Bon Voyage, Connie Pickles Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover Image

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  About the Author

  Credit Page

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  New vocab: un quai (a platform); ne pas manquer (to be in time for); foirer (to mess up)

  FRIDAY, MARCH 28

  Eurostar, car 16, pulling out of Waterloo,

  8:58 a.m.

  I think I can honestly say this is the most exciting moment of my life.

  Julie, who is reading over my shoulder, says that I’m a tragic human being and that the most exciting moment of her life was halfway through Wednesday night when she met Karl. This is what I say:

  A) Karl wears red pants and she once told me never to trust a boy who wore red pants.

  B) I bet he only lasts two minutes. None of her boyfriends lasts longer than that.

  C) She should keep her big nose out of my diary.

  Squiggles on page due to undignified scuffle. Now I have my pen back. (It’s a lovely, thin-nibbed Pentel.) Okay, they weren’t red; they were “wine-khaki.” And okay, she hasn’t got a big nose. Just medium.

  She’s listening to her iPod now, staring out of the window with a lovesick expression on her face, so I’ve got a few minutes’ peace.

  OH! I can’t believe I’m finally on my way. I’m always telling everyone that Paris is my natural home and now’s my chance to prove it. I know it’s only two-and-a-bit weeks and that it’s only a French Exchange, but I feel in my bones that something important is going to happen. Obviously I am going to be busy tracking down my long-lost grandparents (the deliciously named de Bellechasses, who disowned my mother when she ran off with my poor, dead father). And obviously I am going to be getting over William, my oldest friend whom I just happened to fall in love with—after he started going out with my next-door neighbor. But I’m also going to be as one with the French way of life. I may look embarrassingly English now—thick tights and floral dress from Oxfam are a mistake and I’ve made my skin blotchy by picking at those spots on my chin—but in two weeks I will be a changed person. I will be chic. I will be soignée. I will be pimple free. I will probably wear black.

  Hang on, there goes Julie’s phone. It’s Monsieur Baker. We got separated from him and the rest of the group in Departures. It was so chaotic, what with Cyril and Marie, my half brother and sister, charging around and Mother all teary and William and Delilah—but I’m not going to think about that now—and what with Karl being there in his red—I mean wine-khaki—pants that by the time we got through Passports I was a limp rag. Julie yanked me into WH Smith to buy a copy of Bliss and some cigarettes and I let the situation slip. (Honestly, I don’t know why someone as prim as me is best friends with Julie. Or vice versa.) The line was ridiculous and by the time she’d paid and slotted her Marlboro Lights into the back pocket of her jeans—some feat of engineering considering how tight they are—the others had disappeared up the ramp. There was a drunken man taking off his pants and trying to pee at the bottom, so the ticket collector was a bit distracted and we fanned our passports and ran through. The train was already making noises and I had to yell to Julie to run—she’s wearing wedge espadrilles (honestly, in this weather!) and her boobs were bouncing up and down in her stripy halter top. “Hurry up!” I shouted. “We can’t miss the train. Paris awaits!”

  She couldn’t breathe when she finally sat down. Turns out you can’t smoke on the train anyway. Good thing, too. I love Julie, for all her faults. I don’t want her to die of lung cancer before she’s even lost her virginity.

  Kent, 10 a.m.

  I am slightly concerned about the others. I was all for going to join them in car 18 about five minutes ago, but Julie says Monsieur B. will come and find us if he’s that bothered. Now she’s nodded off to sleep with her mouth against the window and I don’t have the heart to wake her.

  I’ve just reread the details of my French Exchange student.

