by Holly Smale
“You should have come through the back door with the others,” he says with a disapproving frown. “But OK. Quickly.”
Nodding at his colleague, he leads me through.
My phone is buzzing, so I quickly grab it and stare at the screen:
Blueberrypop! Versace LOVES ME! Look! There safely? All spangletastic? F-G xxx
Attached is a photo of Wilbur, beaming and holding up a purple and orange handbag with a Medusa clasp.
I smile, then swallow.
I’m here. Whether or not I’m safe and/or spangletastic remains to be seen.
Arrived in one piece! :) Hxx
It’s handy to be uber-literal sometimes.
“You!” a woman shouts as I’m ushered with flappy hands into a chaotic back room. “Are you Harriet Manners?”
According to www.howmanyofme.com, there are 90,262 Harriets in America, 2,360 people with the surname Manners and only one with both.
I really wish that was me right now.
“Y-yes,” I stammer. “I’m really sorry, I had a map but there wasn’t a compass and I—”
“Don’t care,” she says, grabbing me by the arm. “Save the excuses for your agent. We need you ready now.”
Beetroot, damp and throbbing in the face, I’m dragged through an assorted variety of models backstage so beautiful it feels a bit like being thrown into the most stunning and elegant chocolate box in the world.
They’re all totally perfect.
There is every shade of skin colour possible, hair colour and texture, eye colour, nose shape: all different expressions of natural beauty, and each equally spectacular.
Every shade apart from fluorescent red, anyway.
Apparently that’s just me.
But if my previous show was a dark, Henry James short story from the land of Gothic nightmares, this is the light opposite.
Just like chocolates, every model is wearing a different vivid colour: bright, flamboyant shades in ruffles and frills and shiny satins. There are explosions of greens and peaches and baby blues and yellows everywhere, and if I look closely, every dress is covered in tiny tropical prints.
One girl in an elaborately long green number is covered in miniature toucans, another in orange has pink flamingos, while a girl having her shoes put on for her is covered in teeny tiny limes.
For a show set in January, it’s decidedly exotic.
It’s dark and cold outside, but I can almost feel the sunshine.
“In,” the stylist says, holding out a turquoise and floaty calf-length dress: it sticks out from the waist in a bell shape and is covered in teeny little yellow pineapples.
Obediently and quietly, I undress and get in.
I’m zipped up and straightened out.
Then I glance around. The other models are starting to line up towards a door and I haven’t even looked in a mirror yet. At least now my face is a throbbing dark pink I’m contributing to the glorious rainbow spectrum.
And I’ve totally missed the show briefing.
I guess the dot was smaller than I’d hoped.
“But my hair?” I blurt as plastic blue wellies are unceremoniously shoved on my feet like a naughty toddler at playtime and I’m pushed towards the other models. “My make-up? Don’t I need … temporarily enhancing? Umm, de-brightening slightly?”
“No,” the woman says sharply. “Thank God.” Then she turns her attention to a model behind me fiddling with one of her dress straps.
“GIRL!” somebody screams in a voice I recognise instantly. “People just can’t keep us apart, right? We’re like, what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Peas in a pod?” the model behind us suggests helpfully.
“Oh my God,” Kenderall sighs loudly. “What an imagination. No, really. Your brain is sooooo unique.” She rolls her eyes then charges towards me in a peach gown, ignoring the complaints of a diminutive woman with a little earpiece. “We’re like beans in a tin, babe.”
Then she grabs me in a one-armed, kiwi-print hug.
“Kenderall,” a woman says in exasperation.
“It’s Siren now.”
“Siren. Get back in your position, please, and stop crushing your outfit. We’re about to go on.”
“Sheesh,” Kenderall sighs. “I know what I’m doing, lady. Siren is not an amateur. I look much better when contrasted with somebody shorter and less toned, like Harriet here. Let the professionals work.”
The woman opens her mouth, then shuts it again and decides to invest her energy somewhere more productive. With a resigned grimace, she goes back to arranging the less noisy girls instead.
Still trying to adjust to the backstage whirlwind – and also yet another dig at my lack of stature – I blink at Kenderall.
Then at what she’s holding under her spare arm.
Again at what she’s holding.
Then again.
I think the accelerated blood flow caused by running must have affected my eyesight, because she appears to be holding an enormous, papier-mâché-and-foam stag head. The antlers are four feet across, it’s covered all over in pale pink velvet and there are small round holes covered in thin, black netting where the eyes would be.
For want of a better way of describing it, it’s like looking at a grown-up Bambi.
After the scene that makes everyone cry.
“What–” I say, licking my lips. “Uh, Ken— Siren, why have you …”
Then I look at the floor. Lining the wall, neatly, is a row of giant animal heads.
Badgers, skunks, foxes, owls, squirrels.
All in pastel velvets – lavenders, creams, blues – with blank, unseeing netted eyes and furry little noses.
