The Boy from France (2 page)

Rosie widens her eyes at me. ‘She’s only interested because she’s been through every boy in London already,’ she whispers, a little unkindly.

‘Calm down, everyone. Shush!’ says Miss Long. ‘They’re boys, not sweets. I won’t be handing them out. There are five boys in total and they have already been
allocated by the exchange programme organisers. You’ll find a letter with the details of your exchange student in your pigeon-hole by the end of the day. Remember, this visit is not about
romance, it’s about improving your French.’

Half the class bursts into spontaneous giggles. I hear someone say, ‘I think my French is pretty good already, Miss.’

Miss Long remains stony-faced. ‘Improving your French language skills,’ she clarifies. ‘So you can put any other ideas out of your heads right now.’

But, of course, the prospect of snogging fit French boys is all anyone can think – or talk – about for the rest of the day. Everyone except me, that is. I honestly don’t care
if my French exchange student is a boy or a girl. I’m beginning to wish the exchange programme wasn’t happening. I know that Mum can’t really cope with putting someone up for a
month right now, and she’s only agreed because she thinks it will be good for my GCSE grade, and because she doesn’t want me to feel left out.

My mum is sick, and it’s not the type of illness you get better from. She’s been ill for as long as I can remember but, lately, she’s been getting worse. She’s been in
and out of hospital for treatments and now she can’t walk properly any more. She keeps falling over. When we go out, she often has to use a stick or a walking frame, which she hates. She also
has problems with her eyesight and her hands and she gets incredibly tired. Last year, she had to give up work, which meant Dad had to increase his hours, so he isn’t around much. The upshot
is, I have to do a lot more around the house than any of my friends. It’s up to me to do the food shopping and a lot of the cleaning and cooking too. Sometimes, I even have to help Mum to get
dressed or to have a shower. (I haven’t told anyone that before, even Rosie and Sky, because it’s embarrassing.) Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. I’m hardly a
slave. It’s not Mum’s fault and I don’t mind helping her, but it’s hard to fit it all in with my coursework and seeing my friends. I already have to be super organised. How
am I going to add in entertaining a French person too? And what if they don’t understand?

The exchange trip letters appear in our pigeon-holes sometime between lunch and the final period. I take mine out and open it cautiously, praying that whoever I’m getting is sweet and not
too fussy and gets on with everybody. I’ve heard horror stories about exchange students who’ve stayed in their rooms, crying from homesickness for the entire month or, worse,
who’ve taken an instant dislike to their host family and made their lives hell.

Rosie rushes over to me. ‘Who’ve you got, then? I’m getting someone called Manon, who is – worse luck – one hundred per cent definitely a girl.’

I study my piece of paper. ‘My exchange student is called Ex-avier Durand, and she’s fifteen and from Nice.’

Rosie peers at my sheet. She grins. ‘It’s pronounced
neece
, not nice. And it’s not ex-avier, it’s
zav-ier
, like xylophone!’ Her French has always
been better than mine. ‘Vix – Xavier a boy’s name. You’ve got one of the boys!’ She’s so excited for me, you’d think I’d won the lottery. ‘You
jammy cow!’

I shrug. ‘Oh, cool. I guess.’

Lucy has overheard and now she’s dashing over. She snatches my exchange trip letter out of Rosie’s hands. ‘I can’t believe it! Why did they give you one of the boys, Vix?
You don’t even like boys.’

‘Yes she does,’ says Rosie, sticking up for me. ‘They probably didn’t give you a boy because they wanted to make sure he went home in one piece. Without teeth
marks.’

Lucy rolls her eyes. ‘Whatever. God, what a waste. Sad for him that he’s going to have such a boring time. Hey, do you wanna swap? Nobody has to know . . .’

Rosie grabs back the letter. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry, Lucy, we’ll make sure he has the
best
time. And we’ll keep him out of
your clutches.’ She smiles at me.

I smile back, as enthusiastically as I can. I do like boys, just not the ones I know, who are, in my opinion, a waste of space – immature idiots with bum fluff, no style and absolutely
nothing to say. Rosie’s boyfriend Laurie is OK, but he’s a bit older, and Max, who came to stay on our street last summer, was lovely but he had a thing for Rosie and only wanted to be
friends with me. Typically. Most of the boys I’ve met are more like Sky’s ex, Rich – they just muck you around and hurt you and then move on to the next girl. I can’t
imagine that French boys are any different. Except they have French accents. And they eat weird things like frogs’ legs and snails and too much garlic, and
frites
instead of chips.
At least French people are stylish. But, knowing my luck, I’ll get the only French boy who really does wear a beret and a stripy top and ride a bicycle, like French people do in stupid
cartoons. He’ll probably bring a string of onions as a welcome gift.

I have been to France once, way back when I was a kid, but I can hardly remember anything about it, apart from seeing the Eiffel Tower and going shopping with Mum on the Champs-Elysées,
when she could still walk without a stick. My French exchange student doesn’t come from Paris, I remind myself, he comes from Nice. I have no idea what that’s like. Actually, I have no
idea where it is. France is a big country, much bigger than England. I guess I should look up Nice on the internet, so I can learn something about it before Xavier, or Ex-avier, or whatever
he’s called, arrives. I want to be able to make him feel at home, maybe buy some local food for him, and it would be good to have something to talk about. I hope his English is better than my
French . . .

‘What are you thinking about, Vix?’ says Rosie. ‘You’re a million miles away.’

‘Eh? Sorry. Nothing. Just wondering what Xavier will be like and stuff.’

She grins. ‘Ah, so you are a teensy bit excited that you’ve got a sexy French boy coming to stay. I knew it!’

