Girl, 15: Flirting for England (11 page)

She turned the TV sound down and walked to the bottom of the stairs. She would call him and ask him if he liked pizza. That couldn’t be too difficult. She opened her mouth. No sound came out. She shuddered and felt sick. She opened her mouth again. A tiny squeak came out.

Jess went back into the sitting room and sat down. Her heart was thumping. This was ridiculous! How could it be so hard just to give a boy a pizza? She went into the kitchen, picked up the phone and dialled Flora’s number. Her dad picked up.

‘Barclay!’ he barked. Jess cringed. Flora’s dad was so frightening.

‘Hi, is Flora there?’ she asked, in a small, inoffensive, insect-like voice.

‘Who is that?’ demanded Mr Barclay.

‘It’s – er, Jess,’ said Jess, for a moment forgetting her own name, so great was her terror of this international businessman. Mr Barclay imported bathrooms and was always nipping off to Milan to inspect bidets.

‘Look, Jess. Just identify yourself when you ring people up, OK? It saves time. Flora can’t come to the phone right now. We’re in the middle of supper. She’ll call you back later.’

‘Sorry, sorry!’ said Jess. She was deeply regretting phoning Flora. Thank goodness her own dad was feeble and lived hundreds of miles away. She couldn’t cope with all this sergeant-major stuff.

‘I just wanted to ask what the French was for “Do you like pizza?”’ said Jess.

‘
How
many years have you been doing French?’ demanded Mr Barclay. He sighed in a self-important, sarcastic way. ‘Oh well, never mind. It’s ‘‘
Aimez-vous pizza?’’
Or, if you want it in Italian, ‘‘
Lei vuole pizza?
’’?’

‘Thank you,’ said Jess. ‘Didn’t mean to disturb you. Sorry. Thanks you very much.’

She rang off in confusion. She had said, ‘Thank
s
you very much’! Wonderful! He would think she was a complete moron! She had been going to say ‘thanks’, but then it had started to sound too casual, and she’d decided at the last minute to change it to ‘thank you very much’, but she hadn’t quite managed it.

Still, at least she now knew the French for ‘Do you like pizza?’ What was it again? Jess’s brain whirled. She felt as if she might faint. The horror of her phone call to Mr Barclay had blotted out the actual French words he’d told her. All she could remember was the vague sound of the Italian version, which he’d insisted on telling her as well – the bighead! Something sounding like ‘vole’.

Vole pizza. What a ghastly image it conjured up. Limp with effort, Jess dragged herself across the kitchen and opened the door of the freezer. There was indeed a pizza in there. She got it out. It stuck to her fingers, burning with cold. Even inanimate objects seemed hostile and threatening tonight. She brushed the pizza off her fingers. It clattered down on to the table. She peered at it through its coat of frost. The freezer needed defrosting, as ever – it was like Antarctica in there. However, there didn’t appear to be any dead voles on the pizza. One small triumph in the nightmare of this endless evening.

She walked to the bottom of the stairs and listened. No sound. Was he dead? She almost hoped so. She just had to call him. She opened her mouth, filled her lungs and plucked up her courage.

‘Edouard!’ she called. Her voice sounded thin and weedy, but it was definitely loud enough to be heard. There was no reply. Jess was astonished. She had expected him to come straight to the door. A spear of fear went straight through her tummy. ‘Edouard!’ she called again, louder. Still no reply. Still absolutely no sound or movement upstairs.

Jess began to feel annoyed. Why couldn’t he just answer to his name? Even very stupid dogs could do that. She felt a fool, standing there and yelling. She decided she wouldn’t call him any more. She would pretend she had been singing. Edouard, the way they pronounced it in French –
Ed-waaaagh
– sounded just a tiny bit like ‘it was’. Jess remembered a song her father always sang. ‘
It was just one of those things, just one of those crazy things . . .’

She walked away from the stairs singing, ‘
Edouard just one of those things . . .’
She arrived in the kitchen, singing with deranged fury, and decided she was hungry. She’d just cook the freakin’ pizza, and if Edouard didn’t appear she’d eat it all herself. She switched the oven on with furious panache, and hurt herself quite badly on the switch.

The oven leapt into life. Its reassuring hum was like the voice of a long-lost friend. Jess ripped the wrapper off the pizza. Soon the most delicious smell was wafting through the house. And suddenly, there was a sound from upstairs. Lured by the whiff of cheese and tomato, Edouard was leaving his room! Jess’s heart started to beat fast. Any minute now she would be required to speak French.

She heard Edouard start coming downstairs. But there was an awful sickening stumble, a strange squeaking French kind of gasp, a thump, more thumps and thuds, and the unmistakable sound of a small French boy actually falling downstairs! Horrors! Maybe this time he really had died.

Chapter 15

Jess was tempted for a moment to turn tail and run out into the garden. She could hide behind some bushes down at the bottom, by the picnic table, until Edouard had gone away. Or been taken away by ambulance. Or possibly the funeral director.

She hovered, desperate, by the kitchen door. What should she do? On the one hand, she ought to run and see if he was all right. On the other hand, if she’d fallen downstairs in his house, she would prefer it if nobody saw.

There was a rustling sound out in the hall. He wasn’t dead or unconscious, then. Jess crept hesitantly out of the kitchen. Edouard was scrambling to his feet. His back was to her, and, oh no! His trousers were split right up the back! For a fleeting second, she got a flash of his underpants, which were adorned with small red teddy bears.

