Copyright

First published in paperback in Great Britain

by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Holly Smale 2013

Holly Smale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

Source ISBN: 9780007489442

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007489459

Version: 2016-04-21

For my grandad. My favourite geek.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

geek/gi:k/h noun informal, chiefly N. Amer.

1 an unfashionable or socially inept person.

2 an obsessive enthusiast.

3 a person who feels the need to look up the word ‘geek’ in the dictionary.

DERIVATIVES geeky adjective.

ORIGIN from the related English dialect word geck ‘fool’.

y name is Harriet Manners, and I am a geek.

I know I’m a geek because I’ve just looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. I drew a little tick next to all the symptoms I recognise, and I appear to have them all. Which – and I should be perfectly honest here – hasn’t come as an enormous surprise. The fact that I have an Oxford English Dictionary on my bedside table anyway should have been one clue. That I keep a Natural History Museum pencil and ruler next to it so that I can neatly underline interesting entries should have been another.

Oh, and then there’s the word GEEK, drawn in red marker pen on the outside pocket of my school satchel. That was done yesterday.

I didn’t do it, obviously. If I did decide to deface my own property, I’d choose a poignant line from a really good book, or an interesting fact not many people know. And I definitely wouldn’t do it in red. I’d do it in black, or blue, or perhaps green. I’m not a big fan of the colour red, even if it is the longest wavelength of light discernible by the human eye.

To be absolutely candid with you, I don’t actually know who decided to write on my bag – although I have my suspicions – but I can tell you that their writing is almost illegible. They clearly weren’t listening during our English lesson last week when we were told that handwriting is a very important Expression of the Self. Which is quite lucky because if I can just find a similar shade of pen, I might be able to slip in the letter R in between G and E. I can pretend that it’s a reference to my interest in ancient history and feta cheese.

I prefer Cheddar, but nobody has to know that.

Anyway, the point is: as my satchel, the anonymous vandal and the Oxford English Dictionary appear to agree with each other, I can only conclude that I am, in fact, a geek.

Did you know that in the old days the word ‘geek’ was used to describe a carnival performer who bit the head off a live chicken or snake or bat as part of their stage act?

Exactly. Only a geek would know a thing like that.

I think it’s what they call ironic.

ow that you know who I am, you’re going to want to know where I am and what I’m doing, right? Character, action and location: that’s what makes a story. I read it in a book called What Makes a Story, written by a man who hasn’t got any stories at the moment, but knows exactly how he’ll tell them when he eventually does.

So.

It’s currently December, I’m in bed – tucked under about fourteen covers – and I’m not doing anything at all apart from getting warmer by the second. In fact, I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but I think I might be really sick. My hands are clammy, my stomach’s churning and I’m significantly paler than I was ten minutes ago. Plus, there’s what can only be described as a sort of… rash on my face. Little red spots scattered at totally random and not at all symmetrical points on my cheeks and forehead. With a big one on my chin. And one just next to my left ear.

I take another look in the little hand-held mirror on my bedside table, and then sigh as loudly as I can. There’s no doubt about it: I’m clearly very ill. It would be wrong to risk spreading this dangerous infection to other, possibly less hardy, immune systems. I shall just have to battle through this illness alone.

All day. Without going anywhere at all.

Sniffling, I shuffle under my duvets a little further and look at my clock on the opposite wall (it’s very clever: all the numbers are painted at the bottom as if they’ve just fallen down, although this does mean that when I’m in a hurry, I have to sort of guess what the time is). Then I close my eyes and mentally count:

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2…

At which point, absolutely on cue as always, the door opens and the room explodes: hair and handbag and coat and arms everywhere. Like a sort of girl bomb. And there, as if by very punctual magic, is Nat.

Nat – for the record – is my Best Friend, and we are so utterly in tune that it’s like we have one brain, divided into two pieces at birth. Or (more likely) two brains, entwined shortly afterwards. Although we didn’t meet until we were five years old, so obviously I’m speaking metaphorically or we’d both be dead.

What I’m trying to say is: we’re close. We’re harmonised. We’re one and the same. We’re like a perfect stream of consciousness, with never a cross word between us. We work with perfect, unquestioning synergy. Like two dolphins that jump at exactly the same time and pass the ball to each other at Sea World.

