by Holly Smale
Slowly, with an ominous creak and a struggle – and some mild swearing – the front door opens.
And there, with a very surprised look on her face, is Alexa.
f you guessed this is where I was coming then your mind clearly works just like mine does. In a linear and sensible and yet simultaneously creative and poetic fashion.
Nat and Toby’s minds, however, obviously don’t. Their mouths have fallen open in perfect coordination with Alexa’s.
“This,” Nat says clearly behind me, “tops the list of most stupid things you’ve ever done, Harriet. That’s a pretty huge achievement.”
“Harriet,” Toby stage-whispers, “did you know Alexa Roberts lives here? What were the chances?”
I clear my throat. Alexa’s face is going through emotions the way Annabel flicks through channels on advert breaks: shock, followed by incredulity, and then a long moment spent on anger and a brief glimpse of embarrassment. And for a few fragments of time I almost see… respect. Respect for my audacity. On second thoughts, no. It’s not respect.
It’s a reaction to the smell of Toby’s powerful aftershave: the wind’s blowing it straight into the house.
“Alexa,” I say and I take a deep breath. I’m not absolutely certain what I’m going to say, even though I’ve been thinking about it all the way here. I just know that – whatever it is – it has to be perfect and it has to fix everything.
No pressure then.
“Harriet,” Alexa says, beaming at us. “Natalie. Toby. What a pleasant surprise. Would you like to come in for a cup of Darjeeling tea? My mum’s just bought a new box of Bakewell tarts and there’s plenty to go round.”
My deep breath rushes out of me all in one go. “Huh?” I say in confusion. “What? Seriously?”
Nat puts her head in her hands.
“Sure,” Alexa says, folding her arms in front of her. “We can all sit in the living room and discuss the likelihood of a white Christmas.”
“Really?”
The beam disappears. “No, not really, you moron. I have no idea what you’re doing here and I don’t care. Get off my doorstep before I set the dogs on you.”
Toby takes a few steps backwards. Admittedly, I can’t hear any dogs, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any; they might just be really quiet ones.
I bite my bottom lip hard. “Not until I’ve said what I need to say.”
Alexa’s frown deepens and she starts making a whistling sound. “Rex? Fang? Come here, boys. It’s geeks for tea.”
Nat breathes out loudly and tugs at my arm. “OK, Harriet. You’ve made your point, you’re risking your own safety to defend me, you’re very brave, I love you again, now let’s drop it and go home, all right?”
“No.” I fold my arms, partly to look determined and partly because my hands are shaking with nerves. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until I’ve told her.”
“Told me what?” Alexa stops whistling and her eyes narrow. “You’re standing there like the three little pigs on my doorstep so that you can tell me what?”
There’s a long silence while I look at her, my brain making whirring sounds. The Three Little Pigs. And their three little houses. One made out of straw, one made out of wood and one made out of brick. That’s it.
I’m going to tell Alexa that if we’re the three little pigs, then it’s OK because there are three of us, and we’re not in a house of straw, we’re in a house of brick. So she can huff and puff as much as she likes, but she can’t blow us down.
And if she has a problem with this analogy – I do, actually, because in Tudor times houses were made out of straw and they didn’t seem to have a problem with the elements – then I’ll switch to The Three Bears and tell her it doesn’t matter how much of our porridge she eats and how many of our beds she sleeps in: we’ve finally found the strength to run her back into the woods.
And then I’ll turn to The Three Brothers, and I’ll just keep going with the fairytale triumvirate analogies until she understands that we’re not frightened of her any more. And she can’t hurt us again, however hard she tries. Because we won’t let her.
I prepare myself to launch an attack verbally way below my range, but abruptly stop. I don’t need to say any of it. I know. Nat knows. And Toby knows. We’re here and that’s enough. But there is something I do need to say.
“We’re sorry about your hair.” I point to Alexa’s head. “That’s what we came to say. What we did was horrible, malicious and wrong, and we are sorry.”
Alexa lifts her eyebrows. “You came all the way over here to tell me you’re sorry about my hair?”
