There was a long table covered in bottles and paper cups. There was wine of various sorts, lemonade in big bottles, Orangina in little bottles as well as something called Pschitt! and bottles of beer.
Alexandra arrived just as Félicité was being handed something by the young man who’d let them in.
‘It’s just wine and lemonade,’ Félicité said. ‘Don’t worry! I won’t get drunk.’
Alexandra accepted a cup of the same thing and realised you could only taste the lemonade, which meant you could very easily get drunk quite quickly.
‘Only have two,’ Alexandra said to Félicité. Henri was having a beer, which she thought was preferable.
‘Don’t fuss!’ said Félicité, gulping down her drink and holding out her paper cup for a refill.
Never had Alexandra felt so unqualified to do her job. How was she expected to keep her charges safe? She should never have said they could go to this party.
Just then a boy tapped Félicité on the shoulder. Félicité put down her cup and followed the boy on to the dance floor. Alexandra breathed more easily. She was delighted that Félicité had been asked to dance and was being accepted into the party. If she was dancing she wasn’t drinking or doing anything else she shouldn’t be doing.
Henri was talking to a group of boys and seemed to be on his first beer. As neither of her charges had had too much to drink, she could relax a little. She’d said they’d leave the party at eleven. She only had to keep them safe for another three hours.
Before she could think further, someone pulled her on to the dance floor.
As she could see Félicité dancing, she didn’t object to this boy expecting her to go along with his wishes. She copied him and did the twist. While the dancing was fast, it felt safe. It was good to dance, she realised, and when another boy wanted her to jive, she remembered the steps from another party, back in England.
Alexandra soon found she was quite popular. No one spotted her as being older. In fact, the age range of the guests was quite wide. She was by no means the oldest, and nor were Henri and Félicité the youngest. Alexandra found this reassuring. It felt like a family party. There could be no objection to that.
However, a bit later, while Alexandra was drinking a bottle of Orangina to quench her thirst, the lights went down. It was apparently time for ‘le slow’. Quite a few young men wanted to get Alexandra on to the floor for this one and she had to be quite sharp in her refusals. But then she thought that maybe she should have danced because she’d have been able to spot Félicité better. When the music changed and it was still slow, and some other young man tried his luck with Alexandra, she accepted. She allowed him to put his hand on the back of her neck but wouldn’t let him dance cheek to cheek. She was here to look for her charges.
She saw Henri quite quickly. He was still chatting with other boys his age and, when the music ended, Alexandra got rid of her rather affronted dance partner and went to speak to him.
‘Where’s Félicité?’ she asked in English.
He shrugged and shook his head. ‘Dunno.’
‘I really need to know where she is!’
‘Are you looking for Henri’s sister?’ asked a friend, obviously proficient in English. ‘She went outside.’
‘Outside? Really?’ Alexandra went to look for her.
The outside area was full of couples taking advantage of the darkness, which was relieved only by one light fixed quite low to the side of the building. It took Alexandra several minutes to find Félicité.
She was being thoroughly kissed. Alexandra’s first instinct to grab hold of the boy doing it had to be suppressed because Félicité was kissing him back with enthusiasm. She wasn’t being forced to do anything she didn’t want to do. Alexandra turned away. What should she do? Watch from afar like some weird chaperone?
She moved to where the light was better so she could check the time. It was only ten o’clock. She couldn’t drag her charges home yet. She’d promised that they could stay until eleven.
Alexandra went back to the dancing. ‘Le slow’ was being enthusiastically indulged in. She felt a bit surprised there were no parents visible. She’d always got the impression that French children were more closely chaperoned than English teenagers, but she remembered that Henri’s friend went to the progressive school that Antoine’s children might well go to and realised that his parents might have given their children more liberty. Although she’d never thought this before, now she felt a couple of stern parents turning on the lights and turning off the music would be a jolly good thing.
The air was blue with cigarette smoke – something else she now disapproved of. Alexandra had never smoked after she’d nearly passed out when she’d tried it when she was at boarding school. All the partygoers’ clothes would have to be washed before they could even be put in the wardrobes, they would be so impregnated with the smell.
She had just spotted Henri, who was in the control of a very attractive blonde girl who knew exactly what to do with a boy who had probably never been kissed, when a man came up to her.
He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket similar to the one Alexandra had left in the car. He had slicked-back hair and a medallion round his neck. His almost tangible air of entitlement was possibly caused by the admiring looks that the other young people gave him as he passed.
‘’Ello,’ he said, in English. ‘Why are you all alone? Has your boyfriend abandoned you? Let me take his place.’
He pulled her on to the dance floor and Alexandra wondered if anyone ever asked anyone to dance in the old-fashioned way, or if women were always pushed and shoved about as if they were cattle. But as she had to pass the time somehow, she went along with it. She kept her head turned, so most of what this man had access to was her ear. She was aware the other girls were looking at her with envy.
The man got fed up with not getting what he wanted from a slow dance. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and led her outside. Alexandra went because she wanted to check on Félicité, having decided she would try to make her leave the party early. The combination of boredom and anxiety she was currently enduring was deathly. Also the attentions of the probably self-appointed ‘leader of the pack’ might yet become seriously annoying.
She allowed him one kiss, and she put her arms round his neck so she could look at her watch. Carefully, she transferred it to the other wrist, so it caught the light and she could see it better. Time was going so slowly.
