something was holding me up, guiding me to sit down in one of the pews. I can’t really explain it, but it was like the universe was taking control for me because I had lost control for myself.’
She reached for his hand, her fingers wrapping around his, so delicate and soft on his skin.
‘I sat here for an hour, maybe two, just quiet and still, no thoughts, no feelings, just existing and this church just let me exist in it, sit with it.’ He smiled. ‘And then Delphine burst in with the rest of the choir and it got very noisy after that. In fact, I don’t think my life has ever been as quiet as it was that first night here… before Delphine made me listen to that rehearsal.’
‘And the rest is history,’ Orla remarked.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘And it is crazy you should say those words because this is what our date is about. So…’ He stood up and went over to a wicker basket that was on the front pew a few steps away. ‘I remember you wrote about a man in South America. He only ate soup, and he went to the same restaurant every day and had five bowls. One to signify everyone in his life that he had lost.’
Orla gasped. ‘You remember that article.’
‘I told you I had read them all.’
‘I know but there’s a difference between reading them and remembering them.’
‘Is there?’ he asked her. ‘If you have read them in the right way?’
He took out a Thermos and two bowls and placing the bowls on the table he filled each one with the most delicious soup. He knew it was delicious because it was one of his favourites. He sat down again.
‘But, as much as I loved the article and as much as I respected that South American man, I do not want us to eat things and be sad about people who are no longer in our lives, for whatever reason,’ Jacques told her. ‘So, our three courses tonight will be one for the past, one for the present and one for the future.’
Orla could already feel the tears pricking her eyes. This man was everything in this moment. He was strong and gentle, considerate and caring; in fact, there weren’t enough words to describe what he had come to mean to her.
‘Jacques,’ she said. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’
‘You don’t like soup?’ he asked, almost panic on his expression.
‘No, no, I love soup, and this smells so good,’ she said. ‘I just… I want you to know that, well, I won’t be writing forTravel in Mindany more.’
He didn’t say anything, and she watched his face as the news hit. His expression now wasn’t giving anything away.
‘You have a new job?’ he asked. ‘You deserve that. You will be incredible with whatever comes next. You will be able to?—’
‘No,’ she said, reaching for his hand again and slipping her fingers between his. ‘No, I haven’t made any decisions aboutwhat I want to do yet. And that feels really good to say. I’ve always had this path I’ve been set on and I’ve never actually stopped to think if it’s the right one, or whether I should deviate or change direction completely because I’ve never made time to just exist, to sit with myself.’
She looked at the stained-glass window, the moonlight flooding through the depiction of the fox, the fish, the wolf and things had never seemed clearer.
‘Like you said when you first arrived in Saint-Chambéry, the church let you simply exist in it and that’s what I need to do in life.’ She smiled. ‘I want to find out who Orla Bradbee is when she isn’t a worldwide roving reporter. I want to know who she is as a woman. I want to know who she is as a sister and a daughter without any other demands on my time for a while. And, well, I’d quite like to find out who she is as… a girlfriend.’
