Chapter 9: The Orphan

'Who are the people you live with, then?'

'Oh, these are my adoptive parents. They adopted me when I was six. Me and my younger brother.'

'You have an younger brother?'

'Had. He died about ten years ago. Yeap.'

'I'm sorry. What happened?

'Electrocuted. Yeap. He got a night-time job for an electrical company. One night he got drunk and went to fix a power cut in the neighbourhood. Yeap. He was knocked off the power pole by the blast.' And she went to say this with clumsy, slight nods of the head (over a dozen) posing as detachment and strength.

'And your parents? How did they die?'

'Car-crash. It was night; my father had been drinking... yeap... the rest is shazaam. Yeap. That's what alcohol does to you', she said pulling out a couple of beers. 'You want one?' - she asked, handing a bottle to me.

Yeap. I needed one. Her confidence seemed to be shattered and she looked so defenseless right now. ' You get along well with your adoptive parents?'

'They put food on the table... I'm not expecting too much from them.'

'Do you have any other close friends or a boyfriend?' I asked somehow inelegantly, as a passing cloud shadowed the sun 'No. I don't have a boyfriend', and she smiled rather childishly. 'I have a couple of friends but I haven't spoken to them in months.'

'How come you don't have a boyfriend?', came my long-waited question.

'I don't know. It's not like I'm running away from it', and she looked down and tiny droplets of sweat welled up near her temples. She looked terribly sad as she tried to keep her composure. I am trying to figure her out and something escapes me. I can't read her very well. 'I see people - I'm not a recluse - I think you win some, you lose some...' and she was looking for words as if there was something right to say in such circumstances. 'But yeah... Tom was the only serious relationship.'

'How long were you guys together?

'Four years. Yeap.'

'And what happened?'

'Oh he died, as well.' and she laughed.

'What?'

'I thought you knew or... heard'

'No. No. What happened?'

'Heart-attack. Yeap. 25 years old.

'When did this happen?

'About six years... yeah, six years ago. Almost. He always had a bad heart. Yeap. Sorry...' and she went laughing. Maybe it's too much for you...'

'No. No.'

Fucking hell. She said that and suddenly something clicked. Three years ago, Ben Caruthers, a good childhood friend, came to New York and phoned me to meet up for a drink. We sat in a coffee house and reminisced about our school years and also catching up with life in my hometown. Then, at a certain point, he mentioned this family, or girl (I phoned Ben just before I sat to write down the occurrences of this day, but his phone was switched off) in our town - he mentioned it as an anecdote - being cursed and that the church was involved, somehow. I sat there on the grass with Audrey and it hit me like a shovel, and I was beating myself up for forgetting the intricacies of the story and the names involved. Ben seemed to suggest there was some truth in it, that all that stuff made sense - but it's like a fucking haze, that chat we had, and I wished I had been paying more attention.

'I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what happened' I managed to articulate.

'That's alright. Life is meant to be lived for one reason alone - simply out of curiosity' - she managed to brace herself to say.

'Were you deeply in love with him?' I asked and saw that she, somehow, had snapped out of the aura of acceptance she was trying to create in order to end the conversation.

'Well... Yes' and she shrugged.

'Does it bother you? That I'm asking all these questions?'

'No. I just don't know what else to say about it except what happened. You still wanna walk while it's beautiful outside?'

'Yeah - of course'. Only that I didn't know what I wanted anymore. I wanted to phone Ben right that instance; that's what I wanted.

'I made this for you' and as I looked up I saw her holding this most delicate statuette of a tree, made of stone. An old pine with rich branches and flowers, slightly tilted, leaning towards both the sun and the earth. She had spent time chopping, cutting, polishing even the tiniest of flowers on the branch and I could only just believe it was something a human being could do.

'This is incredible. I didn't know you could carve stones'.

'You like it? I'm happy you like it.'

'I can't accept something like that. It's too beautiful... All right. Thank you!' I had too. I saw her face changing as I was saying those first words.

'I'll keep it and give it to you when we get back home. I see you have no bag.' Yeah, I had gone on a picnic, empty-handed. She smiled and put the tree back in her rucksack.

'Come! There is a cool place we have to check out' - and she pulled my hand the way a girlfriend would do.