by Chloe Rayban
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Why bozzer? I call you Rosbif.’ He reached out and took a strand of weed out of my hair.
I turned and caught sight of Matthilde staring at us. She got to her feet and stomped off in the direction of the house.
‘I better go and change,’ I said.
Back in my room I dried off and changed into my swimsuit. I stared at myself in the mirror. It was so unfair. I reckon sports swimsuits are designed to flatten you. It’s probably something to do with streamlining, so you can shoot through the water with the minimum resistance. I wished I had a bikini like Matthilde’s. In fact I wished I had a body like Matthilde. And I’d have to do something about my hair. My hair is blonde and dead straight. Unless I’ve just washed it, it lies totally flat. And my fringe tends to stick to my forehead in a really unflattering way.
There was the sound of a hairdryer coming from down the corridor. I tracked the sound down it and found a door slightly open. So this was Matthilde’s room. She was sitting on the edge of the bed drying her hair. Matthilde’s room was nothing like mine. It had pink striped wallpaper and a little iron bed with a counterpane covered with a print of old-fashioned people. There were posters of horses all over the walls and an old cot full of dolls and teddies. You could tell this room had been hers ever since she was tiny, set aside and specially decorated for her by her grandparents.
‘Can I come in?’ I asked.
Matthilde nodded. ‘Oui.’
It took a minute or two to explain that I wanted to borrow the dryer. Matthilde was having trouble blow-drying the back of her hair. I held out a hand offering to do it for her.
She passed the dryer to me. As I dried her hair, it turned back into her usual perfect glossy fall of bouncy hair. I would have given anything to have hair like that.
Matthilde was staring at me in the mirror. My eye caught hers.
‘Michel eez like a leetle boy,’ she said crossly.
‘I know,’ I agreed.
‘You sink ’ee likes me?’ Matthilde asked.
I hesitated. Anyone could see Michel thought Matthilde was a pain, behaving like such a princess. But on the other hand Matthilde was the kind of girl any boy would fancy. Most probably he fancied her like mad and was just covering up.
I replied diplomatically, ‘Yes, of course he does. He’s your cousin. He’s practically like a brother.’
‘But ’ee is not my brozzer,’ she said, giving me a steady look.
‘No, I know but …’
The way she said it, I could tell Matthilde was making it absolutely clear their relationship wasn’t simply a family affair.
‘You ’ave a boyfriend?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No. Do you?’
‘Not yet,’ she said and a little secret smile played over her lips.
I finished drying her hair in silence. She’d made her point. Clearly Matthilde thought Michel was her property.
‘Sank you,’ she said with an eye-flick as she passed me the dryer. ‘See you outside, OK?’
I finished blow-drying my hair staring at myself in the mirror, trying to see myself from Matthilde’s point of view. Surely she didn’t regard me as competition? Although I’m not that bad looking. I have the kind of English skin that people call ‘peaches and cream’, which I loathe personally. My best point is my blue eyes which are big like Mum’s. But how I’d love to have cheekbones like Matthilde’s. The French seem to be born with them. I reckon it’s a kind of evolutionary thing – they’ve evolved them over generations by chewing their way through endless baguettes.
Humiliating or not, my shorts and T-shirt had to dry, so I was forced into wearing my swimsuit. I put a fresh T-shirt on over it and went down to join Matthilde. She’d taken occupation of the one decent sunlounger and had dragged it down by the waterside. I noted that her skin looked a nice colour even before she was tanned. She had that lovely French olive skin that tans effortlessly, while mine goes scarlet at the very mention of sun.
I stripped off my T-shirt and stayed as much as possible under the parasol but it wasn’t much help because of the holes. The day passed in a lazy sort of way. I needn’t have worried about my swimsuit because Michel didn’t want to join us. He went off somewhere on one of the bikes with the two dogs running behind.
Matthilde and I made sandwiches for lunch and ate them down by the moat. Matthilde picked all the ham out and threw the bread to the fish. She seemed cross and out of sorts and every time there was a sound on the gravel, she raised herself on one elbow to see if Michel had come back. I asked her where he’d gone and she just shrugged and said she didn’t know.
