‘Noooo!’
‘What? We’ve sorted it out for you. You have to come now.’
I agreed to this, Lucas agreed to this, Chantal completely understood my sudden withdrawal from the band practice (and was maybe just a bit relieved) and, most unexpectedly of all, Madame Faye was fine with it. So Saturday night found me in the kind of pink dress that Chantal made fun of (well, it wasn’t really pink, it was dark burgundy with a fitted top half, cut straight across with burgundy straps, but edged with pink ribbon, and a wide pink bow around the waist) waiting for Lucas to turn up on his moped. Chantal had already left, so I waited with her parents, and you can imagine what fun that was. By the time he arrived, I was so relieved to see him that I greeted him with a silly, wide smile. He told his mum he’d get me back before midnight, and we set off. Ack, I’d forgotten about helmet head, and I’d spent so long on my hair!
I don’t know what I’d been expecting the Lacasse house to be like, but it was more spectacular than that. It was an enormous farmhouse, ten bedrooms, according to Rachel, with six sets of glass double-doors at the front, some of which were thrown open for the party. Lucas parked his bike in the gravel car park, and we walked towards the house together, unintentionally keeping time with the music we could hear. My hand sort of prickled to hold his, just because I was nervous and he was there, but I held back.
‘Wow,’ I whispered. ‘It’s gorgeous.’
‘It’s a nice house,’ Lucas said. He looked down at me and smiled. ‘Victoire’s a nice girl.’ We walked round to the back, from where people’s voices could be heard over the music. There were groups of girls in full-skirted prom dresses in a rainbow of colours talking to cute boys in bashed-up jeans. One or two of them looked at us, but it wasn’t like making an entrance or anything, people were just milling around outside. I couldn’t see Victoire or Rachel. The garden – which went on for miles – was lit with candles in glass jars, around the terracotta paving stones, and amongst the dark bushy trees. It was so beautiful I gasped.
I found Marthe first, who I rushed over to, still feeling grateful to her after the rough night in Paris, although it was really her older sister who’d helped me out. Marthe said she’d just seen Victoire and Rachel in the kitchen, and Lucas stayed outside talking to Marthe while I went in to find them.
The kitchen was gigantic, a lot bigger than our living room at home, complete with a long, rustic wooden dining table and French dressers, and a lovely blue-grey cat in the corner, sleeping through the loud music. Rachel was wearing a dress I’d never seen before, made of soft blue cotton with white lacy embroidery. Her honey-coloured hair was tied in a loose pony tail that fell on one shoulder, her curves were like something out of a cartoon – hourglass figure with a tiny waist – and she was so stunning I could hardly stop looking at her. This was my shy best friend, who had never been out with anyone in England (apart from Ginger Brian). Next to her, Victoire, who was elegantly curveless, looked like a French film starlet. I wondered if there was still time for me to get to the medieval festival band practice with the geeks, where I obviously really belonged. My dress, which had once been my ultimate pulling dress, now seemed old-fashioned, and I was embarrassed that I’d worn it so many times.
‘Did Lucas bring you?’ Victoire asked, while pouring me a glass of Perrier. I nodded, and she looked pleased. ‘But his sister didn’t come?’ When I said no, Victoire didn’t seem very interested.
‘Let’s go out and find him,’ she said, taking hold of Rachel’s hand. I followed them, and when we were outside, I was shocked to see Bruno talking to a ridiculously pretty – was no one at this party average-looking? – girl with shiny dark ringlets. I stared for a moment before I realised my mouth had fallen open. I’d worked out what had happened: when I made him come out to meet me in Vernon the last time, he’d already met this girl, and was just being kind to me, but had been bored and uncomfortable, hadn’t wanted to be there, had wanted to get away as quickly as he could – that explained his indifference, and the slight air of irritation that had almost seemed at the time like anger. I felt stupid for having bothered him. I had to get away this time before he saw me, or caught me gawping at him. I strode quickly round the side of the house, pushing through a gap in a hedge where the branches of trees crossed over making a kind of leafy doorway, and found a sort of secret courtyard. The gardens around the house were really endless – there were little alcoves and patios and quiet places around every corner. I leaned against the wall for a moment in my old dress, and wondered why I always felt so alone these days. Then I realised I wasn’t.
