Mum told me that it wasn’t possible to touch the teacher’s breasts without her informed consent. I’m not too sure what that means, but I felt really let down and thought that Mum had bottled out. Just then, she said, ‘Don’t be disappointed; I don’t want you to think that I bottled out,’ and I said to myself, OMG, now she can read my mind – that’s the last straw (as Grandma would say). Mum gave me a bit of lecture explaining that this sort of thing wasn’t acceptable, that she understood schoolboy fantasies, but touching a person’s breasts without their consent was sexual abuse, and that what she had experienced was exactly what would have happened to me had I tried to touch Madame Ernest’s breasts myself: I’d have been met with downright refusal, and a good thing too. I imagined Madame Ernest slapping my face or sending me to see the head, and I told myself that my mother was probably right. Mum ended up laughing and saying no wonder I fantasized about that teacher, she really was very pretty, but she was certain that, very soon, I’d be able to touch the breasts of lots of girls with their informed consent. And I tried not to think anything because I suspected that Mum could read my mind.

Then Mum and Grandma told me they wandered along the school corridors in search of Madame Grospiron, the English teacher I hate.

Having identified her, they snuck into her classroom, Grandma turned on the camera and then the light, and Mum stripped off in front of the table of irregular verbs. They laughed themselves silly and then found themselves face to face with the head teacher as they came out of the classroom. Mum was still hysterical, she told me. ‘You should have seen his face . . .’ Then Mum played the sympathy card, saying she had to pick up her son Louis’s exercise book. ‘As you know, Monsieur Farès . . .’ Monsieur Farès melted and offered his sincere condolences. No one found that funny, and Mum told him I was alive, and that ruined the mood. Mum didn’t laugh after that. She told me I had to be strong, that she still believed I could do it, that she loved me more than anything in the world and she missed me so much.

I don’t recognize my mother. It’s her, of course, but she’s more open, cheerful and relaxed, and funnier. And she’s also more sincere and more affectionate.

She’s my mother, only better.

Excerpt from the Book of Wonders

I dare!!!

– Touch Madame Ernest’s boobs!

– Get into a taxi and yell, ‘Follow that car!’

– Strip off in Madame Grospiron’s class

12

17 Days

Charlotte Forever