Eventually, the sun went off our sunbathing area and Matthilde roused herself, shoved her sunglasses back on her head, took off her iPod, closed her book and headed back to the house.
I followed her, carrying most of our stuff. Back in my room, I stripped off my swimsuit and observed the damage. Although I’d rubbed in loads of sun cream, I could feel my skin tingling from too much exposure. I had hot red marks on my arms and shoulders. My face was scarlet and I could tell my nose was going to peel. I really did look like roast beef. Rare roast beef with seams of white where my swimsuit had been.
When Madame de Lafitte saw my sunburn, she made such a fuss I thought she was going to call an ambulance. She spoke quite severely to Matthilde and sent her to find some lotion. I had to sit still while she gently dabbed it over the red bits. It was lovely and cool and it did stop the stinging.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘you wear many clothes and an ’at. No more sun.’
I went back to my room and caught sight of myself in the mirror. I’ve never seen such a fright. Madame’s lotion had dried to an opaque white paste. I had a dead-white nose and two white blotches where my cheeks had been. I didn’t want to go downstairs, Michel was back. I could see his bike abandoned on the lawn.
I don’t want to go into the humiliation of dinner that night. I could tell everyone was trying to be polite and not notice what a sight I looked. But at one point I heard Matthilde whisper something to Michel which sounded like ‘Pinochio’ and she dissolved into giggles. Michel cracked up too, although he was trying not to show it. Madame de Lafitte put on her strictest expression and glared at them. I said I’d had enough to eat and went up to my room before we’d even had pudding.
I sat by my window miserably staring out. Why is it that when you want to look your most cool and sophisticated, disaster strikes? I only have to set eyes on a boy I like and I grow a monster zit, or I take it into my head to trim my fringe and end up looking like a moron. Uhhhrrrr!
I could see Michel in the garden below, making his way down to the moat. He started skimming flat stones on the water, the way boys do. Aw.
Hang on. Matthilde had wandered out on to the lawn. I watched intrigued as she approached Michel. Abruptly he swung round as he heard her.
She went and sat on the bridge, her legs swinging. I could see by the way she turned her head she was flirting with him. I wanted to drag myself away from the window but something kept me watching. Michel leaned towards Matthilde saying something back, then Matthilde bunked down from the wall and picked up a stone. She was trying to do ducks and drakes like Michel and clearly making a mess of it.
Michel picked up another stone, demonstrating to her how it should be done. Matthilde tried again, and messed it up. Then Michel went behind her, put his arm around her and guided her arm. I saw Matthilde turn her head and lean very close. A nasty flicker of envy ran through my body. I tried to suppress it. They’d known each other for ever, they were cousins, I reminded myself. But I remembered the way she’d looked at me when she said: ‘Not yet.’
Chapter Eight
The following morning I woke up early feeling loads better. Whatever Madame de Lafitte’s lotion had been, it had worked its magic; when I washed it off I found my sunburn had practically gone.
Matthilde was up early too. I caught sight of her beside the barn with the two bikes Madame de Lafitte
and I had ridden at the hunt. The horses had been put out in the fields, now the hunting season was over, so the threat of riding no longer hung over me. I went and joined her.
‘What are you doing?’
She frowned, her perfect brows raised in a perfect curve. ‘Eez a good day to ride vélos.’
I didn’t feel like pointing out there were only two of them. Madame de Lafitte had said I should stay out of the sun; clearly, if anyone was going to be left behind, it was me.
Matthilde spent some time fiddling round pumping up the tyres and then went into the kitchen. I followed and sat down at the table to eat breakfast. I could hear Matthilde in the back kitchen asking Florence for stuff; she seemed to be making a picnic.
Michel appeared at that point and slumped down at the table opposite me.
‘Salut, Rosbif,’ he said and made a grab for the last croissant.
‘Salut, Grenouille,’ I said.