‘Ah, I’ve found you,’ Lucas said.
Chapter 16
‘Victoire’s looking for you,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’ve seen her already,’ Lucas said. ‘With your English friend.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Oh, thanks for bringing me, by the way. It’s an amazing party.’
‘It’s always the best party of the summer,’ Lucas said. Wow, this conversation was both awkward and boring. There was a silence, and Lucas broke it by asking, ‘What did I do wrong?’ His voice was soft and serious.
‘I . . . what do you mean?’ I asked.
‘It was Château-Gaillard, wasn’t it?’ Lucas said. ‘I came at you too quickly. I scared you away. But you seemed to like me then.’
‘Well, um, obviously,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘I just . . . it wasn’t that you scared me away, I just thought it was a mad idea. I’m staying with your parents, your mum is not exactly happy with the way I’ve been behaving since I got here, you come home at least once a week, it wasn’t very sensible of me to . . .’
Lucas had moved closer, and was touching my wrist with his fingertips, then my hip. I glanced down. What should I do, move his hand? Move myself? ‘You can’t always be sensible,’ he said.
‘I think it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .’ I couldn’t think straight! ‘It’s always best to try!’ I finished brightly. With Lucas easing in closer all the time, I felt a bit like one of those cartoon cats that’s been accidentally painted with a white stripe and is being chased by the French cartoon skunk. But he was very, very good-looking, and I knew he was a great kisser, and there was something about being cornered against a wall by Lucas that made me forget common sense and just think about his soft lips. As long as I didn’t look at them, I’d be fine.
‘That’s why you changed your mind, then?’ Lucas asked. His fingers were still on my hip, and with his other hand he leaned on the wall behind me. I shivered a little. I looked at his lips. I tried to be sensible.
So there I was, tumbling head first into a long dizzy kiss with Lucas when, totally unexpectedly, I just mentally snapped out of it. His tongue was, at this point, in my mouth, and I realised that not only was I not enjoying it, but I was completely in control of my head and knew this was a pretty disgusting thing to be doing, like asking for a second helping of tough old Faye family fish. Not because Lucas wasn’t sexy – he definitely was, and he’d been really sweet to me, too. But I fancied someone else. And even if they didn’t want to know, snogging someone else was immature and . . . well, a bit slutty, really. Plus it wasn’t fair to Lucas. I pushed him away, gently.
‘Lucas,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a good idea.’
‘Your body is telling me it’s a very good idea,’ Lucas murmured, kissing my face. Um . . . yuk?
This is awful, but I was thinking just one thing at this point: if I upset him, how am I going to get home? Then again, given that this palace had ten bedrooms couldn’t my oldest best friend just let me sleep on the floor of hers? ‘I have to go,’ I said to Lucas. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why don’t you make your mind up?’ Lucas snapped, his voice sounding suddenly harder. ‘You’re being quite a tease, you know?’
Now, back in the days when I used to understand the world, and my friend Rachel didn’t have sex with boys who had girlfriends, or stay up all night at parties getting off with complete strangers, some boys at school had accused her of being a te
ase, and it really made me mad. I used to get really fighty when she reported it back to me. I told her that it was their egos talking. I said they had their chance to make her fancy them, and if they failed, that was their fault, and NOTHING to do with any encouragement from her. I told her she could change her mind at any time. I meant it, and I was right. So why, now, when I heard the feeblest, oldest line of the sulking male, was I so upset and deflated by it? Why did it make me feel guilty and stupid and wrong?
I think when you feel confident you can laugh anything off. But when you feel sort of ugly, uncertain, rejected and lovesick, then you believe whatever people tell you about yourself, especially when it’s bad. You even feel you’ve got less of a right to make decisions, and that other people probably have a right to tell you off if you make one they don’t like. So, despite knowing better, I just quietly excused myself, and left him there in the little courtyard, trying not to look as if I was ready to cry. Although I was.
