Page 64 of When We Were Friends
Morgan ate the Victoria sandwich whilst Emily and Tiff avoided eye contact. The three of them offered to help wash up once everyone had gone. Morgan kept looking at the clock. Paige really had kept away. Emily went into the dining room to crouch down and study Mlle Vachon’s fish, Monet and Matisse. Morgan dried the last plate just as a rapping on the front door resonated through the house. Mlle Vachon disappeared and came back, minutes later, holding a gift bag. Morgan’s stomach flipped.
‘Are you sure I’m not too late?’ asked Paige as she came into view.
Mlle Vachon looked at the four of them. ‘It’s never too late for cake.’
36
MORGAN
‘Thanks for a lovely birthday,mon cher,’ said Mlle Vachon to George as she fetched his coat. ‘See you for lunch tomorrow? We can eat leftovers, then go for a walk if the weather holds.’
George waved at Morgan and her friends. He winked at Mlle Vachon and kissed her on the cheeks. She saw him into the hallway and they spoke in low voices for a few minutes. The front door closed and Mlle Vachon reappeared.
‘Bon… let’s sit at the table.’
‘George is lovely,’ said Paige, fiddling with her watch strap. ‘How did you meet him? How long have you been seeing each other? His accent isn’t Mancunian; where does he come from?’
Mlle Vachon indicated for them to sit opposite each other, two either side, her at the end.
Her lips twitched into a smile. ‘My pupils haven’t changed much. I still see through distractor technique, young Paige. You and your classmates would try all sorts on me back in the day if a test was due. Like the time… yes, in your Year Eleven, out of the blue you told me about a law that the French National Assembly had just voted to pass, banning religious clothing and items from schools – you’d overheard your parents talking. I remember because a classroom discussion ensued. I indulged you because it was a controversial, important subject. Still is.’ She ran a hand over the tablecloth, free from crumbs now. ‘On the surface, a lot has changed since 2004, on a public, global and personal level. I’ve got arthritis, often I’m still in bed when school bell time comes around, I have trouble finding the right words in French, let alone English…’ She formed a fist. ‘But the more fundamental things are the same, such as religious discord, discrimination, such as the basics of our personalities. In here…’ She thumped her chest. ‘I’m still the person I was back then.’ She gazed at the four faces. ‘I couldn’t help you, that night of the prom; you were full of hormones, teenage angst, anger, humiliation, disbelief, hurt. But you are grown women now. Fine ones, I can see, at that.’
Morgan, Paige, Emily and Tiff exchanged sheepish glances.
‘I know about Paige marrying Hu… Felix, but Morgan mentioned there were other secrets too.’
Silence tightened the air between them. Morgan’s heart pounded in her ears; it was as if she were back at school and waiting outside the head’s office. Very occasionally, she caused mischief, tipping Jasmine’s rucksack upside down or bunking off a lesson to smoke with Paige in the toilets.
‘We all hid things from each other,’ said Morgan. ‘Not only was I the only one to… get intimate with Felix; I actuallydidcare how boys saw me and feared I was going to end up with no one.’
‘I never told the girls that people looked at my clothes and belongings and made certain judgements, and I hated it,’ said Paige.
‘The others had no idea I was actually unhappy with my appearance, or the looks and comments from others,’ said Tiff.
‘Each of us wore a mask,’ said Emily. ‘Mine was to hide stuff about my mum.’
‘Tell me,pucette,’ said Mlle Vachon softly.
Emily explained the truth about her mother’s illness and ‘death’. ‘When Mum realised I’d found her out, she called me a nosey little bitch, too clever for my own good. She warned me men didn’t like clever women and that I’d end up on my own if I wasn’t careful.’
Morgan had heard French swearwords before, but never from Mlle Vachon.
Mlle Vachon took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Put them back on. ‘Go on,chérie.’
‘Mum had always laughed at my modest dress sense, and put my big, comfy knickers on her head once, threatening to show the neighbours. She took me shopping, bought me more fashionable stuff, but then went mad when I wouldn’t wear the short skirts. Mum sneered and said a lorry driver wouldn’t have been interested in her if she’d been an intellectual.’ Emily looked out at the garden. ‘Thing is, Dad is really intelligent. There’s not much he doesn’t know about English wildlife…’
Emily spoke as if she found it hard to stop, and Morgan understood. Mlle Vachon always did have a knack of extracting the truth.
‘When I told my younger brother Mum had left, he blamed me at first, before he understood the whole truth,’ Emily continued. ‘He said I hadn’t looked after her well enough. She’d actually told him I was Dad’s favourite. In some weird way, I reckon she was jealous of me.’
‘Oh Emily,’ said Mlle Vachon. ‘I wish I’d known.’ She paused. ‘Being treated by your mum like that must have been impossible to talk about, almost as if you’d have been making it up.’
Vigorously, Emily nodded her head. ‘Out loud, it sounded so unbelievable… as if I was just being dramatic, or looking for attention, or even worse…’ She swallowed. ‘As if there must be something deeply wrong with me if my mother behaved like that.’
Morgan caught Mlle Vachon’s eye as she gave her, Paige and Tiff pointed looks. She began to understand why Emily had found it so hard to open up.
‘I did manage to tell Felix some of this stuff though, because of the common ground between us, his dad treating him as badly. He was… so understanding. The colour drained out of his face. He said my mum and his dad sounded like a perfect match. When he was younger, his father would tease him for crying, tell him he needed to toughen up. He gave me a really long hug and said I could talk about it to him any time.’ Emily caught Paige’s eye. ‘I never told him about Mum not really dying, but he knew all the bad stuff she did to me and didn’t mention any of that at the prom, even though he was clearly doing everything he could to hurt us that evening. At first, I thought it was because he’d been speaking the truth about his dad and he was worried I’d tell everyone. But as I matured, as I looked back, I decided perhaps he did have a shred of decency in him.’
‘Have you ever worked out what was at the root of your mum’s behaviour?’ asked Morgan.