He broke the croissant in two and passed me half. I took it and instantly forgave him for laughing last night – I must have looked really funny. Matthilde slid into a seat beside Michel and said something about the vélos. He shook his head in a very definite manner. Matthilde indicated the weather and the picnic and seemed to be doing a big persuasion job on him.
Michel turned to me. ‘You want go out on vélos?’
‘But there are only two.’
‘I stay. I want to talk to Charlie.’
Matthilde looked cross and said something that I could only interpret as she’d taken a lot of trouble preparing the bikes. Michel shrugged and took a sip of his hot chocolate. He came up with a big frothy moustache and grinned at her from under it.
Matthilde pulled herself up to her full height and gave him a withering look. Then she turned to me and said huffily, ‘OK, ’Annah, we go.’ With that she strode out of the room with the picnic.
I had to dress up like a bag lady to go on the bike ride. Madame de Lafitte lent me a sunhat and insisted I wore a scarf tied round my neck and a long-sleeved sweatshirtover my T-shirt. I had to wear jeans and socks too and I was already pretty hot. As we rode down the avenue, I caught sight of Michel on the terrace drawing up a deckchair beside old Oncle Charles. It was nice of him to take trouble with the old man.
Matthilde had a cross, set look on her face. She pedalled in front of me as if her life depended on it and we were soon out on the open road. Predictably she was riding Madame de Lafitte’s bike because it was bigger and her legs were longer than mine. They were and brown and gorgeous and were shown off at their very best in the shorts she was wearing. Madame de Lafitte’s bike had gears and was reasonably new. Mine was the poor broken-down old thing I’d ridden at the hunt.
We pedalled down into the village. It wasn’t much of a place, just a row of houses with a tiny church set back from the road. But there was a boulangerie, which had a throng of people going in and out in a typically French obsessive way as if their lives depended on a constant supply of fresh bread. My legs got a brief respite at the boulangerie while Matthilde went in and bought a baguette. I hovered outside with the bikes. You could hardly call the French standoffish, every single person who passed said ‘bonjour’.
Soon we were off again down more country lanes. It was good cycling country, not too hilly and with practically no cars on the roads. But my bike wasn’t exactly a candidate for the Tour de France. After a couple of hours of steady pedalling, I was hot and sweaty and longing for a drink. At last, at the end of a very long rise, Matthilde turned into a field and rested her bike against a tree.
She took a rug from her bicycle basket and spread it on the ground, then threw herself down on it. I parked my bike too and sat in the shade.
Matthilde turned over and looked at me.
‘You are ’ot?’
‘Very.’
Reluctantly, she got up and dragged the rug so that half was in the shade. I joined her and lay down too. It may not seem a particularly big gesture – dragging a rug into the shade. But it was the first tiny thing that Matthilde had done to register my existence and it felt like a milestone.
‘I’ll get the picnic,’ I said.
I unpacked the things from the basket. There was a smoked sausage and a gooey Camembert at the ultimate point of ripeness, two boiled eggs and a couple of apples. She’d brought a big bottle of mineral water too and we took it in turns to drink out of the bottle.
As Matthilde passed me the bottle she said suddenly, ‘You like Michel?’
‘Yes, when he’s in a good mood,’ I said, feeling myself go even hotter under her gaze. ‘He can be really funny.’
‘ ’Eez mother, ma tante, she eez really beautiful. She was a mannequin.’
‘A model?’
Matthilde nodded. ‘But she eez no good. She fight wiz my oncle. She make big problem.’
‘Oh?’
Matthilde lay on her back and stared at the sky. ‘I sink Michel eez like ’eez mother.’
‘Really?’
‘ ’Ee’s ’ow-you-say … mixed together?’
‘Mixed up?’
‘Oui.’
I thought of his angry strumming at the guitar. And his sudden changes of mood – she was right. But he could be really nice too. In fact, he was far nicer to me than most boys.
Matthilde’s mobile rang at that point. She had a text message. She read it and then turned to me. ‘Maman, she send you bisous. She is in the Dordogne,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ It seemed an odd place to be working. The Dordogne was the kind of place people went for holidays. Or romantic mini-breaks!
