Sisters Behaving Badly by Maddie Please

Author:Maddie Please [Please, Maddie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

16

I loitered at the sink, doing the washing-up and scrubbing at the wooden draining board. Who knew what lurked in its cracked surface? Plague or botulism, perhaps. I should ask about replacing it.

Just after eight thirty, Benoît and Claud turned up in their van and stood watching the digger, smoking and muttering. Ten minutes later, the triumphant braying from Hector that had announced Bertrand’s arrival stopped, and shortly afterwards I could hear Bertrand laughing.

By then my heart was thumping with anticipation and I was cleaning the hob, after first making the mistake of spraying some kitchen cleaner onto a lit burner. The resultant steam was akin to tear gas and I had to go back out into the hall to have a choking fit.

After the air had cleared, I composed my face into a welcoming expression and opened the kitchen door.

‘Oh. Has Léo gone?’ I said airily, looking around.

Sylveste flicked his cigarette butt into the rubble bucket.

‘No, he has gone to Morlaix. A pick-up. Il cherche des carreaux.’ He pointed to a box by the door. ‘He also left you this – for the garden?’

Cue disappointment. Pick-up of what? I didn’t like to ask in case it was something embarrassing. Haemorrhoid cream or new underpants.

‘Oh, I see. Well, never mind. I must get on. How is your leg, by the way?’

With a mournful face, Sylveste pulled up his trouser leg and showed me the same bandage that I had put on last Friday. It didn’t look quite so impressive. In fact, it looked as though he might have used it to clean his car over the weekend.

‘Well, that’s no good, Sylveste,’ I said. ‘It’s filthy; you should have changed the dressing!’

He turned the corners of his mouth down like a sulky child. ‘Jeanette was going to get some plasters, but she forgot. And she doesn’t like the injury. The blood. Une phobie du sang.’

He looked up at me with tragic puppy eyes.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Well, you could have got some. Men are allowed into shops to buy things too, you know. Come into the kitchen,’ I said, ‘and we’ll look at it.’

With all the enthusiasm of a dog going to the vet, he followed me.

‘Should I take…’ Sylveste motioned towards his belt.

Take his trousers off?

‘No, absolutely not!’ I said quickly. ‘Just roll the trouser leg up.’

We spent the next half an hour removing the dressing, which of course had stuck to the graze. I didn’t know the French equivalent to ‘big wuss’, but that was what Sylveste was. There was a lot of wincing and protest from him before we eventually got it off. Underneath there was an unremarkable and scabby wound. I gave it a wash with some disinfectant, provoking another bout of whimpering and flinching from Sylveste, and ‘Don’t be such a baby’ from me, which made the other three, who were clustered around the kitchen door snort with laughter.

‘You need a new dressing,’ I said, ‘because it’s healing okay but it needs some protection from all the dirt and mud.

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