All That Glitters (12 page)

Suffice to say, today is not on this list.

Frankly, it wouldn’t even make it into the top 5,000.

I had so many brilliant plans for my first day back at school. Facts and stats and equations and carefully controlled explosions; laughter and soul-searching and conversations about life and death and what our favourite trees are (mine – the Socotra dragon blood, followed closely by the rainbow eucalyptus).

I was prepared for everything and anything on my first day as a sixth former.

I just never thought I’d spend quite so much of it
cleaning.

By the time I’ve finished vacuuming the hallway, all I want to do is crawl to my bedroom, bury myself under a pile of books like a hedgehog and never come out again. I can be one of those people who says
reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body
while never moving another muscle.

“Harriet!” Annabel says in surprise, coming in through the front door as I’m halfway up the stairs with Tabby in my arms: she’s earlier than I thought she’d be. “How was school? I thought you might still be at some kind of extra-curriculum or social activity.”

Then she pauses, rubs her eyes and looks round the spotless house. “Crikey,” she adds with a grimace. “Now I feel terrible. I’d assumed your father would spend the day trashing the place and writing terrible poetry. I clearly don’t know my husband at all.”

I really don’t have the heart to break it to her.

“School was great,” I say brightly, clipping a smile on like Lego. “How was work?”

“Amazing. Frankly, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy telling people I’m going to sue them.”

Annabel grins at me – attired once more in her fitted suit and black heels and obviously feeling completely herself again – and I smile back.

Then I pull my phone out of my pocket and stare at the empty screen. “Oooh, six missed phone calls and seven text messages from like-minded people with similar interests who want to spend quality time with me. Better go reply to them all.”

Annabel takes Tabitha off me with a gentle, “I missed you, squirrel.” Then she looks up with dark eyes. “I’m so glad your first day back went well, sweetheart. I was worried it would be tricky to fit back in so late into term.”

I nod. For once, I’m glad my stepmother is too exhausted for her mind-reading superpowers to kick in properly.

“Not at all! It was ace!!!!”
Fake quadruple exclamation marks.
“I just have a little extra reading to do before tomorrow!! So I shall say goodnight!!!”

There go five more.

Then I do a weird little royal wave all the way up the stairs until I’m locked safely inside my bedroom.

Where I fling myself face down on my bed.

And promptly start to hyperventilate.

Apparently if you hyperventilate before you go underwater, you can hold your breath for much longer because CO
²
levels in your bloodstream are lower.

Frankly, I’m breathing so fast now I’m basically a mermaid.

What’s the expression?
Be careful what you wish for.

I wished for everything to be different; I thought that way it would change for me too. I’m not sure it was such a smart ambition after all.

Everybody else has moved on already.

Nat has college and Theo. Toby has a brand-new, top-secret project that doesn’t involve me. Annabel has work, Dad has “poetry” and Tabby has the imminent hurdle of solid foods to attend to. My grandmother Bunty is painting murals in a beach hut in Rio, Wilbur’s still creating fashion havoc in New York, Rin’s moved to South Japan.

My modelling agency has forgotten who I am.

Nick’s still gone.

Even Alexa and her minions have found something better to do.

And in the meantime, I’m just the same old me, doing the same old things, over and over again. Carrying the past around with me, exactly as I always have.

There’s a humpback whale in the ocean that sings at fifty-two hertz: too low for any other whale to hear. Scientists aren’t sure if it’s a genetic anomaly, or a sole survivor of an extinct species, or just a whale who accidentally learnt the wrong song. They just know that it’s probably the loneliest mammal on earth.

I know exactly how it feels.

As if I’m swimming desperately round and round in repeating circles, singing as hard as I can, but nobody can hear me.

For the first time since I left America, I put my pillow over my head.

And burst straight into tears.

ccording to a recent study, the average teenager cries for two hours and thirteen minutes a week. Thanks to saving it all up, I’m very close to hitting that target in just one session.

I cry until my face hurts and my pillow’s wet.

I cry until my chest aches and there are no tears any more: just an exhausted
ng ng ng
sound.

Never mind Jupiter: my heart is now on the sun. It’s on a white dwarf. It’s somewhere on a neutron star, weighing millions of tonnes and about to rip a channel to the bottom of my toes.

Because there’s the massive lie I told Nat: one with a gaping, obvious hole in it.

I am not
OK
at all.

Finally, I stop crying.

I wipe my nose on my duvet and sit up. I grab a piece of paper and a pen from my bedside table.

And I start writing.

uickly, I cram the letter into an envelope.

I scribble an address on the front and stick three rare stamps on it that will carry the letter far, far away: to a strange, foreign place I’ve never been before. Then I shove my trainers on and run down the stairs before pride or shame or hope can stop me.

“Harriet?” Annabel says as I run through the hallway and fling open the front door. “I thought I could hear crying. Is everything OK?”

“Yes,” I say as I close the door softly behind me. “At least, I think it will be now.”

I run all the way to the postbox. Which isn’t saying much: it’s only at the bottom of the road.

But still.

And as I run, Nick runs with me.

Home, Hertfordshire – January (10 months ago)

“Did you know that snow isn’t actually white? It’s translucent. It just reflects light uniformly, which makes it
look
white.”

“Jump,” he instructed, hopping over a large slushy ice puddle and squeezing my hand with his warm, dry fingers. I’d taken my left glove off, claiming it was because I had one randomly hot hand.

This was a small white lie.

Or possibly a translucent one, reflecting light.

My stomach flipped over, and I jumped too late to avoid a totally wet and icy sock.

“Like polar bears, right?” Nick continued as we kept running towards the train station. “They’re not actually white either, are they?”

I was impressed: I told him that
months
ago. His ability to retain useless but fascinating information was getting nearly as good as mine.

“Exactly,” I said, slipping slightly so that his arm went temporarily round my waist. “We – I mean
they
– aren’t what they look like at all.”

Then I cleared my throat in embarrassment.

Oops. It was one thing comparing myself to a misfit polar bear in a rainforest in my head occasionally: quite another to do it out loud to my boyfriend.

“I was twelve the first time I saw snow,” Nick grinned as we started running down the stairs to the train platform. “I was so excited I got out of bed at 3am and tried to make a snow angel in shorts and a T-shirt.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Half of the world’s population has never seen snow, Nicholas. Considerably fewer would be that stupid.”

He shouted with laughter and my heart squeezed shut for a few seconds, just as it had the first time he did it in Moscow.

“Luckily, I’ve now got the world’s biggest smarty-pants to balance me back out again.”

With a quick spin, Nick stopped, wrapped his arms round me and pulled me so close I could feel his breath warming the end of my cold nose. I had just a second to notice that everything was white and still and calm, like a snowglobe just before it gets shaken.

Then he kissed me and it all disappeared: the snow, my wet sock and both my feet with it.

When we finally stopped kissing, we’d missed the train.