French Kiss

  We went down the steps of the Metro station. ‘What d’you mean by “you know”?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well maybe you wouldn’t have been so… fierce with Dylan if I’d let you blow off some steam with me,’ she finished uncomfortably.

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I told Shona as we headed towards our platform. ‘But I don’t want to talk about Dylan. He means nothing to me any more.’

  ‘Oh come on!’ said Shona incredulously. ‘I know you’re mad at him right now, but it’ll blow over, it always does.’

  ‘Not this time,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Look, I don’t know exactly what you said to Dylan this morning ’cause he wouldn’t tell me,’ Shona confessed. ‘But I do know it must have been something pretty devastating. I’ve never seen him this gutted. He thinks you hate him.’

  It wasn’t very nice but I couldn’t help the little flame of triumph that suddenly started to burn. ‘Well, he thinks right then,’ I snapped.

  Shona looked surprised, bewildered and then disgusted. ‘I never knew you could be such a bitch,’ she said quietly before turning away and walking back to Paul.

  The train journey was hideous. Shona didn’t speak to me, I didn’t speak to her, which left poor Paul and Simon to plug the awkward gaps in the conversation.

  Once we got back to the hotel, Shona stomped upstairs with a definite toss of her head. I was about to follow her and say I was sorry ’cause, bad mood or no bad mood, I hated arguing with her, when I realised that Madame La Réceptionniste was waving wildly at me. When I saw the telephone receiver in her hand, my first thought was that the ’rents had been in an accident. I rushed over to the desk and took the phone.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Edie, it’s me. It’s Josh, why haven’t you returned any of my calls?’

  ‘Oh hi, Josh.’

  ‘I’ve been ringing your mobile but you never answered.’

  ‘Well, yes, but my dad said it wasn’t worth getting international roaming for five days and it costs a fortune to make calls back to the UK and I’m sorry but I’ve been out all the time and there’s been all this weird stuff going on, y’know.’

  ‘You could have texted, at least. I was worried about you. I thought you’d let me know when you got there safely.’

  ‘Josh, you sound like my mum! I’m sure if there’d been a three-lane pile-up on the autoroute you’d have heard about it on the news.’

  ‘That’s not funny. Look, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday for tomorrow.’

  ‘Cheers. I’ll see you when I get back… I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Don’t go! Edie, I miss you so much. I think about you all the time, I’m counting the minutes till you get back. Are you missing me?’

  ‘Look, Josh, you should, like, go out and stuff. You shouldn’t be sat at home moping about me not being there.’

  ‘I love you, you know that. I think you’re great. You’re just the best girlfriend in the world.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yeah, you are.’

  ‘NO, I’M NOT!’

  ‘I think you are. I’m so lucky to be going out with you. Are you still there?’

  ‘Josh?’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I was going to wait until I saw you but, but, there’s no easy way to say this, and it’s nothing you’ve done. It’s all my fault…’

  ‘Oh God. You’re going to dump me, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not dumping you. Well, yes I am. It’s just I have, I mean I had feelings for someone else and I kissed him, or like he kissed me. It’s not that I want to go out with him ’cause I don’t, I hate him but I wouldn’t have let him kiss me if things had been going really well with us, would I?’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. You’re a really good person, Josh… I like you a lot but not in a boyfriend way.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘You know, you could do so much…’

  ‘Don’t you dare say that I deserve someone better and don’t say that you want to be friends. Save me the clichés.’

  ‘Josh, I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Well, too late, you already have.’

  ‘Oh look, please don’t be like this.’

  ‘Christ, Edie, how do you want me to be? The only girl that I’ve ever felt anything for tells me that she’s sorry but she’s chucking me and, by the way, she’s been seeing someone behind my back.’

  ‘No! It wasn’t like that, you’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘You said it, hon.’

  Click.

  ‘Well, that went well,’ said Dylan from somewhere behind me.

  I whirled round, still clutching the telephone receiver.

  ‘Were you listening to my private conversation?’

  Dylan looked unrepentant. ‘I did try not to but you were being rather loud. Then it started getting really interesting and I thought, well, Edie already thinks I’m complete scum and she can’t think any less of me, so I might as well stay and listen to the juicy bits.’

  I put the receiver down, before I picked it up again and threw it violently at Dylan’s head. ‘I hate you!’ I spat out childishly.

  ‘So you keep saying.’ Dylan gave me a smile that was completely without humour. ‘I think that was just after you told him that we’d kissed. No, hang on, that you let me kiss you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, you just stood there and let me kiss you?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I muttered. This conversation was starting to make me feel sick.

  Dylan took a step towards me and I took a step back so I was pressed against the reception desk. Of course, Madame La Réceptionniste was nowhere to be seen. Which was a pity, ’cause Dylan looked like he was about to throttle me.

  ‘I just want to get this straight in my head, Edie,’ he said politely. Way too politely. ‘I kissed you and you had nothing to do with it? You just stood there and suffered my attentions?’

