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.’
‘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
