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I sigh loudly, put my satchel down on the floor and then do as I’ve been told. Annabel is sitting on the sofa in her office suit, inexplicably eating sardines out of a tin, and Dad is in the armchair opposite her.
You know what I was saying about young children, and how non-uniform doesn’t really exist? It’s the same for lawyers. Annabel’s either in her suit, or her dressing gown, or she puts her dressing gown on top of her suit. When she goes out for dinner, she has to buy an outfit especially.
“What are you eating?” I ask immediately, sitting down on a chair and looking at Annabel’s tin.
“Sardines,” Annabel says – as if I didn’t mean why are you eating that? – and she pops another one in her mouth. “Now, Harriet,” Annabel says as soon as she’s swallowed it. “Your dad’s in trouble at work.”
“Annabel!” Dad exclaims. “For the love of… Don’t just throw that at her! Lead up to it, for God’s sake!”
“Fine.” My stepmother rolls her eyes. “Hello, Harriet. How are you? Your dad’s in trouble at work.” Then she looks at Dad. “Better?”
“Not even slightly.” Dad scowls. “It’s nothing, Harriet. Just a small difference in opinion.”
“You told your most important client to go and French Connection UK himself, Richard. In the middle of reception.”
Dad picks a bit of fluff off the sofa. “Well, he wasn’t supposed to hear it, was he?” he says in his most defensive voice. “It just came out loudly because of the acoustics. That place is all stone walls.”
“And we’re keen that you have a sterling example of adult behaviour to follow, Harriet.”
“It was the walls,” Dad shouts in exasperation.
I look at Annabel. Under a cosy layer of flippancy she looks really worried. “How bad is it?”
Annabel puts another sardine in her mouth. “Bad. They’ve called him into a disciplinary tomorrow.”
“It’s just a formality,” Dad mutters. “I’m creative: I’m supposed to be unpredictable. I’m the sort of guy who wears brown suede shoes when it’s raining; they just don’t know what to do with me. I’ll probably get a pay rise for being such a maverick.”
Annabel lifts one eyebrow and then rubs her eyes. “Let’s hope so because we really can’t afford to just live on one salary at the moment. Anyway. What about you, Harriet? Did you have a nice day? I hope you had a fragrant day at least because when I went into the bathroom, it was knee-deep in your grandmother’s vanilla talcum powder.”
“Oh.” I look at the floor. “Sorry. I meant to clean that up.”
“Of course you did. If only your actual cleaning was as good as your intended cleaning, we would have a very tidy house indeed. Did you manage to get out of whatever it is you were trying to avoid this time?”
“Actually,” I say, ignoring this extremely slanderous insinuation, and then I take a deep breath and stand up. “I have something to tell you both.”
On second thoughts, maybe I won’t tell them about the money right now. Honesty is very important within families. But so is timing. Especially when it comes to amounts like £3,000 while your father is in the process of throwing his job out of the window.
“Well?” Annabel prompts after a pause. “Spit it out, sweetheart.”
“I, uh,” I start. “Well, it’s…” I take a deep breath and prepare myself for the…well, whatever reaction you get from parents to news like this. “I’ve been spotted,” I finally manage to blurt out. There’s a silence. “Today,” I clarify. “I’ve been spotted today.”
There’s another silence and then Annabel frowns. “What?” she snaps. “Let me see.” She puts the sardine can down and drags me up from the chair and pulls me under the light. She looks carefully at my face, and then she looks at my hand and turns it over. She stares at my wrist and the inside of my upper arm. Then she gets Dad to stand up and look at my wrist and the inside of my upper arm. What the hell are they doing?
“No, Harriet,” she finally says firmly. “There’re a couple on your forehead, but I think that’s just teenage acne.”
“Since when is spotted a human adjective?” I snap impatiently. “I’m not a leopard or a stingray. Spotted. Verb, not adjective. Scouted. Picked up. Discovered. Found.” They still look blank, so I continue even more crossly. “By a model agent. By Infinity Models, to be more specific.”
Annabel looks even more confused. “To do what?”
“To pack potatoes.”
“Really?”
