Erin shook her head. ‘You haven’t given him a chance yet.’
‘How am I supposed to do that when I can’t meet him because he lives somewhere the UK officials need to vet people from.’
‘See!’ Erin exclaimed. ‘Judgement!’ She put down her plate of food and stomped off towards Gerard’s bar.
‘Erin! Wait!’
She sighed. What was it with their family? They wanted this persona of being this happy nucleus to the outside world but, in reality, nobody spoke to one another and, if they did, it was miscommunication and half-truths.
‘Is everything OK?’
It was Jacques beside her now, the guy who was being hailed as some kind of superhero for bringing the fish back to Saint-Chambéry like the village was in a dire famine situation. The rest of the non-fish spread would definitely suggest a shortage of food could never happen here.
‘Yes, good. Erin just being a teenager and me being an inadequate older sibling who knows nothing about anything. Her thoughts not mine.’
‘Is that all?’ Jacques answered with a small smile.
‘Yes,’ Orla answered. ‘That is all. I mean it’s completely nothing when you put it into context and align it next to the commissioning of a statue of you next to the wheelbarrow to commemorate the day you brought a rare and gigantic fish back to the village.’
‘No one has mentioned a statue yet,’ Jacques told her.
‘“Yet” being the operative word.’
He smiled. ‘Do you think it should be bronze or something else?’
‘Not pure gold?’
‘We are a very humble village,’ Jacques reminded her.
‘I can see that from this banquet fit for fish-catching royalty.’
‘What can I say? We are a humble village that likes to share good fortune.’
Community. Old-fashioned values. She saw it so much in the tiny places she visited all around the world. How the UK once was but seemed to be drifting further and further away from.
‘You are thinking,’ Jacques stated.
‘Oh, well, yes, you know, a journalist’s brain never really goes to sleep. If it did then I might miss out on a scoop.’
‘Here,’ Jacques said, a spoon dolloping something that looked like black shiny paste on the side of Orla’s plate.
‘What’s that?’
‘A scoop,’ he answered. ‘Of Madame Voisin’s famous sloe and blackberry jam.’
‘O-K. It looks very dark.’
‘Doesn’t every scoop have to have an undercurrent of mystery?’ he asked with a raise of his eyebrows.
‘These days I prefer mine with fewer surprises and a whole lot more planning.’
‘Ah, but then we would not have gone ice fishing and we would not be having this beautiful night with the village.’
She looked at him, remembering the first time she had set eyes on him. There was something different about his features now. He was still incredibly good-looking, still had that sharp jaw covered in a smattering of short beard, but there was somehowsoftnessthere now,warmthin the depths of his eyes…
‘Now you are thinkingandstaring,’ he said.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise I was doing that. The staring I mean.’ She stuck her finger in the mound of jam and inspected the consistency like she was a food aficionado. Desperate to distract him from the fact she had been staring, she put her finger in her mouth. And sharp sourness took over everything.