I had to find Rachel and Victoire and see if I could stay the night. Madame Faye wouldn’t be happy, of course, and would assume I was up to no good. I saw Bruno again, still sitting with the very pretty girl, and our eyes met, but I didn’t stop. I found Marthe, who was making a lot of people laugh with a story that she was telling too quickly for me to understand, and I had to wait to the end, pretending to find it funny, so I could ask her if she’d seen Rachel. She said no, but maybe to try the tables at the front of the house.
There were a couple of twirly iron tables outside, which were now covered in empty glasses, but Rachel wasn’t there. I sat down at one of them. A little later, Bruno came and sat down at the next table, but didn’t talk to me or look at me. He just sat there quietly as if he’d come to be alone. I stared at him. He looked straight ahead. Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence any more, and pushed my chair back, making a scraping sound, determined to say something.
‘How are things?’ Bruno said, in little more than a whisper, still gazing ahead.
‘Oh, I . . .’ I said, surprised. ‘Things are OK.’ I heard my voice crack and wished I could control it better.
‘You looked upset. Just now in the garden.’
‘No, I was . . .’ Well, what was I? ‘No, I’m all right.’
‘That’s good,’ Bruno said, turning to look at me for a moment. I shivered. Then he looked down. ‘Did you fight with Lucas?’
‘I suppose so. No, it wasn’t a fight.’ I wanted to explain, but I knew that wouldn’t be very stylish of me, telling him about a snog with another boy. But Bruno had started off as my friend, even if I’d ended up wanting more from him. The part of me that remembered him as a friend wished I could loosen up and share some of my sadness with him.
‘OK,’ he said. For some reason I couldn’t guess at, he sounded about as miserable as me. ‘How are you going to get home? Are you staying here?’
I felt sorry for myself again, and my eyes filled with tears. ‘Yes,’ I said tightly, trying to sound normal. ‘I could do either. I haven’t even decided – it’s not going to be a problem, though.’
‘That’s good.’ He moved his chair as if he was about to get up. I didn’t want him to go, but I didn’t want to look desperate, so I thought maybe I’d better go, then he wouldn’t think I was bothering him. I opened and shut my little clutch bag.
‘Well, I should really find Rachel and see what’s happening,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course,’ Bruno said, then in a quite unexpectedly cheerful voice, ‘So how are you enjoying your summer?’
I wanted to smile, it was so much a polite, your-friend’s-dad sort of question. I appreciated him keeping our chat going on longer, though. I wondered whether to give him the answer you give your friend’s dad, or open up, be honest. I went for the latter. ‘I think Rachel is having the perfect summer. It’s an amazingly beautiful part of the world, and I love being here, and the Fayes have taken me to lots of interesting places, but I don’t really feel like I’ve made it home the way she has. She’s just melted into the place and I still feel a lot like an outsider.’
‘It’s your first time away from home, though?’
I nodded.
‘And your friend is staying in a house it’s very easy to melt into, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Oh, oui, bien sûr,’ I said, laughing at my useless French, and the fact that I still let everyone speak English to me, despite the fact that my mum had let me come here with the understanding that I’d do the opposite.
‘If you wanted a change of scene, I was going to take the train to Étretat in a day or two, it’s a . . . beach town, but not so much for tourism. Very pleasant for sketching, you know? Would you like me to take you? As friends, I mean, of course.’
I’d been getting gradually more hopeful as he made his sketching suggestion, but the carefully added ‘as friends’ brought me down to earth with a bump. I glanced at him and couldn’t help shivering again.
‘You look cold,’ Bruno said. ‘Perhaps you brought a warm coat?’ He was wearing a grey jumper over his white T-shirt and he tugged at it. ‘Would you like to wear my pullover?’
‘Oh no, I’ve got a cardigan,’ I said. ‘I left it with . . .’ Lordy, I’d left it with Lucas in the little courtyard. ‘I’ll go and get it.’
