Grandad grumbles, declares that it’s the silliest thing he’s ever heard, and don’t count on him to even touch that vegetarian sausage; he’ll just give us his recipe for mustard sauce, and believe me, no one will want your dirty vegetarian sausage!
“Let’s see,” says my grandmother soothingly. “We could have a mixture of breadcrumbs with, for instance, leeks, goats’ cheese, chives…”
She mixes, blends, rolls, weighs, fries; meanwhile, Astrid is delighted because the situation is “virtually indistinguishable” from Kitchen Rush—as she enthusiastically explains to my grandfather, it’s a video game where you have to manage a restaurant but there’s salmonella, health-and-safety inspectors, unhappy customers… Grandad nods and nods: ohhhh yes, he knows about that all right. But at some point Astrid says, “There’re also out-of-date ingredients you absolutely can’t forget to throw away, or else—”
“WHAT?! There’ll be none of that talk round here, young lady!”
He swings his big knife right beneath her nose.
“We don’t throw away anything in this kitchen! We’ve got tins of goose fat from 1956!”
“And it’s still perfectly good!” Grandma confirms vigorously.
“Absolutely! Goose fat doesn’t go out of date.”
“Nor does crème fraiche!”
“In Kitchen Rush,” says Astrid, “it does.”
“Hrrrmph! Your electronic gizmos go out of date faster than my crème fraiche,” Grandad grumbles. “Right, you want to learn to make that sauce, or what? To work!”
So we learn to make vegetarian sausages, mustard sauce and onion sauce, while dodging my grandparents’ long knives and wooden spoons. The assistant chefs begin to trickle in for tonight’s first service, and are asked to join in.
“Here, Jean-Pierre, have a bite of that vegetarian sausage. What do you think?”
“Not enough meat.”
“Right, but apart from that?”
“Apart from that, it’s very nice.”
We even serve some slices of the sausage as an amuse-bouche to the first diner of the evening—an accountant, famous in the region, who’s making the most of her dinner partner’s lateness to read through an important file.
We are all tense as we wait for her verdict, huddled like spies at the kitchen door…
The blonde accountant puts down her BlackBerry for a minute, chews a bit of vegetarian sausage dipped in onion sauce… asks to talk to the chef…
“She said it was delicious!” Grandma tells us on the way back.
A round of applause, and Grandad rushes to serve the accountant a large glass of some local red wine.
“And now,” Grandma begins, “the apple compote…”
“No!” shouts Astrid. “I know how to make apple compote!”
“Really?”
Our blonde half-Swede falters, noticing the suspicious glances my grandparents shoot each other.
“Yes,” she stammers, “I was always on compote duty at the convent…”
(Oh, what fun one must have at that convent.)
“How do you make it, then?”
“It’s my thing, I know exactly…”
“Well, tell us, then, young lady!”
The Adam’s apple of the young lady bobs up and down a little. After a sufficient amount of anxious swallowing, she stutters, “You take the apples…”
“What kind?”
“B… Bos… Boskoop?…”
They nod.
“You… youp… youp—peel—them?”
Another nod.
“You take the pips out?”
Nod, nod.
“And then?” asks my grandmother slyly. “You get a big pan out, and pour a small amount of water into it?… Don’t you?…”
Complete silence. Everyone, including all the assistant chefs, is staring at Astrid.
Sling, sling, goes my grandfather’s knife on the sharpening rod.
Pssshroooof! goes a blowtorch that my grandmother has inexplicably produced from a drawer.
“Nnnnno,” whispers Astrid. “Well, maybe you do, but I—in my version, I…”
The blue flame purrs, the knife sings…
“…I put them in the oven for ten minutes first, so they taste a little bit smoky.”
“COME TO MY ARMS, DEAR CHILD!” my grandparents shout in perfect harmony, and a general hugging session follows.
While everyone’s congratulating everyone else, Hakima and I stuff our faces with vegetarian sausages dipped in the two sauces.
“Like it?”
Her mouth full, Hakima stretches out her podgy little thumb.
