‘Stop saying that,’ Orla said, a little annoyed.
‘If it doesn’t exist,’ Erin continued. ‘Does that mean we have to go home? Because I know I said it was cold and a bit shit but home is more cold and more shit so…’
‘Erin, I don’t want you to worry about home, OK? I know about things now so let me work on it.’
She swallowed, she had yet to respond to her mum’s text. Her dad had sold something precious. Itwasunforgiveable. Where did you start with that? But she didn’t want Erin to be thinking or feeling like home was cold and shit. Home should always be warm and welcoming, somewhere you could rely on to be a safe space. Except as soon as Baby Erin had arrived Orla was planning an escape to somewhere new, out into the wider world. Not because home didn’t feel safe, but because she’d always had a wanderlust and, as she’d got older, she still found it difficult to understand how her mum could be ultimately satisfied with a sedentary life on the outskirts of London. When Erin’s packets of Pampers had filled every spare space, a ten-year-old Orla had started putting pins in a world map on the back of her wardrobe door. She wanted to see everything. She wanted to go everywhere. Home should be solid, there waiting, there to catch you if you fell…
‘We can’t go home yet,’ Orla decided to say. ‘Even if there’s no reindeer.’ What was she saying? When had she made this choice? And she kept on talking. ‘Because where Orla Bradbee goes stories follow.’
‘Isn’t that meant to work the other way around?’ Erin asked.
‘Did you ever read my article on the man who only ate soup?’
‘Is this a joke?’
Orla shook her head, repositioning herself on the stool. ‘No. I went to South America to see what was supposed to be this phenomenon of the sky. It’s called Catatumbo lightning.’
‘Cata-what?’
‘Catatumbo. Anyway, when I get there the locals tell me that it’s not going to happen for at least three months because there has been this terrible drought. So there I am, at this restaurant in the midst of Venezuela wondering where I’m going to find a story from this expensive trip and there’s this old man sitting on his own eating soup.’
‘That’s not that weird,’ Erin said with a sniff. ‘I swear Danica only eats Hula Hoops.’
‘He ate five bowls. One after the other. And I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. I thought, what makes someone eat five bowls of soup at a restaurant that was well-known for so many other great delicacies.’
‘How did you spin that into a story?’
‘I asked the waiter about him and he told me his name and that he came to eat at the same time every day. So, the next day, I came back and I watched him eat the same amount of soup as he had the day before and then I went to speak to him.’ She took a sip of her drink.
‘Well, what did he say?’ Erin asked.
‘He said he ate a bowl of soup every day for everyone he’d lost in his life. His mum, his dad, his two brothers and his wife. And he intended to do that every day for the rest of his life.’
She swallowed as she concluded. She had never forgotten Luis and what warmed her heart the most was that after her story went to print people visited the restaurant and joined him for lunch. He now had friends all over the world.
Erin was quiet until finally she spoke up. ‘I don’t think Dad is drinking a certain number of pints to represent people he’s lost.’
‘No,’ Orla said with a sigh.
‘But he’s going to be OK, right?’
This was her sister being as transparent as it got and she needed to reassure her fully in this moment.
‘Yes!’ Orla said quickly. ‘Of course he’s going to be OK! Mum’s not going to let him be anything else! You know how she is! She will decree that things must change and that’s exactly what will happen. And, I told you, I’ve got this now, too.’
She wanted to cross her fingers. She wanted to manifest it into being but all she really had was hope…
‘Beanbags!’
It was Delphine. Shattering the moment and slapping down two beanbags amid the drinks on the table. They were horseshoe shaped, like nothing Orla had seen before. And Delphine was off and away again, without explanation or further conversation, delivering more odd shapes to other tables. Orla went to pick one up.
‘Wait! Don’t!’ Erin said, phone poised in the air. ‘I want to take a photo for Burim. He’ll probably make an innuendo about the shape.’
Ah, yes. She mustn’t forget that as well as their parents being in crisis and there being no reindeer for her end-of-year-potentially-profit-saving story forTravel in Mind, her sister was in a talking stage with a Moroccan she didn’t know the age of, who sent photos of himself in his underwear…
‘So, Erin?—’
‘Bonsoir.’