“No! To be a model,” I yell in distress. It’s one thing thinking you’re not pretty, but it’s quite another having that confirmed by the only people in the world who are supposed to think otherwise.
Annabel frowns again. When I look at Dad, however, he appears to be shining with the light of a million smug fairies. “They’re my genes, you know,” he says, pointing to me. “Standing right there. That’s my genetics.”
“Yes, dear, they’re your genes,” Annabel repeats as if she’s talking to a child. And then she sits down again and picks up her newspaper.
I look from Annabel to Dad. Is that it? I mean, seriously?
OK, I didn’t expect them to start dancing round the coffee table, waving their Sudoku books in the air like exotic bird feathers, but a bit more enthusiasm would be nice. Fantastic, Harriet, they could say. Maybe you’re not as totally disgusting to look at as we all thought you were. How wonderful for the whole family.
Or something that acknowledges that this would be the most exciting thing that had ever happened to anyone, if I was someone else and this was a totally different family.
Annabel looks up to where I’m still standing, mouth open. “What?” she says. “You can’t do it, Harriet. You’re too young and you’ve got exams coming up.”
“She can’t do it?” Dad repeats in an incredulous tone. “What do you mean she can’t do it?”
Annabel looks at him calmly. “She’s fifteen, Richard. It’s totally inappropriate.”
“It’s Infinity Models, Annabel. Even I’ve heard of them.”
“Hundreds of beautiful women in one place? I bet you have, darling. But the answer’s still no.”
“Oh my God,” Dad yells at the top of his voice. “This is so unfair.”
You see the problem? It’s really hard being a child in my family when that space seems to already be taken.
“I don’t actually want to do it,” I interrupt. “I’m just telling you. But you could say well done or something.”
“You don’t want to do it?” Dad yells at me.
Oh, for God’s sake.
Annabel looks at me. “It’s modelling. Fashion.” She pulls a face. “What’s there to be excited about? Why is everyone getting so worked up?”
I look from her to Dad and then at Hugo. Hugo gets off the chair, tail wagging, and promptly licks me. I think he knows I need it.
“Right,” I say in a slightly deflated voice. “Fine.”
The only remotely exciting thing that has ever happened to me and it’s over already. It lasted about as long as I thought it would. I feel a little bit like sulking. Dad still looks totally shell-shocked.
“Now,” Annabel says, shaking the remote control to get the batteries working and turning the television on. “Who wants to watch a documentary about locusts?”
Whatever it takes to make her anger with me disappear.
It’s all a total waste of time and effort and flour. Apparently I don’t need to woo Nat at all. On Friday morning, at precisely 8am, the doorbell rings.
“Nat! You’re here!” I gurgle in surprise, halfway through a jam sandwich. It comes out a sticky, strawberry-flavoured, “Nnnnnaaatcchh uuuhhh hhiiii!”
“For breakfast?” she says, looking pointedly at the other half, which is perched in my left hand.
I stick my nose in the air in my most dignified way. “Jam sandwiches have all the necessary nutrients needed to survive. Sugar, vitamins, carbohydrates. I could live entirely on jam sandwiches and lead a totally normal life.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Nat says, pulling me out of the door. It’s lucky I already have my shoes on or I’d be walking to school in my socks. “You’d be The Girl Who Only Eats Strawberry Jam Sandwiches and that’s not normal.” She looks at me and then coughs. “Can I have the other half, though? I’m totally starving.”
I give her the other half in surprise and then look at her while she eats it. Firstly, Nat never eats food with high sugar content. Ever. Not since that fateful disco, eight years ago. And secondly, is this it then? The big dramatic scene I’ve been dreading all night? I made muffins without sugar especially and now nobody is going to eat them.
“Nat,” I start and at exactly the same moment she says “Harriet?” and then she clears her throat.
“I’m sorry. For getting mad at you and stomping off.”
“Oh.” I blink in shock. “That’s OK. I’m sorry too. For… getting spotted and stuff.”
“The lying was the main problem, Harriet.” Nat twists her mouth up in an awkward half-smile and licks her fingers. “Can we just forget about yesterday?”
