Picture Perfect (2 page)

I beam at them.

See what I mean? My life is going exactly to plan. Even my parents are following my cake-and-gift related schedule, despite being asleep when I told them about it.

“Awww,” I say happily, zooming Tabby over as if she’s a wriggly aeroplane and giving them both a kiss. “Thank you so much, sleepyheads. You’re the best.”

“I’m just going to go tell Liz Hurley that,” Dad murmurs, closing his eyes. “Be back in a minute.”

“Say hi to her from me,” Annabel says, yawning and rubbing a bit of butter off her face. “If she wants to come over and do some washing-up, tell her to knock herself out.”

And my parents go straight back to sleep.

Right.

According to today’s schedule, I now have six and a half minutes left. Just six and a half minutes to put my purple flip-flops on, pick a couple of chocolate buttons off the cake, smudge the icing so my parents don’t notice and get to the bench on the corner of the road where my best friend will be waiting for me: eager, bright-eyed and ready to confront our mutual destinies.

I have it timed to absolute perfection.

Unfortunately, I obviously forgot to show the plan to my little sister. Because as I kiss her tiny nose she gives me one bright, adorable smile.

And vomits all over my head.

eriously.

Just
once
I’d like to start an important day without being covered in the partially digested contents of somebody else’s stomach.

This was
so
not on the pie chart.

Anyway, while I’m scrubbing baby sick out of my hair I may as well update you on what else has happened in the last seven weeks:

1. I
   still
   haven’t turned sixteen. My birthday is the last possible day of the academic year, which according to recent newspaper reports means I am statistically likelier to fail in life.
   
2. I’ve had quite a lengthy go at my father for making me statistically likelier to fail in life.
   
3. My Best Friend Nat and I have spent plenty of time together, despite me being in my First Ever Relationship. This is because friends should
   always
   come first.
   
4. And also because my model boyfriend spends quite a lot of time working abroad and isn’t around very much.
   
5. Toby has spent a lot of time with us too. Despite not always being invited. Or encouraged.
   
6. Or actually seen for big chunks of it. His stalking skills are really improving.
   
7. Dad is still out of work. Unless you count playing ‘Galloping Major’ with a baby as employment.
   
8. My grandmother, Bunty, left. She managed five days of Tabitha screaming, and then found a Buddhist retreat in Nepal and decided she might be more ‘useful’ in a ‘country very far away’.
   
9. Which surprised nobody, least of all Annabel.
   
10. I haven’t done any modelling.
    

Since quitting my job with fashion designer Yuka Ito, I’ve done nothing even vaguely related.
Nada
. Zilch. Zip.

It turns out Yuka and my flamboyant agent Wilbur were single-handedly keeping my career alive between them, like two Emperor Penguins raising their runty, dependent chick. Without them there to feed it every few hours and protect it from Giant Petrels, it couldn’t survive.

Except in this situation the Giant Petrel is less an enormous arctic bird of the
Procellariidae
family, and more an agent called Stephanie who replaced Wilbur at Infinity Models six weeks ago. She’s very stern, very professional and she doesn’t remember who I am.

I know this because she rarely answers any of my calls and the one time she did I heard her say “
Who
?”.

I haven’t heard from the agency since.

Honestly, I hadn’t realised quite how much I enjoyed getting painted gold, or wrestling octopuses, or jumping around in the snow, or pretending to be the world’s most elegant Sumo wrestler until it was taken away from me.

Literally.

Infinity Models told me to send back by FedEx the gold shoes Yuka had let me keep.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve got other things to focus on. Sixth form starts in ten days and I am so ready for it.

I have a brand-new red satchel.

I have an expensive calculator that does graphs and integration and quadratics and natural logarithms, whatever they all are.

I have a set of non-uniform clothes bought to be worn to my new classes. Almost none of which have cartoon animals on them.

I’ve stalked all of my new teachers on the internet and created a bullet-point summary for each of them, so I can win them over and/or force them to like me.

And – most importantly – I have a brilliantly conceived and carefully structured plan.

I have four A levels to ace, and a boyfriend and Best Friend to juggle properly for a healthy and balanced lifestyle. I have a stalker to keep away from bushes with thorns in them. I have my one and only sixteenth birthday to organise. I’m going to be the busiest I’ve ever been, so I’ve planned it all in minute detail.

