Picture Perfect (5 page)

“
Harriet?
” Annabel yells down the stairs. Tabitha has decided to recommence screaming. It only takes 100dB at the right pitch to break glass, and for once the windows in our house aren’t just in danger from my door slammings. “
Is that you?
”

“Who else is it going to be?” Dad says, wandering in from the laundry room. “If
only
strangers would consider politely breaking in with keys. Maybe they’d dust while they took our valuables.”

His arms are full of tiny pink things: little towels, trousers, onesies, cardigans, socks, bibs. It takes another glance to realise that they aren’t supposed to be pink. There’s a lone red sock on top of the pile.

Dad gives me a look that indicates he knows just how much trouble he’s about to be in.

“
Harriet?
” The screaming goes up a notch. “How did you do?” Annabel appears at the top of the stairs and Dad quickly lobs everything into a cardboard box and closes the lid.

“It went really well,” I say as the screeches get louder.

“
What?
” Annabel transfers Tabitha to a different arm and jiggles her up and down. “Say it again, Harriet.”

“My exams went really well,” I say, holding my thumbs up in the air. “Better than expected, actually.”

Dad climbs the stairs two at a time and takes Tabitha out of Annabel’s arms. “Pipe down, junior,” he says firmly, and my sister immediately goes silent.

Annabel crumples against the wall as if she’s just been popped.

“You’re like some kind of Baby Whisperer, Richard.”

“Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin were all premature babies like Tabby,” Dad explains. “Genius recognises genius.”

I hand Annabel my results and she looks at them and then beams at me. “Brilliant. Well done, sweetheart. You worked incredibly hard for them.”

“Hard
schmard
,” Dad says, fondly scruffing up my hair. “
Both
my daughters are geniuses. I genetically gave them my fierce intellect, fantastic cheekbones and the ability to make great spaghetti bolognese.”

“Marmite,” he adds, turning to the side and sucking his cheeks in. “The secret is Marmite.”

“Did you genetically give them your laundry skills too?”

There’s a long silence. Then Annabel lifts an eyebrow and looks at the tiny pink sock stuck with static to the side of Dad’s trousers.

He coughs.

“Maybe,” he admits. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

I look around briefly at the tidiness of the house.

It’s a lovely gesture of support and encouragement, but I think they’re overestimating how much I value seeing carpet. I haven’t seen the rug in my bedroom for weeks.

“There’s quite a lot of extra space in my wardrobe,” I say, tucking my results back in my satchel. “If you need it.”

Dad and Annabel look at each other.

“Huh?”

“I’ve got a spare drawer too, if you want it for some of Tabitha’s stuff. There’s no point boxing it while you clean.”

“Umm, Harriet …” Dad starts, clearing his throat.

“Thank you, darling,” Annabel says, raising her eyebrows at him whilst putting her arm around me. “It’s
your
big day. How would you like to celebrate?”

I think about it.

Starting the day again and making sure I do my satchel up properly
doesn’t seem appropriately upbeat.

“I’m going to go upstairs and speak to my boyfriend,” I say instead. “I bet he’s been trying to call me all morning.”

“Young love,” Dad grins at Annabel as I start heading towards my bedroom.

They lean over and give each other a little kiss.

“Scientists have said that romantic love is only supposed to last a year,” I mumble, “due to diminishing levels of neurotrophin proteins in the blood. You guys are just making a mockery of statistics.”

And, with my parents giggling away, I walk into my bedroom and close the door as quietly as I can behind me.

t takes a computer with 700,000 processor cores and 1.4 million GB of RAM forty minutes to map just one second of human brain activity.

Forty minutes.

No computer in the entire world can do what we each do in our own heads every minute of the day. No computer is as complicated or as interesting.

I bet they don’t get into anywhere near as much trouble either.

Or write diaries and then drop them in the playground.

The first thing I do is pull my T-shirt over my head and slide down the back of my bedroom door. Then in the stuffy, deodorant-scented darkness I pull out my phone and stare at the blank screen.

