by Smale, Holly
“Yuka won’t let you out of the airport?”
Wilbur starts giggling again. “Out of agenting, my little Nutmeg. She’s finally going to give me a position with her new label.”
I don’t know why I’m so surprised. Adults almost never like doing their jobs from what I can tell.
“I like being an agent, but I’m shockingly bad at it, Muffin-top. Anyway, I didn’t get a degree in fashion so I could sit at a desk, trying to talk to pretty women. If I wanted to do that, I’d have got a job in a normal office.”
Wilbur straightens out the waistcoat. “This is our chance, Bunny. Yours, and mine.” He pauses. “Mostly mine, because let’s be honest: I’m an adult with a proper career and I’d imagine your shelf life as a teen model is almost over.”
For the last twenty-four hours, I’ve thought about a lot of things. I’ve thought about how far away Japan is (5,937 miles), and how bad I am at eating with chopsticks (very) and my chances of dying in an air crash (1 in 10.46 million). I’ve thought about how many Hello Kittys I’m going to buy for Nat (zero: they creep her out) and how many vending machines there are for every person in Japan (23).
But it hadn’t occurred to me that I might actually have to model when I got there. That it would be important to a lot of people. Or that I would be totally out of my depth. Again.
“OK,” I stammer nervously. “I’ll try my very hardest.”
Wilbur sighs. “I know you will, Baby-baby Panda,” he says, pinching my cheek. “And that is exactly what I’m worried about.”
y the time we get through the security gates, I’m so excited and nervous, I feel like a shark. As if I can’t stop moving or I’ll die.
Or talking, for that matter.
Which is less like a shark, but does a similar job in making people try to get away from me as fast as possible.
“I’m going to Japan,” I tell the man standing by the electric buggies. “I’m going to Japan,” I tell the lady behind the counter at Boots. “I’m going to Japan,” I tell the man who gives me a sandwich at Pret A Manger.
“I’m going on my lunch break,” he replies, immediately entering into the spirit of things.
Everything is suddenly fascinating. The air-hostess uniforms. The scarily round bread rolls. The little packs with free socks and toothbrushes. The fact that you can pop the edges of the headrests out. Even the in-flight safety procedure brochure is – you guessed it – fascinating.
I think I may be over-stimulated.
“Haven’t you been on a plane before?” Bunty laughs when I finish breathlessly pointing at random landmarks below us so that I can click the cup holder in and out of the seat in front of me repeatedly.
“I have, but never without—” I swallow. My parents or Nat. “Not long distance before. Did you know that the chances of being in a plane crash are less than 0.00001 per cent? That means that you’re more likely to be killed by a donkey or to naturally conceive identical quadruplets.”
Bunty pulls a blanket over her knees. “Is that so?”
“Uh-huh.” The lights of London are starting to melt below us into a large, sparkly neon puddle. “They test plane windscreens by throwing chickens at them at five hundred miles per hour so they know they can resist errant flying birds. Once a chicken went through the window and smashed the pilot’s chair in half. They realised afterwards they’d accidentally catapulted a frozen one.”
Bunty chuckles. “You’re so much like Annabel was at your age, darling. Fascinated by the little things.”
I immediately look out of the window so Bunty can’t see my expression. “Actually, everyone likes facts. Apparently three million people Google the words ‘interesting facts’ every single month.”
Bunty looks at me then twists up her nose and closes her eyes. “Funny,” she says. “That’s just what she would have said as well.”
And before I can respond, my grandmother is fast asleep.
I fully intend to stay awake for the next fourteen hours. I have a special Flight Bag I put together to keep me entertained: maps to study and crosswords to fill in and quizzes about the flags of Asia (you never know when somebody abroad is going to test you on something like that).
But I get over-excited about the little butter tubs at dinner, peak early and pass out before we’ve flown over France.
And the next thing I know…
I’m in Japan.
Places I Want to Visit
Japan
Burma Myanmar
Russia
’ve wanted to come here for so long that when I get the list out of my satchel I can see where I struggled to join up the a and the n and there’s blue glitter in the creases from when Nat threw it over everything for a term at primary school.
