Sex and Stravinsky (30 page)

Caroline doesn’t usually say ‘darling’, but she seems in a very good mood and there’s something a bit weird and glossy about her, like she’s holding back on a secret.

‘Mattie found it for me,’ Zoe says. ‘She was fab. She saw it on a coat peg at school and she just went up and stole it back.’ Then she says, ‘But, Mum, what are you doing here? I mean, haven’t you come two days early? And wasn’t I going to come back on the coach?’ She’s not actually all that pleased to have her mother invade her territory – even if Caroline’s been so brilliant about getting Mimi to the vet – but she’s trying hard not to let her disappointment show.

‘Your grandmother died,’ Caroline says. ‘Zoe, I’m afraid we have to go back.’

‘I don’t really want to go back,’ Zoe says, after a pause to take this in. ‘I mean do I really have to? Gosh. Mum, I’m sorry. I mean I’m sorry that she’s dead. I mean, that’s horrible. Like, when, Mum? Like, how?’

Caroline explains how, day after day, she’s been trying to get Zoe on the phone and Zoe’s dad as well.

‘I decided that the only thing for us to do is to fly to South Africa and tell him, face to face. And, gosh, we do need a holiday, don’t we? We’ll be leaving almost as soon as we get back. For a fortnight – which means you’ll miss a week of school, but I dare say that won’t bother you?’

Meanwhile Zoe’s thinking, Is this really my mum, who has never let me skive off school? Never, ever. Not once. And what’s she done to her hair? Then suddenly she takes note that the taxi is turning into the tarmac playground, where Mrs Caroline Headmistress is right in her natural element.

‘Come along, children,’ she calls out, as they do their best to scurry after her, still in their stockinged feet; Zoe with the hat box and Gérard cradling the dog. Caroline, as if by radar, is striding towards the head’s office.

‘Mum,’ Zoe is saying. ‘But I don’t think we ought to be here. And I really don’t want to go home. Please, Mum, I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay with Gérard. We’re learning how to do ballet together and it’s all so fun and Gérard knows all about trees as well, and, anyway, his dad really needs us and . . .’

And then they are ushered into the office. Caroline does lots of teacher talk and, mostly, it’s all in French. She’s head to head with the head. She’s apologising for the children’s truanting. And then she switches to English so that Gérard won’t understand. She’s doing a bit of
sotto voce
with regard to Gérard’s situation. A very decent boy, she says, who is struggling to do his best within a patently dysfunctional family; a drunken, unemployable father for whom the boy feels responsible; a mother at the end of her tether with a bit of a penchant for violence; a troubled older sister. The situation is in need of urgent attention.

‘
Ah oui
,’ says the French head. ‘
La soeur
. Thank you very much, Madame. We will look into it at once.’

Finally, Caroline explains that Zoe needs to return home right away. Her grandmother has just died. Then they take their leave.

‘I don’t need to go home yet, do I?’ Zoe says in the car park.

But Caroline isn’t listening to her. They all get back in the cab. Caroline tells the driver to take Gérard home. Not home to the forest hat, but home to the dwarf-conifer house, with horrible, smug Véronique and the Brillo-haired nicotine addict.

‘
Mu-um
!’ Zoe says. ‘It’s a mistake! The driver’s made a mistake. Tell him not here. Gérard doesn’t want to be back here.’

‘Don’t be idiotic,’ Caroline says. ‘Zoe, the boy is twelve years old. He can’t camp out in the woods all his life, taking care of a drunk. He needs to eat properly. He needs to go to school. The head now has the matter in hand. They’ll get the appropriate help. I’ll follow it up myself.’

Zoe has started to cry. Even Gérard is crying a bit now – just the merest moist eye – but their mothers have all the power. For a while, the children cling to each other in the back of the cab as Zoe’s tears fall on to Mimi’s soft brown head. Gérard pulls out a Bic and hands it to Zoe. He indicates that she should sign her name on Mimi’s plaster cast. Zoe writes ‘Gérard, Mimi, Zoe. For ever Friends’ and she gives him back the pen.

Gérard gets out of the cab and shakes Caroline by the hand.