  NAME: Pascale Blanc

  FAMILY: father (hotel supplier); mother (a housewife); two brothers (older)

  HOBBIES: fashion, rock music, literature

  She sounds intriguing and I like her handwriting on the form. Her family sounds tidy and grown-up, too. Just the sort of thing I like. Mine’s so higgledy-piggledy, what with my own father being dead and Jack, my stepfather, being divorced from my mother, and Marie and Cyril being so irritatingly little. Sometimes I think I’m the only person who keeps everything together. A conventional family with older siblings will be restful. I’m not so sure about Pascale’s hobbies. Julie says it’s about time I took some interest in fashion and rock music. Julie’s not impressed with my personal style—what I like to call “thrift shop chic,” i.e., anything I can find that’s wacky and cheap. Julie thinks I need to be a bit more upscale and a bit less downtown. I’m so glad Pascale likes literature.I’ve started Madame Bovary, which is quite hard work.Pascale’s probably read it several times and I expect we’ll discuss it late into the night.

  Train track in the French countryside,

  11:40 a.m.

  I went to sleep. It must have been the rhythm of the train.It seems to be running faster and smoother on this side of the channel. Of course it does. Everything is better here.Julie’s still snoring next to me. I can’t believe I missed the tunnel. I’m actually in France. The landscape is beautiful.Flatter than I’d imagined—dark, furrowed fields stretching out like giant, rumpled handkerchiefs under the lowering dark sky. (Sorry, I must stop trying to be too poetic. It’s just showing off.) A church with a steeple in the distance.And walking along that road, a man with a dog in a beret. The man’s in the beret, I mean, not the dog.

  The countryside is turning into town—chimneys,pavements, cars. There’s something beautiful about the shape of French houses—the steep pitch of the roofs, the golden color of the brickwork, the shutters, the wrought iron balconies. Those houses there are just so French. You couldn’t find them anywhere else.

  We’ve made good time. We must be getting into Paris. It’s strange that Monsieur Baker hasn’t come to look for us. I expect we’ll meet him on the platform. I can’t see anything I recognize from pictures yet, like the Sacré-Coeur, or the Eiffel Tower. It looks more industrial than I’d thought. And—stupid, I know—I hadn’t imagined it to be drizzling.

  We’re slowing down. Julie’s stirring. In a few minutes my feet will be on real French soil. I’m going to remember this moment for the rest of my life. France. Oh France.

  Belgium, 11:55 a.m.

  Oh God.

  Chapter Two

  New vocab: un embouteillage (a traffic jam); une zone industrielle (an industrial park); une gothique (a Goth)

  SAME DAY

  Station office, Gare du Midi,

  Brussels, 12:30 p.m.

  Julie is talking to Monsieur Baker on her phone. I think he is angry—very, very angry. I can tell this by the fact that she has let her hair fall forward to cove
r her face and that she hasn’t looked up to stick out her tongue at me once. A thin man in uniform, also very angry, is talking at us fast and furiously, with lots of hand gestures; but I don’t understand because I seem to have forgotten any French I ever knew. Maybe he is speaking that other language they have in Belgium. What is it? Dredge. I know—Flemish.

  It is only just sinking in. We are not in Paris. We are not even in France. We are miles from France. I wish I’d paid more attention in geography, because then I’d know how many miles.

  To be honest, I’m not even sure where Belgium is.

  Taxi in the back streets

  of Brussels, 2 p.m.

  The station master, or monsieur de gare or whatever he’s called, became much nicer when he’d calmed down. He let us sit in his office while he spoke for a long time on the phone to Mr. Baker. When he hung up, he wrung his hands and raised his eyes to the ceiling as if to say, “Whoa. That’s one angry French teacher,” which I thought was very human of him.

  He gave us a really horrible cup of coffee and then he put us in the taxi, which is at this very minute taking us to a bus station. We don’t have to pay. Mr. Baker has sorted that out, though we will have to pay him back. (I feel very bad for Mother.)

  We’re stuck in traffic. Julie is texting Karl. There’s nothing out the window to fill the heart with glee. The buildings are modern and aloof. Rain streaks the concrete black. The station master says there’s a square near where there’s a statue of a little boy peeing. I think it would remind me of my little brother, Cyril, who always leaves the seat wet but whom I’m beginning to miss more than I can say. I feel homesick. Actually, maybe I just feel carsick.