I’m finally here.
Within minutes of landing, it feels like I have new eyes, new ears, a new nose, a new tongue, new skin. People are talking in a language I don’t understand, making gestures I’ve never seen before and eating food I don’t recognise. There are signs I can’t read, and smells I can’t place, and a hum that sounds entirely different to England. Even the colours look different: there’s a slightly golden glow to everything, instead of the silveriness of a summer in England. I may as well have landed on the moon.
Apart from the whole gravity element. Or I’d just be floating through the airport and it would be really hard to hang on to my suitcase.
“Enormous fun, isn’t it?” Bunty says as I stand, blinking, in the middle of a tiny shop. She waves a couple of bright pink snacks with angry cartoon octopuses drawn on them at me. “Have one of these. It will blow your mind.”
I’ve just seen a sandwich filled with whipped cream and strawberries, a drink called ‘Sweat’ and an entire dried squid vacuum-packed into a bag. The inside of my head has already exploded.
In a daze, I take the snack from her – it’s like an enormous, fishy Wotsit – and then watch a group of schoolgirls roughly my age, standing in a little huddle in a corner. They’re all wearing exactly the same outfit: the same skirts at the same length, the same socks, the same shirts, the same shoes, the same backpacks. They have no make-up on and one of two hairstyles: black, with a fringe in a ponytail, or black, cut short and pushed behind their ears. There’s no cunning personalisation; no fashionable editing or skirt-rolling or high-heel wearing or lipgloss sneaking. It’s stupidly disorientating, considering it’s the precise definition of the word uniform.
They’re all studying maps and staring, wide-eyed, around them, so I don’t think they’re from Tokyo. Then they spot me and their eyes get even bigger. A few start squeaking kawwaaaaiiiiiiii and giggling. I promptly fall over my suitcase and am met with a collection of even louder giggles, and a few squeaks of chhhoooo kawwaaiiiii, ne?
I have no idea what they’re saying, obviously, but it doesn’t feel mean.
I blush slightly and give a little shy wave. They blush and start waving shyly back. Then I notice that one of them has a little dinosaur key ring hanging off their satchel. Another has a little Winnie the Pooh, and a third a small fluffy duck.
Oh my God: is this where I belong? I have spent an entire lifetime struggling to fit in only to discover that all the other tidy, shy teenage girls with neat ankle socks and no make-up and a fondness for satchel accessories live on the other side of the world.
Maybe I’ll ask if one of them can adopt me.
I give another shy wave and then follow Bunty outside.
We walk through a wall of intense, pulsing, dense heat and climb into the back of a taxi.
Then we start the slow, winding drive into the heart of Tokyo.
I have literally never seen a city more awake.
Lights are flashing. People are everywhere. The smell of frying is coming from all directions. Everything is pushed together and jumbled up: streets and paths and roads, winding up and down and over each other like an enormous Scalextric set. The buildings get taller and taller, and – tucked away like secrets – there are tiny wooden t
emples and flowers and trees, peeking out like grass between pavement slabs.
Everything is moving and glowing and beeping: signs, shops, restaurants, T-shirts, pedestrian crossings, all flickering and lit up and coloured and singing.
It’s as if the entire city and everything in it has just drunk eight cups of coffee and is going to spend the rest of the night shaking, feeling really sick and staring at the ceiling. (I did this with Nat a few months ago. It wasn’t as much fun as we thought it would be.)
As I stare out of the window to my left, there’s a shop display with a purple unicorn in it, wearing tiny orange trainers and a rhinestone saddle. A few minutes later there’s a car covered in thousands of diamonds. To my right, ballerina mannequins hang from silver threads.
A group of men wearing grey suits walk past, with a man wearing red tartan in the middle.
A woman dressed as a rabbit waves at us.
And every time the taxi stops at a light, it’s all I can do not to open the car door, jump out and swirl around the middle of the road with my hands stretched out, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Except with a much greater chance of being hit by a car and a much smaller chance of falling off the top of a mountain.
