Read Girl, 15: Flirting for England Online
Authors: Sue Limb
‘
Où est la mer?
’ she said, with a triumphant smile.
Edouard nodded and almost smiled, too. Communication had been achieved!
‘Hang on a tick,’ said Jess. ‘I’ll just go and find an atlas!’ She leapt to her feet. Edouard watched her, looking puzzled. She went off into the sitting room. It seemed unbearably delightful in there, empty and welcoming, with no French exchange person waiting to be fed and talked to. Jess ransacked the bookshelves.
As her mum was a librarian, all the books were in perfect order. There was a whole section of atlases. Jess found them right away, but she pretended to look for a bit longer, so she could have a few more precious minutes on her own. Then she carried one back to the kitchen.
‘The atlas!’ she cried, as if atlases were the most fab fashion accessory. She plonked it down on the table. Edouard looked mystified. Jess flipped through the pages until she came to a map of their region. In the bottom right-hand corner was a bit of sea.
‘There!’ she said, grinning in triumph. Edouard stared at her as if she had gone insane. What on earth was wrong with the guy? He was the one who’d raised the subject of geography in the first place. Jess measured the distance from their home to the sea, using a convenient knife.
‘What’s the scale of this map?’ she said, in a thoughtful kind of way, talking to herself. It was the only sensible thing, really. She was the only person in the room who could understand. Using the scale, she worked out that they lived about seventy-two miles from the sea.
‘Seventy-two miles!’ she announced. Edouard looked blank, even panicky. Jess knew it was the miles that were the problem.
‘Come!’ she said, and ran upstairs. Edouard followed slowly, holding his trousers shut at the back. Jess raced into her mum’s study and went online. She dragged an extra chair alongside her for Edouard. He sat down with a faint ripping sound.
Jess tapped ‘
miles-kilometres’
into Google and found a conversion chart.
‘There!’ said Jess. ‘The sea is 115 kilometres away!’
She expected Edouard to look pleased, but instead he looked lost and slightly tearful. Then Jess had her first good idea of the evening. She leapt up and offered Edouard the seat at the computer. He accepted it instantly, and jumped eagerly into the chair. His little fingers flew across the keyboard and Jess was amazed to see whole web pages in French appearing. How amazing!
There seemed to be a lot of people being fabulous in French: kissing each other on both cheeks, watering chic pot plants in French, skiing, windsurfing, the lot. At the sight of his countrymen frolicking about Frenchly, Edouard started to look a bit happier. So Jess said, ‘Just going down to do the washing-up!’ and escaped downstairs.
It was annoying having to do the washing-up, especially as she’d made the supper, but wasn’t that just like a boy? After she’d cleared the table and burped several times (there had been too much pizza and she had violent indigestion), Jess decided to phone Flora again.
‘Please God,’ she whispered as she dialled, ‘make it Flora who answers, not her dad.’ Although to be honest, sometimes Jess thought that perhaps Flora’s dad
was
God. His voice was certainly loud enough.
‘Hello?’
Bliss! It was Flora’s mum. She was a wonderful, cuddly, glamorous, lazy person who spent most of her time on the sofa. She always treated Jess like a long-lost extra daughter, whereas her husband always treated Jess like a broken bidet, fit only to be kicked.
Eventually, after sharing with Mrs Barclay the trials and tribulations of being home alone with her French boy, Jess was reunited with Flora.
‘How’s it going, babe?’ asked Flora. ‘We’re having a great time. I’m redesigning Marie-Louise’s eyebrows.’
Suppressing a wave of jealousy (it should be Jess who was receiving this kind of cosmetic attention), she cut straight to the crisis.
‘It’s a nightmare!’ she said. ‘My mum’s gone off to Granny’s! He wouldn’t eat the pizza! He’s only had four chocolate biscuits! He fell downstairs and split his trousers and I saw his underpants! And he can’t flush our loo and I’m too embarrassed to mention it – and even if I did, he wouldn’t understand a word.’
‘Put a DVD on,’ advised Flora.
‘It’s all right – he’s on the internet at the moment,’ said Jess. ‘Did you know they have an internet, too, all in French? It’s weird.’
‘Well, let him surf away all night, then,’ said Flora. ‘At least it gets him out of your hair.’
‘What’s the time?’ asked Jess.
‘Er – ten past seven.’
‘Only ten past seven?’ screamed Jess in anguish. ‘How am I ever going to get through this evening?’
‘Homework?’ suggested Flora, who always did hers the moment she got home. (If she didn’t, there was no supper, by order of God.)
‘Homework!’ said Jess. ‘Brilliant! Brilliant! I’ll do my homework! And when I’ve done it all, I’ll invent some more!’
‘Edouard will have homework, too, don’t forget,’ said Flora.
