Ooh La La! Connie Pickles

by Sabine Durrant

  P’s bedroom, 8 p.m.

  Two phone calls from François. Both times I’ve pretended to be out.

  And one phone call from Delilah. Several items from Mimi’s bedroom have gone missing.

  1. A diamanté evening bag.

  2. A pair of silver earrings in the shape of dolphins.

  3. A tube of Lancôme cherry lipgloss.

  Did either of us ‘accidentally’ pick any of it up?

  I said, ‘No, no, Mimi must have mislaid them,’ but MORTIFICATION. I’m going to have it out with Pascale RIGHT NOW.

  P’s bedroom, 8.10 p.m.

  Flat denial from my thieving French exchange. She even emptied out her bag to show me how empty it was. I’ll have to wait until she’s asleep and go through her stuff.

  Under P’s bed, 11 p.m.

  Item: One diamanté evening bag.

  Item: A pair of silver earrings in the shape of dolphins.

  Item: A tube of Lancôme cherry lipgloss.

  Item: One unwashed white sports sock. (Actually cancel that – it was probably there already.)

  Chapter Six

  New vocab: faire partie de (to belong); les biens personnels (personal belongings)

  Tuesday 1 April

  Bathroom, 8 a.m.

  Woke up v. v. v. early feeling sick about the stash under Pascale’s bed, and miserable about the fact that my grandparents haven’t got in contact. I cheered up when I got downstairs to find a postcard of a red bus from Mother and a fax from William waiting for me on the breakfast table.

  Mother’s postcard, posted the day I left, says:

  Then there are some xxxs (kisses) and oooos (hugs) – in pink felt-tip, which must have been added by Marie.

  William’s fax, sent to the Blancs’ fax machine from the newsagent’s at the end of our road, begins, ‘Oi, you,’ which doesn’t bode well. (He can be so uncouth. I can’t imagine Delilah putting up with that sort of talk for a minute.) It lists all the things he’s been doing: helping his brother clear out the shed; visiting his grandmother in her home in Epsom; watching Liverpool v. AC Milan on the big-screen TV at the local pub… ‘until my dad came in’. (Most people’s fathers might have kicked them out if they found them in the local pub. William’s would have been too drunk to notice. Poor William, I bet, will have slipped away embarrassed.)

  At the end, he’s written, ‘Wonder if they sell chocolate buttons in Paris.’ (He and I have a thing about chocolate buttons.) ‘Wonder if they taste the same without me! Love, William.’

  It’s not what you’d call a love letter. Or even a love fax. But I’ve spent half an hour studying the last sentence. What does he mean, do they taste the same without him? Is he saying the ones he’s had don’t taste the same without me? Is it a way of saying I make a difference to his life, or at least to his enjoyment of chocolate buttons? What does the exclamation mark mean? Am I overanalysing? Should I now shut up?

  Dining table, 9 a.m.

  Didier, who keeps giving me the sort of look you might give a guinea pig that needs cleaning out, has just suggested they take me to visit Fontainebleau, which is a château not far away. I said that would be lovely but maybe this afternoon (this morning I’ve got secret plans). Madame Blanc glanced up from the oven, which she was in the middle of cleaning, and said that would suit her better too. Gives her a chance to sort out the house, she said. Poor woman.

  I’m going to go into town before Pascale gets up.

  Starbucks, Les Halles, 10 a.m.

  Just realized I’ve wasted twenty minutes of my time in Paris in an American capitalist conglomerate. Oh well, a Mango Frappuccino’s a Mango Frappuccino.

  I’m waiting for Delilah. I rang her from a phone box at the RER to tell her I had ‘the goods’. She’s agreed to meet me here and smuggle them back into Mimi’s bedroom.

  I’ve just struggled through another chapter of Madame Bovary. I don’t know whether you’re supposed to like her or hate her. She is married to an oaf, and she can be forgiven for looking for love elsewhere, but anyone who refers to ‘bells of evening’ or ‘voices of nature’ tends to lose my vote.

  Oh, here’s Delilah.

  RER, 10.15 a.m.