‘
Merci beaucoup, Madame
,’ he says politely, ‘for the dog.’ Then he reaches in and takes Mimi. ‘
Au revoir
,’ he says.

They watch him carry her carefully along the path to his own house, until he’s standing in the doorway. He turns and manages a wave and a smile, burdened as he is by the dog. Then he goes inside.

Caroline and Zoe travel on to the station with Zoe weeping all the way. She’s trying not to make a sound in case her mum gets cross. Neither says a word. Not until they are through the gate and standing on the platform.

‘Darling,’ Caroline says. ‘I know this is very difficult for you, but it’s all for the best, I promise. In half an hour we’ll be in Paris. Won’t that be super? I’ve booked us into a dear little hotel. And tomorrow we’ll have a really lovely day. Just you and me. We can do whatever you most want to do. I’ll take you to the ballet, if you like.’

So they’re not even going straight back to England! They’re going to dawdle around Paris when she could’ve been with Gérard and Mimi in the wood. Zoe has always tried to be a good child, but right now her mother is being so weird. She knows that she’s making an exhibition of herself, just standing there crying and crying – right there on the station platform, with other people watching – but she can’t seem to make herself stop. For a moment she thinks she might stamp her foot and scream; scream at Caroline that she’s
horrible, horrible
, because it’s true. She’s being really horrible and Zoe can’t understand why. And then she simply feels worse than ever, because how can you think like that about your own mother? And especially when Gran has just died? Maybe it’s me who’s being horrible, Zoe thinks, but I
really, really
don’t want to go to Paris. I
really, really don’t
. Not now. Not any more. Because everything’s gone and got spoilt. For me and for Gérard. Just
everything
– and I don’t see how either of us can ever be happy again.

After a while she looks up furtively at her mother. Then she quickly looks away. Because why is Caroline wearing all those modelly-looking clothes? And why does she look so different? Like her face and her hair and everything? And why is she talking about treats and shopping and holidays, when she’s never been like this before? And isn’t it especially weird when her very own mother has just gone and actually died?

Chapter Eight

Caroline Meets Herman

Zoe can’t get to sleep on the long-haul flight to Johannesburg, though Caroline, beside her, is sleeping like a baby. She squirms all night and tries intermittently to reread her latest Lola book in the dark. That’s because there’s this really fat man to her left who has made her switch off her light. He is spilling over into her space like bread dough rising in a bowl, his huge legs spread wide, his right arm flopping all over her armrest so she has to have her elbows tucked in all night. Zoe could swear that there’s ever more and more of him as the hours crawl by, like in that story of the magic porridge pot that keeps on cooking more porridge until it covers the whole town. She can’t even get to the loo, because his body has blocked her access to the aisle and the only time she tried to climb over him she got stuck, straddled across his great thighs, which was so embarrassing, because he grunted and woke up.

And the person directly in front of her is this male giant, so that when he puts his seat back into ‘reclining’ position, it just keeps on coming until it’s practically touching her forehead. The whole thing is a bit like being on that school coach to France, only ten times worse because it’s taking about a million years longer, plus it’s at night when you’re longing to be asleep. Then, just when she’s nearly asleep – like about
5 a.m. – there’s this little kid behind her, who wakes up and starts kicking the back of her chair.

Zoe has been in what Caroline calls ‘a sulk’ ever since they parted from Gérard and got on that train for Paris. She’s been silent all through that ‘treat’ day in Paris, when her mum has come over all splashy and smarmy, and they’re staying in this ‘dear little hotel’ near this big kind of plant-nursery place and her mum’s like, ‘Paris-Paris-ooh-aah’ the whole time and she’s forever trying to buy Zoe new clothes and coaxing her to eat out in cafés and restaurants, but Zoe’s just shaken her head and stared at her feet. She’s refused to change out of her same jeans and jumper that she’s been wearing with Gérard’s T-shirt that says ‘Zizou’, along with the black Moschino jacket. The only concession she’s made is to allow her mother to buy her a pair of cheap black baseball boots. And there’s no way she’s in the mood to go stuffing her face in restaurants – or to eat anything at all, except for those baguettes with ham and cheese, when she’s too hungry not to. Plus she keeps on chewing this fruit-flavoured gum called Hollywood, that Gérard has introduced her to.

