‘OK,’ Jacques said, getting to his feet. ‘Enough talking for now. If we don’t get these Christmas decorations up around the town then Delphine is going to be on the war path.’
‘Yeah, and no one wants that,’ Tommy agreed. ‘Come on, Hunter. Let’s go put some more tinsel up! Come on, boy!’
Jacques watched his brother run off, Hunter yapping at his heels and, as he looked across the village square, he sensed a little change in the air.
41
JACQUES’S HOME, THE OUTSKIRTS OF SAINT-CHAMBÉRY
‘Why are there so many chickens? Are they in battery cages? Because that could be another story. Heart-warming reindeer, mute guy doing evil deeds keeping the other nature cooped up.’
Orla was wondering if Frances was halfway down a bottle of Baileys already the way she was rattling out her responses over the Zoom link. Having emailed off her words, she had got a request from her boss for an online meeting and Orla had decided to take it to Jacques’s barn now he had entrusted her with the pin codes for barn and house, but not what she was now calling ‘the memory room’. And she hadn’t actually told Frances that Jacques wasn’t mute…
‘No!’ Orla said quickly. ‘They’re all roaming free. Outside usually, too far yesterday actually. It’s very cold here though so they’re inside and they don’t lay eggs in the winter. Look.’ She turned her phone to the barn so her boss could see Jacques’s fowl strutting around the space.
‘Ugh, disgusting. Granted it’s not as disgusting as that place you showed me in Padang Bolak but literally, ugh.’
Orla laughed. For someone who worked on a destination magazine Frances only had five-star, pristine locations on her mind. Everything else was on her personal to-don’t list.
‘Show me the reindeer! And hurry up, because Sonil has training in twenty minutes.’
She looked into the camera again. ‘Oh, did you finally agree to the time-management course?’
‘No,’ Frances said, frowning. ‘Training for the Cadbury’s Heroes eating contest.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Two days ago I took him to my personal dentist and now he can widen his jaw an extra centimetre.’
Orla had no idea what to say about the degree of effort going into this.
‘Show me the reindeer!’ Frances reiterated.
‘Right, yes,’ Orla said. She turned her phone around again and this time focussed on the four-legged animal who seemed to have its head permanently in a trough of food since Jacques had set that up. ‘Well, here it is.’ She did a bit of a pan up and down the reindeer’s body, ending at the head end and those crazy blue eyes. ‘Do you see its eyes and how blue they are?’
‘Is it AI?’ Frances asked.
‘No, it’s how reindeers’ eyes are in the winter. It’s all to do with how they adjust to poor light. In the summer they’re a golden colour and in winter they’re like this.’
‘Well, I want that. Surely the science is there! And you’re saying we have to put up with coloured contacts?’
‘I… hadn’t really thought about it.’
‘It’s a bit sad looking though, isn’t it? Mouth’s a bit droopy. Is that froth around its nose?’
‘It’s cold here,’ Orla reminded her. ‘Well, not actually as cold as it was when we first arrived. Then it was almost too dangerous to be outside according to the locals. But they are resourceful,you know, they light fires, everywhere, and do crazy things with bean bags and make excuses to have community events.’
‘It soundsterrible! I bet you’ll be glad when it’s pumped the kid out and you can get back to civilisation.’
Orla swallowed, her eyes going to the window of the barn. It was like a beautiful painting, the scenery outside framed to perfection – white glistening ground, tall spruces, sunshine through the clouds and those icy mountain peaks in the distance. Yes, perhaps it was barren in some ways, but it was also peaceful, with Saint-Chambéry only a short drive away. She shook herself. What was she doing? Daydreaming? She lived in London – a hive of what was hot right now, business, busyness, more baristas per square foot than anywhere else in the world – or that’s what it felt like. And she was striving for somewhere even more metropolitan – New York. She regrouped.
‘They’re called calves,’ she told Frances.
‘What are?’
‘Baby reindeer.’
Frances took a sharp breath. ‘Don’t say “baby reindeer” to me, I’m still so traumatised from the Netflix series I had to delete an email from someone in the Glasgow office just because they were called Martha.’
She turned the camera back to her face. ‘Listen, Frances, if the reindeer takes a while to have the calf… I mean, if it doesn’t give birth in the next… four or five days then… I might have to come back to the UK before it’s born.’ She held her breath. She had never tried to amend any plan before, never backed out on a story before its conclusion.
‘What?’ Frances asked, sitting forward on her office chair, eyes very close to the camera.