Edouard turned towards her. It was almost like a moment from a film, in slow motion. He placed his hands behind him. Jess knew he was holding his trousers shut. Their eyes met. There was no possibility of a smile. Smiles were just hundreds of miles away.

Jess just raised her eyebrows in what she hoped was a caring way – raised them so far that her scalp actually hurt.

‘Pizza?’ she said in a strange, demented croak.

Edouard shrugged, while still holding on to the back of his trousers. Jess knew it would be polite to stand back and usher him into the kitchen first, but then she would have to see the back of his trousers. So instead she led the way in. She had laid two places at the kitchen table, and she got the pizza out of the oven.

Edouard sat down, with a faint ripping sound. The damage had evidently gone further. He was pale, and looked like a soul in deep torment. Jess wondered for an instant how you could say in French, ‘I do hope you haven’t hurt yourself while falling downstairs, and let me assure you that I didn’t see your underpants, and sewing is my favourite hobby – just leave those trousers outside your bedroom door.’

Actually, she didn’t think she’d ever manage to say anything like that even in English. She cut the pizza carefully in half, picked up Edouard’s bit on a spatula and headed for his plate. But what was this? Edouard was shaking his head and waving it away. What? He didn’t want pizza?

‘No pizza?’ asked Jess incredulously.

‘No pizza,’ confirmed Edouard, blushing and shaking his head. ‘Sank you.’

Well, sank you, too, buddy,
thought Jess. She placed the slice of pizza on her plate. Edouard just sat there, miserably looking at the salt and pepper mills. His plate was empty. Jess had to offer him something. She opened the fridge and got out some cheese, salami, ham, olives, the butter, the margarine, some French-type soft cream cheese with garlic and a carton of orange juice. And a carton of apple juice.

She placed them all on the table in front of Edouard, who looked at them miserably and with revulsion, as if Jess had placed a decomposing dog in front of him. Jess was tempted, for a moment, to grab the rolling pin and – but no! He was a stranger in a foreign land! And he had teddy bears on his underpants. Remembering this detail, Jess felt a brief shiver of something like tenderness.

She got out the bread. Luckily it was already sliced. She found some crackers, some Ryvita, some hummus, some guacamole. She even put a pack of corn chips on the table and opened a jar of salsa dip. Still Edouard gazed at the feast with what looked like dismay.

Jess foraged in the most remote and secret cupboards and found a packet of chocolate biscuits. She placed it before him. Edouard’s expression modulated just a touch. His face made a faint transition from torment to mere anguish. He reached for a chocolate biscuit. Phew! Nourishment was being attempted.

Jess poured him a glass of juice, sat down and started to eat her pizza. The silence was deafening. She began to notice the awful chewing noises she was making, and when she sipped her juice it went
slurp – glug glug glug
in a most unattractive way. Mind you, Edouard wasn’t any better. He was eating with his mouth open. It was like watching a cement mixer preparing to build a chocolate house.

Once she’d eaten half of the pizza, Jess wondered if she ought to eat the other half. If she didn’t, it would just be lying there and Edouard might feel guilty that he’d rejected it. She jolly well hoped he’d feel guilty, anyway. No! Think of the teddy bears frolicking on his bottom. He was a stranger in a foreign land.

After four chocolate biscuits and a sip of juice, Edouard cleared his throat. Jess ploughed on with the second half of her pizza. It was hard work. She’d burnt it a bit, to be honest.

‘Hmmm!’ said Edouard, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Oh no! He was going to speak.

‘
Wheretamare?
’ he said. It was so obviously a question. But what on earth did it mean?

‘Sorry?’ said Jess politely, raising her eyebrows and trying to look as if she just hadn’t quite heard, rather than failing to understand.

‘
Wheretamare?
’ said Edouard again, the fool. It was so unfair of him to speak in French. He was supposed to be here to learn English.

‘To be honest,’ said Jess, smiling pleasantly, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re rabbiting on about, but never mind.’ If only Flora and Fred were here to enjoy this kind of sarcastic game. Or even Mum.

However, Jess did remember vaguely that the French for ‘where’ did sound quite like ‘where’, though it was spelt?.?.?. uhhh?.?.?.
où est.
Bingo! Bravo! Perhaps even bongo! So he was asking
where
something was.

But what? The mare? The female horse? Hmmm, unlikely. But wait . . .
mer
! Jess remembered now!
La mer
was ‘the sea’. They’d done a bit of French geography recently, and Mrs Bailey had pointed out that France was surrounded by three seas: the English Channel to the north, the Atlantic to the west and the Med down south. But good old Britain still beat them hands down, with sea all round.

So . . . Edouard had apparently asked where the sea was. Was this a sign of suicidal thoughts? Had he plans to run to the shore and hurl himself in? And where on earth
was
the nearest sea? To Jess’s intense disappointment, trips to the beach did not loom very large in her day-to-day life.

Her dad did live in St Ives, which was by the sea, but that was hundreds of miles away and she hadn’t actually been down there yet. She had a feeling that even the nearest sea to home was miles and miles away, or, as Edouard would probably prefer to think of it, kilometres. She smiled, nodded and raised her finger as if to indicate he should speak no more.