  ‘Well, not exactly…’

  ‘You didn’t kiss me back? And you didn’t run your hands through my hair? Or wrap yourself around me? Or make those breathy little moans?’

  Dylan was practically purring. Even though there were other people milling about, they all faded into the background so it was as if me and Dylan were completely alone.

  ‘Shut up! Just shut up!’ I all but screamed. ‘Stop twisting my words. OK, we kissed. Are you happy now?’

  ‘No,’ said Dylan, sounding genuinely sad. ‘I’m not happy at all. You’re acting like I’m an evil, scheming piece of dirt.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, still clutching the edge of the desk like it was a life raft. ‘I don’t think that about you.’

  ‘You know, we could go and see a film or something. It’d probably be in English with French sub-titles or it might be badly dubbed and then we could make up the dialogue ourselves…’

  I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. ‘Don’t Dylan, just don’t,’ I sobbed. ‘I can’t be friends with you any more. It’s not working. We end up kissing and then it all goes wrong.’

  Dylan started to wipe the tears from my face but I pulled away.

  ‘What’s wrong with being friends who kiss each other now and again?’ he wanted to know. ‘The kisses still mean something.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, still crying. ‘I just end up getting hurt.’

  I really thought at that precise moment that Dylan was going to ask me out properly. Like, to be his girlfriend, but he didn’t. He just muttered something I couldn’t quite catch about ‘not being able to do anything right’, and walked away.

  I spent the rest of the day moping. I moped in our room. I moped in the café down the street. I moped as I was getting ready to go out for dinner, and when I found myself sitting between Martyn and Tania, I moped some more.

  When she wasn’t scoffing huge quantities of mung beans and tofu, Tania watched every single mouthful I took. She’d con
vinced herself that I’d got a serious eating disorder. Obviously, no-one had told her about my addiction to chunky KitKats. There was still that really strange atmosphere hanging in the air. Almost as if everyone was in on this great joke except me. I was starting to wish that I’d never set foot on French soil. But at least one good thing happened…

  I waited until Paul went to the toilets and then slid into the empty chair next to Shona, even though Dylan was sitting opposite. She gave me a look that was half reproachful, half contemptuous but I’d been expecting that. I didn’t say anything, I just handed her a napkin that I’d prepared earlier. It had a little drawing of my face looking unhappy and a speech bubble with the words, ‘I’m not a bitch, it’s just the way I’m drawn.’ It wasn’t going to win me any awards for art but it did the trick. Shona looked at me and I looked at her while trying to stop my bottom lip from trembling and then she pulled me into her arms and gave me a hug. I rested my head on her shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I know I’ve been acting like an utter cow.’

  ‘Oh, Edie, I’m sorry too,’ Shona said. ‘I have to stop sticking my nose into other people’s business.’

  ‘And I have to stop having hissy fits,’ I promised but Shona just laughed.

  ‘Why change the habit of a lifetime, kid?’ she said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dylan pushing the food around his plate. He was glaring at his pizza like it had done him wrong.

  ‘What’s up, Edie?’ Shona asked. ‘You look done in.’

  I rubbed my forehead. ‘I’ve got a headache,’ I told her. I wasn’t lying. All the traumas of the day had caught up with me and were thumping around the inside of my skull. ‘I think I’m going to go back to the hotel, I’m really tired.’

  ‘Are you all right to go back on your own?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, Martyn’s told me to get a taxi. I’ll see you later, yeah?’

  She squeezed my hand. ‘I’ll try not to wake you when I come in.’

  As I got up and put my jacket on, everyone said goodbye to me but Dylan just sat there with his head bent, one of his fingers tracing the rim of his glass.

  Monday

  When I woke up the next day, I looked at the clock and it was eleven in the morning! I must have been bone tired. Then I was like, ‘yay, it’s my birthday!’ until I realised I was on my own with just a couple of cards on the pillow next to me. One was from Mum and Dad (couriered over by Shona, no doubt) with a wad of euros in it and a message to get myself ‘something nice’. The other one was from Shona, saying that she hoped that this year I’d get what I really wanted. The last three words were underlined about a million times. She’d also stuck a note on the envelope to tell me that I had to meet up with them at the Sacré-Coeur later.

  I couldn’t believe it. It was my birthday and I was all on my own. After I’d got dressed (I was definitely still in an all-black kinda mood), I dug out the Paris guide-book that Mum had insisted I bought and decided on a birthday whim to take a boat along the Seine (Paris’s answer to the Manchester Ship Canal, if you ask me) to the Sacré-Coeur, which was basically a big white church. Yup, it was that exciting.

