‘Yes,’ Jacques replied. ‘Both. But I have deactivated them.’
She physically baulked. Was he being for real?
‘I want to leave,’ Orla reminded him.
‘I thought you wanted to interview me.’
‘No, my magazine wants me to interview you. Right now, all I want to do is completely forget you.’
The last sentence came out a lot harder and harsher than she had meant. Ordinarily, in front of someone she was meantto be working with, she would be hastily apologising right now, but the words weren’t coming. And Jacques was saying nothing, those dark eyes fixed on her like whatever happened next was her move…
And then he laughed. Loud and so unexpected that Orla jumped. But the laughter kept on coming like her asking to leave was comedy gold.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jacques said, finally. ‘It’s just you go from not saying anything to exploding. It’s amusing.’
Now her last nerve was rapidly unravelling. ‘You think this is exploding? You obviously don’t get out much.’
‘Non,’ he seemed to agree. ‘You see, I have this very difficult door.’
OK, that was good. And unfortunately she couldn’t help but show it on her face. She tried to stop the smile from forming.
‘I apologise,’ Jacques said. ‘For being an ungracious host. Please, let me make better coffee than Delphine.’
His tone sounded so genuine and he was looking directly at her waiting for her response. Maybe she wouldn’t say anything.
‘Ah, you pretend to be mute,’ he said, nodding. ‘I hear it is a thing. Well, perhaps you can write down the one question I said I would answer.’
‘Why do you have an expensive broken coffee machine in your kitchen?’
‘Is that the one question?’ He raised one eyebrow.
‘You didn’t say you would only answer one question,’ Orla replied. ‘My sister said I hadn’t even asked you one question.’
He nodded. ‘You are right.’
‘So?’ She folded her arms across her chest then felt immediately ridiculous and dropped them down again.
‘So I will… make the expensive coffee machine work and we will take it from there.’
It sounded like it was as good as she was going to get and the thought of walking in icy conditions all the way back to the village hadn’t been at all appealing.
‘Fine,’ she answered. And, he really was…
14
Orla Bradbee was sat at his kitchen table. Why hadn’t he recognised her the second he’d set eyes on her last night? Why hadn’t he even considered it was her when she had told him her first name? Maybe because the last photo he had of her was maybe eighteen months old now and that was only a small thumbnail from the by-line of her report on fish poaching in Romania. Her hair was lighter in real life and she was smaller. Granted, he remembered that in one of the pictures in her report from Zimbabwe she’d been standing next to a rhino, but she couldn’t be more than five feet four. It made him feel awkward in his own space, to be a whole foot taller. And for the first time in a long time he felt nervous. How fucking crazy was that?
Just about as crazy as using the coffee machine he loathed and attempted to get rid of on a regular basis. Like some kind of weird talisman it always failed to leave or made its way back. And his morals wouldn’t let him destroy something that still worked and had value, to someone at least.
‘It’s good coffee,’ Orla remarked, sipping at the macchiato he had made. ‘It should keep Erin quiet for at least ten minutes until she asks for another one.’
‘I have let them go into the cinema room. It might buy us an hour perhaps?’
‘There’s a cinema room?’ Orla asked.
He nodded. ‘I don’t use it.’
‘Like the coffee machine?’
