All That Glitters (31 page)

And there’s really no way Nat’s
that
sad.

She lives three minutes’ walk away: not in the outer Hebrides.

I wait an inordinately long time – given that we are
in the middle of a conversation
– then my phone beeps.

Out every night this week too.
I’ll ring soon?
Love you. Nat xxxx

I stick my tongue out at my phone – two sad faces and four kisses is really pushing it – then type:

No worries! Let me know when you’re free!
Hxx

Insincere winky face.

A part of me totally understands: of course it does.

I know exactly what happens when you meet someone you really, really like. I know how it feels as if the world is shutting down and opening up at the same time: as if it’s somehow getting bigger, but only for the two of you. How every sentence of a book, every line of a song, every scene of a film, has a little fragment inside it just for you.

How anything that doesn’t starts to melt away.

But no matter how much time I wanted to spend with Nick, I always tried to find a way to put Nat first. To include her. To make sure she didn’t feel shut out. Always. Because falling in love doesn’t have to mean dropping your best friend in the process.

Except – as I put my phone back in my pocket and start wandering slowly home again – I’m starting to realise I might be wrong.

Maybe sometimes it does.

very hour in Britain we throw away enough rubbish to fill the Albert Hall. It looks like they’ve just found a new place to put it.

The house has exploded, yet again.

As I push the front door open slowly, I spot about eighteen different receptacles scattered at random all over every possible surface: cups, mugs, glasses, vases, the yellow bucket we normally keep in the garden. Tiny bits of debris are scattered all over the hallway, as if a particularly stupid Hansel and Gretel got lost somewhere near the entrance.

So far this week I’ve tidied the house every single night before Annabel got home.

And – frankly – I’ve had enough.

“
Dad
,” I say, slamming my satchel on the floor. “Do you think we have
pixies
or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” My father pokes his head round the corner of the living-room door. “I don’t believe in pixies, Harriet, or fairies either for that matter. I’m a fully grown man in his forties. Do I look like an idiot?”

I stare at him for a few seconds. I can’t believe that appears to be a genuine question.

“You have a tea towel on your head.”

“Yes, well.” He sticks his nose in the air in a gesture I may have to stop doing sharpish. “Your sister and I have spent the day adventuring, and I was keen to give her as realistic an experience as possible.”

“With a tea towel on your head?”

“I couldn’t find my Indiana Jones hat, and Tabitha thought it was hilarious.” He holds Tabby out from behind the doorframe. She has a tiny towel on her head and is grinning widely. “So, don’t you want to know what we found?”

At any other time, I absolutely would: yes. I admit I’d be donning a tea towel and marching around the house with my compass.

But right now, I’m not really in the mood.

“No,” I say a little too sharply, putting one foot on the stairs. “Feel free to discover-stroke-destroy the house without me, Father.”

“First we found a half a hamster wheel in the shed, which is
very
mysterious given that this family has never had a hamster.”

Another step and a sigh.

“We did, Dad. It ran away on day two.”

“Ah. Smart little man. We
also
found a quarter of a person, which your sister thought was hysterical.”

He pulls out the Hug Pillow Rin sent me from Japan a few weeks ago, straight after I got back from New York. It consists of half a torso, one arm and a pink T-shirt that says
I am made for the loving of us.

“A gift from a friend,” I say, taking another grumpy step. Then I turn back slightly. “Actually, give me that.”

Dad throws it and I catch and hug it to my chest.

It might just be time to start using it.

“Don’t you want to know what else we found, Harriet? They appear to be addressed to you.”

“If they’re flyers from the Chinese takeaway then it’s because I told the man in the shop that fortune cookies were actually invented in San Francisco and …”

I stop.

Dad’s grinning and wiggling his eyebrows.

With a sudden lurch, I glance back at all the glasses, mugs, vases and buckets. They’re not randomly distributed at all: they’ve been placed carefully. And the debris looks like … petals and leaves.

Oh my God.

I
knew
it. I
knew
I’d hear from Nick again.

In a single day, one human heart produces enough energy to drive a truck twenty miles. As I leap back down the stairs and start following the trail, mine suddenly feels like it could propel me around the country.

The petals are scattered in the kitchen, out on to the back step and down the garden. I run after them, with Dad jogging carefully after me with Tabby in his arms.

Then I open the shed and my little sister gives a shout of happiness that’s only very slightly louder than mine.

There are flowers everywhere.

Hundreds of yellow roses, pink alstromemeria, purple and white sweetpea, pink gypsophila, cream freesias and red carnations. They’re arranged in bunches on every available surface: on top of the lawnmower, hanging off a large rusting fork and lined along the window ledge.

It smells like Granny Manners’ house, except it doesn’t come from a spray or a potpourri inside a particularly creepy teddy bear.

I open my mouth and shut it again.

“I spent all day arranging them for you,” Dad grins from behind me. “They came with that.”

He points at the old hamster ball, balanced haphazardly on a chair in the middle.

In it is a little yellow envelope that says:

HARRIET MANNERS

And my heart abruptly shoots like a truck to the moon.

’ve never been sent flowers before.

Or I have – obviously – because I’m sixteen and what kind of self-respecting teenage girl has never received flowers?

I’m just not entirely sure they count if they’re from your family, you’re ten and you’ve just had your tonsils out. Gifts don’t seem to mean quite as much if you have to chop a bit of your body off first to get them.

But as I run back into the house with my hug pillow over one shoulder, my arms full and my hand clenched tightly round the envelope, it hits me: these aren’t just proper flowers, romantic flowers.

They’re
fairytale
flowers.

The kind you send someone when they win an Oscar, or have their first opening night in a theatre, or break a world record.

Or if you love them unstoppably.

Hands shaking, I reach my bedroom, close the door gently behind me and sit on the floor. I carefully place some cornflowers so I can stare at them, chest still zooming upwards.

Then I turn over the little yellow card.

With infinite slowness – the kind that really, really irritates Nat every Christmas – I peel it open. Carefully, delicately. As if I’m performing some kind of open-heart surgery.