‘Tommy, you can come in now.’
‘I was always coming in,’ he answered, already at his back. ‘What’s going on? Can we eat before this gets cold? Where’s Erin and Orla? Oh… is that… their luggage? Are they leaving?’
As Tommy fired out his questions, Orla and Erin arrived in the space.
‘Yes, we’re leaving,’ Orla answered. ‘I didn’t know when you were coming back so I’ve arranged for someone to come and collect us to take us to Saint-Chambéry.’
‘What?’ Tommy said, looking bemused. ‘But we’ve got Thai food. This food truck comes through Saint-Chambéry once every freaking blue moon on its way to Grenoble and it came today!’
‘You’ve got Thai!’ Erin exclaimed, dropping her coat to the ground and striding towards him.
‘Prawn spring rolls, panang curry, spicy beef strips, like five portions of noodles and?—’
‘Stop talking,’ Erin ordered. ‘I’ll get plates.’
‘Just get forks,’ Tommy replied.
‘Erin,’ Orla interrupted. ‘We’re leaving.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know why and you said Gerard was going to be an hour at least.’
‘You have called Gerard to collect you?’ Jacques didn’t know why that was the first thing he had asked. They wereleaving?
‘Come on, Erin,’ Tommy said. ‘Bring the forks. We’ll save you some. Or not.’
Before anyone could say anything more, Tommy and Erin had left the kitchen for the cinema room, taking the bag of takeout with them. Hunter let out another whine then spun around in a circle and went to sit on his mat. It was like the dog could sense the tension in the air.
‘I do not understand,’ Jacques said.
‘No,’ Orla said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘And neither do I.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know, I thought you and I had reached a place where we respected each other. You told me a little about your past. I told you a little of mine. You did weird things to my ear and helped my tension headache. You evenasked me on a date! Ha! What a joke! Because then I find out that you’ve been lying to me.’
Lying to her?He hadn’t lied to her. He had told her as much about his life undercover as he had told his brother only today. OK, perhaps he hadn’t told her the details of what had happened with Katie or his mom and dad’s separation, but he hadn’t lied.
‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’ Orla demanded to know, throwing her arms up in the air. ‘Because if that doesn’t smack of a guilty conscience then I don’t know what does.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied.
‘Oh really!’ Orla said, stalking towards him. ‘You don’t know what I mean? Well, how about I tell you exactly what you’ve lied about.’
‘Please,’ Jacques said. ‘Enlighten me.’
‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what’s in that barn!’ She pointed a finger towards the window.
He was still unaware what this was about. Was it the books of his identities? Had she been in there without him? Read about the things he’d done? That was impossible without the code. Still…
‘The information in the books?’ he asked.
‘Not the books!’ Orla yelled. ‘The reindeer! Thepregnantreindeer who is supposed to be at the centre of my article! The one we called Noble because she’s a queen! The reindeer who is never going to give birth on Christmas Day or Easter Sunday or fucking Doomsday… becausehe’sa male!’
He closed his eyes. Ah. That. He opened his eyes again and looked at her. She was angrier than he’d seen. A whole different kind of angry from the first day they had met in the snow and even different to when she’d realised she was locked in his smart home. He turned away from her then, opened the fridge and extracted a bottle of white wine.
‘How did you know?’ he asked.
‘How did I know?’ she shouted. ‘Is that really the first thing you’re going to say in this moment? I was kind of hoping that you had no idea!’
‘Well, it took me a while to tell. With reindeer it is not so easy. There is a subtle difference with the shape of the head. Then there is kind of a beard on a male. But then you have to look at the horns. Males, they have antlers that split at the base and face forward.’
‘I know!’ Orla yelled. ‘Because this is not my first wildlife rodeo and as pissed off as I am that you’ve been lying to me, I’m equally pissed off with myself that I didn’t spot it straight away!’
