That first night, when the old ones went off to bed, Rufus sat there into the late evening with Orla. She got out a bottle of whisky, poured them both a measure, and sat there in her tea dress studying him.
‘You look well,’ she pronounced at last.
‘And you.’ In fact he thought she looked better than well: fabulous. ‘Tell me what happened. I heard talk about a plane crash when I was in London. How could you have survived that?’
Orla’s eyes dropped to the tumbler of whisky. She raised it to her lips, sipped a little.
‘Redmond helped me get out,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Fergal the pilot was done for when we hit the sea, but we were still alive and the plane was filling with water and starting to sink.’
‘It must have been terrifying.’
‘It was. But Redmond saved me.’
‘He got you out of the plane, got you to shore?’
Orla shook her head. ‘He got me out of the plane, but I lost him after that. I swam to shore alone. I’ll never forget how cold that water was. I was sure I would die before I got to dry land. Somehow, I managed it though.’ Her voice broke. ‘But Redmond was nowhere to be found.’
‘Jesus,’ said Rufus, and crossed himself.
She nodded. ‘I can’t talk about this,’ she said.
‘No. I’m sorry. It must be painful for you.’
Orla looked up with a strained smile. ‘And what about you? How’s the world been treating you since we last saw each other?’
Rufus thought of Pikey going up in flames, Don’s unending fury. Losing himself in London, then in Paris and deeper in the heart of France, the flight into Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Tenerife – running and running until the weariness overcame him, and with it the need to touch the soil of home once more.
‘I’ve been travelling.’ He shrugged. ‘Here and there, you know. Europe. Paris. You’d love it there.’
‘Would I?’
‘I’m sure you would.’
‘Well, one day I must go.’ She smiled her sad, secretive smile.
‘I’ll take you,’ he said, looking into her beautiful eyes.
Orla didn’t answer. She drained her whisky, and stood up. ‘I’m off to bed. You can find your way to your room all right?’
She’d sorted him out earlier with the room he’d slept in as a boy, put clean linen on the bed, made it comfortable for him.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Sleep well then, Rufus.’
Just like that. He sat there in the empty kitchen for a long time, wondering had he misread those smiles, her evident joy at seeing him again. Perhaps it was wrong, a sin to think of a cousin in that way, but he would be her lover in the blink of an eye, given the chance. She knew that. He believed that she had always known it. He finished his whisky and went upstairs to his allotted room – which took him past Orla’s.