  A bus somewhere in Belgium,

  seat 23, 4:45 p.m.

  Thank goodness we got on this bus. The last one was full.Julie and I sat in a cafe and drank a gallon of Coke, two sandwiches filled with stringy ham, and about eight packaged cakes. Our landlord, John Spence, who is also Mother’s boyfriend (but that’s another story), gave me fifty euros as a present (he may be a geek, but at least he’s a generous geek) and I spent eighteen of them on snacks.

  Julie has been talking a lot about Karl. He goes to the same school as her last boyfriend, Ade. “But,” she said, “he’s not the sort of person to make out with someone else when you’re in the same room.”

  “No.” We both sat thoughtfully remembering a fateful party in which Ade had done just that.

  “Karl’s perfect,” she breathed.

  “But he does wear red pants,” I added.

  Same bus somewhere in France, seat 22 (swapped

  with Julie so as to be by the window), 6:30 p.m.

  We’ve crossed the border—lines of poplars, more huge fields, highways, factories. We might not be seeing France’s best side.

  Julie has just suggested we make lists of all the boys we’ve ever liked. I’ve humored her for a while, but only on the condition that we play Eye Spy in French to practice our vocab.

  She’s just texting Karl—AGAIN—and then she will.

  Bother. I can’t stop thinking about William now. It was odd of him and Delilah to come and say good-bye. Delilah is my next-door neighbor and a good friend—though I don’t always like her, if you know what I mean. She was wearing an acid green jacket cinched in at the waist and quite a lot of makeup for so early on a Friday morning. I think she’d really come because she was pissed off that she wasn’t going on a French Exchange (they don’t do them at her school—too fancy) but she wanted to show me she wasn’t. She said airily, “We’re going on a day trip. William’s taking me to Brighton. Platform six. Thought we’d see you off as we were passing.”

  I tried to catch William’s eye but he was scuffing his feet back and forth across the floor as if there was a stain he was trying to clear up. Truth be told, his jeans are so wide and flapping that he was in fact mopping clean a small area without realizing it.

  He looked up finally, saw me watching. “We’ll miss ya,” he said casually.

  “Me too,” I said.

  We gazed at each other. And for a moment I forgot all the noise and bustle of Waterloo around me. I just saw my dear friend William—that sweet, sheepish smile he has when he bites the corner of his lip as if trying to stop himself. For a moment I thought there is something still between us, but …But then Delilah came up and gave him a side-on hug. Bless her, she can be so obvious.

  Right. I’m going to read Madame Bovary now. So far it seems to be about an unhappily married woman who is obsessed with love. Not a good life path. One thing I’m going to do on this trip is flush William from my system. That sounds a bit bathroom. I should say purge him from my being. Oh dear, that does too. What I mean is:

  FORGET HIM.

  (I’ve had a horrible thought. Do you think they’ve done it?)

  Outskirts of Paris, back in seat 23 (swapped back,

  as Julie is feeling sick), 7:40 p.m.

  We are entering Paris through the back door. The bus is going to drop us somewhere near Disneyland (the indignity), where Monsieur Baker will “hand us over” to our FE families. Julie and I made a few jokes about the Family of Mouse, but we’ve both gone quiet now that we’re getting closer. I’m beginning to feel nervous. Julie says she’ll run away if she doesn’t like hers.

  We are turning off the highway, so we must be getting near. We’re pulling into an industrial park. I can see Monsieur Baker waiting with a group of people. On one side of him is a smiley girl in jeans, younger than us, a chubby woman in a tracksuit, and several small children in grubby jackets. On the other is a small woman in a beige raincoat and an angry-looking Goth in head-to-toe black. We’ve come to a halt. I wonder which is mine. Julie has just squeezed my hand. I think I can bear anything except perhaps the Goth.

  The cleanest bathroom in the world, 9 p.m.

  I got the Goth.

  I’m so tired I can hardly lift my pen. I’m in the bathroom.They think I’m brushing my teeth.