‘What’s she doing there?’
‘I do not know,’ said Matthilde. ‘But we cannot go back to Paris.’
‘I see.’
‘You want go back?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No. Do you?’
‘No,’ said Matthilde with a smile. She stretched out luxuriously like a cat in the sun. ‘Eez nice ’ere. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ I said and stretched out too. Matthilde had relaxed, she’d dropped her Parisian posiness for once and was almost human.
It was even hotter in the afternoon. Matthilde said we were going round in a circle and we’d soon arrive back at Les Rochers. I pointed out that if we took one of the forest paths we could take a short cut and actually ride in the shade.
Matthilde agreed. ‘Pourquoi pas?’
It was cooler in the dappled light and the paths had dried since the day of the hunt so the going wasn’t so difficult. I spotted a lake through the trees and we went down to take a look at it. The water was cool and we dipped our feet in and lazed on the edge for a while. Matthilde found some flat pebbles and showed me how Michel had taught her to do ducks and drakes.
It became quite a competition actually. We were soon fighting over the best flat pebbles. Matthilde made totally over-the-top disparaging noises whenever I made a bad shot. But I was starting to get the drift of her Parisian humour. You had to give as good as you got. When her next stone sank without a single bounce, I did the same. Matthilde looked at me in surprise and then burst into laughter.
I noticed the sun was dipping behind the trees and when I checked my watch, I found it was way past six. Matthilde said it wasn’t a problem, we just had to continue riding round the lake and we’d be home. But after half an hour or so we came to a marshy bit where the path abruptly stopped.
Matthilde looked really peed off and said something about it being my fault. I stood up for myself and said it was just as much her fault as mine; she was the one who knew her way around here. But whoever’s fault, there was nothing for it but to cycle all the way back the way we’d come. The problem was all the forest paths looked the same. Eventually Matthilde slowed down, I came up beside her.
‘I think we are “perdue”,’ I said.
‘Oui,’ she admitted.
‘Perhaps we should ring your grandmother,’ I said.
‘Per’aps,’ said Matthilde and got out her mobile. ‘Oh zut,’ she exclaimed, it nee
ded recharging. ‘But you ’ave yours, no?’
I shook my head. My mobile was really expensive to use in France. I was keeping calls to the minimum, so I’d left it behind.
‘Why you not bring it?’ said Matthilde angrily. She got back on her bike and started to pedal furiously.
It was getting dark and a cold dampness seemed to ooze from the trees. Matthilde was only in a T-shirt and shorts. At the top of a rise she stopped again. She was shivering and I could see goose-pimples standing up on her arms.
I took off the extra sweatshirt I’d been forced to wear and handed it to her.
‘Merci, ’Annah,’ she said and put it on. She actually looked grateful for once.
The forest all around us was really dark and I could hear strange rustlings in the bushes. I remembered the wild boar’s head in the hallway at Les Rochers. I didn’t fancy having a run-in with one of them.
‘Eez OK,’ said Matthilde, as if she’d read my mind. ‘The wild animals – they run away from people.’
‘How big is the forest?’ I asked.
‘Many, many kilometres,’ she said and I could tell she was scared too.
We rode side by side after that. I wondered what would happen if we were forced to sleep the night in the forest. It was only April and the nights were cold.
We pedalled on steadily, in spite of being exhausted. At last I detected light up ahead. The trees started to thin out and we came to a wider path. We rode along this for a kilometre or so and then Matthilde slowed down and said, ‘Ecoute!’
I listened. I could just detect the sound of a car. We heard it come nearer and then fade away in the distance. My heart rose – there must be a road up ahead. I could see Matthilde grinning at me through the darkness.
‘Voilà!’ she said.
We pedalled with renewed energy and at last came to the road. It was deserted.
Matthilde insisted that we should go left, but I had a gut feeling that Les Rochers was to the right. Matthilde
shrugged then took a coin out of her pocket and said, ‘Pile ou face?’ Which was the French for ‘heads or tails’.