“Of course we can,” I beam at her.
A huge wave of relief washes over me: it’s all OK. I was being neurotic and oversensitive as normal.
And then – just like waves – the relief abruptly disappears. Nat clears her throat and I look at her again, but a little more carefully this time. Suddenly I can see what I didn’t notice before: that her neck is tense and her shoulders are all bunched up. Her collarbones have gone red and splotchy. The rims of her eyes are pink. She keeps biting her bottom lip.
“Cool,” Nat says after an infinitely long pause, and then an anxious flush climbs up her cheeks and sits there, staring at me. “So…”And she clears her throat. “Did they…”She swallows. “You know… ring you?” She clears her throat for the third time. “Infinity? Did they ring you?”
She hasn’t forgotten about yesterday at all. Not even a little bit.
“No.” I didn’t give them my number, I add in my head, but somehow I’m not sure saying that out loud is going to help.
“Oh.” Nat’s cheeks get darker. “That’s a shame. I’m sorry. So let’s just put it behind us, right?”
I frown. I thought we’d already done that. “OK.”
“And pretend it never happened,” Nat adds in a tense voice.
“…OK.”
Every time she tells us to put it behind us, it’s becoming more and more clear that Nat hasn’t done that.
“We’ll just carry on as normal,” Nat adds.
“…OK.”
Then there’s a long silence and it’s not comfortable. In ten years, it might be the first uncomfortable silence there has ever been between us. Apart from the time she peed herself on the ballet-room floor and it hit my foot. That was a little bit awkward too.
“Anyway,” Nat says after a couple of minutes, as she pats her hair and straightens her coat and pulls up her school tights with one hand. “So, Harriet.” She looks at the bite of sandwich left in her hand. “Where’s the protein in this thing, huh? I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’ve done your research properly.”
Finally, the topic has moved back to territory I can handle.
“I have done my research properly!” I shout back, pretending to be totally outraged. “The protein’s in the…” What can I say to move the conversation as far from modelling as it is possible to move it? “Chicken,” I finish and then grin at her. “There’s chicken in it too. Did I forget to mention that? Strawberry and high-protein chicken sandwiches. Mmmm. My favourite.”
“Strawberry and chicken?” Nat laughs and my shoulders relax a little bit.
“You can totally live on strawberry and chicken sandwiches,” I clarify, trying not to meet her eyes. Is there any way we can just avoid the subject of yesterday until it goes away completely? Is that how Best Friendship works? Maybe. Maybe not.
But we both spend the rest of the journey to school trying to find out.
“Woooooaaah,” he says as Nat and I walk into the classroom. We’ve got to school in one piece – just. I’ve talked about the Greek origin of the delphinium flower (delphis, because it looks like a dolphin), just how many wives Henry VIII actually had (between two and four, depending on whether you’re Catholic or not) and the fact that the Egyptian pyramids were originally shiny and white with crystals on the top. Nat has stared into the distance, nodded and grown progressively quieter, stiffer and pinker around the collarbone.
But the important thing is we’ve managed to avoid talking about modelling or dream stealing or the bone-crushing disappointment of thwarted lifelong ambitions. Or the fact that there’s palpable tension between us.
Anyway. “Wooooooaaaah,” says Toby. “Look at the palpable tension between you! It’s like the Cold War, circa 1962. Harriet, I think you’re probably America. You’re sort of trying to make lots of noise in the hope it goes away. Nat, you’re more like Russia. All kind of cold and frosty and covered in snow.” Then he pauses. “Not literally covered in snow,” he clarifies. “Although it’s terribly wintry today, isn’t it? Do you like my new gloves?”
And then he holds out a pair of black knitted gloves with a cotton-white skeleton hand attached to the back. There’s an embarrassed silence while Nat and I put a lot of energy into getting our books out of our bags. All our morning’s hard work has just been totally undone.
Thank you, Toby.
“You know,” Toby continues obliviously, turning his gloves over and over with an affectionate expression, “I had to sew these bones on myself. I was inspired by an old Halloween costume, but it just wasn’t warm enough for December.” He holds a glove up to my face. “Plus, I thought it would be an excellent way of developing my medical knowledge.”