I got up clumsily and walked round the house to where I’d left Lucas, hoping he wouldn’t still be there, hanging out menacingly to call me a tease. But Lucas was there, with some girl. Snogging her face off! I backed away immediately, the way you do when you interrupt people snogging, but a millisecond later my brain processed what I’d seen, and I whirled around again to see that it was RACHEL snogging Lucas. For a moment I couldn’t move and just stood there, my jaw hanging, feeling like I’d had a bucket of boiling hot water thrown in my face. I could see my cardigan on a little stone wall and didn’t know whether to interrupt them or not, to let them know I could see them. I was so angry I just went for it. I charged over to the cardi, said, ‘Excuse me, I left this,’ and then clomped away noisily.
But my confidence completely vanished as soon as I was out of their sight. I couldn’t get a lift back with Lucas now. There was NO WAY I was asking Rachel if I could stay with her. What was up with her? Was she going to snog every boy she met? And fine, I didn’t want Lucas any more, but she didn’t know that. As friends, she should have made sure I had officially signed off on him, no matter how much I’d hinted at it, before going ahead and snogging him. There are rules! You get permission! I wanted to turn around and go back and say to her, ‘You know what? All those years being my saddo friend who never got kissed have meant you’ve never learned the etiquette of snogging your best friend’s ex-snogs,’, but I knew that was stupidly mean, and the truth was, I was just jealous of her and felt I’d lost yet again. Sexy mystery-boy Lucas, who all her French friends liked, had been the only thing I had that she hadn’t got here. Now even he was hers.
Chapter 17
Good old Marthe, again, gave me a lift in her car back to the Fayes. I talked a little about Rachel, without giving much away, and Marthe told me that Victoire’s mum still wasn’t happy with her going to Paris without telling anyone, and that they were all a bit disappointed with her. She stayed out late in Vernon quite a lot, sometimes just with boys, when the girls had already gone. It was bizarre hearing people talk this way about Rachel. Marthe said she was going back to the party, and I thanked her for being so nice. I went straight to bed and didn’t come out of my room the next morning until I heard Lucas’s bike growling down the drive and away, and I knew he’d gone again.
When I started making breakfast, Madame Faye walked in and observed sarcastically that I was beginning my day late. I just wanted to tell her to sod off. She had no idea what had happened and how long
I’d been awake. I looked moodily into my coffee cup. Chantal came in looking sunny and bouncy (in a small gothy way) and asked how the party had gone.
‘I didn’t have a great time,’ I said. ‘I wish I’d come out with you instead.’
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‘Well, you’re welcome to come along next time,’ Chantal said. ‘I don’t know if it is your style, though.’ We both smiled. ‘I didn’t speak to Lucas this morning,’ she added. She looked at me, as if I might fill in the blanks. I wasn’t about to do that.
I was sulking and walking in the fields near the Faye cottage when Rachel called. I’d been imagining the things I’d say to her when we next met, whispering the witty comebacks as I walked. I must have looked insane. When Rachel apologised for snogging Lucas, I was going to stay cool, and act as if I barely even knew what she was talking about. I’d laugh lightly and say something like ‘Oh him, who cares what Lucas does, he’s just a male tart. You should be careful though.’
‘Can we talk?’ Rachel said. ‘Do you fancy meeting in Vernon in the café?’
‘What do we need to talk about?’ I said coldly.
‘Sam,’ Rachel said. ‘Come on.’
‘Well, why don’t you come here if you want to talk?’ I said.
‘I just thought you liked that café.’
‘Yeah, it’s just always me that has to come and see you,’ I said.
‘Fine, I’ll come and see you,’ Rachel said.
‘Fine.’
‘OK, um, how do I get there, again?’
‘I’ll come into Vernon,’ I sighed. ‘Now?’
‘Yes, please, now,’ Rachel said. ‘If you can. As soon as you can.’
We sat there, two best friends, on the holiday of our lifetime, sipping iced tea in a French café.
‘I can just tell you’re mad at me,’ Rachel said.
Wow, really, you think? ‘I’m not mad at you.’
‘Everything I’ve done since we got here has annoyed you. You even seemed annoyed at me over Fabrice, when I’ve never needed you to support me more.’ Her voice sounded croaky, and I did feel a pang of guilt.
‘You’re not you!’ I said. ‘You haven’t been you since we got here.’
‘Who am I, then?’