Lowewood Academy

“Faye, viens ici!”

I jumped and looked up at Madame Couchette. She didn’t look angry or anything but I’ve been a bit wary of her ever since she whacked mine and Clauds’ hands for laughing at the word coq (I mean, come on! What was that all about??).

So, even though I was 99.9% sure that I hadn’t done anything wrong in the last hour or so, it was with a small amount of trepidation that I crept over to her desk. “Yes, Miss?”

She looked up at me coolly. “Ici on parle français, fillette.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, with considerable difficulty. “Oui, Madame?” I enquired, in my sweetest, frenchiest voice. 

“Je veux que tu prennes ce message à Dr Blake,” she said, holding out a folded note. I took it from her hand and she immediately turned her attention back to the rest of the class. “Tournez à la page 94,” she ordered in a ringing voice that instantly quelled the outbreak of whispering occasioned by her brief moment of inattention. “Et lisez l’article intitulé ‘Le Plafond de Verre’.”

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I guess my golden streak was never going to last forever!

It’s not like I set out to turn over a new leaf or anything to start with though. I’d just felt so subdued after the prefects’ council, and the dramatic end of things with Leon, that I’d gone to ground. As a consequence, trouble stopped finding me with its usual regularity. Then the Sports Ambassador role was bestowed on me and since then I’d been almost too busy to seek it back out again.

Still, two things had worked their magic to do a lot of healing in the interim: good old time, for one, along with the more tangible presence of David Maybin-Leith at my side. We were now pretty inseparable away from classes, and even though we’d completed most of our ambassadorial duties, we still found ourselves hanging out; chatting, training together, visiting Lowerton, that kind of thing. My mates took the piss constantly, making smooching sounds in our direction and asking when the wedding was! But it wasn’t like that, we hadn’t done anything that good friends wouldn’t do with each other, like hug and stuff. David was just incredibly sweet, great company and, for some unknown reason, seemed to like me for, well, me. And that was more than enough right now. That was golden. (more…)

French has never been my strongest point. I know all of the essential phrases of course: “pate de foie gras”, “Chateau Lafite, quatre-vingts-neuf”, “chambre”, “jeune fille” and so forth.

But since my preferred holiday destinations when I’m not at some religious retreat or other are more South-East Asia than Loire Valley, I have never particularly seen the point of polishing up my schoolboy ‘O’ Level knowledge (grade A, naturally) to any degree of fluency. Mme Couchette’s cheery ‘bonjour’s are met each day with a some-might-say-sullen “and a very good morning to you, my dear lady”.

So you can imagine my state of mind when the Headmaster’s trusty secretary called me in something of a state of panic this afternoon, desperate for my assistance. Young Miss Cul-Fouettee, our delightful assistante, had seemingly been called (or, rather, dragged) away to deal with a pressing family matter. (I later discovered that her father had arrived at the school gate in a state of some agitation, his battered old Citroen 2CV parked untidily on the pavement, demanding that Nicole be brought to him immediately “to face the consequences of her actions”).

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