"Excusez-Moi?"

'The Smokers' by Adriaen Brouwer c.1636

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TW: This piece uses strong profanity and contains adult themes. Please read sensibly.

Every year at school we had the option to go on the French Exchange. For someone like me — an introvert — it was the ultimate conundrum. A part of me was excited at the chance to travel (away from home), but my neurodivergent brain was already spiralling with the endless stream of social expectations and anxieties I’d have to navigate.

I was torn about whether to go, and my overthinking prickled at the edges of my skin and kept me awake at night, from the moment my mother decided that 'we' should sign the permission slip.

To soothe this inner turmoil, I selected “own room” on the application form, thinking it was my safety net. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be absolute best friends for life — of course I did. I had already spent hours fantasising about my new best friend and all the adventures we would have together.

By the end of the week, I would be part of the family.

We’d have a tearful, painful separation but vow to be friends forever.

I’d move to France asap.

We’d get an apartment.

Our boyfriends would be brothers — or at least best friends, like us.

And finally — finally — I would have proof that I was lovable.

Wanted.

(Gives Single White Female vibes, I know. But ask yourself what came first — the film or the crazy lady?)

However...

I needed my own space.

I needed to love on my terms.

I most definitely needed my own room.

But when I arrived at Juliette’s house, I was hit with the ultimate twist of fate.

Not only did we have to share a room —we had to share a bed.

I literally shuddered inside at being that close to a stranger. And wanted to be sick at the thought of having to perform as 'normal' around the clock.

In my head, I was panicking — trying desperately to suppress the anxiety that now felt like a wild thing clawing inside me.

Mask.

Mask.

Mask.

So I smiled and pretended everything was fine.

Inside, I was imploding.

The universe, however, as I've discovered it always does, had its own plans.

Juliette was outgoing, friendly, kind — and a rule-breaker. But her rebellious streak was tempered with a gentle assurity and a wit that made her magnetic and utterly lovable. We spent two weeks together and, probably due to the enforced amount of quality time we spent together, we did indeed become the best of friends. And she didn't mind me, just as I was.

As it turned out, I also fell a little bit in love with her best friend (which she actively encouraged, by the way. We’ve moved away from SWF now).

This ironic turn of events turned out to be a gift from the universe, because on that trip I committed the cardinal school sin:

I was caught smoking.

I know, I know. The modern equivalent is probably telling the teacher he’s a cunt or doing a line of charlie off your locker key on your way to P.E.

But this was the nineties, and my comprehensive was particularly firm. Kerry Howl almost got expelled once for bringing half a bottle of vodka into school. Not to drink. To take to a party that night.

It was quite the scandal.

At my school, for example, you were expected to wear your blazer at all times. You could only take it off with a teacher’s permission.

I once almost died from breaking this rule.

It was May. And back then, May was always fucking roasting. Or, at least, that’s how I’ve chosen to remember it. I had been sat in the corner of the field, away from all the agonising peopling, reading a book, and completely lost track of time.

As I looked up and realised no one was in the field any longer, I grabbed my stuff and legged it.

Blazer in hand.

As I rounded the corner of the Science block and nearly tripped through the open double doors, I took the stairs two at a time and burst onto the landing — only to come face-to-face with the Headmaster, frozen like a fridge-freezer mid-delivery.

Who, I might add, quite literally looked like an older version of Terrence Hardiman from The Demon Headmaster. I’m pretty sure he’d been someone fairly important in the army once-upon-a-time.

About 150 years ago.

And Good Lord, had that man perfected his death stare.

I was severely reprimanded verbally but it was mainly the stare that did it. I'll be honest. It was touch and go.

You’ll be pleased though — and not surprised — to hear that I lived.

Anyway, back to France.

You now get the full weight of what it meant to be caught smoking on the exchange trip. It wasn’t just “naughty.” At my school, it was a moral failing. Reputation-ruining. I was supposed to be the Good Girl.

Especially given that, at the time, I was a prefect.

Mr Campbell handed down my punishment with the solemnity of a judge sentencing a sex offender. Actually, scratch that — I live in the UK. So, more like someone who posted a vaguely offensive meme.

Seeing as he had limited ways to discipline me (what was he going to do — give me detention on the beach? Confiscate my croissant? Exile me from Juliette’s house?), he decided I was to carry his rucksack.

Which, by the way, was heavy as fuck on day one, and I swear got heavier every single day.

Naturally, I still had to carry my own bag, too. So I spent the week trudging around museums, monuments, art galleries, parks, beaches and cafés — all under the brutal heat of the summer sun — as Mr Campbell’s personal pack mule.

Or, more accurately: his bitch.

I felt strongly that the punishment didn’t fit the crime. I even tried to negotiate with him a few days in, exhausted — offering to accept whatever sentence he saw fit once we were back home.

(My actual punishment? Standing in front of the entire school, cutting the prefect braids off my blazer beside Barbarous No.2 — whose crime I can’t even remember.)