I blush. ‘It’s not like that – you know it isn’t. Anyway, I bet you a million pounds he won’t be sexy. And if he is, he’ll like you, or Sky, not me. Like
always. I just don’t want him to have a rubbish time, what with my mum and everything. And I’m worried it’ll be too much for her. She’s only just come out of
hospital.’

Rosie puts her arm around me. ‘It’ll be all right, Vix. You’re worrying too much, thinking about all the what ifs before they’ve happened, like you always do. I’ve
got a feeling he’s going to be drop dead gorgeous. And why shouldn’t he like you? You’re drop dead gorgeous too.’

rop dead gorgeous? Hardly. I don’t have any complexes about the way I look, not like Sky, who has a thing
about her nose (although she’s a little better about it now), but I’m realistic – I’m not the type of girl who makes boys stop and stare. Boys like me, just not in
that
way.

I’ve never had a boyfriend. God, if I’m honest, I’ve never even kissed anyone. That information is top secret. Everybody thinks I have, and I’ve let them carry on
thinking it – even Rosie and Sky, who believe they know all my secrets – because I’m almost fifteen and too embarrassed to admit that I haven’t.

They think it happened at a party, last year, while we were all playing a stupid Spin-the-Bottle/truth-dare type game. Somehow – don’t ask – I found myself having to get into a
wardrobe with this guy, Robbie, from Sky’s school, and we were supposed to stay in there for five minutes and snog. But we didn’t. We were both too shy and we didn’t really fancy
each other, and I’m fairly certain he’d never kissed anybody before, either. So we stared at each other awkwardly for a while and then, I guess because he was wearing a T-shirt with a
racing car on it, we ended up having a conversation about cars instead. He was impressed how much I knew about them because girls aren’t supposed to be interested in that kind of thing, let
alone be experts on the technical specifications of each Formula One circuit or car design. But I’ve always loved racing; I even played with cars instead of dolls when I was little. Rosie and
Sky think my fascination with cars is weird and that it could partly explain why boys always want to be mates with me, and not my boyfriend. That, and the fact I think about things too much. Maybe
they’re right. Anyway, Robbie and I came out of the cupboard at that party, looking sheepish and smoothing down our clothes, like you’re supposed to, and everybody thought we’d
enjoyed five minutes of pashing, when we were really reviewing the previous week’s
Top Gear
.

Fourteen, going on fifteen, and never been kissed – what a cliché! I read advice pages online that say, ‘It’s fine never to have kissed anyone, however old you are . . .
You’ll do it when you’re ready, when you meet the right guy . . . Be patient . . .’ but none of it makes me feel any better. I feel like I’m the only girl in the world who
hasn’t done it, the only person who hasn’t become a member of a club that I don’t even know if I want to join. How can I know if I’ll like it until I’ve done it? But
if I do it just for the sake of doing it, with the wrong person, then I might not like it anyway. That would be pointless, wouldn’t it? So I wait. And I wait. And I wait, for it to happen,
somehow. And in the meantime, I pretend that I’ve already done it and that I’m not too fussed about doing it again. It means that some people, like Lucy Reed, think I don’t like
boys and others, like Sky and Rosie, think I’m just too choosy. Even my mum has started saying, ‘When are you going to get a boyfriend, Victoria?’ She refuses to call me Vix,
however much I plead with her.

I was supposed to be going round to Rosie’s tonight, but Dad’s away on a business trip and Mum has had a bad day. Even though she hasn’t asked, I think she wants some company,
so I told Rosie I’d come tomorrow instead. Mum gets lonely, stuck at home on her own all day, while everybody else is out at work. She doesn’t even like watching daytime TV, which would
help. Since I came home from school, I’ve done the vacuuming and popped to Sainsbury’s to buy a few things, like toilet paper and pasta. Now we’re having dinner and then
I’ll do some coursework. I should have time for an online chat with my friends before bed, if nothing else.

My cooking has got heaps better. I only used to be able to make beans on toast or omelette, so we ate a lot of microwave meals, but lately I’ve been watching
MasterChef
and
finding recipes on the internet and I can rustle up a decent casserole or spaghetti bolognese or even a basic curry. Tonight we’re having fish pie. It’s a bit of an experiment and
I’m not sure it’s worked, but we’re eating it anyway.

‘So how was school today?’ Mum asks, like she does every day. It’s more of a ritual than a conversation.

‘Fine.’ I tell her, like I do every day. ‘Same old, same old. You know . . .’ And then I remember. ‘Actually, I do have some news. About the exchange
student.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Mum says. ‘She’s coming next week, isn’t she?’ She sighs. ‘We’ll have to get the spare room sorted.’

We both know that by ‘we’ she means ‘me’.

‘Yes. Except she’s a he: Xavier. I hope that’s OK. I’ve got a letter with all the details.’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know it could be a boy.’

‘Me neither. Miss Long sprang it on us this morning. Apparently there’s been some administrative cock-up.

Too many boys and not enough takers at the boys’ school, and not enough girls for us.’

‘Well, it’ll be nice to have a boy around the place for a change. Someone for your dad to talk about football to, and practise his French with. Where’s he from?’

‘From Nice. Wherever that is.’

‘Ah.’ She smiles. ‘We went to Nice once on holiday, when you were a toddler. I don’t suppose you remember.’

‘No! I didn’t realise I’d been there. I only remember Paris.’

Mum looks wistful. We haven’t been on holiday for a couple of years, not since she starting getting worse. ‘It’s right in the South, near Italy. A bit like Brighton, in a way,
with a long promenade and a stony beach. But there are palm trees and the sea is a beautiful blue, and it’s lovely and hot and sunny there. I’m sure I must have some photos
somewhere.’ She moves as if to get out of her chair, but then remembers she can’t do that as easily as she used to and grips on to the table to right herself again. Her stick is propped
up against the wall, just out of reach. We both glance at it, but say nothing.