Orla swallowed. She’d had no idea about any of this. Why hadn’t her mum told her before things had got to this crying point? Or had she missed signs?
‘Have you asked Dad about it all?’
‘Are you mad? What do you think he’d say? “Oh, my love, yes, it’s true, I can’t get through the day without a tot of Captain Morgan’s at dawn, the rest of the crew throughout the day and a final Famous Grouse before I turn in for the night.”’ Dana sighed, ‘And he doesn’t acknowledge that money is tight. He says it’s a lean spell, then mumbles things about pensions maturing.’
‘But ignoring it isn’t going to solve anything. It isn’t just going to go away.’
‘I wish it would.’ She sighed. ‘Because worrying about a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl who’s just ripe for being taken advantage of is hard enough as it is.’ She raised her eyes to meet Orla’s. ‘Did you ask her? About the Moroccan?’
‘Burim’s Moroccan?’
‘Ah! Is that what he’s called?’
She suddenly felt she had been duped into giving up a secret. ‘Does he live in Morocco?’
‘Not a clue,’ her mum replied. ‘Let’s be honest, he could say he lived anywhere, that he’s called anything, it wouldn’t be the truth. I read an article that said 85 per cent of men on social media tell lies within the first three messages. So you have “hello” and “how are you?” and then it’s straight down to “I’ve never seen a girl as pretty as you before”. Utter bollocks.’
Orla swallowed, ripples of her last situationship playing on her mind. Henry. Someone she’d given months of her online life to. Another failure. The dating game wasn’t so much of a game any more, it was more like full-on warfare where it seemed everyone was your enemy, even the person you were legitimately trying to get to know. How did that work?
‘Maybeyoucould speak to your dad.’ The topic had turned again.
‘Me?’ Orla said, like the idea was as crazy as eating mussels with their shells still on.
‘You’ve always had that way about you that says “friendly” but with an undercurrent of “serious” that you can’t miss.’
Had she? And did her mum mean in confrontation or all things? Now she was starting to overthink the whole of her personality.
‘I don’t think I’m the one who’s best placed to raise the topic,’ Orla answered.
‘And now you’ve gone BBC newsreader on me.’
‘No, but I’m not here all the time like you are and I’m going away tomorrow so?—’
‘You’re what?’ Dana cut in, tea almost sloshing into her lap.
Orla hadn’t meant to drop it quite like that. She sighed. ‘I’ve been given a last-minute assignment and?—’
Suddenly her mum’s eyes widened, and the tea mug was quickly dispatched to the one table that used to be part of a nestof three… ‘This is it, isn’t it? This is the assignment you’ve been waiting for. The one that’s going to get you toTimemagazine and New York! Oh, Orla, this is big news! The biggest! Much more important than a few silly drinks too many and Dad getting a bonk on the head, because I expect your sister told you that too!’ She finally drew breath. ‘I always knew you’d get there! Always knew it! Your sister got all the beauty but you got all the brains! This is something to be celebrated!’
As Dana bounced up out of her chair and took a couple of steps towards the mantelpiece Orla ignored the backhanded compliment and knew she should stop this train of thought before it pulled into a station. Because on first email glance, this trip to France was the very opposite of something that was going to further her career dreams. In fact, it had all the potential to be a nightmare. ‘Mum, it’s not exactly?—’
‘Look!’
A switch was flicked and Orla’s gaze was drawn to one string of white fairy lights now glowing across the family photos and a resin duck ornament Erin had made in pre-school.
‘I know they don’t seem much,’ her mum said. ‘But they change rhythm – there’s twenty-nine different settings. I don’t know why there’s not thirty but there we are. Oh, Orla, you’re making me so proud. Just knowing you’re really on your way now is making everything seem a tiny bit brighter. Maybe I will call the doctor in the morning, see if she can have a chat with your dad, perhaps make up some middle-age check-up he should have and get to the root that way.’
‘That sounds like a good idea, Mum. But this assignment, it’s?—’
‘So, tell me more about it, if you’re allowed to that is. But, if you can’t tell me everything now, make sure you get the go-ahead to tell everyone all the details over Christmas dinner because Bren’s still crowing that her godson’s daughter got intoCambridge and I swear the length of time she’s been talking about it, the degree must be done by now.’
And, after that sentence, Orla knew there was no way she was going to be able to miss Christmas dinner at home this year, no matter how long the reindeer took to give birth.
5
SAINT-CHAMBÉRY, FRANCE
Jacques Barbier could always tell when he was being watched. Call it a survival instinct. Whether the watcher had malintent or not, it didn’t matter. Any kind of attention whereby someone felt the need to look and not be seen to be looking warranted your guard going up. It didn’t often happen when he was between the aisles of this convenience store/café though. Ordinarily, this was one of the places he felt most comfortable. Except now, as well as feeling eyes on him, he could hear whispered voices. There was only one thing for it. Grabbing a tin of chopped tomatoes from the shelf, he whirled round at speed and held the can in the air like he might be about to launch it somewhere.