I can now see that on quite a few of the 27 white bones in the hand he’s written in grey pen the Latin name for them: carpals, metacarpals, proximal phalanges, intermediate phalanges, distal phalanges.
“Very nice, Toby,” I say in a distracted voice because Nat’s already getting out of her seat.
“I’ve just got to go hand in my biology homework,” she says in an awkward voice. “See you at breaktime, OK?”
For the record, Nat and I don’t have any lessons together. Despite trying very hard to get put in the same sets last year (Nat studied more and I did my best to answer things wrong), I’m still in the top sets and Nat is in set two or three for everything.
“OK,” I say. She’s still not really looking at me. “Meet you in the school canteen?”
“Sure,” she says, and then she flicks me a smile and shoots out of the classroom faster than I’ve ever seen Nat shoot out of anything.
The rest of the day can be summarised thus:
By the time the final class comes around and she tells me she’s going to be kept behind after school as well, I’m fairly convinced that Nat is specifically getting detentions just to avoid me. I’m torn between being devastated and simultaneously impressed by her extremely cunning strategic bad behaviour.
Toby has been making the most of Nat’s absence to follow me around like a small kitten follows a ball of wool; he even pats me now and then to check that I’m still there.
“Harriet,” he whispers during sixth period English literature. “Isn’t it lovely to spend so much time together?”
I make a noncommittal grunt and doodle another eye on my textbook.
“I really feel that I know you better now,” Toby continues enthusiastically. “For instance, I know that at ten o’clock exactly you tend to go straight to the toilet, and when you come back out, your hair is much neater so I can only assume that you redo your ponytail in front of the bathroom mirror.”
I continue doodling.
“And,” he whispers in excitement, “at five past twelve you go back to the bathroom and when you come out at twelve fifteen, your eyes are sort of pink and gummy around the edges. Which I can only conclude means that you go in there to cry in private.”
I glare at him. “I don’t do that every lunchtime, Toby.”
“No?” He gets out a little notepad and opens it to a page that appears to have a list on it. He draws a line through the corresponding entry.
I can sense that I’m about to lose my temper. I’ve hurt Nat, it’s been a rubbish day and I suspect that Toby is about to bear the brunt of it.
“And,” he continues, “at approximately three pm you go to the bathroom again, but this time you’re in there for the entire break so I believe you might be avoiding me. Either that or you’re… you know. Engaged in intricate bowel activities.”
I can feel my cheeks suddenly flame. He was right the first time, but I’m not happy with that second insinuation. I don’t like talking about bowel activities, regardless of intricacy.
“Could you just leave me alone perhaps?” I whisper and I can feel my voice getting louder with every word. “I mean, is there any chance that you could – I don’t know – find someone else to stalk?”
Toby looks astonished. “Who?” he says, looking around. “There’s nobody else worth stalking, Harriet. You’re the only one.”
I grit my teeth. “Then don’t stalk anyone.” My voice is getting more abrasive. “How about you just don’t stalk anyone, Toby? Otherwise known as LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.”
And then there’s a silence. Toby looks at me in astonishment. A low snigger ripples round the classroom.
When I look up, Mr Bott has paused writing on the board and is staring at me with an expression that a geek like me doesn’t see very often. One of anger, frustration and a fervent desire to punish.
It looks like I might be seeing Nat after school today after all.
“Miss Manners,” he says icily from the front of the classroom, and I suddenly remember that we’re supposed to be reading act four, scene five of Hamlet. “Do you have a thought you would like to share with us?”
“No,” I say immediately and stare at my desk.
“I find that very hard to believe,” Mr Bott says in an even sharper voice. “You always have a thought to share with us. In fact, it’s usually difficult to stop you from sharing it with us.”
“I’ve no thoughts,” I tell him in a meek voice.
“Good to know. That’s what I like to see: a student approaching her exams with nothing at all in her head.”
Alexa looks up from where she’s been texting somebody under the desk and snorts with laughter.
