He bit the inside of his lip. He would rather have given her anything but that. But he also knew she wasn’t going to stop asking. He stepped towards the door at the rear of the barn and with another input of a code, it slid open.
‘Want a drink?’ he called.
‘What is this?’ she asked as she crossed the barn to join him. ‘A secret bar?’
‘No,’ he answered matter-of-factly. ‘It’s my memories.’
35
The second Orla crossed the threshold she gasped. It wasn’t the biggest of rooms, but the walls were covered with thick books, like photo albums. There had to be scores of them and down each spine was a name and dates. As she stepped further in, Jacques produced a bottle of what looked like whisky from one of the cupboards.
‘This looks like a bunker I was in once when I wrote about preppers. But with more books and fewer guns.’
‘Yeah, and the guns your preppers had weren’t the greatest, trust me.’
‘So, youdoread my articles!’
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
‘You subscribe to the magazine?’
‘I used to get the magazine delivered to Delphine’s store. But, since the prices went up and, to be environmentally friendly, I subscribe online.’
She shook her head. ‘You’ve readallmy articles?’
‘And you are so much better than your predecessor who had a fixation with putting advertorials in every piece he wrote.’
She suddenly felt bare in front of him. Yes, she knew thousands of people read her words but to know that he had read every word she had written… it was simply the weirdest feeling.
‘Is that the something real you were looking for?’ he asked, handing one of the glasses out to her.
‘Well, I would have said yes when we were next to a reindeer and surrounded by chickens, but now we’re drinking by bookshelves that look like they could hold the world’s history, you obviously wanted to tell me something else.’
She watched him take a swig of the alcohol, like he needed it before he said anything more. Maybe she needed to start him off, let her journalistic tendencies take over.
‘Were you in the army?’
‘No.’
‘So these files and books aren’t intel on people you’ve killed?’
‘Do you think I would do something like that?’
‘No… I don’t know. What are they? And why are they in here and not the house?’
He sighed. ‘They are all people I have had to become, over the years. They hold information to keep me and my family safe, they are reminders of who I was when I was playing a part.’
‘Different identities,’ Orla said, her eyes going back to the thick books. ‘You worked undercover?’
It would explain all this smart home business and the codes for all the doors. It also said something about his lack of personalisation in the rest of his home. He was someone used to holding things – and people – at arm’s length.
‘I was… in the police force.’
‘Here? In Canada?’
She watched him shake his head. ‘In Belgium.’
‘O-K.’