“Yes.” I turn to Nat, who looks totally speechless. “Aren’t we, Nat?”
“I’m sorry too,” Toby interjects. “Despite having nothing to do with it in a literal sense, as leader of this gang I feel I should take responsibility for its actions.”
Nat and I look at each other. We’ll just let Toby have that one.
Nat scowls and her cheeks go pink. I know she’s been feeling bad about it too. She’s just not mean enough to think it was acceptable behaviour. “Yeah,” Nat says finally, her shoulders relaxing. “I lost my temper, Alexa, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.” She pauses. “But if you do anything like that to Harriet again,” she mutters so that only I can hear her, “I’ll give you a buzz cut.”
Alexa touches her hair. “Luckily my face shape can pull off just about anything. Are we done now?”
“Yes,” I say slowly, looking at her hard. “We are done now.”
And I really, really mean it.
“Then please feel free to go to hell. All of you.” Alexa looks at the three of us. “Geeks,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.
And closes the door on us.
e dance all the way home. Although we wait until we’re out of Alexa’s driveway first obviously. We’re not on a suicide mission.
“Did you see that?” Toby keeps shouting, wiggling his hips. He’s opened his jacket up and is accompanying our triumphant movements with the electric keyboard on his T-shirt. “Take that, Alexa! WHAM! We came all the way to your house and everything!”
I twirl round in a happy little circle with my hands over my head. It’s all over. If the big bad wolf wants to get us, she’s going to have to climb down the chimney. Where we’re going to keep a big cauldron of hot water, just in case.
It feels amazing. Even Nat does a little triumphant shoulder wriggle when she thinks nobody’s looking.
“You know,” she says breathlessly when we’ve all finally stopped glorying in the moment, “that felt really good. Alexa’s never going to say sorry for anything, which makes us the good guys, right?”
“Well, we know we’re not the bad guys,” Toby says earnestly. “If we were, we’d be wearing black with little skulls and we’d probably have moustaches.”
“I still can’t believe you cut her hair off.”
“I know. What was I thinking?”
“Where did you even get the scissors?”
“The art room. Everything went a bit blurry for a few minutes and the next thing I knew I had a ponytail in my hand. I’ve felt horrible about it for days.”
“Nat,” I say seriously, slowing my skipping down a little. “I am sorry. For everything. For lying to you. For stealing your dream. And I know that you’ll probably hate me forever, but…”
Nat rolls her eyes. “I was never going to hate you forever, Harriet. Just a couple of days.”
“But you said…”
“We were fighting. What did you want me to say? I’ll hate you for about thirty-six hours until I’ve calmed down a bit?”
Oh.
“Yeah, that would have been nice, actually,” I tell her, slightly huffily. “Just a heads-up could have been really handy. I was in the depths of despair.”
Nat laughs. “Drama queen as always. Although if you had a temper like mine, I probably would have kept the modelling secret too. I am terrifying.” She looks proudly at her nails and blows
on them. “Unpredictable and absolutely terrifying.”
“So we’re…” I venture.
“Yeah.” Nat shrugs and grins at me. “Whatever.”
I’m just about to throw myself into her not-even-slightly open arms when my phone rings and Toby holds his hands up.
“It’s not me,” he points out. “Just in case anyone’s wondering. I’m not ringing you, Harriet. Although I could because I’ve totally learnt your number off by heart.”
“Wilbur?” I say, grabbing it out of my pocket.
“Hello, my little Crunchie-nut,” Wilbur says happily. “I’d love to sit and chat about all sorts of girly fun, but I want to go home, so here’s the details for this thing Yuka wants you to do. It’s tomorrow morning, Petal-moo; an interview for a fashion special on WakeUp UK. They need you there nice and early so you’ll still get to school on time.” He pauses. “If your school starts at 10am obviously.”
I look at Nat, who’s pretending she can’t hear the entire conversation. Wilbur’s voice carries like a Sports Day whistle.
