Luke tried to imagine what it must have been like for her to find Bill. Lorford wasn’t the easiest place to get to for an ambulance, and the panic at finding somebody collapsed in the middle of nowhere must have been terrifying. He glanced at her now. She looked so pale and he had a feeling she might actually have fallen asleep. Quietly and as quickly as was safe, Luke drove to the castle.
The village should have been a welcome sight to him, but he was so anxious about both Bill and Orla that he didn’t have time to luxuriate in being back in the place he’d grown to love.
‘Orla?’ he said, reaching across the van to touch her shoulder.
She jumped, her eyes opening.
‘We’re back,’ he told her as she looked around, confused.
‘Was I asleep?’
‘I think so.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay. Come on – let’s get you inside.’
They got out of the van and walked up the steps to the castle door. One Ear was there to greet them and Luke bent to make a fuss of him.
‘I’ll take you out in a minute, boy,’ he promised. ‘Can I make you some tea, Orla?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a vague sort of way, as if she’d only half heard him.
He watched her drift out of the room and wondered if she was going to lie down. He couldn’t blame her if she was. So he got on with the task of making tea. Sometimes, something as simple as putting a kettle on and finding mugs was calming. It was a familiar ritual that grounded a person, bringing order to a chaotic day. One might not be able to control the world, but one could at least control a cup of tea.
Luke was just walking through the great hall with two mugs when he heard the noise. He frowned. It sounded like something had smashed.
And again.
One Ear leapt out of his basket and whined as another smash came and Luke hastily put down the mugs and ran out of the room.
‘Orla?’ he called as he heard another smash. He knew what it was now, and he knew where it was coming from.
He headed to the china room.
Chapter 25
Orla wasn’t sure how it began but, all of a sudden, she found herself in the midst of it, the deep fear and anger she’d been carrying inside her erupting in a force she couldn’t quite control. The fear of finding Bill collapsed at the allotment, the anger at the way her mother had left the castle, and the horrifying memory of seeing Brandon in the sacred space of her home. It was all too much.
One minute, she’d been hyperventilating in the middle of the china room and then, the next, she’d grabbed hold of her camera tripod and was swinging it through the air like an angry baseball bat, smashing and thrashing all the china around her.
She swung to the left and an enormous jug came crashing to the stone floor, where it broke into a thousand red and gold pieces. She swung to the right, and rainbow shards and splinters flew across the room. The tripod felt lighter in her hands now – she was wielding it more like a sword than a baseball bat, cutting through the cups, bowls, plates and vases that filled the room, and screaming like somebody possessed.
Reds, blues, greens and pinks, silvers and golds, roses and cherries and blue and white willow leaves – all flew through the air before smashing to the floor. Pretty patterns she’d spent hours photographing, gorgeous antique pieces that had featured on her Galleria feed – all were being sacrificed, dying on the grey stone floor of the castle. It was as if all the energy of her body was passing through her arms and into that new weapon – all the anger and the fear that she’d been holding inside her for goodness only knew how long.
The sound was almost deafening and she was only half aware of One Ear barking and Luke shouting something over the noise from the safety of the door. But she couldn’t stop now. She just knew that this had to be done.
Her dark hair flew in a frenzy, partially obscuring her vision, but it didn’t slow her down as she continued thrashing, her heart racing and her breath ragged.
And then she stopped.
Her whole body was heaving and she was gasping for breath, but the sudden silence that flooded the room was wonderful. It felt wonderful.
She sank forward, dropping the tripod and placing her hands on her knees, glad that Luke didn’t speak for a moment, but aware that he’d walked into the room, his feet crunching on the china shards.
‘Oh, dear!’ she whispered, slowly coming back to herself, her eyes focusing on the devastation around her. Just a few items had escaped her wrath and now seemed to tremble in the deep recesses of the castle’s windowsills and on the far shelves. ‘What have I done?’
Luke came forward. ‘I think you needed to do that,’ he said, gently putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘How are you feeling?’
She looked up at him and blinked, as if settling back into herself at last.
‘Strangely calm.’
‘Good.’
‘Good? Look what I’ve done! All my beautiful things!’
They both looked around the room again. The floor was covered in a china carpet. It was a strange, but rather wonderful, mosaic.
‘Well, a lot of it was already broken,’ Luke pointed out. ‘Wasn’t it?’ Orla saw a smile tickling the corners of his mouth.
‘Yes, but only hairline cracks or little chips. None of it was actually smashed!’
‘Well, it is now!’
‘Luke!’ she cried as he continued to smile at her, but she was smiling too. ‘Oh, my God!’
‘This happened for a reason,’ he told her.
‘You think so?’
‘I really do.’
‘I’ll keep telling myself that then.’
‘I think you needed to get whatever was inside you out, and quickly. You’ve been carrying a lot, Orla. And I’m not just talking about today, but for the last few years.’
Orla gazed down at the floor again, knowing that Luke understood.
‘I was so worried about Bill,’ she said at last.
‘I know.’
‘He’s been such a good friend to me. More than a friend. Like a father, really.’
