Loving Amélie Read Online Free Page B

stainless steel of Montpelier; and leaving Chris behind to pursue
an early career and young adulthood that would be neither as glorious nor
inglorious as his older brother’s.

 
 
    Despite having an open
invitation to visit Peter in his student accommodation, Chris never quite made the
trip. He had a weekend job in the local steakhouse and a post-office savings
account; but running his car swallowed up most of his pay and he never seemed
to have enough spare funds for a journey to France. He was also dating a girl
from college called Glynis, who wore black eyeliner and Doc Marten boots: she
would sit and listen to music with him all evening but never wanted him to
touch her. They eventually “stopped bothering”; and Chris subsequently saw her
with a string of butch girl friends, looking much happier. Peter found this
very amusing.
    Chris received postcards from
his brother, on a regular basis, that he attempted to write in French. He was
learning new techniques and terms – such as estouffade, fougasse, réligieuse –
and these began to punctuate his writing. Chris often sat reading them on his
bed, bored and broke, turning them over to take in the picturesque foreign
scenes. Whilst he appreciated the levity of Peter’s filthy comments about
stuffing and breast meat, he also found himself perceiving the unwritten messages:
of his brother’s newfound pleasure and purpose in life.
    After a year or so, Peter
returned to the West Midlands with his girlfriend, Linda. They had met at the
cookery school. Chris and Roy and Jean took to her instantly: she was bright
and friendly, with wilful blonde wavy hair that was usually held off her face
with a colourful hair band or scarf; and a compact, muscular physique that took
her from preparing a roast in the kitchen with their mum to helping Chris to
change a tyre with impressive ease.
    Peter talked incessantly of his
time in France around the family dinner table, and Linda was his amiable
co-narrator: they seemed to have met almost as soon as Peter had arrived in
Montpelier and had been inseparable ever since. He was relegated to the sofa
while Linda was staying; although, inevitably, after the three of them had been
out at the local pub, Chris was aware of the sitting room door creaking open
and his brother tiptoeing up the stairs and into her bed:
    “ Peter! Your parents will hear us!” she
hissed.
    Alongside Peter’s persuasive
whisper of denial, Chris heard both his parents snoring loudly in a kind of
duet of mercy, and stuck his own head under his pillow.

 
    He gladly accepted Linda’s
offer to spend a week of the summer holidays with Peter at her parents’ house
in Surrey.
    “There’s loads of space, we’ll
hardly notice you. We hope!” she had quipped.
    There was little else to tempt
Peter at home.
    Linda and her two sisters had
had the benefit of a benevolent and privileged upbringing, in a large,
comfortably shambolic house in Surrey. Her parents were well-educated and
fairly laid-back individuals – her father a stockbroker and her mother a
teacher. It was a different world altogether from working-class Dudley.
    It seemed that all the girls
had the financial freedom to follow any path of their choosing. Although Linda
- the eldest - was very active and industrious by nature, it struck Chris that
she had ended up in Montpelier because her father had paid her way. He felt weirdly
proud of Peter, for getting there under his own steam, even if it had been the
steam generated by wild behaviour!
    The next sister, Vanessa, was
more aloof (“probably a lesbian: you might like her” Peter had said,
provocatively) and spent most of the time Chris was visiting out riding her
horse or occupying herself out of the others’ way. The youngest, Nadine, was
more in Linda’s image: jolly and talkative; and played the cello. She was
studying music and hoped one day to be a professional musician. Although she
was a year younger than Chris, it was a natural development