Anyway. Nat takes one step into the room, looks at me, and then stops and puts her hands on her hips.

“Good morning,” I croak from under the covers, and then I start coughing violently. Human coughs release air at roughly 60mph, and without being vain, I’d like to think that mine reaches 65mph or 70mph minimum.

“Don’t even think about it,” Nat snaps.

I stop coughing and look at her with my roundest, most confused eyes. “Hmmm?” I say innocently. And then I start coughing again.

“I mean it. Don’t even think about thinking about it.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. The fever must be making my brain swell.

“Nat,” I say feebly, closing my eyes and pressing my hand against my head. I’m a shell of the person I used to be. A husk. “I have bad news.” I open one eye and take a peek round the room. Nat still has her hands on her hips.

“Let me guess,” she says in a dry voice. “You’re sick.”

I give a weak but courageous smile: the sort Jane gives Lizzie in Pride and Prejudice when she’s bedridden with a really bad cold, but is being very brave about it. “You know me so well,” I say affectionately. “It’s like we have one mind, Nat.”

“And you’re out of it if you think I’m not about to drag you out of bed by your feet.” Nat takes a few steps towards me. “Also, I want my lipstick back,” she adds.

I clear my throat. “Lipstick?”

“The one you’ve dotted all over your face.”

I open my mouth and then shut it again. “It’s not lipstick,” I say in a small voice. “It’s a dangerous infection.”

“Then your dangerous infection is glittery, Harriet, and just so happens to match my new shoes perfectly.”

I shift a little bit further down the bed so that only my eyes are visible. “Infections are very advanced these days,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster. “They are sometimes extremely light-reflective.”

“Featuring small flecks of gold?”

I raise my chin defiantly. “Sometimes.”

Nat’s nose twitches and she rolls her eyes. “Right. And your face is producing white talcum powder, is it?”

I sniff quickly. Oh, sugar cookies. “It’s important to keep sick people dry,” I say as airily as I can. “Dampness can allow bacteria to develop.”

Nat sighs again. “Get out of bed, Harriet.”

“But—”

“Get out of bed.”

“Nat, I…”

“Out. Now.”

I look down at the duvets in a panic. “But I’m not ready! I’m in my pyjamas!” I’m going to give it one last desperate shot. “Nat,” I say, changing tack and using my most serious, profound voice. “You don’t understand. How will you feel if you’re wrong? How will you live with yourself? I might be dying.”

“Actually, you’re right,” Nat agrees, taking another two steps towards me. “You are. I’m literally seconds away from killing you, Harriet Manners. And if that happens, I’ll live with myself just fine. Now get out of bed, you little faker.”

And, before I can protect myself, Nat lunges suddenly towards me and tugs the covers away.

There’s a long silence.

“Oh, Harriet,” Nat eventually says in a sad and simultaneously triumphant voice.

Because I’m lying in bed, fully dressed, with my shoes on. And in one hand is a box of talcum powder; in the other is a bright red lipstick.

K, so I lied a little bit.

Twice, actually.

Nat and I are not in perfect harmony at all. We’re definitely close, and we definitely spend all of our time together, and we definitely adore each other very much, but there are moments now we’ve almost grown up where our interests and passions divide a teensy bit.

Or – you know – a lot.

It doesn’t stop us being inseparable, obviously. We’re Best Friends because we frequently make each other laugh, so much so that I once made orange juice come out of her nose (on to her mum’s white rug – we stopped laughing pretty shortly afterwards). And also because I remember when she peed on the ballet-room floor, aged six, and she is the only person in the entire world who knows I still have a dinosaur poster taped to the inside of my wardrobe.

But over the last few years, there have definitely been minuscule points where our desires and needs have… conflicted a little bit. Which is why I may have said I was a little bit sicker than I actually felt this morning, which was: not much.

Or at all, actually. I feel great.

And why Nat is a bit snappy with me as we run towards the school coach as fast as my legs will carry me.

“You know,” Nat sighs as she waits for me to catch up for the twelfth time. “I watched that stupid documentary on the Russian Revolution for you last week, and it was about four hundred hours long. The least you can do is participate in an Educational Opportunity to See Textiles from an Intimate and Consumer Perspective with me.”

“Shopping,” I puff, holding my sides together so they don’t fall apart. “It’s called shopping.”

