Picture Perfect (11 page)

I am never going to trust an adult again. This is exactly like when I was five and found them scoffing the mince pies I left out for Santa.

“So where are we?”

“Greenway,” Annabel says quietly. “New York is only an hour and a half away by train.”

Only
an hour and a half away by train.

Nick is an hour and a half away.

The Empire State Building is an hour and a half away.

The ice rink is an hour and a half away, as is Central Park and romantic horse-drawn carriages and boat rides and the Statue of Liberty.

Marilyn Monroe’s famous grate and the Museum of Modern Art are an hour and a half away.

The buildings, the lights, the museums, the galleries: everything I’ve got planned for the next six months.

My new
life
is an hour and a half away.

And I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere.

My parents tricked me into giving up everything I care about and everyone I love for this.

For
nothing
.

I try to take a deep breath.
Be calm, Harriet. Be mature. Be the adult you know you should be growing into and respond in an orderly and
—

“OH MY GOD!” I scream, opening the car door and jumping out of it. I’m so furious my hands are shaking as if they’re resting on top of a road drill. “I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, YOU’VE RUINED MY LIFE AND I NEVER WANT TO SPEAK TO EITHER OF YOU, EVER AGAIN!”

And I run straight into the garden behind the house and burst into tears.

n the upside, at least my parents have got the old Harriet they know and love back.

On the downside, they won’t be able to enjoy it because I am never talking to them, ever again.

It’s a good thing the American legal services are so comprehensive, because I am going to divorce them and there’s not a single thing they can do about it. I’ll start the procedure just as soon as I come out of the enormous bush I’ve crawled into.

I curl into a ball and cry silently into my knees.

Maybe I can go back.

Maybe Bunty will look after me.

How long does it take to book a new flight to England? How can I let school know that I need my place back immediately?

Everyone is going to laugh at me because I couldn’t make it in America, like some kind of failed pop star.

“Harriet?” A blonde head pops into the bush, and then a ginger head joins it. “Shuffle over.”

I don’t shuffle over, but somehow Annabel and Dad manage to squeeze into the bush next to me.

Tabitha has been propped up in her car-seat just outside the bush and is staring at us with a strangely wise, owl-like expression.

Maybe I should have screamed for the entire plane journey too.

“We know this probably isn’t what you were hoping for, sweetheart,” Dad says, putting an arm round me. “And we’re sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” I snuffle into my shorts. My nose is damp, and leaves a shiny trail. “You lied.”

“We didn’t
lie
,” Annabel explains gently. “We just … didn’t totally elucidate the facts accurately.”

“Same thing.”

“Not legally, it isn’t.” She sighs. “Sweetheart, I thought you understood that. We can’t afford the rent in New York.”

I
knew
there was no way a normal family could live in Manhattan. Somebody needs to sue every American sitcom ever made
.

“But what am I supposed to do for six months in
Greenway
?”

“Harriet,” Dad says, “Greenway has almost exactly the same population as our hometown in England. We haven’t moved you to Outer Mongolia.”

“I wish you
had
. They have two-humped indigenous Bactrian camels there.”

Dad and Annabel laugh, even though I’m being totally serious. A thirsty camel can drink thirty gallons of water in thirteen minutes. That would at least be something to watch.

“Give us a chance?” Dad says softly. “I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of stuff to do here. I think I saw a bowling alley around the corner.”

I scowl at him furiously.

“Please?” Annabel says. “For us?”

I glare at them, and quickly run through the alternatives in my head.

It doesn’t look promising. There aren’t a lot of options available for a penniless fifteen-year-old on the wrong side of the world, with nothing but a satchel and a guidebook to her name.

I’m resourceful but I’m not Pocahontas.

“Fine,” I say in a small voice. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” Annabel says, kissing the top of my head. “We really appreciate how mature you’re being, sweetheart.”

“There’s a door on the front porch you can give a good slam, if you want.”