I’ve researched Japan for an entire decade. I’ve looked at photos and memorised facts and stuck maps on my wall. I’ve printed things off the internet and ripped pictures out of calendars. But for the first time in my life, studying has let me down. Not a single thing I’ve read or looked at or studied has ever come close to what it’s like actually being here.
I stare out of the window in total silence until the car finally pulls into a smaller street with large, grey, grubby concrete blocks and stops halfway along the kerb. The windows have bars across them and there are wooden sticks strewn on the floor with bits of dried chicken still attached to them.
“Ta-da, darling,” Bunty announces, flourishing her hands, as if she just pulled a grubby Tokyo suburb out of a black top hat. “Out you hop.”
I go to open my door, and then pause. My grandmother looks very seated and her invitation sounds nowhere near as plural as it should do. “Me?”
“No, I’m talking to the cab driver,” Bunty laughs. She playfully grabs my arm and shakes it. “Yes, you, silly bean.”
“Where are you going?”
“I thought this would be so much more fun on your own, sweetie. It’ll be a real, grown-up adventure. We won’t tell your parents. Deal? I’d only cramp your style anyway.”
The driver opens my door for me and then starts pulling my suitcase on to the pavement. I climb out with my mouth flapping in confusion. What is she talking about? I don’t have any style to cramp. Does this woman know anything about me at all?
“B-but—” I stammer through the gap at the top of the window as the driver gets back in and the engine starts. “What about the contract you signed with Annabel?”
“What’s my daughter going to do?” Bunty grins, raising an eyebrow. “Sue me?” And I’m suddenly not at all sure she knows anything about Annabel either.
The car starts moving away.
“W-wait,” I shout, unsuccessfully attempting to jog after it. “I don’t think that this is … this is a really big … please … I won’t … I can’t.” I swallow. “You can’t just abandon me on the other side of the world!”
“I’m not abandoning!” Bunty shouts through the window as the car starts driving back up the street. “I’m setting you free! Have a tremendous time, darling! Flat 6B!”
ccording to my guidebook, Tokyo is 2,187 km in area. It has 12.6 million people, twenty-three wards, sixty-two municipalities, 168 tube stations and nine train lines. There are 6,029 people for every square km, and it’s the largest metropolitan area in the world. By any stretch of the imagination, it’s a pretty big city.
In the last few seconds it just got a whole lot bigger.
I watch the taxi get smaller and smaller until my grandmother disappears completely. Then I take a deep breath, collect whatever enthusiasm I have left and start dragging my suitcase anxiously up the road.
The wheels keep getting stuck in the pavement, it keeps falling over, and by the time I’ve worked out that the sign for 6B looks like 5E I’ve walked past it six times and most of my excitement has been left in a sticky trail up and down the road, like a big sad snail.
Finally I clear my throat and press one of the buttons lined up in two neat rows, like the buttons on a dinner jacket. It crackles, and a fuzzy voice says, “Yes?”
“Umm. My name is Harriet Manners. I think I’m staying here?”
“I’ll be right down. Wait there.” The crackling abruptly stops, and a few floors above me a door slams.
This is ridiculous. I’ve done exactly as I’m told all my life. Fifteen years of not taking sweets off strangers, running with scissors, playing with matches, jumping off swings, petting stray dogs or accepting lifts from people I don’t know, and this is how it ends: knocking on the door of a stranger in a darkening alley on the other side of the world with nobody to hear me scream.
If I knew I was going to die like this, I could have relaxed and actually enjoyed my childhood.
I start rifling through my satchel for something to defend myself against my imminent attacker. I’m just tentatively wielding the Pocahontas pen I got from Disneyland in front of my face when the door swings open.
“Oh,” the axe murderer says, inhaling sharply, and I drop my weapon.
Because standing in front of me, in black jeans and a grey vest, is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.
hen Nat and I were seven we realised we would never be princesses.
