A French Girl In New York Read online

  A French Girl In New York

  Anna Adams

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright notice

  © 2012 Anna Adams, all rights reserved, worldwide. No part of this book may be reproduced, emailed, uploaded to or downloaded from a file-sharing site, or copied without author permission. If you did not pay for this eBook or receive it via a free, author-authorized promotion directly through Smashwords, you are in violation of this copyright.

  Anna Adams thanks you deeply for your understanding and support.

  Dedication page

  To the MAFA

  Table of contents

  A French Girl In New York

  Anna Adams

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright notice

  Dedication page

  Table of contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Prologue

  June 2012

  “Okay, I’m done. Now hurry!” the makeup artist cried out. “You’re up in two minutes. Don’t you dare mess up your makeup again!”

  Maude ran out, keeping her hands away from her recently rouged cheeks, and Matt hurried behind her.

  She stood right behind the curtain and listened to the host’s cheerful voice, announcing her.

  “Now ladies and gentlemen, we have a new artist with us tonight. She’s spent her last six months in New York working on her first album. Her first single has been released and is a huge hit . . .”

  “Maude,” Matt whispered, tugging her sleeve.

  “Yes?” She looked back at him, smiling.

  “I just wanted to tell you . . . to let you know that you can always count on me.”

  “I know, Matt,” Maude smiled gratefully.

  “Her voice will take your breath away, her music is amazing . . . ”

  “No, I’m serious. Our friendship has had its ups and downs, but I don’t want it to be that way anymore.”

  Maude nodded.

  “I don’t care if you’re with Thomas Bradfield. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  Maude paused, puzzled. “What? Thomas Bradfield—”

  “Give a round of applause for Maude Laurent!” the host cried.

  “That’s your cue! Go!” Matt urged.

  Maude reluctantly turned away from Matt and hurried on stage.

  The blaring lights blinded her as she entered the stage and faced the cheering crowd. She had to restrain her impulse to shield her eyes and continued steadily towards the dark Steinway.

  She had played on it earlier but then, she hadn’t felt nervous. Her hands hadn’t been trembling, and her voice hadn’t been shaky.

  Maude sat on the piano stool and looked towards the crowd.

  They were all there.

  James and Victoria were holding hands and beaming like proud parents. Cynthia, dignified as always, was trying to keep Ben from falling off his seat while he was waving madly at Maude. Jazmine, hands clasped, was sending all the positive energy she could muster from her seat.

  Maude turned to the piano and sang her first song. She had played it many times before but this time was different. She had grown. Maude wasn’t the same person she’d been six months ago, and her performance wasn’t that of a mere teenager—it was that of a young woman who had looked at life in the eye and refused to bend her spine.

  She finished her first song and prepared herself for the second.

  She had planned to sing ‘Sunrise’ from her debut album, but now she knew she couldn’t play that song, not after all she’d just been through. Maude dedicated her second song, John Legend’s ‘Coming Home,’ to her parents.

  She took a deep breath and started singing:

  A father waits upon a son

  A mother prays for his return

  I just called to see

  If you still have a place for me

  We know that life took us apart

  But you’re still within my heart

  I go to sleep and feel your spirit next to me.

  As she played, she released the pain she had been holding back for years. Her parents were dead. They were gone forever, but she was still alive. Though her pain was severe, it also gave her strength. Strength to sing in a clear voice, strength to overcome her fears, strength to master her initially shaky fingers, and strength to let her notes reverberate through the audience.

  It may be long to get me there

  It feels like I’ve been everywhere

  But someday I’ll be coming home

  Round and round the world will spin

  Oh, the circle never ends

  So you know that I’ll be coming home.

  Her voice rang out as clear as water from a fountain and wavered with deep emotion as the song washed away her doubt, drowned her insecurities, and melted her pain into a beautiful, calm river of hope.

  Maude ended her song and carefully folded her hands on her knees.

  “I did it,” she muttered softly to herself.

  The crowd broke into thunderous applause. She could hear whistling and thumping. As she walked towards the host, she squinted her eyes to avoid the blaring lights and saw the crowd on its feet, cheering and calling her name.

  She smiled and greeted the host, a tall man with a prominent nose and a large, kind smile.

  “Wow, wow, wow,” he exclaimed. This host was known for his exuberance. But then, TV hosts are rarely known for being discreet. “That was incredible, Maude!”

  Maude laughed, relieved to be breathing at a normal pace again.

  “Just tell me, Maude,” he started in a conversational tone. “How does a sixteen-year-old teenager, raised in the north of France, end up spending six months in New York recording her debut album with the world’s hottest pop star?”

  “That, my friend, is a very interesting question,” she answered, her dark brown eyes twinkling mischievously.