“That’s not what’s written on the leaflet. It’s a school trip: there has to be something educational about it.”

“No,” I huff. “There isn’t.” Nat pauses again so that I can try and catch up. “It’s just shopping.”

To be fair, I think I have a point. We’re going to The Clothes Show Live, in Birmingham. So-called – presumably – because they show clothes to you. Live. In Birmingham. And let you buy them. And take them home with you afterwards.

Which is otherwise known as shopping.

“It’ll be fun,” Nat says from a few metres ahead of me. “They’ve got everything there, Harriet. Everything anyone could possibly ever want.”

“Really?” I say in the most sarcastic voice I can find, considering that I’m now running so fast that my breath is starting to squeak. “Do they have a triceratops skull?”

“…No.”

“Do they have a life-size model of the first airborne plane?”

“…Probably not.”

“And do they have a John Donne manuscript, with little white gloves so that you can actually touch it?”

Nat thinks about it. “I think it’s unlikely they have that,” she admits.

“Then they don’t have everything I want, do they?”

We reach the coach steps and I can barely breathe. I don’t understand it: we’ve both run the same distance, and we’ve both expended the same energy. I’m an entire centimetre shorter than Nat so I have less mass to move, at the same speed (on average). We both have exactly the same amount of PE lessons. And yet – despite the laws of physics – I’m huffing and purple, and Nat’s only slightly glowing and still capable of breathing out of her nose.

Sometimes science makes no sense at all.

Nat starts rapping in a panic on the bus door. We’re late – thanks to my excellent acting skills – and it looks like the class might be about to leave without us. “Harriet,” Nat snaps, turning to look at me as the doors start making sucking noises, as if they’re kissing. “Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown by Lenin in 1917.”

I blink in surprise. “Yes,” I say. “He was.”

“And do you think I want to know that? It’s not even on our exam syllabus. I never had to know that. So now it’s your turn to pick up a few pairs of shoes and make ooh and aah sounds for me because Jo ate prawns and she’s allergic to prawns and she got sick and couldn’t come and I’m not sitting on a bus on my own for five hours. OK?”

Nat takes a deep breath and I look at my hands in shame. I am a selfish, selfish person. I am also a very sparkly person: my hands are covered in gold glitter.

“OK,” I say in a small voice. “I’m sorry, Nat.”

“You’re forgiven.” The coach doors finally slide open. “Now get on this bus and pretend for one little day that you have the teeniest, tiniest smidgen of interest in fashion.”

“All right,” I say, my voice getting even smaller.

Because – in case you haven’t worked this out by now – here’s the key thing that really divides Nat and me:

I don’t.

o, before we get on the bus, you might want to know a little more about me.

You might not, obviously. You might be thinking, Just get on with it, Harriet, because I haven’t got all day, which is what Annabel says all the time. Adults rarely have all day, from what I can tell. However, if – like me – you read cereal boxes at the breakfast table and shampoo bottles in the bath and bus timetables when you already know what bus you’re getting, here’s a little more information:

1 My mother is dead. That’s usually the bit where people look awkward and start talking about how rainy the sky looks, but she died when I was three days old so missing her is a bit like loving a character from a book. The only stories I have of her belong to other people.

2 I have a stepmother, Annabel. She married Dad when I was seven, she’s alive and she works as a lawyer. (You would not believe the amount of arguments my parents have over those two facts. “I am living,” Annabel will scream. “You’re a lawyer,” Dad will shout back. “Who are you kidding?”)

3 Dad’s In Advertising. (“Not in adverts,” Annabel always points out when they have dinner parties. “I write them,” Dad replies in frustration. “I’m as In Advertising as you can get.”“Apart from actors,” Annabel says under her breath, at which point Dad stomps off to the kitchen to get another bottle of beer.)

4 I’m an only child. Thanks to my parents, I am destined to a life of never having anyone to squabble with in the back seat of the car.

5 Nat isn’t just my Best Friend. She gave herself this title, even though I told her it was a bit unnecessary: she’s also my Only Friend. This might be because I have a tendency to correct people’s grammar and tell them facts they’re not interested in.

6 And put things in lists. Like this one.

7 Nat and I met ten years ago when we were five, which makes us fifteen. I know you could have worked that out by yourself, but I can’t assume people like doing equations in their heads just because I do.