  What was great was that the Sacré-Coeur (the Sacred Heart) was in Montmartre, which is this really cool part of Paris known as the artists’ quarter. As far as I could tell, this means that lots of scruffy people with really good cheekbones sit around in cafés having deep philosophical discussions. Last night, Martyn had been boring me stupid, telling me stories about when he’d been a student and had spent two months living in Montmartre, growing a goatee and going to ‘beat clubs’. I vowed to stay away from anyone with a goatee once I made it to Montmartre. I managed to find the boat place without too much trouble and even though it was quite cold, I sat on the deck. It might have been my birthday and I might have been a complete Betty No Mates, but there’s not many girls from Manchester who get to travel down the Seine the day that they turn seventeen. Then, I couldn’t help but remember what had happened the last time I’d been on a boat. As the wind whipped at my hair, it made me think about Dylan and how he’d sat on the ferry with me, stroking my face and staring deep into my eyes.

  It seemed like I’d ruined everything that was good between me and Dylan. But he couldn’t keep kissing me and expect everything to stay the same. He knew what kind of girl I was. The day that he’d come round to my house to sort things out, he’d told me that he needed a girl who was stronger than me and who wouldn’t get hurt and how we should just be friends blah, blah, blah but our kisses had made that impossible. Dylan wanted to have his cake and eat it too and life just wasn’t like that. At least, I didn’t want my life to be like that.

  When I got off the boat and looked at the Sacré-Coeur I suddenly decided that I wasn’t going to waste my birthday clumping around a church. Sod it, I was going to have some quality time with me. Montmartre was all tiny cobbled streets and shabby cafés. Every time I turned a corner I seemed to fall over a street artist who wanted to draw my picture. They were all displaying really naff pencil drawings of supermodels as if to show how talented they were. Not even! When I wasn’t telling them to go away, I was in severe danger of being brained by one of the thousands of jugglers who were chucking balls in the air. I hate jugglers. They all think they’re all that just ’cause they can throw three orange beanbags at once. They should just get over themselves.

  I could feel myself starting to get really stressed-out so I chose a swank-looking cake shop and gorged myself on the most deliciously gooey chocolate gateau and a hot chocolate while I wrote postcards to the ’rents and the grand’rents and some of my old friends from where we used to live. But it was hard to think of what to say:

  Dear Mum and Dad

  Having a wonderful time. Dylan’s snogged my face off twice and now we’re not speaking to each other. Everyone keeps talking about me and a huge hippy woman who doesn’t possess a bra, thinks I’m anorexic. Please send chocolate.

  Lots of love, Edie xxx

  I don’t think it would have gone down too well, so I settled for writing about the weather and how Hôtel Du Lac was situated in the middle of the red-light district, ’cause I knew Mum would have kittens when she read it!

  Although I was trying to be all jolly and birthdayish, at the back of my mind were all those unhappy thoughts about Dylan waiting to pounce. I ordered another hot chocolate and was just wondering whether I should try and find the others when it suddenly hit me. Shopping! I had a ton of euros to spend and a bit of serious retail therapy was just what I needed to chase all the darkness out of my head.

  The guidebook stated that Montmartre was full of second-hand clothes shops, so I set out to buy myself the most beautiful, kick-ass, vintage dress that I could find.

  Shopping is, like, the best way to make yourself happy. I bought an adorable, little green cardie with tiny glass beads embroidered along the hem and the cuffs for about a fiver, some Betty Boop hairslides, a notebook covered in Chinese silk and a box of beautiful French chocolates for the oldsters. I’d been walking round for ages and was just about to re-trace my steps back to the boat when I saw my dream dress.

  It was the one thing on display in the window of a tiny, pink shop. Like, everything about the shop was pink. The walls were painted pink; there were pink plastic roses pinned to the ceiling; even the till was pink. But the slip dress in the window was mostly black. It seemed to be made of silk and was edged with pink broderie anglaise, including the tiny shoestring, shoulder straps. The girl behind the till smiled when I walked in and started squeaking in really bad French about The Dress in the window.

  The shop girl took it off the mannequin and handed it to me, indicating a tiny curtained-off cubicle where I could go and change. I pulled off my jeans and jumper and carefully eased The Dress over my head. As I pulled The Dress down over my body, it transformed me. I stopped looking like a gawky, just-turned-seventeen-year-old and became elegant and sophisticated and well, sexy. Even my socks and t
rainers couldn’t spoil the effect. ‘J’aime la robe!’ I told the pink girl as she stuck her head round the curtain and started ‘Oooh la la-ing’ at me.

  It wasn’t even that expensive, which just proved to me that I was meant to have The Dress. I changed back into my clothes (which seemed so boring and ordinary after being in The Dress) and went to pay. When I told the pink girl it was my birthday she gave me a pink (what else?) plastic ring shaped like a rose, for free. I was so happy. But I was also very late. I decided that there wasn’t time to get the boat back and headed for the Metro. Somehow, probably ’cause I was so excited about buying The Dress, I got on the wrong train and it was ages before I realised. I was determined not to let it ruin the day for me but by the time I raced up the stairs of Hôtel Du Lac, it was already past six o’clock.