Two Friends, One Summer
I shrugged.
‘Is this about Lucas?’ she said.
‘Why would it be about Lucas?’
‘You saw me snogging him. You obviously still like him.’
‘I don’t still like him,’ I said.
‘Oh, right, I see. Excuse me for thinking there was a problem! If you don’t like him there obviously can’t be one! Why would you be mad at me for snogging someone you don’t like?’
‘Because you don’t know I don’t like him!’
‘So it wasn’t you who told me he said you were a little girl and you never wanted to see him again.’
‘But you didn’t know how I felt about him!’
‘I just assumed you were telling me the truth!’ Rachel said.
‘I was,’ I said quietly.
I knew that I could say something nice, meet her halfway, and this would all be over and we’d be friends again. There are moments in life when you can see really easily what’s going to happen – every outcome of every action – before you do anything, and before you make the choice you actually have some control. It doesn’t happen a lot. In those moments it’s like you’re a soap opera character and you’ve suddenly joined the writing team. But it doesn’t make you feel good, because you just have less people to blame when it goes wrong. I knew that I could make everything fine by being easy and light, and laughing about what a mess we’d got into, or what fun we were having – something like that. But I was too angry. I wanted her to know it; I wanted her to feel bad; I wanted the apology that was owed to me.
So I watched myself act like a cow to her – almost as if I was watching it happen to someone else: the character on that soap opera I was now writing – and knowing that at any time I could stop. But not stopping. I wasn’t light or carefree, I was sarcastic and ignored her questions and let the silences go on and on. And then, obviously, Rachel didn’t have much choice but to do the same. That’s how we left things.
Chapter 18
I thought I would let Bruno forget he’d asked me to the seaside with him. There was a good chance he’d only asked because he felt sorry for me when I looked so miserable at the party. So when my phone rang and his name appeared on the screen I was really happy. I’d been wallowing in depression having not spoken to Rachel since our meeting in the café. I knew Bruno just wanted to be friends, but, as I said before, I needed a friend.
Well, that was the idea. But when I saw him waiting for me at the station, all gorgeous-like-he-didn’t-know-it, and shy smiles when he noticed I was there, my heart seemed to lift up into my throat and I knew I’d have to keep pulling it back down all day long.
We took a train to Rouen, then le Havre, then a bus to Étretat, and at every stage Bruno apologised for the journey being so long and said he hoped I’d think it was worth it. He didn’t seem to realise that I was happy just to be there with him, trundling along through the beautiful countryside, listening to his low voice and funny, too-perfect English. The rest of my life was messed up, but with Bruno things were simple. There was just today, and no hidden meaning behind his talk, and no chance of me getting it wrong again. I wasn’t going to blurt out ‘Hey, I fancy you something chronic!’, because I knew he didn’t feel the same way about me. I was just going to chill, take in the day, forget about my embarrassing non-starter of a romance with Lucas and the stressed out arguments with Rachel.
We arrived at Étretat before noon, and when we got off the bus I could smell the sea. An oven-hot blast of sunny air hit me hard after the air-conditioning on the bus, but I shivered with excitement, the way I had as a little girl when I was taken to the seaside. It was an old-fashioned town, with tight little streets. A car was trying to squeeze down one of these, but a huge seagull had chosen to walk very slowly immediately in front of the car, wiggling its hips like a sassy thing, while the car beeped and tried to get it to move. The driver was getting angrier and beeping more, but didn’t dare run over it. Finally, the seagull looked sneeringly over its shoulder at the car, turned and flew up on to the bonnet, where it faced the driver eye to eye, until the driver put on his wipers and it screeched huffily and hopped off. Everyone else on the street had stopped to watch, and Bruno and I were laughing so hard.
I fought the urge to hold hands with him.
I know, I know, not cool: it just felt like the kind of day you should be spending with a boyfriend. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to waste the day wishing for more than friendship, but it was difficult.