  I almost cried saying good-bye to Julie. She whispered,“Mine looks about ten and yours looks about twenty-five;do you think they’ve got us muddled?” as we hugged. I gave her an affectionate whack in the ribs with my elbow, so the last I saw of her face, it was contorted in fake agony. Oh, I’m going to miss her.

  This is stupid, and I’m going to get over it, but I feel lonely. The house is modern and clean, next to other identical houses in something called a clos. There’s a tiny, old-fashioned kitchen and a big room divided into a sitting area and a dining area, with a massive flat-screen television blaring from the wall. The floors are all cold and tiled.Upstairs, where the bedrooms are, the carpet is dark green and scratchy. It’s nowhere near the center of Paris.We’re way out in the suburbs.

  Madame Blanc is like a little brown mouse (complete with whiskers; oh that’s so mean, sorry). She’s slightly bent and her hair is tied back in a frail little bun. No makeup, gray clothes. I keep worrying I’m going to tread on her. I think she wants to be called “Madame Blanc”because she didn’t correct me when I did. One of the side effects of an unconventional upbringing is that you can be a bit free and easy with Christian names. No sign of Monsieur Blanc. Or either of Pascale’s brothers. You know how other people’s houses always smell different, though there’s normally food and soap involved? Well, this one smells of pine, like a doctor’s waiting room.

  Pascale does look about twenty-five. Huge black boots, buckles all over her pants, dyed purple hair, loads of eyeliner. She’s pretending she’s not interested in me to be cool. Or I hope she’s pretending. She didn’t talk to me at all in the car. I tried to chat, but my dictionary was in my backpack and my French, despite the Eye Spy, has deserted me.

  I’m sleeping on a spare bed in her bedroom. The room’s covered in posters of snarling rock stars and she’s written things in angry felt-tip marker all over the mirror. The windows are covered in black paper. I’ve got a drawer for my clothes. At the back I found a key ring in the shape of a skull.

  I called Moth
er to tell her I was here safely. She’s received a running commentary on our day from Mr. Baker and has been “ver, ver, ver” worried (she often says things in threes). I had to pretend to be “ver, ver, ver” happy to cheer her up. Marie came on and told me all about the Easter bonnet parade she’d had at school and then I spoke to Cyril—he’d lost his Superhero Top Trumps and I remembered they were on top of the toaster—and now I feel so homesick I can’t write anymore.

  Chapter Three

  New vocab: la banlieue (the suburb); voler à l’étalage (to shoplift)

  SATURDAY, MARCH 29

  Pascale’s room, 1 p.m.

  Some observations:

  1) In France you drink hot chocolate from a bowl, not a cup.

  2) Madame Blanc enjoys cleaning.

  3) Pascale snores.

  I woke up this morning feeling much more positive.Pascale was still asleep (see observation 3, above) but I could hear noises out in the street—voices and birdsong. I lay on the bed thinking about my grandparents, imagining our meeting. Mother, who hasn’t spoken to them in years, wrote to let them know I was coming and it is strange that they didn’t call. It was only last week—I joined the French Exchange program at the last minute. Maybe the letter hasn’t reached them yet.

  Madame Blanc, wearing rubber gloves (see observation 2), came into the room as I was reading my book, shook Pascale awake, and told her to get up, have breakfast (see observation 1), and take me for a walk. It wasn’t that smooth a negotiation. There was a lot of shouting from Pascale and at one point she threw herself into the bathroom and locked the door. But in the end the two of us left the house together, so you have to assume she agreed.

  Once out she marched off down the road, with me following behind, until we got to a square with a small market. Despite Pascale’s unfriendliness I felt a surge of excitement. It looked so colorful—stalls with piles of cheese and salami, red and white striped awnings, a boulangerie bristling with bread. The sun had been going in and out, but it felt warm for a moment. The pearl white buildings turned silver. I would have skipped if it weren’t for the look of venom shot my way by P. B. (Actually she’s right: skipping at my age—not a good look.)