She’s really wanted to go on the Eurostar – and on a plane the way Matti and Maggs do every summer – but not now. Because of what’s happened. Because she and Gérard were having such a fun secret time together, day after day. They were going to be ballet dancers and travel the world together and even Gérard’s dad was quite sweet to her – not like that revolting mother and sister – except he was nearly always asleep, or drunk, or being ‘
triste
’. And now Caroline’s gone and told on them all to Gérard’s headmistress, just like she was their social worker or something. Zoe thinks her mother has been a traitor.

Anyway, everything has got messed up. Zoe is in quite a troubled state of mind because she knows that she’s never going to forgive her mother. Not as long as she lives. And thinking about all of these things just keeps on making her snivel, which is embarrassing, because it’s so pathetic and babyish. She knows that. And then the aeroplane lights click on and they all get this box of soggy-looking breakfast plonked in front of them, after which Zoe reaches for the sick bag, because they’ve started their descent.

Then they finally get off the plane in Johannesburg, where she’s hit by this wall of heat and blazing sunlight, which doesn’t help since she’s been feeling puke ever since the plane began its descent and they’ve got about two hours to wait for their connecting flight to Durban. But her mum, like from nowhere, has suddenly got these posh designer sunglasses she’s put on and then she tells Zoe to stand by the ‘carousel’ while she goes straight to the Ladies’ and changes into these summery clothes that she’s obviously had stashed in her hand luggage, because when she comes out she’s wearing this amazing little yellow sundress that comes to about twenty centimetres above her knees and she’s got these ropy yellow espadrille things on her feet. And she’s obviously been putting stuff on her face because her skin and her eyes look all gee-whiz.

Then Caroline is trying to get Zoe to change as well, but Zoe won’t even take off the Moschino jacket, though she’s feeling really sweaty and she’s probably smelly as well, because she hasn’t even cleaned her teeth, never mind all her little creases.

After that, because they’ve got all this time to kill, they go and sit in a juice bar, where Caroline is trying to phone Josh and getting nowhere, plus then the juice bar won’t take Caroline’s French or English money because she hasn’t yet changed it into rands. But just as she’s standing there looking a bit thrown, with the two long mango drinks on the counter, this guy butts in, who’s really tall and quite hunky-looking, except that he’s about mid-forties-ish and he’s one of those bald guys with a shaven head, and he goes, ‘Please. Allow me,’ and he pays for their drinks, which is really quite embarrassing.

Then he buys himself a cup of coffee and he looks round for somewhere to sit because the café is quite crowded and Caroline goes, ‘Won’t you join us?’ so he does.

And then they introduce themselves, and Caroline says, ‘This is my daughter Zoe.’

By this time he’s said his own name, which is Herman Somebody. It’s something that sounds a bit like ‘Murray’, only it’s not. But right away, because of him being so big and tall and muscly, a bit like someone’s made him out of one of those giant old-fashioned Meccano sets that middle-aged nerds collect, Zoe thinks, Herman Munster. She doesn’t really want to shake hands with him and she’s kind of sinking into the collar of the black Moschino jacket wanting to be invisible, especially because her mum is being so smiley and talky, and she’s even started explaining all about how she hasn’t been able to get hold of her husband because, even though she’s got the right SIM card, she can’t seem to get through, et cetera.

Then Mr H. Munster says to try his ‘cell’ and he hands her this fancy-looking, top-of-the-range thing that’s making Caroline’s phone look like it belongs to Mrs Flintstone. But even then she still can’t seem to get hold of Zoe’s dad, though at least she gets the phone to ring. It just rings and rings. Zoe has suddenly started getting worried about her dad. Like where
is
he?

It turns out that H. Munster is on the same flight as them to Durban, which is where he lives, so he says not to worry, because he’s arranged to have his car waiting for him at the airport so he can easily run them to the hotel where Caroline’s ‘other half’ is supposed to be staying and she can go check things out.