No texts.

No missed calls.

No emails or Skype messages.

Not a single light flashing anywhere to say Nick has tried to reach me. I turn it upside down, just in case any incredibly romantic and supportive texts want to fall out.

They don’t.

This afternoon, for the record, was supposed to go like this:

Instead – on yet another pivotal day of my life – I’m hiding under a T-shirt on the floor of my bedroom.

I
knew
I shouldn’t have used my new calligraphy pen to write the list. All the curly Es took
ages.

My phone beeps, and my stomach does a sudden unexpected backflip like a maverick seal on YouTube.

You have such a vivid imagination, weirdo.

Can’t wait for next week.

A

And it’s as if somebody has thrown a pebble straight into the middle of me: panic starts rippling from it in small waves.

They start in my chest, and then they spread outwards. They spread to my shoulders, then to my arms and fingers. They spread through my stomach, into my legs and knees and toes until I’m full of undulating, pulsing ripples.

The waves get bigger and stronger and the pebble gets heavier and harder until everything inside me is threatening to spill out.

Which in a way it already kind of has.

Apparently thirty-nine per cent of the world’s population uses the internet, and Alexa is on every social networking site available. With a few clicks of a button, she has access to
everyone
.

There’s a knock on my door.

“Harriet?” Annabel says gently. “I just downloaded a meerkat documentary narrated by David Attenborough. I thought you might quite like it.”

Meerkats have really thin fur on their bellies so they can lie flat like sunbathers and warm up in the sun, and I’m intrigued to see what David has to say about that.

But right now, I just don’t care.

So I do the only thing I can.

“Oh,
Nick
,” I shout as loudly as I can into my dead mobile. “The monkey did
what
? How
funny
! Tell me more about it! You are just so
hilarious
.”

“Say hi to Nick from me,” Annabel calls through my door.

I don’t know why parents always want to send greetings vicariously. I think it’s their way of making sure they’re still watching us.

“Annabel says hi,” I tell nobody. Then I wait a few seconds in horrible silence. “Nick says hi back.”

“Great. I’ll go prepare your father by explaining that a meerkat is not, in fact, a real cat.”

Annabel retreats down the stairs, and I grab a slice of the chocolate cake she’s thoughtfully left on my dresser.

Eating cake on my own on my bedroom floor is not exactly how I planned to spend one of the biggest afternoons of my life.

But it’s the only thing left on my list I can still tick off.

he rest of the day is spent:

1. eating cake
   
2. lying flat on my back, trying not to be sick
   
3. attempting to get brown icing off my duvet.
   

When I was in Japan I learnt that Buddhist monks in training must eat every single grain of rice in their bowl or it represents ingratitude towards the universe.

I’m pretty sure the same thing applies to chocolate cake.

The next thing I know, it’s 7am and the doorbell is ringing.

I sit up groggily and rub my eyes.

I’m still in my Spider-Man T-shirt, and there is a melted chocolate button stuck to my forehead. My phone is still in my hand, from where I fell asleep gripping it like a small, hard and square stress-ball.

“Annabel?” I shout. “Dad?” The doorbell rings again.

There’s a silence so – grumbling slightly – I grab my dressing gown off the back of the door and start plodding down the stairs: heavily, so my parents know that on the Day After My Big Day I cannot
believe
I am expected to get out of bed and operate as some kind of family doorman.

Then I swing the door open and stop scowling.

I
knew
Nick hadn’t forgotten about me. I
knew
the big romantic gesture was coming: I just had to be patient and wait for it.

I beam at the postman, and at the huge package he’s holding. Maybe it’s exotic flowers. Maybe it’s a carved African mask with a fascinating history, or indigenous jewellery with our names carved into a heart and—

“Are you going to take it or what?”

“Sorry?”

“I’ve got a lot of things to deliver, missy. Please sign here and let me get on with it.”

I don’t think this postman appreciates the level of grand romance he’s participating in.