  Mission accomplished. ‘You can’t bring Pascale to the apartment again,’ said Delilah, who has been a sport. ‘I’m not going to keep on being your trafficker. They’re going to start suspecting me. It’s not on.’

  ‘No, I know it’s not. Just this time. You’re a star.’

  I handed her the stuff wrapped in a plastic bag. She had to get back – Mimi and her parents were taking her for lunch somewhere posh called Les Deux Magots (The Two Maggots? Surely not – I must have misheard), but I managed to ask her idly if she’d had any letters from home yet and she said, ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve only been here a couple of days,’ she added shortly.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. But deep down, all I could think was, ‘Hurray! William has faxed me! Hurray!’

  Isn’t that awful? I’ve got to stop it, I really have. Delilah is my friend. I had my chance with William and I blew it. I promise I won’t do it again.

  (Oh God, sorry. Just one more little one… hurray!)

  Dining table, 1 p.m.

  Pascale met me, boot-faced, when I got back from Paris. She has obviously discovered what I have done – or undone. On the RER I rehearsed a lecture on Why Stealing Is Wrong, but I’ve decided not to give it. It’s her business. Just so long as she keeps out of mine.

  The Crying Girl is here for lunch. I’m going to make myself scarce.

  P’s bedroom, 6 p.m.

  Back from Fontainebleau. Alive. Just.

  After lunch, Didier, who passed his test two weeks ago, drove Pascale and me to Fontainebleau. Madame Blanc said she couldn’t come because she had a headache, and took herself up to bed. There is something mysterious about that woman. The others had got into the car (a beaten-up three-door Citroën) but I came back upstairs because I’d forgotten my purse and the door to her bedroom was wide open and she wasn’t in it. She wasn’t in the bathroom either. She must have gone out.

  The journey was hairy. Didier kept swerving into the middle of the road. Pascale and I screeched half in horror, half in delight, every time he turned a corner.

  We didn’t bother with the château – too pricey. Instead, we bought a box of gâteaux from a shop and sat on our coats and ate the cakes in the gardens. The sun came out and it was so warm I took off my jumper. I was wearing an old green T-shirt that seems to have shrunk recently and I felt self-conscious. I saw Didier look at me – then he leant across and tickled the inside of my elbow with a blade of grass. I laughed and it was OK.

  I don’t get Didier. Sometimes he looks down his nose like he’s about fifteen years older than me; other times he’s almost playful. I feel him staring and I don’t know whether he’s about to say something, or whether he’s checking I’m all right. Today I quite liked him. Or I did until he mentioned François.

  ‘Have you seen your little friend again?’ he said. Little friend! I mean, that’s so condescending.

  ‘No. Been too busy.’ I decided not to be drawn.

  ‘I hear he is quite smitten with the English girl.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Pascale, because we’d been talking in English.

  ‘Ahh,’ Didier replied, ignoring her. ‘So, he is in love. And this William, he misses you?’

  I glared at him. ‘Have you been reading my private faxes?’

  He put his hands up as if in surrender. ‘I am but the delivery boy.’

  The way he went on, anyone would think I was some femme fatale, instead of the only girl in Woodvale who’s never had a boyfriend.

  He drove v. fast all the way home. If he weren’t so grown-up, you’d think he was showing off.

  Living room, 7 p.m.

  Two phone calls to report.

  I rang Delilah to check everything was OK. She said it was fine. She’d put
each item back and thinks suspicion has already lifted. A few minutes ago, Mimi had found the necklace and said, ‘Oh, it was here all the time!’

  I was about to hang up when she said, ‘Oh, and Con, guess what? William just rang me! I felt a bit worried earlier when you asked if I’d heard from him so I sent him a text. He rang me straight back and everything’s fine. He’s so great. I mean, you know that, don’t you, he’s your friend. But I think I love him, you know? I think he’s The One. Before I started going out with him, I was all over the place. But now I feel grounded. Do you know what I mean?’

  I said I did.

  If there was anything sad in my voice she didn’t notice. ‘And he’s such a great kisser!’ she added.

  I rang Julie to cheer myself up. She sounded a bit better – Virginie’s got a secret wild side, apparently, but said she thinks she’s just eaten horse.