“Weird, huh,” Kenderall says, lifting the stag head and putting it over her own. “I mean,” she continues, slightly muffled. “Why you’d want to cover up the perfect and peerless face God gave me I have no idea. Good thing I’ve got the hot body too.”
One by one, the other models are putting their velvet/papier-mâché heads on as well. Like The Animals of Farthing Wood crossed with a My Little Pony nightmare.
I stare at the disembodied head next to me.
It’s a pale yellow rabbit, with a little pink nose and enormous, three-foot floppy yellow velvet ears sticking out of the top.
Now I really really wish I had been at the briefing.
On the upside, I do like rabbits.
They have 360-degree panoramic vision, can hear in two directions at once and are capable of jumping a very long way to safety, very quickly.
Maybe I’ll be able to now too.
“OK, girls!” the lady cries jauntily. “Remember what we told you! Good luck! And remember – stay dry!”
There’s a laugh, and bouncy music I recognise from Nat’s bedroom kicks in, with an additional electronic beat that pounds through the building.
What is happening?
WHAT DID THEY TELL US?
The door opens and with a wave of alarm I see the bright, sparkling turquoise light of an enormous, empty swimming pool.
“Show time!”
t’s a well-documented fact that I’m a creature of planning.
I like my lists, my itineraries, my schedules, my mapped-out pictures of exactly where my friends will sit when we eat pizza. In fact, I get quite cross when they try to change the order without asking first.
Attention to detail is one of my most endearing qualities.
But even though I obviously knew I was coming to the Piscine Molitor – built in the 1920s and famous for both the unveiling of the world’s first modern bikini and giving its name to the protagonist in Life of Pi – I assumed we would be modelling around it.
As none of us are capable of walking on the surface of water like either Jesus or Pygmy Geckos.
Except that – as the door continues to swing open and shut and the girls begin to walk out, one by one – it’s becoming rapidly clear that the catwalk runs through the swimming pool.
Or, more specifically,
two inches below it.
Just under the surface of the enormous, rectangular, fluorescent blue water is a long white stage, surrounded by lights that illuminate the entire building and flick shimmering rainbows on to the white, art-deco walls and ceilings.
Around the edges are palm trees, scattered at random and hung with tiny brightly coloured party lights. They blink all the way across the balconies, where hundreds of fashion people are sitting in sunglasses, furs, scarves, heels, chatting and laughing: quietly buzzing with excitement.
Along the edges of the pool, photographers are eagerly clustered.
And models are just splashing through.
Confidently striding to the music: kicking down the middle, stomping the flashing, drenched catwalk as water and lights spray everywhere.
Wearing tropical, floaty dresses.
And giant forest animal heads.
And plastic wellies.
Because apparently this is what happens at Paris Couture Week.
Swallowing, I focus a bit harder and try to remember how to breathe. And how to swallow, because frankly I’m having difficulty.
The models appear to be prancing to the bottom of the catwalk, pausing with a hand on their hip, turning left and turning right, pausing again and then kicking straight back, by then soaked to the skin.
That seems pretty simple.
It’s the only thing about this situation that does.
“Game on,” Stag-Kenderall says, holding her hand up to high-five me. “And remember to keep your head, babe. Lolz.”
I grab my yellow giant bunny and stick it on anxiously.
Yup.
Keeping my head.
Easier said than done.
cientists have studied how we walk.
Apparently by analysing more than 100,000 pressure points created by our feet, they are able to pinpoint seventy key patterns unique to an individual.
It’s so accurate that they can correctly identify people from their stroll 99.6 per cent of the time.
Without even seeing their faces.
All I’m going to say is: I really hope none of them are in the audience right now. Kenderall may not like having her visage hidden, but I’m kind of a big fan.
At terrifying times like this, being anonymous could have its advantages.
The door opens.
Holding my breath, I walk with intention on to the catwalk: shoulders back, chin up. The foam-and-papier-mâché rabbit head is surprisingly heavy, but as long as I keep my neck very still and stay facing the end of the catwalk, I can focus on the gravity situated round my bellybutton and keep my ears balanced vertically.
Which is definitely not something I’ve said before.
As fiercely as I can, I begin to stomp through the water in my wellies.
Trying to copy the red squirrel who went before me, I kick my feet as if I’m back at home: walking to school through autumn leaves, trying to find the best and biggest conkers to fight with.
The music pounds, water sprays.
Lights are flashing, but through the tiny netted eyeholes of the rabbit head I can’t really tell from where. I’m moving too fast: it’s just a mass of blinding, sparkling flares from across the audience seated in a nearly 360-degree circle. All hanging over the balconies, built specifically to look like those of an old cruise liner, back in the swinging twenties.
Around my feet is a bright turquoise swimming pool.
Somewhere up ahead is an open sky.
But I can’t risk looking either upwards or downwards.
Instead, I focus through the two little round holes, into the net-spangled space in front of me. I slam my feet down, feeling the cold water spraying and my huge velvet ears flopping with every step.