Still, for a moment, the view took my mind off thinking about throwing myself at Bruno. We were looking out over a tiny curve of shingled beach, sheltered in the carved-out stone of beautiful white cliffs. At each edge of the curve, there was a craggy fairy-kingdom arch in the cliff face, just wide enough for little boats to sail through. We climbed to the top of one of these arches and sat down on the grass looking out over the sea, which sparkled like twirling disco balls, all the way to the horizon.
‘When do you go back home?’ Bruno asked. ‘Would you like a sandwich?’ He’d undone his rucksack and taken out a packed lunch, which had been cooled. He offered me a baguette filled with brie and tomatoes, and I realised I was starving.
I took one off him with a greedy smile. ‘Hey, thank you. Um, I’ve got just over a week, give or take a few days,’ I said, taking a bigger bite than I’d intended, and talking with my mouth full. ‘Sometimes I think that’s forever, other times I panic about how late I’ve left it to . . .’ I stopped talking, thinking about the fabulous plans I’d had for the summer, feeling a bit weepy, and took an even bigger bite of the baguette.
‘How late you’ve left it to do what?’
‘Well, learn French for one thing,’ I said, trying to swallow quickly. ‘That isn’t happening so much. But this was our first time away from home together – mine and Rachel’s – and I thought it was a big deal and that we’d – this is going to sound lame – really start to grow up. Instead it’s made me feel younger and less in control than ever before.’
‘That’s not very unusual, I think,’ Bruno said. He was leaning on one elbow now, elegantly sipping water from a little bottle, while I wolfed down lunch. ‘It can be quite intimidating to have to make all your choices all at once. Especially when you’ve been separated from your friend. At home she is sometimes confident enough for both of you, perhaps?’
My heart sank. I wanted to go, ‘NO! I’m the cool one! I’m the one boys like! I’m the one with better clothes: check out my cool flipflops!’ – but I realised this would only prove beyond any doubt that I was the one who was a total saddo. I took another bite and swallowed it.
After we’d eaten, Bruno pulled open the other side of his bag and produced a tin of sketching pencils, charcoals, and battered, dog-eared sketch pads, then a crisp new pad, which he gave to me. He put the pencils between us.
‘You know, I think I might have misled you,’ I said. ‘I am actually very crap at this.’
‘No one’s looking,’ Bruno said. ‘Just let your pencils float over the paper. Everyone is inspired by Étretat.’
So we just sat there quietly, me watching him while his pencils ‘floated’ over the paper, and making my own little feathery marks on the furry-smooth brand new page. I was thinking, Well, Sam, you’ve finally made the swap complete. Rachel is probably somewhere snogging someone, and meanwhile this just about counts as homework and you’re having a really good time.
I peeked at Bruno’s pad, and was surprised to see that instead of the obvious cliffs and horizon, he’d drawn a little old French lady sitting on a bench near us, who’d taken off her shoes and was stretching out her toes and eating a boiled egg with an expression of perfect contentment.
I looked back at my own wonky landscape. ‘Gah, this is hopeless,’ I muttered to myself.
‘Would you like me to take a look?’ Bruno asked.
‘Well, um, no, I mean, you can, it’s just I . . .’
Bruno leaned into me, his face close to mine. ‘You’re not a b
it hopeless,’ he said. ‘Would you mind if I . . .?’ He reached over my arm with his pencil and added just a few fast strokes to my page. I was distracted by his closeness, and the soft sometimes-touch as his bare arm bobbed into mine. Unbelievably, now the landscape I’d tried messily to construct seemed to hold together, and looked like a proper drawing; I was even proud of it, because it was still recognisably mine. ‘It’s good,’ he said simply, and flashed me an adorable little smile.
We walked down to the beach, wobbling over the stones, and the surge of romance in the atmosphere became painful, because I knew this was just today, and he didn’t feel anything I was feeling. Later he’d go and meet his pretty girlfriend, the one I saw him with at Victoire’s party, and tell her that today he took pity on that lonely English girl, the one with the more dazzling friend.