  My bed, 10 p.m.

  A conversation with Pascale has made me like her again.

  During supper Monsieur Blanc kept getting at her. He bellowed, in English, ‘So, I hope you are fluent now, Pascale, as you have Constance here to remind you of your tenses. I hope you are making the most of this opportunity to increase your vocabulary,’ etc., etc. Everyone was nervous. Madame Blanc was scratching at a mark on the table, while Didier made overly appreciative noises about the food.

  Pascale stared at her father insolently and then pushed her plate away and stood up.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. And then there was a big row. I cleared the table quickly and then came up here to write to William. I was telling him everything – about Madame Blanc’s cleaning and Didier’s driving and Pascale’s nicking – when Pascale stormed into the room, red-faced, swore a few times, sat on her bed and burst into tears. I went over and put my arm round her shoulders.

  ‘He hates me,’ she said, rubbing mascara into her cheeks. ‘I do everything wrong. He only likes my brother Philippe. Nothing any of the rest of us do is right.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said soothingly.

  ‘It’s true. He thinks I am a delinquent.’

  It wasn’t the time to raise the shoplifting and the thieving. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Parents are hard.’

  I tried to make her laugh by telling her all about Mother and some recent attempts of mine to matchmake her. ‘Of course she ended up with someone I’d never have chosen, our “geeky” landlord, Mr Spence.’

  ‘Geeky?’ she said. ‘What does “geeky” mean?’

  ‘Odd, unusual, a bit weird.’

  She looked at me hard. ‘Like you?’ she said.

  And I must have been in a good mood because we both laughed.

  Later on, I told her about William: about how much I liked him and how much Delilah, his girlfriend, liked him too. Pascale said, ‘You need to forget him. You need to meet someone else. You can’t lose a friend. You can’t lose two friends.’

  I nodded. When she was asleep I tore up the letter to William. I’ve got to stop thinking about him. I’m in Paris. It should be easy.

  Pascale’s all right really, she is.

  Chapter Seven

  New vocab: un collier en argent (a silver necklace); les lunettes de soleil (sunglasses); un tampon (a tampon)

  Wednesday 2 April

  P’s bedroom, 6 p.m.

  I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about my grandparents. I was joking to Julie the other day about how they were my entrée into French society, but it’s not about that. It’s not that I don’t love my half-siblings or Jack, my ex-stepfather, or Granny Enid, his mother, my step-grandmother. Because I do. I really do. I suppose I just wanted to meet a bit of family that was mine. My father was an orphan, so there’s nothing on that side – except for some uncle or other in New Zealand. I just realized I wanted to look into someone’s face and see something I recognized. And maybe to feel connected. Not just for my sake, either. Mother puts a brave face on everything and I know she thinks of London as her home, but she can look a little lost sometimes – at school sessions or meeting parents of my friends. It must be good to be comfortable with your place in a family, to have somewhere where you always feel at home.

  I woke up, determined to sort it out. If they don’t want anything to do with me or Mother, fine. But I had to know.

  Pascale had told me she planned to sneak out to see Eric today. He works in a garage that fits exhaust pipes and Wednesday’s his day off. Perfect, I thought. But then first thing this morning he rang to say he needed to get his Suzuki’s gasket mended so she decided to come with me instead.

  The house was empty when we got up. Monsieur Blanc had gone off to work early; Madame Blanc was out – probably at the supermarché. Didier was doing some schoolwork at the dining-room table. He was wearing a black T-shirt that had seen more than its fair share of washes and a pair of grey slacks even I know aren’t the height of fashion.

  ‘Do you have plans today?’ he said when he saw us putting our jackets on.

  ‘Eiffel Tower,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Ah.’ He stretched his arms into two ‘V’s behind his head and then out straight. ‘Maybe I’ll come.’

  Pascale stopped in the doorway. She blew out through her teeth and jabbered something I didn’t get. He shrugged and turned back to his work. ‘OK.’

  She rolled her eyes behind his back and did the blowing out thing again (I wish I could describe it exactly – it was so fantastically French).