  Chapter 1

  October 2011

  Maude Laurent, a tall, slender, sixteen-year-old girl with soft brown skin, was quickly walking in Carvin’s deserted streets in the rain. Her long eyelashes drooped to avoid the droplets from entering her wide brown eyes. Her dark natural hair, usually held back in a bun, had frizzled with the rain and rebellious locks of hair covered her forehead under her soaked hood. She could barely see where she was going, but walked steadily nonetheless, her step firm and graceful at the same time although she carried two heavy grocery bags. Her foster mother, Mrs. Ruchet, had sent her on an errand in the rain to the local grocery store on an evening when the town was desolate, not one inhabitant leaving their cozy chimney, not one car venturing out of its garage, not one stray cat rambling in the street.

  But there she was, Maude thought angrily, her thin raincoat drenched, her old worn-out gaping boots deep in mud.

  Ever since she could remember, Mrs. Ruchet had made her life a living hell. Maude woke up early each morning, cooked and cleaned for the family, took the eight-year-old twins to school, and went to school herself where she fought not to sleep through her classes. She would then pick up Jean and Jacques from school, try unsuccessfully to make them do their homework, prepare dinner under Mrs. Ruchet’s stern glare, bathe the boys, do the dishes, take care of meeting Mrs. Ruchet’s every demand, and then go to bed, wake up, and start all over again the next day. Maude was tired. Her only motivation in life, her reason for w
aking up every morning was the dream she secretly harbored.

  She was determined to leave Carvin after high school and go to Paris to become a professional classical musician at the Conservatoire de Paris, the most prestigious classical music school in France. There, she’d do the two things she loved the most: sing and play the piano. Maude smiled thinking of the secret dream she had kept hidden all these years from her foster parents.

  A few years ago, the town library had followed a recent trend and arranged a small music room. A piano had been purchased and old CDs and vinyl of famous opera performances were kept in that room. No one in Carvin had a passion for music, and the room remained abandoned. That is, until Maude stumbled across that very room one Saturday afternoon. That is when, at eleven years old, Maude began to teach herself to play the piano and trained her voice on the most famous opera arias. Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Bizet, she knew them all by heart. She would quietly sneak out of the Ruchets’ house, lock herself up in the library’s left wing where no one else ever went, train her voice and practice her scales. Once, when she was thirteen, while looking for an old pair of gloves for Mrs. Ruchet in the basement, she stumbled across old scores owned by Mr. Ruchet who, like every good, well-off French boy had learned to play the piano. Time had yellowed the pages, but they could still be used.

  That is how Maude learned to play elaborate classical pieces such as Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, and Chopin. Every Saturday, Maude grew more and more determined to leave the Ruchets’ household at eighteen and start her classical music career at the Conservatoire de Paris. She worked hard, and before going to sleep, she thought of and composed new melodies, variations of songs she knew or songs she herself created and brought to life the following Saturday afternoon in that small library room.

  How she had been delighted, that same morning, when Ms. Clement, her French literature teacher had announced a day trip to Paris in November! Mrs. Ruchet never gave her permission to roam on her own in the town or to spend time with friends. Nevertheless, Maude was determined to be among the students, participating in that trip. It’s not even as if she had any friends to roam around town with, thought Maude wistfully, not wanting to admit to herself that she still longed for friendship. Deep down she felt it would be a nice change to have people to talk to apart from the Ruchet twins whom she had to look after and who considered her as nothing more than an annoying nanny. She had craved for friendship and a family for a long time. She had even foolishly thought kindness, docility, and serviceability would win Mrs. Ruchet over.

  Maude laughed dryly at her own foolishness. She had now wholly given up on the idea of making any friends with her classmates, who continuously mocked her worn-out clothes. She had also abandoned the hope she had harbored to one day become close to Mrs. Ruchet, who never considered her as anything other than a housekeeper, a baby-sitter for her twins, and of course, her personal maid. After having understood that, Maude had become determined to follow her dreams and leave Carvin for good in two years. She would never have to obey Mrs. Ruchet’s orders again, Maude thought, happily picturing herself independent and free, roaming wide Parisian streets.

  Mrs. Ruchet was a big, imposing woman with short, curly, blonde hair tangled wildly around her oval face. She spent most of her days sitting on her couch, her two huge legs propped on a dark green cushion in front of her, watching soap operas on television, all the while hating the actresses for being so thin. Her dark eyes accompanied her constant pout, which occasionally turned into a smirk when Maude didn’t plush her cushion like she was supposed to. Her foster mother had been especially difficult these last two days as she had started an umpteenth new diet. Maude couldn’t help but smile, remembering watching Mrs. Ruchet uncommonly munch on nothing but red vegetables and fruits for the last few days. She swallowed nothing but tomatoes, radishes, capsicum, strawberries, cherries, and was forced to drink tomato juice.

  This proved to be quite difficult. Mrs. Ruchet, for many years now, had been addicted to one drink. Ever since she had stopped smoking ten years ago, she had transferred all her affections towards one light brown liquid she drank day in, day out, rain or shine.

  Mrs. Ruchet was addicted to Lipton Peach Iced Tea.