‘He’s a very special person.’
Orla nodded. ‘I should tidy this up.’
‘Not now. It doesn’t need to be done now.’
‘But it’s dangerous. One Ear might . . .’
‘We’ll make sure the door’s closed.’ Luke put out a hand, encouraging Orla to leave the room, and that’s when he frowned. ‘You have a splinter of china in your wrist.’
‘Where?’ Orla asked. She hadn’t felt any injury.
‘Right here,’ he said, turning her pale arm so she could see it. ‘Let me help you.’
He led her gently to the bathroom, holding her arm over the sink and pulling the piece of broken china from her skin.
‘Ouch!’
‘Best wash it now. Have you got some antiseptic?’
‘Yes, in the cabinet. I’ll do it.’
‘Okay.’ He made to leave.
‘Luke?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m ready for that cup of tea now.’
He grinned. ‘Me too.’
Ten minutes later, after letting One Ear out in the garden, they were both sitting in the great hall drinking their tea. Orla looked calm – perhaps the calmest Luke had ever seen her – and he thought it the right time to broach the subject that had been playing on his mind for so long.
‘Orla? You know when I left? I feel so awkward about it, and I want to apologise.’
‘Oh, Luke! If anyone should apologise, it should be me. I’m afraid I let my mother drive you away and I was too weak to stop her. I wasn’t coping.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I went to a bad place for a while.’
Luke sighed. ‘I think I might have put you there.’
‘What?’ Orla looked confused.
‘I brought nothing but trouble with me. That man would never have found you if I hadn’t—’
‘You can’t blame yourself for what happened with Brandon.’
&
nbsp; ‘But if it hadn’t been for me being here—’
‘If it hadn’t been for you being here, I’d still be locked up in a world of my own, only leaving the castle to go to the beach twice a day. I still wouldn’t have talked to anybody or gone into the village or made friends, and I wouldn’t have known the joy of good friendship with somebody like you.’
Luke was unable to say anything. He felt a hard lump forming in his throat for the second time that day. She didn’t blame him for the things that had happened, and she certainly didn’t hate him.
‘Luke? Are you okay?’
He nodded, still unable to speak.
‘I’ve been worrying about you so much,’ Orla went on. ‘I wanted to reach out to you, but I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.’
He gazed up at the high ceiling of the great hall, blinking back his tears.
‘Luke? How have you been?’
He closed his eyes, trying to find a shred of inner strength.
‘I’ve not been coping very well,’ he confessed, and he really wasn’t sure why he had. He hadn’t meant to say anything. Orla had enough to cope with, without him unloading onto her.
‘No?’ Orla pressed.
Luke shook his head, not trusting himself to say anything else.
‘Come with me,’ she told him, putting her tea down and standing up.
‘Where are we going?’
Orla didn’t reply. Instead, she left the room, and Luke had no choice but to follow if he wanted an answer.
They passed the stairs, which meant that they weren’t going down to the basement or up onto the roof. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought she’d take him to either of those places, but the last place he’d expected was the one she stopped at. The china room.
She opened the door and gasped as she surveyed the beautiful devastation afresh. But then she walked in and started reaching into all the little alcoves, windowsills and shelves to pick up the pieces that had escaped her lethal swing before. Luke watched, wondering what she was doing as she placed them neatly on the main table in the centre of the room. It was a surprising collection. He hadn’t realised how much had got away unscathed, and he was glad for Orla because he knew how much she adored her pieces. But he couldn’t have predicted what she’d do next.
She handed him the tripod.
‘Go on,’ she told him.
‘Go on what?’
‘Break some.’
His eyes widened. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not. Go on – it’ll do you good, I promise you!’
He looked at her as if she was quite mad. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can! Go on, Luke! Break what’s left. Break it all!’ Orla bent down to the floor to retrieve some of the larger pieces there and placed them on the table too.
‘Be careful – you’ll cut yourself!’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’ll be worth it.’
‘Orla!’
‘Go on! Just do it!’
She was serious, deadly serious, and her strange energy was beginning to infect him too as he looked around the room at the hapless collection of crockery. Suddenly, he didn’t see their beauty, only their breakability, and then something fell into his mind, quite unbidden. It was as if it had just been waiting for the right moment. It was a headline in a recent local newspaper about the train crash.
It Should Never Have Happened.
He hadn’t told Orla about it, but he thought about it now, and he remembered the anger he’d felt as he’d read it and he used that anger as he took the tripod in both hands and swung it.
He wasn’t sure what it was – whether it was the powerful weight of the tripod in his hands, the motion of the swing or the satisfying sound of the china breaking on the floor – but it proved addictive and he found the second swing easier and the third even easier, until he was slicing through the air like a professional swordsman. Orla had moved into the hallway and was cheering him on.
‘Go on, Luke! Smash it. Smash it all!’
He swung again. And again. Quickly, he found a rhythm and a release that he hadn’t known he’d needed and, when he stopped, he – like Orla before him – was panting. He dropped the tripod to the floor as if it were on fire and tried to take control of his breathing as his heart rate slowly returned to normal.