  On the way to the RER she said Didier was an imbecile, but that Philippe – who’ll be back at the weekend – is fantastic. She nodded to herself. ‘Him,’ she said, ‘you will love.’ I am getting a bit bored of hearing about the wonders of Philippe (particularly as Monsieur Blanc seems to think he’s so great) but Pascale got a photograph out of her wallet and… well, he is handsome. If you like big eyebrows, anyway.

  We got the metro, as before, to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I’d been full of determination when we left the house but as we got close to the apartment block I felt it drain away. When I breathed out it was as if I was going to deflate and deflate and deflate. My internal cavities seemed to fuse together. I could hardly put one step in front of the other without falling over. What if they just closed the door in my face? What if they’d read my letter and found it rude and had decided they didn’t want to know me? What if…

  We stood outside the door – me feeling sick, Pascale whistling, so clearly not feeling sick.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said.

  There was a cafe opposite I hadn’t noticed before. I pulled her towards it and sat down at a table in the second row facing the street. And that was when I realized something important. This was what I’d come for. I don’t mean the cafe, with its little round French tables, its French wicker chairs, its French fan whirring, its French waiter with his big, wide, white French apron coming over with his big, wide, white French menu. None of this mattered. I could have been anywhere. I could have been in Bombay. Or Bolton. It wasn’t Paris I’d come to find, was it? I’d come to find my grandparents. I suppose I’ve known this all along, but it came as a shock.

  ‘OK. I’m going to do it,’ I said before the waiter could reach us. But at that minute, the elderly woman I’d seen the other day, the one with the neat grey bob, the one I was convinced was my grandmother, came out of her apartment block opposite. I didn’t stop to think. I pushed back my chair, jumped up and ran out of the cafe.

  I stopped on the pavement. The woman had turned towards Boulevard Saint-Germain and was walking smartly and purposefully down the street away from me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Pascale had come out too.

  ‘Sssh,’ I said. ‘That’s her. Let’s go.’

  We followed about ten metres behind her. She was wearing a maroon skirt with a pine-green jacket, and a patterned scarf in the same colours round her neck. She walked quickly, but occasionally she stopped to look in a shop window. She crossed Boulevard Saint-Germain and turned into a side street. We passe
d a toyshop and then a shop selling baby knits, and for a moment I allowed myself to think how my life might have been if my mother hadn’t run away from home, how Sundays might have been spent with my grandparents, ambling round these streets – a little light shopping, a play in the park, steak frites for lunch…

  My grandmother had sped up and Pascale was beginning to dawdle, so I had to pull her along. We reached the river and crossed a bridge – a different one from the one we crossed the other day – and not far away on the other side was a department store called La Liberté. We tried to look inconspicuous as we followed my grandmother into the store.

  We were in a large cosmetics hall. It felt airy and empty because there was no ceiling in the middle – just blue railings going up and up to floor after floor, like an enormous staircase.

  My grandmother looked at some Lancôme face creams, dabbing them on her hand and smelling them. She took the escalator to the first floor, where she tried on a black polo-neck jumper. She then took the lift to the fifth floor, where she went into ‘les toilettes’ (we hovered at a discreet distance). On the way out, she browsed in the books section before returning, via the escalators, to the ground floor. I began to worry we might be rather obvious, and wished Pascale wasn’t with me – that goth black is so in your face.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to her?’ she hissed. We were in the accessories section on the ground floor. My grandmother was the other side of a display case, holding up a watch with a silver strap, peering at the face as if she couldn’t quite make out the numbers.

  ‘Because it’s not the right moment,’ I hissed in return.

  I wouldn’t have known what the right moment looked like if I’d had it laid out in front of me. Golden? Maybe silver. Or white perhaps? But the air around it would have been calm and generous and warm. It may be that the right moment never existed. Or maybe I had left it behind in Boulevard Saint-Germain. It’s funny what a difference a few seconds can make. If I’d gone straight up to the apartment block and not gone into the cafe. If my grandmother had come out of the building earlier. If I’d run fast up behind her and introduced myself before she’d crossed the road. If Eric hadn’t needed a new gasket. If Didier had come too. If a butterfly hadn’t beaten its wings a hundred years ago in Costa Rica… Any of these things might have prevented what happened next.