Picture Perfect (7 page)

“You’re coming with us, Harriet,” Annabel says calmly. “How ridiculous do you think we are?”

Dad has a piece of burnt pizza stuck to his knee.

I’m not going to answer that.

“But there isn’t time,” I state stupidly. “School starts next week.”

“It’s not for a holiday, sweetheart. It’ll be for six months, at least.”

“I got a job!” Dad shouts, jumping into the air again. “I’m going to be head copywriter at a top American advertising agency! I am no longer a draining sap on the life-source of this family!”

I thought Dad quite enjoyed sitting around in his dressing gown, losing his temper at people on the television and eating red jelly out of a big bowl.

“But
when
?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Annabel says, face getting blotchier by the second. “Sweetheart, we didn’t have a choice. It was that or they’d give it to another candidate. We’re leaving a lot of stuff here and Bunty’s going to take care of the house.”

I don’t think ‘Bunty’, ‘house’ and ‘care’ have ever been put together in a sentence before. She’s going to sell it, or burn it down, or cover it with glitter paint and glue feathers to the windows.

I’m definitely going to have to hide the cat.

“Your father’s new company is getting you a tutor,” Annabel continues gently. “That way you won’t miss anything and you can slip straight into sixth form when you get back.”

I blink at her a few more thousand times.

“Your father has to take it, Harriet,” Annabel adds when I still don’t say anything. “He’s been out of work for nine months, and New York will give him the break he needs. Plus –” she clears her throat – “we’ve, umm, run out of savings. We can’t afford for both of us to be out of work any longer.”

“New York? The job is in
New York
?”

What am I supposed to say?

That I’ve spent the entire summer making carefully laminated plans and timetables for the next academic year?

That I have a pencil case full of brand-new stationery I haven’t used yet?

That their timing couldn’t be worse and I hate them I hate them I hate them?

I’m just opening my mouth to say precisely all of that when I see a familiar expression on their faces. The Harriet’s-About-to-Throw-a-Tantrum look. The Hide-the-Breakables look. The We’ll-Need-to-Buy-New-Door-Hinges look.

And then I see what’s underneath it.

Under the nerves, they both look sad. Worried. Tired.

Dad’s excitement suddenly doesn’t look so real any more. It looks like he’s faking it, to try and make us all believe in it. Including him.

They don’t want to leave.

They
have
to.

“I think,” I say, taking a deep breath. “That I may need a few minutes to think about this.”

And – trying to ignore my parents’ astonishment – I turn my back, grab Hugo out of his basket and quietly walk upstairs to my bedroom.

K, I am never laminating anything again.

Ever.

The first thing I do is lie on my bed with my nose in Hugo’s fur and try to slow-breathe, the way Nick taught me to for times like this.

i.e. when I’m about to throw a wobbler.

Then I sit up, grab a pad off my desk and slowly write:

Frankly, this should be the easiest list I’ve ever written.

It’s the eighth-biggest city in the world. It has 8,336,697 people and 4,000 individual street-food vendors. It has been the setting for more than 20,000 films, and it has the lowest crime rate of the twenty-five largest cities in America. The rents are some of the highest in the world, and the wages totally insufficient.

How do I know all this? Because I’m fascinated by the city, just like everyone else. And because every time I watch reruns of
Friends
I go online to try and work out how they all survive, financially.

This could be an enormous adventure. Bigger than modelling. Bigger than Moscow. Bigger than Tokyo. In six months, I’d become a local. A resident.
One of them.

And I mean that quite literally. Thirty-five million Americans share DNA with at least one of the 102 pilgrims who arrived from England on the
Mayflower
in 1620. We’re pretty much blood relatives anyway.

Plus I’d get my very own tutor, who I will refer to as my ‘governess’. I could learn to speak Latin and sing about whiskers on kittens or spoonfuls of sugar and be gently guided by the hand through my formative years, learning to embroider.

But for some reason, I can’t make myself write any of that down.

Instead, I chew on my pencil and scribble:

My life is here.

This is my
home
.

Everything I love is here.

Nat and Toby are here. Nick is here, albeit sporadically. My dog is here, my school is here, my bedroom is here. My memories are here: the corner of the garden where Nat and I used to build forts out of bed sheets, and the washing line I trained Hugo with when he was a puppy, and the area that used to be an expensive plant before I ran over it with my tricycle.

My books are here, my fossils, my photo-montage wall, the cold dent in the wall I lie against when it’s hot in the middle of the night.

The road where Nick and I ran through the rain.

The bush outside where Toby waits for me.

The bench where Nat waits for me at the end of my road, in exactly the same position.

I love my life as it is, and I just want everything to stay exactly the same.

I chew on my pencil and stare at the wall.

Except … it’s not going to, is it?

Alexa has my diary, and humiliation levels at school are about to reach unprecedented levels. For the first time ever, I’ll have to handle her alone.

My modelling agency has already forgotten who I am.

I haven’t heard a peep from my former agent, Wilbur, for weeks.

Nick hasn’t called me.

And then my stomach twists uncomfortably.

Nat
.

Because it doesn’t matter how many schedules and lists I write to try and keep us together, things are about to change. As soon as term starts, Nat is going to make new college friends and she’s going to start a new college life.

A life full of fashion people who know things about colour-coordination and handbag shapes; a grown-up life full of parties and shopping and
coffee or something.
A life where inventing codes and making choreographed dances in the living room just aren’t on the plans any more.

A life without me.

Pretty soon, the pigeon and the monkey are going to start wanting to fly and climb without each other, and the gap between us is going to get bigger and bigger.

Until one of us falls straight through.

Right now, I have a strong feeling that person is going to be me.

Slowly, I take my pencil out of my mouth and spit out a few bits of yellow paint.

And then – painfully, carefully – I write:

hat are we going to do?” I hear Annabel say quietly as I slip back downstairs with Hugo chasing after me. “Did you
see
the way Harriet reacted?”

Dad sighs.

“She responded calmly, with thought and consideration. I’ve never been so frightened in my entire life.”

You have got to be kidding me.

Just
once
in fifteen years I respond to unexpected news in a mature fashion, and all I’ve successfully achieved is terrifying my parents.