“I can’t do it, Wilbur.” Nat’s eyes go very round, but we’ve only just resurrected our friendship: I can’t risk it. “You’re just going to have to tell Yuka to sue me. Remind her that I’m underage, please, and my stepmother’s a really, really great lawyer.”
I can feel it already. Nat and I will be like the dolphins at Sea World again, jumping in perfect harmony. Living in synergy; one stream of consciousness, with never a cross word between us. Two minds in one bod—
The phone gets snatched out of my hand.
“Wilbur? Hello. This is Nat. I’m the girl who cried in your reception on Saturday morning. Harriet says it’s a fantastic and exciting opportunity and she’ll be there. Text her the time and address. Thanks.” And she hangs up.
I stare at her for a few seconds. Nat’s the girl who was crying in the agency?
“Nat? What the hell are you doing?” I finally blurt.
“What I would have done at the beginning, if you’d let me.”
tatistics aren’t important, they’re just numbers. Irrelevant, arbitrary numbers. So obviously I don’t spend the evening on the internet, researching how many people watch WakeUp UK every morning.
(3,400,000.)
And I don’t find out the demographic of the viewers.
(Extremely widespread: students getting ready for school, families having breakfast, workers as they get ready to leave the house.)
And I definitely don’t find out roughly how many people watch the internet videos of the interviews.
(300,000 for a guy talking about trimming the edges of your lawn neatly.)
Most importantly, the thing I most absolutely don’t do is skip breakfast because I’m locked in the toilet, breathing in and out of a paper bag, and then spend the entire taxi journey to the studio tearing the bag to shreds and scattering it all over my lap.
Why would I do that? I’m not the old, anxious Harriet any more. I’m cool. I’m calm. I’m taking all of this in my stride.
Obviously.
“Harriet?” Dad says finally. Everyone has decided to come with me this time: the taxi is so full that the driver has started making grumpy sounds about what his insurance covers. Annabel’s taken the front seat and Dad, Nat, Toby and I are all crammed in the back, trying to put our feet in places that don’t already have feet in them. “Are you under the impression that you’re some kind of hamster or possibly bird?”
I look at the papery mess on my trousers. It’s true: if I was suddenly rendered much, much smaller, it would make excellent bedding.
“I’m making an ancient style of puzzle,” I tell him loftily. “When I have time, I will consider putting it all back together again.”
“Would you like me to make a start on it?” Toby asks eagerly. I tried to evade him, but after he explained how many buses he was going to have to catch to follow me, I relented. It’s easier if he just stalks me in the same taxi.
“No. But thanks.”
“I’m going to need to get out again I’m afraid,” Annabel says from the front. “I need to pee.”
“Again?” Dad sighs. “Honey, do you need a catheter?”
“No, it’s fine, Richard. I’ll just urinate all over this nice man’s seats and then we’ll just walk the rest of the way. Hang on, isn’t this your favourite jumper, darling? Maybe I can use it to mop up the mess.”
Dad’s face goes pale. “Stop the taxi.” He looks at all of us. “Never lend a pregnant woman cashmere.”
“I was going to anyway,” the taxi driver tells us, pressing the little green light so that we can hear him through the speakers. “We’re here.”
The taxi turns a corner and we all fall silent. Partly because it’s a little overwhelming arriving at an international television studio at 6.30am. And partly because Wilbur’s waiting for us. Wearing a bright pink top hat and silver jumpsuit.
“Is it me?” Annabel says as the taxi pulls to a stop and Wilbur takes his hat off and bows. “Or does that man just get weirder and weirder?”
Once we’ve disembarked, Wilbur adjusts the pink hat slightly and then sends everyone to sit in another part of the studio while I go with him to “get beautiful”. He looks at the frizz-ball masquerading as my hair. “Although, Baby-baby Panda,” he adds sadly, “it looks like we’re going to have to start from scratch again, doesn’t it?”
Just in case I was under some illusion that I may have transformed even slightly in the last week, it’s nice to be set straight.
“I can’t control it,” I explain in a small voice as he shepherds me down some skinny corridors towards a closed door.
