Jacques pulled the large coffee machine forward and opened a cupboard above.
‘Did you manage to get the wood burner going again?’ Orla asked him.
‘You really think I would not?’
‘No, I just… I don’t know… I guess I was just thinking… I…’ She stopped talking as the lump in her throat had somehow managed to grow in size and become a boulder lodged in her chest.
‘Listen, Orla, I want to apologise for earlier. The way I reacted was… not how I should have reacted.’
She shook her head as she tried to maintain some equilibrium with her emotions. ‘No, I was to blame too. I was unprofessional and those things I said were, I don’t know, ridiculous.’
‘Is everything OK?’ Jacques asked her. ‘With your parents?’
‘Yes,’ she said quickly. Too quickly. ‘No, actually… they are… going through something right now and it’s difficult, you know?’
‘They are separating?’ he asked, pressing buttons on the machine.
‘No!’ she said immediately. But then she thought over his question. Would they? Because this was no good for either of them. Except when you had been married for as long as they had surely you worked through every kind of problem without deciding there was no hope? And she still hadn’t given him an answer.
‘My parents,’ Jacques said. ‘They separated.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Orla replied.
‘No, don’t be sorry,’ Jacques answered. ‘Sometimes people just aren’t meant to be together forever. No matter what promises they’ve made.’
‘Do they still both live in France?’ Orla asked him.
He shook his head. ‘No, we are originally from Canada. The French part. My mother’s parents were both French. My father’s parents, Canadian. Tommy and I are a mix of the two.’
‘So, that’s where he’s come from now? Canada? All that way?’
Jacques smiled. ‘Yes, but knowing my brother he probably began this trip a week ago. He has never been one to shy away from exploration. It would not surprise me if our father hadn’t even realised he had left the country.’
‘And now here you are, going from a recluse with only his trusty canine companion to having a house full of people,’ she remarked.
‘And two teenagers who demand I must try to use this fucking coffee machine I’ve never been able to get to work the same way twice.’
She smiled, enjoying the slip in Jacques’s usual aloof demeanour and a sliver of humour.
‘Do you want me to look at it?’ she asked him.
‘Please! I thought you would never ask,’ he said with another smile.
‘OK,’ Orla said, sizing it up like it was an opponent in a wrestling ring. ‘How hard can it be?’
‘Well, it was not originally mine and I have never established a working relationship with it.’
‘So do we go through it methodically? Or shall I just press each button in turn and see what happens?’
‘That is really what you are going to do?’ Jacques asked, sounding a bit shocked.
‘You haven’t had a better idea in years so…’
She started to hit buttons one after another and suddenly the machine burst into life, whirring and whizzing and spurting until steam started shooting out of places that it didn’t look like steam should come from. Orla screamed.
‘I don’t want to be burned again! Make it stop!’ She pressed more buttons, trying to halt what she had started.
‘Youdid this!’ Jacques exclaimed, pulling the handle.