‘Yeah! Of course! Brilliant! I always wondered what was the point of homework, but now it seems quite a wonderful invention,’ said Jess. ‘Oh, by the way, he asked me this really weird question – where’s the sea?’
‘The sea?’ said Flora, puzzled.
‘Yeah, like:
Où est la mer?
I looked it all up and everything. I even translated it into kilometres, but he just looked puzzled. Honestly! He’s so ungrateful. As well as being anorexic.’
‘It might not have been, “Where is the sea?”’ said Flora, rather irritatingly. ‘It might have been, “Where is your mother?”
You know:
Où est ta mère?
’
‘But it sounds so similar,’ complained Jess, though light was beginning to dawn.
‘One’s got an extra e,’ said Flora. Jess, despite being grateful for the explanation, still wanted to hit Flora, slightly. ‘That would make sense, wouldn’t it, as your mum’s out?’
‘That’s it! That is so obviously it,’ said Jess. ‘Thanks. All I have to do now is translate into French, ‘‘Mum’s gone to see Granny for some unknown reason and she’ll be back at midnight and sends her apologies.’’ It’ll only take seven weeks for me to do that, but hey! The evening’s going to be that long anyway.’
‘Wait a min,’ said Flora. ‘I’ll just ask Marie-Louise what it is.’
Eventually Flora and Marie-Louise translated the message into French and dictated it to Jess, who wrote it down. She replaced the phone and heaved a massive sigh. Never mind homework. Her brain was totally exhausted already.
She went upstairs. Edouard was still checking his e-mails. Jess placed the slip of paper in front of him. Edouard read it, then turned towards her with something that was almost a smile, and nodded. Jess felt a tidal wave of relief wash over her. She went downstairs and got out her homework.
Never had homework seemed less boring. Even though she was already tired out, the prospect of having to make small talk with Edouard was even worse than having to write an essay about the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. Jess was herself a Cavalier, obviously, because she loved all the velvet and lace and curls and stuff. She also loved drama, and had hated the Roundheads ever since she discovered they’d closed all the theatres. She threw herself into the essay with panache.
Some time during the reign of King James I, Edouard could be heard leaving the computer and going into the bathroom. There was a long silence, and then he started the loo-flushing routine. However, this time, after about seventeen attempts, when Jess was on the point of covering her ears and screaming aloud, he actually somehow made a huge effort and managed it.
It was music to Jess’s ears. She sighed again, with relief this time. Then she heard Edouard coming out of the bathroom. She cringed in anticipation of him coming, or possibly falling, downstairs, but instead he did the decent thing: he went into his bedroom and closed the door.
What a relief?! Jess returned to her essay. It was so odd to be sitting at home, willingly doing an essay, without Mum standing behind her with her arms folded and wearing a ferocious scowl. Having a visitor changed everything.
Eventually she finished the essay (a Grade A, surely, this time – it was three and a half pages instead of her usual one and a half?). Then Jess placed some corn chips, a tiny pot of dip, a banana, an apple, a piece of cheese and three more chocolate biscuits on a plate and left them outside Edouard’s door with a can of coke. She knocked and ran away downstairs. It was a bit like looking after a pet hedgehog.
After this act of charity, she switched on the TV. She sprawled out full-length on the sofa, and the next thing she knew, Mum and Granny were staring down at her and something random to do with deep-sea fishing was on the telly. Jess realised she must have been asleep for hours. She hoped Edouard hadn’t come downstairs and seen her. She sat up, yawned and stretched.
‘It’s midnight,’ said Mum. ‘Come on, Jess. You can share my bed tonight. Granny’s staying with us, just for a day or two. She can sleep in your room.’
‘Are you OK, Granny?’ asked Jess, leaping up and giving her adored grandparent a hug.
‘I’m fine, thank you, dear,’ said Granny. ‘But I’ve apparently got to be punished for my recent bad behaviour.’
‘Don’t be silly, Granny,’ said Jess’s mum.
‘What bad behaviour?’ asked Jess. Granny shrugged.
‘Just talking to somebody,’ she said in a sarcastic tone of voice. ‘I won’t intrude by taking your bed, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ll just sleep right here on the sofa.’
‘No!’ said Mum. ‘You’ll sleep in Jess’s bed! Please! You know it’s for the best. I’ll just go and get you a cup of cocoa.’
Mum went off to the kitchen, and Granny sat down on the sofa, looking thunderous. Jess was amazed at this evidence of a row between the adults, but wondered if the best thing would be to distract her granny with small talk.
‘So, Granny!’ she said, grasping the old dear’s hand. ‘Heard about any good murders recently?’ Granny was an enthusiastic devotee of TV and newspaper homicide. Granny gave her an exasperated look, glinting with malice.
‘I haven’t heard of any, dear,’ she remarked. ‘But if things don’t get any better, I shall be committing one fairly soon.’
Wow! Her granny was thinking about murdering her mum! What on earth was going on?