“I can see that, Apple-blossom,” he sighs, narrowing his eyes at the top of my head. “Any chance that it’s controlling you?” He looks at my outfit. “Glad to see you’re styling it out, though. Are these your pyjamas, Bunny?”
I ignore him. I’m getting quite used to doing that now. They’re not my pyjamas, for the record. It’s a snowman-themed T-shirt and baggy patterned trousers from the Moroccan shop in town. These are the only clean clothes I have left.
“So what do we do first?” I ask nervously. “Do I have any lines to learn?”
“Even better than that, my special Sugar-peanut. I’ve got this.” And he holds out a small piece of plastic.
“A hearing aid?”
“I’m wiring you up, darling. With five million viewers, we reckon you might need some help.”
Five million? The internet lied to me?
I look at the little plastic thing with a mixture of relief and horror. “You’re going to tell me what to say?”
Wilbur throws back his head and laughs. “I’m not, Monkey-tiger. Can you imagine? I just don’t think my vocabulary would fit in your little mouth, darling. No, Yuka Ito is. Word for word.”
Oh, God. She’s here? “And all I have to do is repeat it?”
“And all you have to do is repeat it,” Wilbur confirms. He giggles again. “You see? I should so have been a model.”
I look at the earpiece apprehensively. OK, I can do this. Say whatever it is Yuka wants me to say and then get back to my normal life. School. Trigonometry. History club. Walking to school, instead of getting a taxi via Shepherd’s Bush and five million people.
“Now,” Wilbur says, “let’s get you ready and then we can get you both on to the sofa.”
My brain twangs. Both?
“But if Yuka’s sitting next to me,” I point out, “how can she…”
“Oh, Yuka’s not sitting next to you, Sweet-pudding,” Wilbur laughs, throwing open the closed door. “Nick is.”
My brain is now pinging in frantic little elasticated movements around the inside of my head.
Nick looks up, grins at me and then goes back to doodling on a notepad.
Would people please stop doing this to me?
“Did I forget to mention he was being interviewed too?” Wilbur adds, looking carefully at my face and then winking. “Oops.”
oes anybody – anybody – have any idea how hard it is to concentrate on getting ready to talk in front of five million people with an unexpected Nick sitting a few metres away?
Well, let me tell you: it’s like trying to tune a digital radio while Mount Vesuvius erupts in the background.
“Why is he here?” I whisper under my breath as a nice lady called Jessica does my hair and make-up. I’ve already been put into a blue dress that I would never, ever have picked for myself. Mainly because it doesn’t have cartoon characters on it.
“He’s the male face of Baylee, Plumptious,” Wilbur whispers back as if I didn’t already know this. “Maximum brand exposure.” He looks to the ceiling as if he’s just seen an angel. “Yuka’s a total publicity legend.”
“Hmm.” Nick’s lazing around on the sofa – flicking his pen in the air and catching it again – as if national television is something he does all the time. Which, actually, it might be. Today he is wearing a warm grey jumper and a pair of dark blue jeans. His hair is all sort of quiffed up at the front and now and then he puts his finger in his mouth and bites the—
“Hey, Manners,” he says, looking up.
I look away quickly. Sugar cookies. “Y-yes?” I stammer, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.
He gestures towards the coffee table. “It’s low, but if you really squidge, you might be able to do it.”
Is that all he’s going to say? After we held hands and everything? “I have grown out of my table-hiding days as it happens,” I tell him in a cold voice. “It was a childhood phase, that is all.”
“That’s a shame. If we lived somewhere with lots of earthquakes, you’d be a really good person to know.”
I glare at him. For somebody so gorgeous, he really knows how to be annoying. “Actually, there have been nineteen earthquakes in the UK in the last ten years,” I snap. “Which makes me a good person to know right now.”
“It does,” he agrees, grinning at me and going back to his doodle.
I grind my teeth and feel my cheeks get hot. What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m a good person to know, but only nineteen times in ten years? That’s not a very good ratio.