8 Nat is beautiful. When we were young, adults would put a hand under her chin and say, “She’s going to break hearts, this one,” as if she couldn’t hear them and wasn’t deciding when would be the best time to start.

9 I am not. My impact on hearts is like an earthquake happening on the other side of the world: if I’m lucky, I can hope for a teacup tinkling in its saucer. And even then it’s a bit of a surprise and everybody talks about it for days afterwards.

Other things will probably filter through in stages – like the fact that I only eat toast in triangles because it means there are no soggy edges, and my favourite book is the first half of Great Expectations and the last half of Wuthering Heights – but you don’t need to know them right now. In fact, arguably, you never need to know them. The last book Dad bought me had a gun on the front cover.

Anyway, the final defining fact that I may already have mentioned in passing is:

10. I don’t like fashion.

I never really have, and I can’t imagine I ever will.

I got away with it until I was about ten. Under that age, non-uniform didn’t really exist: we were either in our school uniform, or our pyjamas, or our swimming costumes, or dressed like angels or sheep for the school nativity. We had to go and get an outfit especially for non-uniform days.

Then teenagehood hit like a big pink glittery sledgehammer. Suddenly there were rules and breaking them mattered. Skirt lengths and trouser shapes and eye-shadow shades and heel heights and knowing how long you could go without wearing mascara before people accused you of being a lesbian.

Suddenly the world was divided into the right and the horribly, horribly wrong. And the people stuck between, who for the life of them couldn’t tell the difference. People who wore white socks and black shoes; who liked having hair on their legs because it was fluffy at night-time. People who really missed the sheep outfit, and secretly wanted to wear it to school even when it wasn’t Christmas.

People like me.

If there had been consistent rules, I’d have done my best to keep up. Made some sort of pie chart or line graph and then resentfully applied the basics. But fashion’s not like that: it’s a slippery old fish. You try to grab it round the neck and it slides out of your grip and shoots off in another direction, and every desperate grab towards it makes you look even more stupid. Until you’re sliding around on the floor, everybody is laughing at you and the fish has shot under the table.

So – to put it simply – I gave up. Brains have only got so much they can absorb, so I decided I didn’t have space. I’d rather know that hummingbirds can’t walk, or that one teaspoon of a neutron star weighs billions of tonnes, or that bluebirds can’t see the colour blue.

Nat, however, went the other way. And suddenly the sheep and the angel – who hung out quite happily in the fields of Bethlehem together – didn’t have as much in common any more.

We’re still Best Friends. She’s still the girl who lost her first baby tooth in my apple, and I’m still the girl who stuck one of her sunflower seeds up my nose in primary school and couldn’t get it out again. But sometimes, every now and then, the gap between us gets so big it feels like one of us is going to slip through.

Something tells me that today that person is going to be me.

nyway.

What all this means is: I’m not thrilled to be here. I’ve stopped whining, but let’s just say I’m not spinning round and round in circles, farting at intervals, like my dog Hugo does when he’s excited. In fact, I did two years of doing woodwork specifically so I didn’t have to come on this textiles trip. Two years of accidentally sanding down my thumbs and cringing to the sound of metal on metal, purely to get out of today. And then Jo eats prawns and does a little vomiting and BAM: here I am.

The first step on to the coach is uneventful, just one step, directly behind Nat’s. The second step is slightly less successful. The coach starts before we’ve sat down and I’m thrown sideways, in the process kicking a nice fluffy green bag the way I’ve never, ever managed to kick a football in my entire life.

“Moron,” Chloe hisses as she retrieves it.

“I’m n-n-not,” I stutter, cheeks lighting up. “A moron only has an IQ of between 50 and 69. I think mine’s a little higher than that.”

And then it all goes wrong. On the third step, the driver sees a family of ducks on the road, hits the brakes and sends me flying towards the end of the bus. I instinctively grab whatever will protect me from slamming my face on the floor. A headrest, a shoulder, an armrest, a seat.

Somebody’s knee.

“Ugh,” a voice shouts in total disgust, “she’s touching me.”

And there – staring at me as if she just sicked me up – is Alexa.

lexa. My nemesis, my adversary, my opponent, my arch-enemy. Whatever you want to call somebody who hates your guts.