  There was an orange basin on the table next to her couch that Maude made sure was never empty. The orange basin was full of ice, waiting for Lipton Iced Tea and the big red straw to drink it. Nobody in Carvin understood where this infatuation came from, and they were all disgusted by it. But nobody ever said anything because she was the wife of one of the most influential men in the town. So people just watched as she drank gallons of iced tea that Maude poured her in the gigantic orange basin. She could spend days in a row lying on that sofa, gorging on ice tea, and jamming trays of assorted cold cuts in her mouth to accompany her beverage. Mrs. Ruchet never let her twins eat sweets but she, on the other hand, before the diet, could never get enough of Snickers and M&M’s, which she loudly crushed under her teeth while ordering Maude around.

  On the present evening, she had sent Maude into the rain to go buy her bottles of ice tea and tomato juice. Needless to say, she was slowly slipping back into her former diet, and Maude was paying the price for it.

  While continuing to move forward, Maude also seemed to slower her pace as she got nearer to her destination, a house on 29 rue du Général de Gaulle. It was a medium-sized, red-bricked, two-storey house. The young girl now stood in front of the door, her eyes fixed on the number 29 as if it would answer her question, the decision she had to make to either stay on the doorsteps, shivering in her drenched, thin raincoat, or dare to enter the seemingly calm, cozy home. Her glance continued towards the window, over which the white linen curtains had been drawn. She could see them in the large living room near the fire. Big and small, the entire Ruchet family was sitting motionless near the fire. The mother, the father, and the two young sons. Then there was her. The intruder. She hadn’t entered yet. Maybe she could even stay there until she caught cold and absolutely had to go in.

  At that moment, lightning struck, and the bellowing sound shook her to the core. She hurried inside 29, rue du Général de Gaulle.

  “Finally you’re back,” yelled Mrs. Ruchet from the living room once she heard the front door slam. “What took you so long? I hope you brought everything I asked for! Or else you’re going back!”

  Still in her wet coat, Maude dragged the two bags to the living room and presented the bottles of tomato juice. Mrs. Ruchet instantly noticed that there was no Lipton Iced Tea.

  “Where are the Lipton bottles?” she asked in a menacing tone.

  “There weren’t any left at the store,” replied Maude. Probably because Mrs. Ruchet had wiped the store out already, Maude thought sourly.

  The two young boys were starting to get agitated, fully enjoying the scene unfolding before them.

  “You’re a liar. You just hurried in order to come back home and escape the rain.”

  Mrs. Ruchet was a coward. Although she repeatedly mistreated Maude, she was also afraid of her and could hardly stand what appeared to her as a silent, defiant, proud glare. She couldn’t understand how the girl she had crushed since she was able to walk and talk could continue to look at her with a tearless, defiant stare. If Maude had ever once cried in front of her, Mrs. Ruchet thought, she might have relented and acted kindly towards her. Maude had never cried or pleaded. Therefore, this girl was a rebellious and ungrateful orphan without a shred of respect for the family that had reluctantly taken her in from her youngest age.

  And there she was again, staring at her.

  Mrs. Ruchet emptied the bottle of tomato juice, drank greedily from the basin, and looked again at Maude.

  “When will they refill their stock?” asked Mrs. Ruchet, still sipping her drink.

  “Tomorrow,” answered Maude.

  Mrs. Ruchet, smiled, her canine teeth seeped in tomato juice. Maude averted her eyes to hide her disgust. Mrs. Ruchet, not knowing her teeth were red, thought Maude was sh
owing a sign of bashful obedience and felt satisfied.

  “Go to your room, you’re ruining the carpet,” she ordered with a smirk.

  Relieved, Maude left the room, the two boys’ laughter echoing in her ears. Maude headed towards the basement in which she had been living since her earliest memories.

  Although there was no light in the basement, she had learned to find her way in what was her room, cluttered with useless things. Mrs. Ruchet never threw away a single object but stored everything in the basement along with Maude, the least important object of the household.

  When Maude was six, she had shared her space with a broken television and a malfunctioning radio. Now, ten years later, several more broken televisions and radios had found their way to the basement along with bicycles, sky-high stacks of clothes and magazines, children’s costumes of Spiderman and Superman, toys, and other unidentified objects. In the left corner of the basement was the thin mattress on which she slept at night covered in a sheet that never kept her warm during the rough, cold wintery nights that only people in the north of France knew. Under her dust-filled pillow, she hid the flashlight she occasionally used, to scare the rats away when she could get a hold of a battery. However, dreary though the basement was, those four walls represented the only place in the house where Maude found a semblance of solace.

  Maude looked out the only window of the basement towards the dark sky and stared dreamily at the stars. Though her parents had been dead for sixteen years, she knew they were somehow watching over her. She wanted to make them proud although the Ruchets had never even mentioned their names to her. The only information she’d received was an involuntary slip at a parent teacher conference in sixth grade. Her English teacher had expressed her concern to the Ruchets about their foster child’s poor grades in English. Mrs. Ruchet had snorted, “I guess she doesn’t take after her father who was perfectly fluent in English!”