Finally, I reach the end of the catwalk.
I manage to stop before I plunge off the end, put my hand on my hip and pause just long enough for another flurry of sparkles to disorientate me.
I face the other way for a few seconds.
Then I start stomping back through the water like Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain, or maybe a baby elephant on its first outing at a watering hole.
A sudden thrill of pride, triumph and amazement surges through me.
I did it!
I totally nailed that fashion job!
On the dot, I reckon.
Mentally, I high-five myself.
I do a little inward Happy Dance, so tiny nobody can see it.
Then, dripping and victorious, I make my way through the door and wait in a shivering line of forest animals. Let’s just say that January, floaty summer dresses and chlorinated water are not a comfortable combination.
I can feel myself starting to grin.
“You know,” Kenderall says loudly as she stands next to me, water droplets collecting at the end of her antlers, “I fail to see the point in paying models of our stature, fame and versatility to do a show where you can’t see who we are.”
“Siren,” the stylist behind her admonishes.
“What, babe?” Kenderall says fearlessly. “I mean, you could get any old skinny girl to do this. My face is extraordinary. You are wasting these cheekbones.”
My happy smile gets wider: there’s actually something kind of refreshing about a beautiful girl who knows she’s beautiful.
A few minutes later, the door opens again.
And in a long line, we all go out together: splashing back out through the swimming pool and stopping less than a metre from each other.
Relaxing now, I watch what everyone else is doing.
They’re not posing: they’re just standing very still, with their feet at shoulders’ distance apart, their arms by their sides like mannequins.
So I do the same.
Beaming happily from ear to ear, I face the front with my back straight.
With a bang, small pieces of coloured confetti begin to explode around us: perfectly in time to the music, flying into the sky with majestic rainbow pops.
Now I’m not stomping and there isn’t water splashing up everywhere, I can see a lot more clearly through my eyeholes. Through the colourful tissue-paper clouds, into the audience, up into the rafters, to the people lined up along the front.
There’s an almost static-like buzz in the air: crackling and making every one of my five million hair follicles stand on end yet again. Everyone is chatting, leaning forward, taking photos, laughing. Enjoying themselves in one big, glorious fashion party.
No one can see my massive smile as I let my eyes slide over the congregation.
Another thrill of warmth rushes through me.
You know what?
I don’t get invited to parties very often but it’s a shame, because I think I’d really enjoy them. I feel vibrant. Included. Part of something bigger than just myself.
I didn’t realise Fashion Week could be like this. So bright and fun, such a celebration of creativity.
No wonder Nat was excited for me.
My eyes make one more glorious and victorious sweep of the pool, drinking everything in.
Then they stop.
And the whole universe stops with them.
We each blink on average eight hundred million times in a lifetime, but – as my entire body and every muscle in it slowly freezes – there’s a chance I may never shut my eyes again.
n the middle of all the chaos and noise – in the very centre of the colour and light and pop and explosions – is a boy.
He’s sitting very still.
His skin is brown, his hair is curly.
His lips are wide and curve upwards in the corners: there’s a mole on his left cheek, and holes in his jeans. His eyes are black and tilted, and they blink slightly too slowly.
He’s too far away, but I know that if I got closer he’d smell green: like limes, and grass and summer leaves. I know his hands are warm and dry, and that his fingers somehow fit mine perfectly.
That he moves lazily, with power and purpose.
Like a big, dark lion.
Except I’ve never seen this expression before.
Never seen his face so motionless.
The average fully grown human head weighs about five kilograms. Our brains weigh about 1.3 kilograms, and then the rest of it is composed of skull, of teeth, of facial muscles and blood and skin. Some of which I’ve seen pretty close-up today already.
But as I stare unblinking at the boy in the crowd, it feels like mine is about to crumple: folding inward on itself like a piece of origami paper, the way it did when I first met him.
I’m going to literally lose my head.
And – judging by the way he’s leaning forward, dark eyes staring somehow at, through and into my huge rabbit mask – the feeling is mutual.
He’s here. This time it’s really him. I can see Nick.
And Nick can see me.
ime is not constant.
According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the closer something is to the centre of the earth, the slower time goes: the day stretches fractionally longer for our feet than it does for our brains.
As I stand on the stage and stare directly at Nick – as he sits and stares directly at me – I think I must be miles and miles underground for the third time today.
Everything, now, has stopped.
It’s not just me and him any more. It’s as if every atom in the room has paused with us: bright confetti, hovering in mid-air; people frozen with their mouths open; water stiffened and solid, camera bulbs in one blanket of light.
Nick’s here.
He’s here he’s here he’s here …
And I can feel a loud banging starting inside my head, travelling with thuds through my body, like Edgar Allan Poe’s famous Tell-tale Heart.
Our eyes are locked: I can’t move my head, I can’t breathe, my ears have gone numb.
He’s here he’s here he’s here …
“Babe?”
Nick’s just staring back.
He’s here he’s here he’s here …
“Babe?”