‘You okay?’ Orla asked.
He nodded, still trying to corral his thoughts.
‘Feel better?’
He turned and smiled. ‘I do feel better!’
Orla laughed. ‘Good! I think you needed to do that just as much as I did!’
‘I wish I’d discovered this sooner,’ Luke told her. ‘Not that I would’ve come in here and smashed up all your china.’
‘We could buy some more.’
‘What – just to smash up?’ he asked.
‘Yes!’
Luke laughed. ‘Maybe we should tidy up.’
Orla cocked her head to one side. ‘It’s kind of artistic in its own way, don’t you think?’
Luke bent to pick up one of the larger pieces of broken china.
‘You know, I could probably fix some of these. If you wanted them fixed.’
Orla took the piece from him and examined it. ‘No. They’ve had their time. I need to let all this go.’
Luke frowned. ‘You mean you won’t collect any more?’
‘I think I should do something else now. Something that gets me out more. Don’t you?’ She gave a little smile.
Luke smiled back. ‘I think that sounds like a great idea.’
Orla sighed, looking back down at the floor. ‘But first, I need to tidy this lot.’
Luke looked at the patterned mess on the floor and watched as Orla lifted her right foot and brought her heel carefully down onto a piece of china.
‘What are you doing?’
She bent to pick up the piece she’d stepped on. ‘You know what? I’ve always wanted to make a mosaic. Do you think that could work? To make something beautiful out of all these broken pieces?’
Luke looked at her in admiration, marvelling at the resilience of his friend. ‘Absolutely,’ he told her. ‘You could definitely make that work.’
The Next Summer
Orla took a deep breath before entering the village hall, her camera hanging around her neck like a special kind of talisman. She tried desperately not to think about what had happened to her there the year before, when she’d been asked to photograph the village fete and her fear and panic at being surrounded by so many people had sent her running. That wasn’t going to happen again. She was quite determined. She was a different person these days, wasn’t she?
There had been so many positive changes in her life during the last year and she felt as if she was truly moving forward now. Just five months ago, she’d leased a shop in Woodbridge and had opened a small photography studio. Business was good. More importantly, Orla felt good. She genuinely liked being out in the world and meeting people, seeing places and doing her own shopping, especially shopping for books. She’d found a wonderful little shop nearby and loved the experience of holding a book in her hand and flipping through it rather than choosing one from an image online.
She’d bought a small car and was driving into the nearby town four days a week. She’d also been working with the local schools, forming photography clubs and encouraging the youngsters to use real cameras instead of just their phones. She’d seen a few of them today as she entered the village hall, and they’d waved to her, which made her smile.
But there was an even bigger change in Orla. She’d agreed to have more surgery, not because she was concerned about her looks but because her scars were causing her discomfort and she knew she could improve that with a few more simple operations. Luke had encouraged her when she’d told him about it during one of the long weekly phone calls that they’d shared ever since he’d returned to Kent back in the autumn.
‘You know, when you were visiting Bill and worrying about him, you totally forgot your fea
r of hospitals, didn’t you?’ Luke had said.
That really hadn’t occurred to Orla, but she’d had to agree with Luke. Her fear was fast becoming a thing of the past.
Now, in the heart of the village hall, surrounded by her neighbours and so many of her new friends, Orla smiled and got on with her job, moving around the room, taking shot after shot. She photographed the tables with the heaps of wonderful produce and home bakes, she photographed the winners as the prizes were given and then moved outside into the sunshine, where the fun really began, with bric-a-brac stalls, a tombola, and the ever popular attraction: throw-a-wet-sponge-at-your-local-MP, which the vicar seemed to be enjoying a little too much. Orla photographed it all, stretching up on tiptoes and bending down onto knees to get the best angle, capturing all the joy and laughter of the day and feeling so much of it herself too.
When the crowds finally began to drift away, Orla walked across to a shady spot and looked at the back of her camera for a sneak preview of what she’d taken. There was some good stuff there, she thought, pleased with the images she’d caught.
She looked up from her screen, watching as the stallholders began to pack things away and the exhibitors reclaimed their produce or donated it at a collection point which had been set up. These were her neighbours, her community, and they were good, kind, honest people who had welcomed her so wholeheartedly. They hadn’t been there to judge her or reprimand her for having shunned them for so long. They hadn’t overstepped the mark by staring at her or questioning her, as she had once feared they might. They’d simply acted as if she was one of them, which she was. She was finally beginning to feel that now.
She was just popping the lens cap onto her camera when she saw him across the playing field. He was helping to dismantle a slide which had been set up for the younger children. She walked across the grass towards him and he looked up.
‘Luke!’ she cried, her pace picking up at the sight of him. ‘You made it!’
‘Of course I did,’ he said with a smile. ‘You don’t think I’d miss it, did you?’
‘I didn’t see you in the hall.’
‘I came in late, I’m afraid, and I saw you were busy and I didn’t want to interrupt. How did it go?’
The Beauty of Broken Things Page 27