I’ve known her three days longer than I’ve known Nat and I’ve yet to work out what her problem is. I can only conclude that her feelings towards me are very similar to what I’ve read about love: passionate, random, inexplicable and totally uncontrollable. She can’t help hating me any more than Heathcliff could help loving Cathy. It’s simply written in the stars. Which would be quite sweet if she wasn’t such a cow all of the time.

And I wasn’t totally terrified of her.

I stare at Alexa in total shock. I’m still clinging to her tight-covered leg like a frightened baby monkey clinging on to a tree. “Let go,” she snaps. “Oh my God.”

I scrabble away, trying desperately to stand up. There are approximately 13,914,291,404 legs in the world – over half of them in trousers – and I had to grab this one?

“Ugh,” she says loudly to anybody who will listen. “Do you think I might have caught something? Oh, God, I can already feel it starting…” She cowers in her seat. “No…The light… It hurts… I can feel myself changing… Suddenly I want to do my homework… It’s too late!” She puts her hands over her face and then pulls them away, crosses her eyes, protrudes her teeth and pulls the ugliest expression I’ve ever seen on public transport. “Nooooooo! I’ve caught it! I’m… I’m… I’m a geeeeeeeeeeeeek!”

People start sniggering and from somewhere on the left I can hear a little ripple of applause. Alexa bows a couple of times, pulls a face at me and then goes back to reading her magazine.

My cheeks are flushed, my hands are shaking. My eyes are starting to prickle. All the normal responses to ritual humiliation. The thing I want to make really clear right now is that I don’t mind being a geek. Being a geek is fine. It’s unimpressive, sure, but it’s pretty unobtrusive. I could be a geek all day long, as long as people left me alone.

The thing is: they don’t.

“Seriously,” Nat snaps in a loud voice from a few metres in front of me. “Did you sniff wet paint as a child or something, Alexa?”

Alexa rolls her eyes. “Barbie talks. Run away and play with your shoes, Natalie. This has nothing to do with you.”

I’m trying desperately to think of something clever to say. Something biting, poignant, incisive, deeply wounding. Something that will give Alexa just an ounce of the hurt she gives me on an almost daily basis.

“You suck,” I say in the tiniest voice I’ve ever heard.

Yeah, I think. That should do it. And then I hold my chin up as high as I can get it, walk the rest of the way down the aisle and sink into the seat next to Nat before my knees give way.

I’m in my seat for about three seconds when the morning promptly decides to get worse. I barely have time to open my crossword book first.

“Harriet!” a delighted voice says, and a little pale face pops over the back of the seat in front of me. “You’re here! You’re really, actually, actually here!” As if I’m Father Christmas and he’s a six-year-old whose chimney I’ve just climbed down.

“Yes, Toby,” I say reluctantly. “I’m here.” And then I turn to scowl at Nat.

It’s Toby Pilgrim.

Toby “my knees buckle when I run” Pilgrim. Toby “I bring my own Bunsen burner to school” Pilgrim. Toby “I wear bicycle clips on my trousers and I don’t even have a bike” Pilgrim. Nat should have told me he’d be here.

I’m now following my own stalker to Birmingham.

magine you’re a polar bear and you find yourself in the middle of a rainforest. There are flying squirrels, and monkeys, and bright green frogs, and you have no idea how you got there or what you’re supposed to do next. You’re lonely, you’re lost, you’re frightened and all you know – for absolute certain – is that you shouldn’t be there.

Now imagine you find another polar bear. You’re so happy to see another polar bear – any polar bear – that it doesn’t matter what kind it is. You follow that polar bear around, just because it’s not a monkey. Or a flying squirrel. Because it’s the only thing that makes it OK to be a polar bear in the middle of a rainforest.

Well, that’s how it is with Toby. One geek, incoherently happy to find another geek in the middle of a world full of normal people. Thrilled to discover that there is someone else like him. It’s not me he wants. It’s my social standing. Or lack thereof.

And let me get something straight: I’m not going to have a romance with someone just because they’re made out of the same stuff as me. No. I’d rather be on my own. Or – you know – in unrequited love with a parrot. Or one of those little lemurs with the stripy tails.

“Harriet!” Toby says again and a little bit of bogey starts dripping from his nose. He promptly wipes it on his jumper sleeve and beams at me. “I can’t believe you came!”