But no.

The judge had spoken.

You might be thinking, “Well — don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

And that would be a very neurotypical response.

My response, however — the one my perplexed little neurodivergent brain just couldn’t let go of — was that I hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

In France, it was legal for someone my age to not only buy cigarettes, but also to smoke the little fuckers. And…

I was in my own clothes, walking down the street at night with my friends. And…

There was no way I was displaying any kind of association with the school. And…

There was no fucking way anyone within 600 miles knew who I was.

Or so my naïve and stubbornly rigid (perhaps a touch too “I know the law”) brain thought.

Turns out, I’d breezily walked down the one street that ran parallel to where all my teachers were sitting, enjoying their escargot.

I argued my case politely and with humility — but Mr. Campbell didn’t buy it. He was one of those judges who probably wasn’t getting laid.

My mother, too, wouldn’t hear me out. I wasn’t even allowed to defend myself with reason. I remember her telephoning Juliette’s house and ferociously chastising me over the line — telling me how I had brought shame to the family.

Her words — repulsively familiar, still make me feel sick inside even as I type them — became etched into my sense of self:

“You silly... little... girl.”

After hanging up, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried uncontrollably.

It wasn’t about the smoking anymore — it was about my mother’s anger, rejection, and her total entitlement to own me. It was about always falling short of some impossible standard she — and fucking everyone — had set for me.

Juliette’s mother didn’t speak a word of English, but she didn’t need to. She knocked gently at the bathroom door and pulled me into a warm hug. I don’t know what she said in French, but the message was clear:

“This isn’t as big a problem as you think it is...as she's saying it is.”

It was as if, for the first time, I had really felt a mother’s hug — one that was pure and not tangled by strings.

The contrast between how I was feeling — small, embarrassed, lost, ashamed — and how Juliette’s mother responded, with calm kindness, was a revelation.

I’d grown up in an environment where mistakes were magnified, where the punishment never quite matched the crime. It wasn’t the rules that suffocated me, but the emotional repercussions of breaking them. It’s strange how, even now, I can trace those same feelings into other relationships — where the stakes felt equally high, where a simple mistake could trigger harsh words, emotional withdrawal, or worse.

Juliette’s family made it clear: my mistake wasn’t that big of a deal. I was still a young person, figuring out who I was.

I was still a person.

I'm sure you also want to know about Nico, Juliette’s best friend. A tall, caramel-skinned, six foot four respectful, funny and sweet, but also hot as fuck young man (I still have his photo in one of those boxes somewhere), who made it clear that he liked me, in a way I hadn’t yet encountered.

I was awkward, unsure of how to talk to boys who didn’t even attempt to try and add me to their score card. Nico seemed to want something different, in that he didn't expect anything, at all. He just seemed to like being around me. And that was enough to set me on fire inside, in a way I had never experienced.

So, of course, naturally I didn't even let him hold my hand. Not once.

Juliette’s family continued to care for me, to make me feel valued.

Her father took us shopping, and Juliette encouraged me to try on a white mini skirt with glitter woven into the fabric - something that my mother would never have allowed me to wear. For the first time, I didn’t see the awkward, gawky girl in the mirror. I saw a young woman.

Juliette’s father bought it for me, and a matching skirt in gold for Juliette — an act of kindness I’ve never forgotten.

And yes, before you ask — my brain did later wonder if it was creepy. But in that moment, it just felt… safe. Seen. Like maybe I wasn’t disgusting for growing into a woman.

That night, we went to a nightclub — as a family. I know. Juliette said they'd been doing it for years. I know.

I was surrounded by adults: dancing, drinking, smoking.

I was in Grown-Up Land.

Breaking every rule I’d ever been told to follow.

In my glittery white mini-skirt.

It was intoxicating.

But even as I stood there on the jet black dancefloor, a cold can of Coca-Cola in one hand, under the flashing rainbow coloured disco lights, something shifted. I became aware of the men around me — their gaze thick with a kind of desire I didn’t yet understand but instinctively felt was wrong. That I felt threatened by.

(It really fucking pisses me off when my mother is right.)

But the trip wasn’t just about the cigarettes, or the punishment, or being undressed by the gaze of men old enough to be my father.

It wasn’t even really about Juliette. Or Nico.

It was the slow, quiet revelation of who I was — in a space where I wasn’t confined by the rules that had always defined me.

And who I was… was scared as fuck.

Looking back now, that trip was a microcosm of all the places I would eventually find myself. Caught between the rules that contained me and the longing to break free.

Unsure of myself.

Unsure of the world.

Unsure of the people in it.

Unsure of what kind of person I was becoming — but craving something more.

In that bathroom, crying, I felt so fucking small.

But Juliette’s mother’s embrace reminded me of something essential:

There was kindness in the world, even when I felt like I didn’t deserve it.

That I didn’t have to be perfect to be loved.

That I could forgive myself for my mistakes.

And that actually, my mother isn’t always fucking right.