He couldn’t believe he had said that… to someone who asked questions for a living. To someone who got to the very truth of anything she involved herself in. He held his breath, half of him hoping she would turn his offer down.
‘Whatever questions I want?’ Orla clarified.
He nodded. ‘That is what I said.’
‘OK,’ Orla replied. ‘But this is your last chance.’
His last chance?To take part in an interview he hadn’t called for nor wanted? He opened his mouth to say as much but something made him think better of it.
‘Understood,’ he answered.
15
SAINT-CHAMBÉRY
‘Burim says it’s fourteen degrees with him and he doesn’t want me to be cold. He says if I was with him I would never be cold. He says if I was with him it would be perfect.’
Orla was getting to know that Burim used the word ‘perfect’ a lot. Erin had sent him a photo of the crêpes she had eaten for lunch and they were ‘perfect’. She had also sent him a photo of a snowmobile parked outside Gerard’s bar after Burim had sent four ‘wyd’ messages in two minutes because she had left him on seen for ten minutes – the snowmobile had been ‘perfect’ too. But all the intensity was a throwback to her conversations with Henry. He’d always liked her Insta stories and commented on them. Turned a photo of the latest awful toilet she got to encounter on her travels into something much more positive… and more often than not, sexy. She missed that. She missed having someone interested in her day. It wasn’t the same as your mum putting a ‘love you my beautiful angel’ comment on FB when the focus of your post was meant to be the jackaroo who was sheep-shearing… She needed to say something about Burim.
‘Are there actually going to be beanbags at this bar or are they made up like the reindeer?’
Erin had jumped in with the comment before Orla could say anything.
‘I don’t know,’ Orla said, putting her hands around the mug of mulled wine Gerard had insisted they both had when they’d arrived in this cosy cabin of a pub. ‘Do you think the reindeer is made up?’
‘Didn’t you question it before you accepted the assignment?’ Erin asked like she was the elder and wiser sister in this situation.
Orla swallowed, the tall stool she was sitting on which was facing a roaring fire pit where other customers were warming their hands, making her feel like a child in a highchair. She hadn’t questioned anything much at all. Frances hadn’t let her. Or was it more a case of there was so much drama going on with her family that this mute man/reindeer combo hadn’t sounded all that bad on the face of it. But here with her sister she had no choice but to be the grown-up.
‘I don’t think the reindeer is made up,’ Orla replied with a dash more confidence than she really felt.
‘No?’ Erin said. ‘Because, Wolf, the really tall, really fit-looking but old dude told you? I mean he’s not Ryan Gosling, but I would.’
Orla tried to pick the bones out of the sentence as her cheeks grew as warm as the coals in the fire pit looked.
‘Oh shit! Youdothink he’s fit!’ Erin exclaimed, at a louder level than the merry Christmas music being piped around the space.
‘What? No! I don’t even know who you’re talking about,’ Orla answered rather patchily. ‘But anyway, what’s Delphine’s reason to make something like that up?’
‘Well, you might change your mind about her when I tell you what film she wanted to choose to watch in the cinema room earlier,’ Erin said, jabbing the slice of orange in her drink with the accompanying cocktail stick. ‘She lets everyone see “sweet, caring, shop owner” when really she drinks coffee that must be eroding her gut lining and wants to watchReservoir Dogs.’
‘It’s one of those films everyone’s watched,’ Orla replied. But something in Erin’s words was spiking her journalistic instincts that perhaps something was amiss.
‘She’s watched it seventeen times. She told me. She knowsallthe words. It freaked me out. It’s the only time I’ve wanted to actually say I’m not actually old enough to be watching this according to the guidance rating. So, if you’re asking me if I think she’s capable of making some shit up about a reindeer then yes and it’s a possibility she’s masterminded all the unsolved heists in France.’
Orla smiled, shook her head but made a mental note. Sometimes she did love the way her sister’s mind raced away with itself. It reminded her how her own imagination had been at that age. She’d thought back then that nothing was insurmountable, that the world was hers for the enjoying. When had she stopped thinking that way?Hadshe stopped thinking that way? She swallowed. She was in a good position with her career, she just needed to move that into agreatposition. And as for relationships, well, they weren’teverything.
‘Oh, here she is,’ Erin announced. ‘Madame Loves-A-Big-Weapon.’
‘Shh,’ Orla said.
She looked to the door where Delphine was arriving, a large box in her arms.
‘Pretty cruel if they’ve made the reindeer squash itself into that, pregnant belly and everything,’ Erin said, giggling.
Now Orla was doubting that Erin’s mulled wine was quite the non-alcoholic version Gerard had said it was…
‘Oh yeah, I forgot, the reindeer doesn’t exist.’