The trailer’s makeover takes the whole weekend.
At first, Philippe Dumont isn’t all that pleased to hear we’ll be flinging paint and polish all over his driveway, and coating his beautiful lawn with wood and steel shavings from all the hammering, drilling, filing, soldering and scraping. But he lets us do it.
The Sun and Jamal are there to help (which they do mostly by bringing us bags of Haribo). Philippe Dumont’s toolbox has never been used so much in its life, and its limitations are soon keenly felt. The neighbour lends us his much bigger box, taking pity on Astrid, whose efforts with the minuscule drill aren’t going anywhere, and on Hakima, who’s trying to repaint a huge board with a brush more suitable for eggshell decoration.
It’s a well-organized operation. First, we tweak the trailer so our three bikes can tow it. For that purpose, we buy three half-bikes for children—the kind that clip onto an adult bike and only have one wheel—from a local bike shop. We chuck away the single wheels, and replace them with a hollow aluminium bar, which we then fix to two solid chains linked to the trailer.
We clip the transformed children’s bikes to ours, we jump on, and we’re off!
And, beautifully, we fall flat on our faces, to howls of laughter from the Sun and Jamal.
We get back in the saddle and keep trying until we get it right: we have to pedal at the same rhythm, or else the metal bar gets pulled forward on one side and not the other, and everyone ends up on the floor.
Gradually, we learn each other’s pedalling tempos: Hakima’s vivacious, irregular pushes; Astrid’s long strokes, powered by her scout-like endurance; my own oscillating enthusiasm, alternating three minutes of energetic speed with three minutes of intense muscle fatigue.
Then we have to decorate the trailer. Hakima the artist cuts out stencils from discarded board; letters (S, A, U, G and E to make SAUSAGES, and T, H, R, P, I, G and L to make THE THREE LITTLE PIGLETTES), and also animals, flowers and fruit—birds, tulips, fish, pigs, carrots, apples—which we stick to the sides of the trailer and drench with colourful spray paint that we found in Jamal’s bedroom (“How funny that you’ve got all this spray paint in your house, Jamal!” pipes the touchingly naive Hakima.)
After all our work, believe me, that trailer looks good. It’s like something from one of those TV makeover programmes. Not the most tastefully decorated of trailers, perhaps, but it’s eye-catching enough. One thing’s for sure: that silver cube, with its colourful patterns, towed by three mismatched bikes ridden by three little piglettes, and the Sun in his chariot out in front—you’ll be able to see it coming from a mile away!
And hear it, and smell it! Once the smell of paint gets replaced by that of our sausages, sizzling away in the pans… and the bubbling compote, and the caramelized onions, curling sensuously up on themselves like woodlice—and the peppery mustard, softened by the cream…
“I don’t understand why you insist on calling yourselves the Three Little Piglettes,” Mum groans. “It’s a horrible name.”
“We’ll make it beautiful, you’ll see. Or better, we’ll make it powerful.”
Auntie Mireille’s Life Tips: take whatever insults they throw at you and knit them into a lovely big hat.
It’s a beautiful Sunday night, still warm at 10 p.m. We wolf down pizzas, admiring our masterpiece, incongruously parked here on the posh lawn; the dog Kittycat steals
entire slices of our pizza; the cat Fluffles leaps like a flea to catch the moths knocking themselves out on the globular garden lamps.
Life’s pretty flawless, right now, out here under the stars.
To crown it all, the Sun’s speaking to me.
“What will you tell your biological dad, when you see him?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll introduce myself first, I guess. Put him on the spot. See the fear on his face when he realizes I’m the one who sent him those letters.”
“And then?”
“Then, I don’t know, I’ll play it by ear.”
“If I were him, I’d be very happy to be your father.”
I frown. “You’re not old enough to be my father!”
“Then why do you talk to me in that voice?”
“What voice?”
“All respectful and shy, like I’m your teacher or something. Relax, I’m not going to eat you.”
