‘But Delphine?—’
‘Jacques! Please! Have some respect!’ she shouted. Then she carried on, her voice a bit lower. ‘When you first came here, did I question why you were sitting in the church soaking wet with only a backpack? Did I ever question your decision about where to build your house or make comment about how many ways there were to lock the doors?’
‘No,’ Jacques said, picking up a line of stars. ‘But you asked me a thousand questions ranging from my mother’s favourite recipe to had I ever been chased by a bear.’
‘OK,’ Delphine said. ‘That is true. But I never ever asked you why you sometimes get official-looking letters from Belgium, or why when Tommy visits you’re torn between feeling glad and looking terrified.’
Granted, this was true. And her apparent appreciation of the situation without having any direct knowledge had always been something he held in high regard.
‘You are changing the subject, Delphine. We are talking about your illness.’
‘We are talking about my life.Mine. And my wishes, which everybody knows, have to be adhered to before anything else. Because that is the one thing a dying person should be allowed to be a bit selfish about.’
Dying person. He didn’t want her to be a dying person. She was a living person, a larger-than-life-itself person, one of his closest people. He swallowed and put a hand on the stepladder. ‘What are your wishes? Apart from to make me have Orla and Erin at my house with a fake reindeer and even faker window replacements.’
Delphine put a hand to her chest. ‘How can you say the reindeer is fake? You have seen it with your own eyes! How is it today? Settling in with your chickens?’
He shook his head. ‘It is still a male.’
‘And you have told Orla this?’
‘Not yet,’ he admitted. ‘But I am not going to carry on lying to someone I care about and?—’
‘Someone you care about.’
He watched Delphine put her hands on either side of her face, fingers resting on her cheeks like he had spilt a secret code to the enemy. Why had he said that?
He cleared his throat as he picked up another garland from the very slowly decreasing pile. ‘I care about them both having agood image of the village to take back to the UK and for Orla to write about in her magazine. Just like you said.’
‘Oh, Jacques,’ Delphine said, pushing her glasses up her nose. ‘I do not think that is it. I see you two together. It is like a fire. One minute the flames are so hot and there is passion and singeing, the next there is that warm glow of the embers that is not as hot but sometimes even more satisfying.’
Her words trickled down inside him like the glittering streamers were now trickling down from the food shelves.Wasthat how he and Orla were together? He couldn’t deny there were feelings there he was finding it hard to suppress. But their meeting had been planned by his friend. They had been literally pushed together…
‘I know what you are thinking,’ Delphine carried on, picking up a snowflake decoration. ‘You are thinking that I am wanting you to get together with Orla, then marry and have children that will carry on all the traditions of Saint-Chambéry for generations to come.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No,’ Delphine said. ‘Because I am not naïve enough to think that people will want to spend their whole lives in this tiny village when there is such a big world out there waiting to be explored.’
‘Then, whatisyour wish?’
‘For you to have the strength to leave here,’ Delphine said. ‘But for you to have the desire to also return sometimes.’
‘Delphine,’ Jacques said, sighing.
‘What?’ she queried. ‘I am sick! What else is there for me to do but plan for other people whodohave a future?’
He didn’t want to hear this. That his friend, the person who had been more of a mother to him that anybody else, wasn’t going to be here until she was almost as old as the legend of thebrouette.
‘I am not going to ask you to make me any promises,’ Delphine said. ‘Not about this village. Not about Orla.’
‘But?’ Jacques said.
‘But, think about things, Jacques. Re-evaluate. If only for an old woman’s sake.’
He knew he already was and had been from the moment all his carefully crafted routines had been turned upside down by the arrival of his brother and a reporter who had moved from the admiration zone to whatever was transpiring between them now. His mouth dried like someone had stuck it up to a Dyson Airblade.
‘I… have asked Orla on a date.’
