‘But your plane came late,’ Gerard reminded her. ‘It is OK. I will park the car and we will walk.’
‘Walk!’ Erin exclaimed as though the word was really code for ‘do a marathon’.
‘I don’t think snow is particularly good for pulling luggage,’ Orla said, empathising with her sister. It was freezing. Sheneeded to clarify the length of this walk before anyone opened any car doors. ‘So, Gerard, how far do we need to go on foot because?—’
Suddenly, the car was spun around like it might be about to take part in a high-octane street race and Orla’s words were taken from her as she smashed into Erin.
‘It is not far,’ Gerard answered as he morphed into Charles Leclerc. ‘You have good walking shoes,non?’
Why Orla felt the need to look down and check what she had on her feet as the car raced away from barriers, people and towards towering pines, she had no idea. But her usual not-anything-special trainers might not cut it if ‘not far’ was further than a catwalk runway…
‘Orla,’ Erin said through gritted teeth. ‘I feel sick.’
Oh no! Suddenly Orla was cast back in time to a visit to the fair when her sister was eight or nine. Erin had suffered with motion sickness for a few years after a frantic fling-around on the Waltzers and Orla had never been able to look at popcorn in the same way ever again. But she had outgrown it, right?
‘Stop the car,’ Orla demanded. ‘Erin, take a slow deep breath.’
‘I… am trying to stop the car… it does not… seem to be working.’
Now Gerard sounded just a tiny bit panicked and Erin was doing a very good impersonation of a bleached sheet… There was only one thing for it.
Orla grabbed the handbrake and pulled on it hard. Instantly the car slipped into a sideways skid and suddenly there was something or someone now in their path. Big, black, getting closer. Orla was torn between taking the handbrake back off or grabbing the steering wheel from Gerard. Erin let out a shriek and then…
Thump.
The noise was loud, the impact hard, but suddenly the car was stationary and Orla realised exactly how quiet everything now was. The car engine was idling, Erin was silent apart from a few panicky breaths and Gerard seemed like he was dazed and confused as to what had occurred. But beyond all that Orla felt something was wrong. The dark apparition. Had they hit something? Hitsomeone? She was reaching for the door handle, unconcerned for the cold outside now.
Her trainers crunched down into snow that was a couple of inches thick but she barely noticed, eyes searching the darkness that was only less like night because of the bright white of the ground.
‘Hello!’ Orla called. ‘Is anyone there?’
She couldn’t see anything but snow, trees and the top of the mountain in the distance. They couldn’t have slid that far away from civilisation. And where had the dark figure/thing gone? Now she felt the cold. It was already penetrating her apparently inadequate puffer jacket.
‘Oú est ton chapeau?’
Orla jumped at the sound of a man’s voice, hand going to her chest.
‘Vous n’avez pas de gants?’
What little French Orla knew consisted of the niceties of meeting someone and ‘do you sell ice cream’. Neither were appropriate for now. She turned around and lost her breath to the freezing air. The man was huge. Tall, broad, dressed head to toe in black from his woollen hat to thick sturdy boots. He had some kind of wrap across his face, the only stand-out was his eyes. Large, deep, dark brown and staring at her.
‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ She didn’t know where she had remembered that from, but her GCSE teacher would have been proud.
‘Yes, I speak English,’ the man answered. ‘I asked you where your hat and gloves are. You cannot be out in these temperatures without them here. In the centre of the village, maybe, especially tonight with all the crowds of annoying people, but definitely not here.’
She had a hat and gloves. In her case. Just not on her head or hands. And why was he talking about that when someone could be injured?
‘What?’ the man asked her, presumably because of the confused expression evenshecould feel she was wearing. ‘Is my English not understandable?’
‘No, I… I thought the car hit someone and?—’
‘Yes,’ the man answered. ‘It hit me.’ With that said, he walked past her and around to the driver’s side of the vehicle.
‘Sorry, what?’ Orla said, following the man. ‘But you’re… walking.’
‘Yes,’ the man answered as Gerard emerged from the car. ‘Strangely enough I have been doing this since I was around a year old. And it never stops amazing me. The one foot in front of the other. The balancing.’ He spoke in French to Gerard and Gerard replied. Orla had no idea what they were saying except the odd ‘oui’ and a name – Jacques.
‘But we hit you,’ Orla said, breaking into their conversation. ‘I heard the impact and?—’
