French Kiss

by Sarra Manning

  ‘Turn it off,’ whimpered Shona, burrowing deeper under the bedclothes.

  I nudged her with my foot. Repeatedly. In a very annoying way. ‘It’s eight o’clock, I don’t want to miss breakfast.’

  Shona made an unimpressed grunting noise and snatched the covers away from me so I had no choice but to actually get up. Mia was still asleep. She hadn’t come back with Shona but must have crept into the room after we’d crashed out.

  By the time I emerged from the bathroom, Shona was up and rummaging through my suitcase.

  ‘Did you pack the dress with the cherries on it?’ she asked. I loved seeing Shona first thing in the morning. Her usually poker straight black hair was sticking up and she was wearing pink pyjamas with rabbits on them. If anyone saw her, her icy cool image would be shot to smithereens.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think I stuck to a muted colour palette.’

  I started drying my hair and hoped that the noise would wake up Mia but she was still out for the count. Shona disappeared into the bathroom and I dithered about what to wear.

  I’m not one of those sad girls who always dresses to attract boys, but knowing that I was going to spend the whole day in close proximity to Dylan made it hard to decide on the right outfit. In the end, I chose my new Nordic-style sweater dress which I loved with a fiery passion, black woolly tights and a skinny, striped scarf. It was a pretty stylin’ ensemble, even if I do say it myself.

  ‘Nice outfit,’ commented Shona. ‘Did you pack your black skinny jeans?’

  Shona, on the other hand, takes ages getting dressed.

  ‘I’m not going to spend half an hour watching you try on all my clothes,’ I told her with a smile. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Save me a croissant,’ she said as she started burrowing once more in my suitcase.

  As I skipped down the spiral staircase, I felt much happier. I was in Paris! My parents were miles away and Dylan was being an absolute sweetheart. He wouldn’t even let me pay for the McDonald’s last night and when I’d tried to apologise for swearing at him, he’d been his most charming.

  ‘Oh, forget it, Edie,’ he’d said lightly. ‘It’s not the first time someone’s sworn at me.’

  ‘Yeah, and it probably won’t be the last,’ Shona had added caustically before shutting the door in his face, as I all but dived headfirst into my Chicken McNuggets.

  I walked across the hotel foyer and was trying to remember where the dining room was when I realised that Tania was bearing down on me.

  I’d decided last night that I’d really got off on the wrong foot with her and that I should try and behave when she was around. But I still thought that she should wear a bra.

  ‘Hi Tania,’ I said politely. ‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about yesterday.’

  Tania looked a bit thrown. ‘Well, that’s OK, I’m…’

  ‘Look I know we didn’t get off to a good start,’ I continued. ‘But I hope we can forget about all that.’

  She gave my arm a little squeeze and beamed at me. Sucker!

  ‘Edie, I’m terribly sorry about last night. I was very pre-menstrual, I should never have stopped you from coming out to dinner,’ she puffed.

  In other words, please don’t tell your parents that I tried to starve you.

  ‘Well, that’s all right,’ I said in a small voice. ‘Though I am really hungry. I couldn’t sleep last night ’cause my tummy kept rumbling.’

  That wiped the tree-hugging smile off her face. ‘Well, we need to get some breakfast inside you,’ she decided and frogmarched me off to the dining room.

  I was all set to go over to Nat and Trent but Tania had other ideas. She hustled me over to the breakfast buffet and tried to insist that I had a glass of milk because I looked ‘really peaky and young girls need a lot of calcium to make their bones strong’.

  ‘I only drink milk when it’s got chocolate powder in it,’ I protested. ‘I want white toast with lots of butter, coffee and an apple.’

  ‘That’s not enough to keep you going,’ Tania said bossily. ‘Do you have an eating disorder? You’re very pasty.’

  Oh God, she was a nightmare. I finally managed to persuade her that I wasn’t anorexic or suffering from some fatal strain of anaemia and she let me go. Dylan was already pulling out a chair for me and though I wanted to spend some quality hanging-out time with Nat and Trent, I walked slowly over to the table Dylan was sharing with Simon and Paul.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Simon as I put down my toast.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘She’s terrified that I’m going to tell my ’rents that she deprived me of dinner and then she started going on about eating disorders and the four major food groups and how breakfast is the most important meal of the day. What’s up with you?’

  There was some major smirking going on between the three of them. It was very annoying.

  Paul indicated a big pink envelope. ‘The receptionist asked us to give this to you.’

  I opened it and my heart sank. It was a card from Josh wishing me Bonnes Vacances and telling me how much he’d miss me. I’d only been gone for twenty-four hours and I’d texted him last night. I shoved it under the placemat and started buttering my toast.

  ‘He obviously loves his big romantic gestures then,’ Dylan muttered.

  ‘It’s a lovely, thoughtful gesture,’ I said stoutly.