Which is a shame, seeing how much he seems to be enjoying his calzone. I catch a moth just to annoy Fluffles, who’s been pawing at it for a while. The unhappy insect flutters between my fingers.
Fluffles pats my fist, hoping I’ll let him have it.
“No problem. I’ll relax. I’ll stop hoping you’re going to eat me. I mean, stop worrying you might.”
“Cool.”
“How about you? What will you tell Sassin?”
The Sun smiles to the moon. “I’ll play it by ear.”
One week of school left, and then, two weeks later, we’re away.
One important last thing before we go, though: training.
12
“Hey, Miss Piggy! Is it true what people say? You’re getting up at 5 a.m. these days to cycle through the forest of Seillon?”
Cornered in the arts corridor, just before the last lesson of the year.
“Hey, Babes, what’s up?”
“Don’t call me Babes. Who do you think you are? Bitch!”
It is not pleasant to be surrounded by Malo and his sidekicks, big Rémi (whose dopey giggles reek of weed) and tiny Marvin, who has acquired Nike platform trainers in the hope of looking taller, and beach-ball-sized biceps in the hope of diverting attention from his girlishly slender frame.
“Not keen to be a pig any more, are you? Finally decided to become a real woman? It feels good, you’ll see.”
Rémi’s dopey giggle. Me: “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about. When did you become a real woman?”
Rémi’s dopey giggle. Malo: “Shut up. What are you and the other fuglies up to?”
“What do you mean, Babes?”
“Walid saw you in Seillon cycling along like a load of fat sows.”
“Oh, has he seen fat sows cycling before, then? Interesting.”
“Shut up. Why are you cycling?”
The bell rings, and Madame Karandash’s frizzy head pops out of the arts classroom to rally her troops.
“Aren’t we allowed to? This is a free country.”
“Don’t mess me around. I got a call from Hélène Lesnout. She wants me to respond to something for an article she’s writing.”
“Hélène who?”
He’s not joking about not messing him around; he pushes me against the wall with, I have to admit, surprising strength.
“That journalist bitch. You got in touch with her to say you were up to something, something about pigs. Shut up! I’m talking. She said you were onto something big. That you were going to get revenge, or something. No, shut your mouth! I’m talking. Listen, I don’t know what you’re hoping to do, but if you’re trying to mess with me because of that pageant thing, if you’re trying to—to make me look bad or something, if you’re—I’ll smash your fucking heads in, you hear me? I’ll rip your fat pigs’ heads off. I’ll gut you, understand?”
“Malo, Rémi, Marvin, it’s time for class! You too, Mireille! Just because it’s the last day of school doesn’t mean being late is OK.”
He drops me.
My knees feel a little weak. But after all, for the past three days I’ve woken up at five to go cycling for two hours in the forest of Seillon before school. And every evening, another two hours.
No wonder my joints are a bit sore.
That evening, I call Hélène Lesnout. “What’s wrong with you? When you’re writing an article about us, you don’t even bother to ask for our opinion—and for this one, you run straight to Malo?”
“You hadn’t told me not to.”
“I thought it was obvious! Don’t do it again, or we’ll never tell you why we’re doing all this.”
“Isn’t it just to get back at Malo?”
“No, it’s got nothing to do with him. It’s much cooler than that. Just keep following us, and you’ll see.”
“Can’t you just tell me now?”
“No. Each day, we’ll tell you a little more. And on 14th July, you’ll know everything.”
Hélène Lesnout is hooked. For now, all she knows is that we’re planning a cycle ride from Bourg-en-Bresse to Paris, selling sausages as we go. But whatever for? And what will we do once we get there? We’re keeping it a secret.
But the Bresse Courier newspaper isn’t against that kind of secrecy. It whets the readers’ appetites. The first article will be published on the day we leave, namely, on the morning of 8th July.
In the meantime, we train, train, train. Every morning, every evening.
“Why, Mireille!” Ms Lyse, our PE teacher, marvels. “You’re running around like a little mountain goat today!”
“I must be on a high because the holidays are coming soon.”