But he hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend yet. There could have been a dozen different reasons for this, but one of those reasons might have been . . . that he didn’t have a girlfriend. Did I have a chance? Bruno always seemed to come along and rescue me just when I needed it, but I had no way of knowing how he felt about me. Sometimes . . . but other times . . . It was useless. It wasn’t that I couldn’t trust my instincts any more, it was like my instincts were turning to me and shrugging, going, ‘Huh? I don’t speak French!’
On the way back to the bus stop, we ran into the gull bully again, standing on another car and squawking bossily into the windscreen. We both cracked up laughing, but when we stopped, I suddenly felt very sad because the day had come full circle and now it was over.
‘Is everything OK?’ Bruno said.
I couldn’t really tell him why I was sad, so I started talking about falling out with Rachel, and how upset it had made me. I didn’t go into detail, and just babbled about the way we’d both changed since the holiday began.
‘I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say this,’ Bruno said, ‘but I have to confess that I saw what you saw at Victoire’s party.’
‘Rachel kissing Lucas, you mean,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I feel I should say something now,’ he went on. ‘Well, I feel I shouldn’t say anything, but also that I should have said something before, but I considered the possibility that it was just . . . big talk? And now I have to tell you because I’ve started to tell you, but it’s not my business, and I . . .’ He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I’m very stupid.’
‘OK, I have no idea what you’re telling me.’ I wanted to smile because he was being so serious, but I was also pretty worried.
Bruno grabbed my wrist in his hand, stopping us walking, and steered me – almost pushed me – against a wall to take us off the pavement while we talked. He looked me dead in the eye and sighed hard before he began. Then he talked very, very quickly. ‘Samantha, Lucas has made a bet with his friends – some of his friends are some of my friends – that he will sleep with les Anglaises, both of you, before you leave. I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t told you, but I thought maybe there was still time to let your friend know. And I wish I had told you before it was too late.’
‘He’s what? And what do you mean, “before it’s too late”?’
Bruno shrugged and turned away, letting my wrist go and putting his hands in his pockets.
‘C’est un salop,’ he muttered – swearing in French.
‘But I don’t have . . . I’m not in love with Lucas,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing there. He hasn’t hurt me.’
Bruno’s eyes searched mine. ‘OK,’ he said.
‘He hasn’t won his bet,’ I said, looking right back at him with the same intensity.
‘This is not something you have to tell me,’ Bruno said, then with a small half-laugh added, ‘But yes, that’s good to know.’
‘Well, he didn’t tell his friends he had, did he?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid he did tell his friends he had.’
I sighed heavily. ‘But you believe me?’
‘Of course.’ He smiled again. ‘Of course I do.’
‘So, you were right to tell me. I’ll give Rachel a call and let her know, and that’s . . . that’s all there is to it. Thanks.’ But how could I tell Rachel? She wasn’t speaking to me, I wasn’t speaking to her, and if the rest of our stay here was anything to go by, how would I even know if it was too late for her? If I told her, she’d think I was jealous because Lucas had ditched me and gone for her.
As we travelled back towards Vernon, we tried to talk about other things, but it was probably obvious that my mind kept wandering back to Lucas and Rachel the whole time. At the station, Bruno took my hand to shake it, which was very French and very formal and not what I wanted from him – this was a good time to grab hold of me and kiss me, if you asked me – but then he didn’t let go for so long, and we looked at each other the whole time. I couldn’t work out whether his expression was just friendly concern for a lonely foreigner, or if there was something else there. When it became clear there definitely wasn’t going to be any kissing, I made myself walk away, and trudged back to the Fayes through a sunset-dyed corn field.
Chapter 19
After that, there was no word from Bruno, and when I went to the café, he wasn’t there. I had to accept that he’d only taken me to the seaside to cheer me up after he’d seen how upset I was at Victoire’s. Once again, he’d just come to my rescue at the right time. Finally, I decided that for the rest of the holiday, I would give up on falling in love and having the coolest summer ever . . . and learn to embrace my inner geek. I walked, talked and lived medieval festival activities. I decided it was safest to stick close to Chantal. Yes, she was Lucas’s sister, but she had nothing to do with that weird tight-knit Vernon crowd. She and her spoddy goth crew did their own thing, and now I did that thing too. I cut out cardboard flowers and superglued them on to hats, cycled to the music shop in the next village when the bass player needed a new G-string (no, not the underwear, the kind you play notes with), and helped them design their make-up. I couldn’t get them to drop the heavy black eyeliner, but I did persuade them to add some colour. After all the hard work, I started feeling like I belonged.