I glare at Dad.

“Too soon?” he adds.

“Yes,” I confirm.

“You know what?” Annabel says as she starts clambering back out of the bush. “I think you’re going to be surprised, Harriet. There’s always something interesting to be found if you just look hard enough.”

spend the next five days looking very hard
indeed
.

Here’s what I discover:

That’s it.

As Dad heads out at the crack of dawn to his new job in the city, Annabel slowly transfers all the mess and chaos of our old house into our new house. And I put Tabitha into her buggy (or ‘stroller’) and venture into the local neighbourhood, asking questions and looking for somebody to be New Best Friends with.

It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.

“Oh
my
,” the ancient hairdresser says on the third day when I’ve desperately gone in for a ‘wash and dry’, even though I obviously know how to wash and dry my own hair. She bends down to peer into the buggy. “What a
cutie
. How old is she?”

“Eight weeks exactly.”

The hairdresser prods one of Tabby’s fat cheeks. “She is the
spitting image
of you, honey.”

“I know,” I say proudly. “Did you know that a baby has 10,000 taste buds all over its mouth, not just on its tongue?”

There’s a pause, and then the hairdresser looks me up and down. “And how old are
you
, sugar?” she says. “If you don’t mind me asking?”

“Fifteen,” I say even more proudly. “Nearly sixteen, though. My birthday’s this week.”

“Oh
honey
,” she says, and that’s the conversation over.

On the fourth day, I venture into MANDYS.

“Hello,” I say to the girl behind the counter. She looks a tiny bit older than me, but I like her rabbit earrings. “Did you know you’re missing an apostrophe?”

She stares at me blankly. “
What?
”

“An apostrophe.” I point at the sign. “This shop belongs to Mandy, right? So it’s possessive. It should be MANDY-apostrophe-S.” I think about it. “Unless all of your chickens are called Mandy, in which case it’s grammatically accurate.”

“I don’t know what the chickens are called,” she says flatly. “Oh, I’ve got one of them,” she adds, pointing at Tabitha as she hands me a greasy paper bag.

I beam at her.

“They’re nice, aren’t they?” I say, poking my head over so I can stare fondly at Tabitha’s sleeping face.

“Meh,” the girl says, shrugging. “Bit of a mistake, if you ask me. I’d rather be out partying.”

I couldn’t agree less, but I nod anyway.

“Absolutely,” I say. “But you can always just leave them at home, right?”

Her eyes widen.

I leave my name and email address on a piece of paper and ask her to write to me, but she doesn’t.

In five days, Tabitha and I leave no stone unturned.

We say hello to the man at the car-repair garage. We say hello to his dog. We say hello to the old man weeding his garden. We go to the supermarket five times and lurk in the cereal aisle, saying hello to shoppers and reading all the bright boxes that say things like FROOT LOOPZ and HONEY SMACKZ and SMORZ. None of which look like something Annabel is going to let me eat first thing in the morning.

We sit on the side of the road and wait for somebody to ride past on a bike, and then we wave at them. We even consider going into the church, and then change our minds because they’ve altered their sign to say:

DON’T LET WORRIES KILL YOU.

LET THE CHURCH HELP.

Frankly, that’s a little too ambiguous for my liking.

Finally, on the fifth day, we walk past a tiny park with a roundabout, three swings and a large slide. I can hear laughter from around the corner.

“Oh no,” somebody shouts. “
No!
She didn’t!”

“She so did! She was
all over him
!”

“That’s gross. Like, literally gross. I could be sick on the floor, that’s how gross it is.”

I poke my head around the bush hopefully, and there are six girls sitting on the slide: squidged into the bottom.

They appear to be my age exactly.

So I take a deep, calm breath, straighten my shoulders and start pushing the buggy towards them.

“Right, Tabitha,” I say, pausing to pull the blanket down so they can see her sweet face. “Get your cutest charms ready. It’s time for your big sister to make some new friends.”