The only problem is: every single bit of it depends on how I’ve done in my exams.

Which is exactly what I’m about to find out.

recently read an interesting article about a twelve-week-old abandoned monkey in China who was taken to a sanctuary where it formed a strong and intense friendship with a white pigeon. Despite having nothing at all in common, they immediately became inseparable.

Sometimes I wonder if my Best Friend Nat and I look as ridiculous together as they do.

Now is one of those moments.

By the time I’ve hastily pawed at myself with a damp cloth and kissed my comatose family goodbye, I’m more than fifteen minutes off schedule and hyperventilating with panic.

And Nat looks like she couldn’t be less bothered.

She’s sitting on the bench at the junction. Her new fringe is perfectly straight, black eyeliner is identical on both eyes and a stripy dress is hanging off one shoulder as if she totally means it to.

François may be long gone, but something about her French exchange must have stuck.

Nat looks like she should have English subtitles.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I say breathlessly, handing her a chocolate button and then realising I’ve smudged brown icing all over my T-shirt and it looks disturbingly like something else. “Do you think the results are out yet? Do you think we’ve both passed?”

“This is an
awful
way to start a day,” Nat says, looking up from a copy of
Vogue
. “Harriet, what are we going to do?”

I smile at her in relief.

Obviously I totally misjudged my Best Friend. We will navigate these terrifying academic waters together.

“Don’t worry,” I say in my most reassuring voice as I start tugging her towards school. “I’m sure it’s not going to be as bad as you think.”

“No, it’s
worse,
” Nat says. “Harriet, what does this look like to you?”

She yanks at her dress.

I think it might be a trick question.

“Umm. That’s a …”
Shift. Robe.
“Frock, isn’t it?” Then inspiration hits me. “A
gown
?”

“It’s
stripes
, Harriet. I’ve gone and worn
stripes.
But
Vogue
says the hottest trend this season is miniature prints and florals. I wish they’d give me a bit of
warning
.”

This is what it’s been like ever since Nat got her official welcome letter from the Design College down the road. I haven’t seen her this focused since the blue-glitter frenzy of Year Two. For a few epic weeks, we both looked like Christmas tree decorations.

In a moment of inspiration, I grab a floral elastic band off my wrist and hand it over.

“Oh my God, how did you
know
?” Nat says, throwing her arms around my neck.

“I am very up to date on sartorial trends,” I say, nodding wisely. Plus a stylist left it in my hair once and I’ve been using it to keep my pencils together ever since.

My phone beeps, and I whip it out of my pocket with the speed of a technological ninja.

Ha
.

I
knew
Nick hadn’t forgotten about me this morning. I
knew
he was just as supportive and romantic as a boyfriend should b—

Much congratulationings, Harry-chan! May your big day be full of cloud tens and elevens. Rin x

I grin – I’m glad Rin is making creative use of the
Colloquial English Dictionary
I sent to her home address in Tokyo – and then wait in case somebody else wants to make contact.

He doesn’t.

So I put my phone back in my pocket and nimbly change the subject.

“Nat, I’ve got each of our timetables cross-referenced and colour-coordinated so we know where the other person is at all times. Do you want to see them?”

This is how I’ve spent the last few weeks: carefully constructing an in-depth way of maintaining seamless contact with Nat when she’s at college and I’m at sixth form. We haven’t actually shared a class in five years, so it just requires a little extra imagination.

It also requires hanging out with Toby Pilgrim every day for the next two years, but let’s be honest: I’ve been unintentionally doing that forever anyway.

“Don’t be daft,” Nat laughs, tying her hair into an enormous top-knot. “I’ll just ring you after college and we can do coffee or something.”

Do coffee or something?

“Did you know that coffee can actually kill you in high doses, Nat?”

“I wasn’t suggesting 1,000 cups at once, Harriet.”

“Just a hundred will do it,” I say darkly. “Scientists have done tests.”

I’m just about to tell her that coffee was actually discovered by an Ethiopian goat herder who realised his goats were eating the berries and going totally mad, when we turn the corner and both fall silent.

Ahead of us, school looms exactly like it always has.

Except something is different. Inside that building at this very moment are our entire pasts and our entire futures. That building simultaneously represents the beginning and the end.

A little part of me suddenly wants to sit down on the pavement, dig in my heels and refuse to move.