Oh, yes, Alexa’s in the top sets too. Unfortunately, she’s both mean and smart. I have at least another three years left of her to look forward to, and then she’ll probably follow me to university. Although, given the amount of time she spends on her phone in our classes, I can only assume she’s really, really good at last-minute cramming.
“Alexa?” Mr Bott snaps, whipping round to face her. “Is something funny?”
Alexa looks over to me and raises an eyebrow. “No,” she says in a meaningful voice. “Quite the opposite. Mostly sad, I’d say.”
Nice. She’s managed to insult me in front of the teacher and he hasn’t even noticed.
“Well,” Mr Bott says, but he doesn’t look happy either. In fairness, he rarely looks happy. I don’t think he teaches because it fills him with a deep inner light. “How about Little Miss Shouter and Little Miss Giggles both come up to the front here and give us your perspectives on a little question I have.”
Alexa’s face goes suddenly pale, and as we walk to the front, she’s throwing metaphorical daggers in my direction.
“Now,” Mr Bott says, “turn and face the whole class, please.”
My cheeks are getting hotter and hotter. I turn so that my body is in the right direction, but try to focus on the floor.
“So, Alexa Roberts and Harriet Manners.” Mr Bott sits down and gestures gracefully to the board. “As you are both clearly fascinated by this text, would you like to explain the significance of Laertes in Hamlet?” He looks at Alexa. “Please go first, Miss Roberts.”
“Well…” Alexa says hesitantly. “He’s Ophelia’s brother, right?”
“I didn’t ask for his family tree, Alexa. I want to know his literary significance as a fictional character.”
Alexa looks uncomfortable. “Well then, his literary significance is in being Ophelia’s brother, isn’t it? So she has someone to hang out with.”
“How very kind of Shakespeare to give fictional Ophelia a fictional playmate so that she doesn’t get fictionally bored. Your analytical skills astound me, Alexa. Perhaps I should send you to Set Seven with Mrs White and you can spend the rest of the lesson studying Thomas the Tank Engine. I believe he has lots of buddies too.”
Alexa’s face suddenly goes bright red and she looks utterly humiliated. I feel really sorry for her, actually.
Mr Bott then turns to me. “It’s your go, Miss Manners. Anything to add?”
I stare at the floor for a few seconds. Answering interesting intellectual questions correctly in public is possibly my single greatest weakness. Every time I do it, I make myself even less popular. But I can’t help myself.
“Well,” I say slowly, and even though I know I should say in my most stupid voice, No idea, sorry, I say: “Laertes is a literary mirror for Hamlet. The play is ostensibly about Hamlet avenging the murder of his father, but actually, it’s about Hamlet procrastinating instead. Laertes is a sort of alternative universe Hamlet, because when Hamlet murders his father, Laertes takes immediate revenge and pushes the play to its conclusion straight away. So as a literary construct, I think he’s there to show what would have happened if Hamlet had been somebody else instead. It’s sort of Shakespeare’s way of saying that our stories are driven by who we are and what we do, and not by the events that happen to us.”
I take a deep breath. Toby starts clapping, but I shoot a look that stops him.
“Very good, Harriet,” Mr Bott says, nodding. “Excellent in fact. Possibly even a degree-level answer, although a distinctly second-class one.” He looks at Alexa coldly. “Alexa, English literature doesn’t have any right answers. But it has a hell of a lot of wrong ones. And your cracker was one of them.”
“Sir!” Alexa exclaims indignantly. “This isn’t fair! We haven’t got to the end of the play yet! Harriet cheated!”
“It’s not called cheating,” Mr Bott says tiredly, putting his hand over his eyes. “It’s called having a vague interest in the storyline.” Then he puts his fingers briefly on the bridge of his nose and breathes out.
“But—” Alexa says, cheeks even redder.
“I can see my time here is well spent,” Mr Bott interrupts. “And on that encouraging note, I am going to go and collect some more textbooks from the staffroom. At least three members of this class appear to be reading Romeo and Juliet, hoping I won’t notice the difference.” He sweeps a look of total disdain round the classroom. “Entertain yourselves for five minutes. If you can.”