I had thousands of freckles and ginger hair, and everybody knew that nobody with either of those things ever got rescued from a tower. They got left there for all eternity, and thus ended their royal bloodline.
Nat had unruly black hair, dark skin and the beginnings of what her mother would later describe as a monobrow. It was generally acknowledged that princesses had complexions like fruit and two eyebrows, clearly distinct from each other. So that excluded her as well.
The tall girl standing in front of me now is precisely what we concluded princesses should look like. Huge mesmerising blue eyes, flawless skin, a pouty mouth, pale golden hair in waves down to her waist. An aura of goodness and an ability to engage in conversation with animals. A ray of sunshine, hitting her head like a halo. (I have no idea how she’s found one, it’s almost totally dark outside.)
Any second now, rabbits are going to start leaping around her feet in pairs and a bluebird is going to land on her shoulder.
“Hello,” she says, sounding utterly delighted, and I realise that she’s even more English than I am. “I’m Poppy. You’re so not what I was expecting.”
“H-Harriet Manners,” I stutter, taking her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, umm …” and I finish the sentence by fading into silence and staring rudely over her shoulder. Part of me is still expecting to see seven miniature men wandering around the hallway.
“I’m so happy to finally meet you,” she says, taking my suitcase and wheeling it into the hallway. “My boyfriend’s always so busy. Anyway, it’s just not the same, is it? They just don’t want to talk about girly things.”
Oh, God. I suspect I’m about to prove an enormous disappointment.
“Umm …” I desperately start racking my brain for a subject that will make this girl like me. “Did you know that high heels for women in the West are believed to have originated with Catherine De Medici in the sixteenth century? She was about to marry King Henry of France and wanted him to think she was taller than she actually was.”
Poppy looks at me with wide eyes, and I remember why in fifteen years I have only managed to make one female friend.
“But in the Middle East,” I continue nervously, “heels were used to lift the foot from the burning sand.”
“How adorable!” Poppy giggles. “What else?”
What else?
That�
�s not an answer I’m usually prepared for. I’ve pretty much run out of shoe-based facts. “Did you know that Neil Armstrong took his boots off and left them on the moon to compensate for the weight of the moon rocks they took?”
“Amazing!” Poppy claps a few times, and then pulls my suitcase across the hallway towards a bright green door.
She beams at me – a genuine, open, beautiful smile. I blink and look down at my battered suitcase, crumpled dinosaur T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. I’m sticky with sweat from dragging my suitcase about, and even without lifting my arms I can tell that I smell a bit like Hugo when he’s been out in the rain. This must be how Regan and Goneril felt around Cordelia in King Lear.
I think I’m starting to understand why they put her in prison.
“Rin?” Poppy calls, pushing the door open and manoeuvring my suitcase through the doorway with a graceful flick of her wrist. I try to hop over it and smash my ankle against the wheel. “Harriet is here! Come and say hello.”
There’s a clatter, and an incredibly pretty Japanese girl runs out of one of the rooms. Her hair is massive, waist-length and elaborately curled. She’s wearing a pink flowery dress with lace trim and buttons all the way down the front, and white ankle socks with pink ribbons. A large, pink toy duck is attached on a clip to a belt covered in sequins. Her face is perfectly matt with round sparkly cheeks, huge eyelashes and glittery lipstick.
She looks exactly like one of the china dolls Granny Manners used to have on her mantelpiece, except slightly bigger and without a sign in front that says DO NOT TOUCH, HARRIET.
Rin stops in the hallway, breathless. “I go for gift, but I’m not finding it. It has gone walkabouts.” She drops into a low bow. “My name is Rin. I am delight to meet you.”
“Delighted,” Poppy corrects sweetly. “It’s delighted, Rin.”
Rin looks bewildered. “Who is Ted? He’s coming later? I have no present for Ted.”
“It’s … oh, never mind.” Poppy gestures at me to take off my shoes and starts leading me through an incredibly narrow hallway. “We’re both models too. This is a model flat, but you probably know that already.”