‘Can you sing?’ Antoine the lead singer asked, when Chantal and I arrived at the last rehearsal before the festival.
‘Well . . .’
‘That’s good enough,’ he said. ‘We need another backing singer. There should be three.’
‘But I don’t have anything to wear.’
‘You can wear what you want.’ He looked down at my T-shirt – soft-lemon-coloured, with a picture of a baby lamb on it. ‘Or Chantal can give you something of hers?’
I glanced sceptically at Chantal. She raised an eyebrow and smiled that taking-the-piss smile of hers back at me.
So, early on the morning of the Fouenne festival, I found myself trying on Chantal’s loose black T-shirt dress and my own black high-heeled peep-toes, and thinking that the goth look actually wasn’t all that bad on me. We got a lift from the lead singer in a little open-backed van so we could go and help set up in the cobbled village square. Chantal and I sat in the back, crushed under props and scenery whenever we turned a corner, and the wind whipped and tangled my hair, and I remembered trundling along the same country roads on Lucas’s little moped and winced with embarrassment.
The village was decorated with purple and red bunting and wonky hand-written banners advertising the festival. When the van stopped, the chipboard castle fell off the back and immediately broke in half. We all gasped and there was a shocked silence . . . and then somehow everyone was laughing, and I started laughing with them until I was crying. I leaned against the van and realised that now I’d given up trying, and without even really noticing, I was having a great summer.
We were going to perform the ten-minute show three times in the day; once in the early afternoon for kids – a slightly sillier version – then an early evening slot, and a cheekier, more adult performance – not that I got any of the jokes – sometime around midnight, when the hard-core me
dieval village festival-goers would be loosened up and merry. The festival organisers had arranged a firework display as the finale. There were seven other groups whose shows rotated with ours. One of them was Bruno’s sister’s. I could see them setting up on the opposite corner of the square. The pretty, dark-haired girl he’d been talking to at Victoire’s birthday party was among them. As Bruno hadn’t been in touch since Étretat I was too shy to approach him now. But he’d seen me, and came over.
‘You’re taking part in the festival, then?’ he said.
‘Yes, I got the casting call at the last minute,’ I said. ‘I’m even singing. Although I think they may live to regret that.’
‘Oh, I’m sure that won’t be the case,’ Bruno said, shaking his head. There was a silence which threatened to be awkward. ‘I wonder if you’d like to meet my sister, Claudine.’ Ah, I thought, the dark-haired girl is his sister! Tra la la!
Except Claudine was a blonde, her hair cut into a half-inch all over crop. We talked about her play – in French, Bruno filling in the gaps for me when I was struggling. She was explaining the plot – it was an old local legend about two doomed lovers who had given the name to a famous valley a few miles away. I asked her if she was playing the lead.
‘No, that’s Hélene. My girlfriend,’ Claudine said, and she waved over at her drama group, and the pretty dark-haired girl waved back!
‘That’s her?’ I said, trying to look like I wasn’t shocked. Obviously I wasn’t shocked because she had a girlfriend (well, maybe a tiny bit) – it was because she wasn’t Bruno’s girlfriend!
There was no real time to talk. Our first performance was in a couple of hours, the scenery was being held together with a few lumps of Blu-tak, and I – with no real rehearsals – was going to be standing on stage in front of real people. Yes, it was likely that no one would notice I was there, I could probably get away with miming, and I knew the words because I’d seen it played about a thousand times, but still, I was nervous. The village square, quite empty when we first arrived, was now full of stalls and carts selling toffee apples and crepes, T-shirts and little flags on sticks with a picture of the Fouenne festival mascot – a big, purple cat-like thing – printed on them, and little kids and their parents were starting to arrive to take a look around.