  Dylan looked sheepish. ‘Ah. Well if that’s how you feel, Edie, what can I say?’

  ‘How about not saying anything?’ I snapped, but it’s quite hard to pull off icy indignation when you’ve got a mouthful of toast.

  Dylan looked at me as if I was a really cryptic crossword clue.

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘What?’

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘What satisfaction can you get from stringing him along like this?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I spat out furiously. I was dimly aware of Simon and Paul muttering their goodbyes and getting up hastily.

  ‘Well, he’s obviously totally crazy about you. I mean, he made sure that card was waiting for you and it’s also obvious that you don’t give a stuff about him.’

  I couldn’t believe that Dylan would turn on me like this. OK, Josh was way more into me than I was into him, but Dylan knew why I was going out with Josh. And he knew how bad I felt about it. So why was he trying to make me feel even worse?

  I didn’t say any of this to Dylan. He was staring out of the window, the weak morning light hitting his face so he was all planes and angles. He seemed really cold and unapproachable.

  I pushed my plate away – I’d suddenly lost my appetite – and scraped my chair back noisily as I stood up. Dylan looked at me questioningly.

  ‘I don’t have to listen to this, Dylan,’ I bit out. ‘And I don’t know why you’re getting so upset on Josh’s behalf, he’s never bothered you before.’

  Dylan reached across the table and gripped my wrist tightly so I couldn’t pull away.

  ‘You know why he’s bothering me,’ he said and then lowered his voice when he realised that people were turning round to look at us. ‘Sort it out.’

  I managed to free my wrist and tried to stalk out of the dining room with some semblance of dignity. I decided to go for a walk. I needed fresh air and I needed some time to try and work out what the hell Dylan was on.

  But I’d only been walking for about five seconds when I realised that the Hôtel Du Lac was situated in Pigalle. And that Pigalle is the red-light district of Paris. I was so busy goggling at posters featuring busty women in their smalls and neon signs that promised, ‘Girls, Girls, Girls!’ that, to be honest, I completely forgot about Dylan. Mum and Dad were gonna freak when I told them about this!

  We were meant to be meeting in the foyer at ten to go to the Louvre, but hardly anybody was there. I finally managed to hook up with Nat and Trent who made room for me on one of the sofas.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Trent nu
dged me playfully. ‘Exactly what we were going to ask you.’

  ‘Yeah, what was that scene with you and Dylan at breakfast?’ added Nat.

  ‘Huh! He’s gone down with a severe case of boy disease,’ I snorted. ‘I think it could be fatal this time. Anyway, where is everyone?’

  Nat squeezed his eyes tight and stretched like he does when he’s got juicy gossip. ‘Weeellllll, Shona and Paul have disappeared off the face of the earth, Mia’s gone back to bed in a strop, Dylan and Simon have decided to make their own way to the Louvre even though the only thing they can say in French is something very, very rude and half the boys in the Foundation class have realised that we’re in the middle of the red-light area and gone to a strip show.’

  ‘I know about that,’ I said witheringly, so neither of them thought that I was completely clueless when it came to information gathering. ‘I just saw them go into a club called The Pink Pussycat.’

  ‘Boys are so sad,’ commented Trent.

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I said sourly.

  The day wasn’t a dead loss. The six of us who were still around and Martyn (Tania, thank the Lord, had gone to meet some of her hippy friends) went to a proper French café for cappuccinos and then braved the Metro. My A-level French made me the star of the hour. Everyone was dead impressed as I approached the ticket office and recited, ‘Excusez-moi, monsieur, je voudrais sept billets Louvre, s’il vous plaît.’

  Outside the Louvre was this weird glass pyramid thingy that I wanted to take pictures of, so Nat and Trent waited patiently while I fiddled around with my camera and evil-eyed any inconsiderate people who had the audacity to walk across my line of vision.

  Once we actually got inside, we decided to kick it free style. Following a tour guide round and listening to them blithering on about ‘the textural qualities of Van Gogh’s later work’ is the exact opposite of fun. Instead, Nat, Trent and me spent half an hour pretending that I was a stinking rich jetsetter who wanted to buy some pictures to go in my New York penthouse and Nat was my personal assistant and Trent was this really oily gallery owner who had to suck up to me ’cause I was so shockingly, obscenely wealthy. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I’m nearly seventeen, I can be very immature.

  The most famous painting in the Louvre is the Mona Lisa but when we got to it; actually not so much. It’s really small and dark and it’s covered in bullet-proof glass which makes the light reflect on the picture so you can’t get a proper look at it.

  The three of us stood in a line in front of the picture and tried to see if her eyes really did follow you around like they were supposed to.

  ‘And this is one of our most legendary exhibits, madam,’ said Trent. ‘Does madam care for it?’

  I wrinkled my nose.

  ‘I don’t think madam does care for it,’ said Nat.