“I see… Shame I had to wait for the very last lesson of the year to witness that budding sprinting talent.”
“Do you think I could beat Usain Bolt, Ms Lyse?”
“I wouldn’t bet all my savings on it, but what’s for sure,” she says, louder, “is that you’ll easily beat Malo and his little friends, if they keep up that sluggish pace for the whole class…”
Hearing that mighty threat, Malo glares at me and darts off at top speed along the track.
“Yeah but, Ms Lyse,” Rémi guffaws, “she’s cheating, Mireille, Ms Lyse, she’s cheating, cos she goes cycling every morning in the forest of Seillon!” (dopey giggle).
“I don’t call that cheating, I call that healthy living,” Ms Lyse answers. “If I were you, Rémi, I’d go with her, instead of smoking outside the school gate at eight in the morning…”
Energized by these wise words, I run around the track another three or four times. Some people laugh at me. I don’t care: they’re scoffing and sweating and I’m soaring. Soaring!
Then it’s time to leave for “a well-deserved summer rest”, as the head says. Tears, sobs, hugs.
Or, in my case, just a quick bye! to the school walls before meeting up with Hakima and Astrid right outside. No time for kissing the losers inside—we’ve got five miles of forest paths to cycle. And then another hour with the trailer in tow. That trailer is so heavy. Pulling it makes us sweat like cheeses under a cloche.
And then those showers! Freezing, astonishingly generous—drenching our broken bodies, our burning joints, our blood-red faces. After that, huge plates of pasta, rice salad, cheese and ham quiches. And at last, sleep—a sleep so deep, every night, that even Fluffles’s claws (the idiot regularly mistakes my toes for mice) don’t wake me up.
One week of that routine, then another.
Then there’s only a few days left, and then only a few hours, before it’s time to go.
13
“You can’t go. You’re not even allowed to sell food! You’ll poison everyone…”
“Don’t worry, Mummy darling, we’ll keep it cold and follow the three-second rule.”
“Keep it cold how? That little fridge’s only got enough battery for six days!”
“It’s chargeable.”
“You’ll get stopped by the cops before you’re more than a couple of streets away.”
“We’ll cycle too fast f
or them to catch us.”
“Seriously, Mireille: your journalist friend wants to write a feature on your little trip, and you don’t think the police might be a bit intrigued? Don’t count on me to pick you up from the Bourg-en-Bresse police station.”
I sigh deeply, and slip something out of my pocket: a licence to sell food from a trailer, in the name of Kader Idriss. Mum’s speechless (for at least two seconds).
“And you think the cops will be happy with your Kader getting underage girls to work for him?”
“He’s not my Kader. Mum, are you helping us or what? You’re such a wet blanket sometimes!”
She emits a few irritated groans and starts helping us load the trailer. Since she’s currently full of that little bastard Brad Pitt Junior, aka Julius-Aurelian, she can only carry light things; Philippe Dumont and Astrid, mean-while, are offloading trays of sausages from Raymond’s van. Hakima’s parents are talking to Kader very fast, doubtlessly in the hope of talking him out of the trip. No chance. Astrid’s mother is admiring our tweaks to her trailer.
Pots of sauce and tubs of compote have been Tetrised around the mini fridge, the portable hobs and the small gas bottle we’ll need to top up on the way. There’re also two extra-light easy-opening tents in there, carefully folded. And plenty of spare pairs of pants; the other clothes will be washed and dried along the way if need be.
“You’ve got a full list of the campsites you’ll be stopping at?”
“Of course!” (not.)
“Phone charger?” (She’s bought us a solar panel that we’ve screwed to the roof of the trailer. It’s so sunny that it’s currently producing much too much electricity, and is possibly at risk of exploding.)
“Fluffles, get out of that trailer! You’re not coming with us!”
“What’s the time?” Astrid asks.
“Eight fifteen. We’ve got to go. We’re already a quarter of an hour late.”
“Your helmets!”
“Yes, Mum, chill out, we won’t forget.”
We strap them on; so does the Sun, in his wheelchair.
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