Free Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido Page B

the bed, on top of all these Tintin books in French, and she opens a drawer for her clothes, but inside it’s full of boys’ boxer shorts and socks and bathers, and there’s even one of those embarrassing things that makes you really glad to be a girl. It’s a thing that’s meant to hold a groin guard in place – Maggs once explained it to her when they went to a sports shop to get gym shirts for PE. It’s a kind of white-pouch thing, with dangly straps that are supposed to go up a boy’s bum crack and they’re fixed to an elastic waistband.
    There’s no way she can mingle her clothes with boys’ boxer shorts and especially not with that groin-guard thing in there, so she decides to leave all her clothes in the hat box, except for her pyjamas, which she puts under the pillow. But – oh gross! – someone else’s head has been on the pillows. No one has even bothered to change the pillowcases, so she’ll just have to spread a bath towel over them and first thing tomorrow she’ll have to ask Mattie and Maggs about buying some sheets and stuff. That’s if she’s got enough money. And even then she doesn’t know how she’s going to stop Maman from noticing. Meanwhile she’s just going to have to sleep on top of the bedspread.
    Then, to help block out the awfulness of everything, she sits on the bed and reads her Lola book until Maman yells up for her to come downstairs and eat.
    But when Zoe opens the door to come out, she goes mental.
    ‘ Zut! Pas là! Espèce d’imbécile !’ she says, and she charges up the stairs and jabs her finger towards the next door along. ‘ Là !’ she says, and she flings it open.
    It gives on to a sort of boxroom with a camp bed and no reading lamp, but at least it’s got clean pillowcases and a clean duvet cover.
    ‘ Mets tes choses là-dedans !’ she says, so Zoe scrambles to move her hat box and her backpack – and she remembers just in time to collect her pyjamas.
    It’s only the three of them for supper – still no sign of the Tall Merry Fellow – but at least, to Zoe’s relief, it isn’t home-made ‘soups and terrines’, or even one of those ‘family dishes’ with animal innards in them that look like bits of chopped-up worms. It’s just potatoes au gratin and a bit of salad and then some of that not very nice supermarket ice cream that tastes like baking margarine with strands of red jammy stuff running through it.
    ‘ Bon appétit ,’ Maman says, with a face like a shrunken head.
    Then, once Zoe’s in bed, she remembers she’s left her Lola book along with Ballet Class on top of the Tintin pile next door. She’s too scared to go and retrieve them in case the floorboards creak – and anyway there’s no lamp to read by. Plus she’s feeling too exhausted and stressed.
     
    And next morning they drive, Maman, she and Véronique – stop-start, stop-start – through all the busy traffic and the petrol fumes and the ciggy smoke, until Zoe is sick into the third of the freezer-bag collection. This time the sick is a mix of undigested Frosties and full-cream milk.
    ‘ Merde ! Merde !’ Maman says once again. ‘ L’imbécile !’ and Véronique does one of her smirky looks all over again, but this time the car doesn’t pull to a stop, so that when she gets to the tarmac playground, Zoe is still clutching the freezer-bag.
    School isn’t actually all that bad because Maggs and Mattie’s bubbly blonde twins are quite good fun and they right away pull up an extra chair for Zoe at their work table. Then they sportingly shout, ‘No room! No room!’ when Sadie tries to squeeze in, because their dad has got them an abridged CD of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , in English, to prepare them for their hosting duties, so they know ‘The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’ off by heart.
    It’s only at home time, just when the five of them have hatched this plan to go out together, that Véronique barges in and pulls Zoe off and marches her to a bus stop. Then