  I pulled a face. ‘It doesn’t match my colour scheme. Have you got something that’s a bit less green?’

  ‘Oh yes, madam and I really aren’t feeling the green,’ chimed in Nat.

  Eventually we got bored playing and Nat and Trent went off to find some statue of a naked bloke so I wandered about on my own. I didn’t really rate the pictures that much. They were all dark and gloomy or full of chubby-faced cherubs and topless women.

  I was just watching some art boy (not one of ours) who was working on an amazing reproduction of one of the Old Masters when I felt a pair of hands creep round my waist and someone kiss the back of my neck. I knew it was Dylan. All my insides turned to mush.

  I turned around and he cupped my face and gave me the lightest kiss on the mouth. It was the merest whisper. A prelude to a kiss. The art boy winked at me as Dylan took my hand and started pulling me through all these inter-connecting rooms but everything was a blur around me. The only thing I was sure of was Dylan’s hand clasped in mine. It was right that we didn’t speak. Speaking would have ruined the spell that seemed to have woven itself around us when he’d come up behind me.

  We ended up in this small anteroom off the main drag. There was no-one else in it, apart from a security guard who was asleep in his chair. Dylan and I looked deep into each other’s eyes and for a moment there were no secrets or lies or Mia or Josh between us. We were just Dylan and Edie and we were the only people left in the world.

  Then we were both reaching for each other and Dylan had backed me against the wall and he was kissing me hard. Harder than he’d ever kissed me before. But I was kissing him back with just as much fervour. His hands were under my denim jacket and I wasn’t even freaking out about where they were going. I was aware of so many things. Of the sleeping security guard. Of the hum of the lights and the faint whirr of the air conditioning. Of Dylan’s heart beating really fast. And the feel of his body as he pressed me against the wall. Of the way I was standing on tiptoe so he could reach my mouth. And especially of the way our mouths clung together and the feel of his tongue against mine and the faint scrape of his teeth as he nibbled my bottom lip.

  When we came up for air, I carried on leaning back against the wall so I didn’t fall over. One of Dylan’s hands was still inside my jacket as he stroked the curve of my waist and kissed my ear and my neck and the little knobbly bits between my collar bones. We still didn’t speak. Then we were kissing again and his hands were in my hair and I was clutching greedy handfuls of his leather jacket. We broke off again as we both became aware of the sound of voices getting nearer. I took in a couple of deep lungfuls of air. Dylan was all flushed and breathing hard like he’d run a marathon. He looked like he was going to say something but just as a group of tourists arrived in our little room he bent his head, stole one last swift kiss and sauntered away.

  Saturday, but later

  I felt completely dazed. So dazed, that when Nat and Trent found me I was sat dreamy-faced on a bench.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ asked Nat.

  ‘Yeah, you look really weird,’ added Trent peering at my face.

  I tried to act normally but I was completely spaced out. All I could do was gingerly prod my lips, which felt all tingly and sore from where they’d been melded onto Dylan’s mouth.

  On the Metro back to the hotel, I still didn’t speak. I just kept re-playing the whole thing back in my head from when Dylan had come up behind me to that last, devastating kiss he’d pressed onto me before exiting stage right.

  Shona was waiting for me in the foyer. I’d been planning on having a long, soaky bath so I could go over the kissing a few more hundred times but Shona was, like, you outside, now.

  ‘What’s your damage?’ I protested as she pulled me bodily around the revolving door and out into the street.

  ‘The walls have ears,’ she said cryptically.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not official or anything but Paul and I are… on,’ she informed me smugly.

  ‘Define “on”,’ I said, smiling vaguely at Martyn as he passed us on the street.

  Shona’s mouth twisted. ‘Back together. Exclusively. No more skanky maybe girlfriends lurking in the background.’ And the way she fisted her hands against her sides told me more than her throwaway tone. I was confused because last night Paul had seemed quite happy to be sucking face with his skanky maybe girlfriend. ‘So how did you manage that?’

  ‘I sat him down and told him that I was done moping around after him. That I was over him and I’d moved on…’

  ‘Which isn’t even remotely true,’ I pointed out.

  She pulled a face at me. ‘I hate it when you start being all perceptive, so cut it out right now.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Well, he didn’t say anything for a while and then he squinched up his face like he was in pain and said that he didn’t want me to move on because he wasn’t ready to move on.’ She rolled her eyes like it was no big deal but I knew it was. I’d seen her face whenever Paul and Mia were in the same room and she looked like her whole world had turned to broken biscuit.

  I lean
ed against the wall and gave her a look to let her know I was on to her. ‘And then?’ I prompted.

  ‘I just told him that if he was going to be my boyfriend then I wasn’t going to stand for any more of his nonsense. It was quite easy really.’

  I was still having trouble understanding all this.

  ‘But I thought you’d split up…’