I glare at Nat and she grins, winks and goes back to reading her magazine. I am not feeling very harmonised with her at the moment, if I’m being totally honest. In fact, I sort of feel like hitting her over the head with my crossword puzzle.

“Yes,” I say, trying to edge away. “Apparently I had to.”

“But isn’t this just wonderful?” he gasps, clambering up on to his knees in his unbridled enthusiasm. I notice that his T-shirt says THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE 127.0.0.1. “Of all the buses in all the towns in all the world, you walk on to mine. Can you see what I did there? It’s a quote from Casablanca, except that I replaced the words gin joints with bus and the word into with on to.”

“You did, yes.”

Nat makes a snuffle of amusement and I subtly pinch her leg.

“Do you know what I learnt this morning, Harriet? I learnt that the phrase rule of thumb came from a time when a man was only legally allowed to beat his wife with something the width of his own thumb. I can lend you the book, although there’s a pizza stain on page 143 which you might have to read round.”

“Erm. Right. Thanks.” I nod knowingly and then lift my book so that Toby realises the conversation is over.

He doesn’t.

“And,” he continues, holding it down so he can see me properly. “You know the most unbelievable thing?”

It’s funny, when Toby behaves like this, I can suddenly see why I’m so annoying.

“Well, did you know that…” The coach swerves slightly into the middle lane. Toby swallows. “That…” he continues and licks his lips. The coach swerves back into the slow lane. “That—” Toby’s face goes abruptly green and he clears his throat. “I don’t want you to think I’m easily distracted, Harriet,” he finally continues in a little voice, “but I’m suddenly not feeling so well. I don’t take too kindly to vehicles, particularly the ones that move. Do you remember the ride-on lawnmower in Year One?”

I look at him in horror and Nat immediately stops smirking. “Oh, no,” she says in a dark voice. “No, no.” Nat obviously remembers it too.

“Harriet,” Toby continues, licking his lips again and going an even stranger colour. “I think we might need to stop the bus.”

“Toby,” Nat snaps in a low, warning voice. “Breathe in through your nose and out through your—”

But it’s too late. The coach makes one more sudden movement and – as if in slow motion – Toby gives me one look of pure apology.

And vomits all over my lap.

n case you were wondering, that’s what Toby did on the ride-on lawnmower in Year One too. Except this time he manages to broaden his horizons in the most literal sense and hit Nat too.

She’s not happy about it. I mean, I’m not happy about it either. I don’t relish being hit by the contents of other people’s digestive tracts. But Nat’s really not happy about it.

She’s so unhappy about it that when the coach finally pulls up to The Clothes Show at the NEC, Birmingham – two and a half hours later – she’s still shouting at him. And Toby’s telling both of us how much better he feels now because, “Isn’t it funny how it feels OK when all the vomit’s gone?”

“I don’t believe this,” Nat is still snapping, stomping across the carpark. We’re both now wearing PE kit: luckily two of the boys had football practice straight after the trip, so – after a lot of whining – Miss Fletcher managed to convince them to lend us their kit. We’re wearing orange football shirts, green football shorts and white knee socks.

I quite like it. It’s making me feel quite sporty. Nat, on the other hand, isn’t so keen. We were forced to keep our shoes on, and – while my trainers look quite normal – Nat’s red high heels… don’t.

“Do you know how long it took me to choose my outfit this morning?” she’s yelling at Toby as we approach the front doors.

Toby contemplates this like it’s not a rhetorical question. “Twenty minutes?” he offers. Nat’s face goes slightly puce. “Thirty?” Nat’s jawline starts flexing. “An hour and a half?”

“A really long time!” she shouts. “A really, really long time!” Nat looks down at herself. “I had a brand-new dress and leggings from American Apparel, Toby. Do you know how much they cost? I was wearing Prada perfume.” She picks up a piece of green nylon between her fingers. “And now I’m wearing a boy’s football kit and I smell of sick!”

I pat her arm as comfortingly as I can.

“At least my vomit was sort of chocolatey,” Toby says cheerfully. “I had Coco Pops for breakfast.”

Nat grits her teeth.

“Anyway,” Toby continues blithely, “I think you look awesome. You both match. It’s super trendy.”

Nat scrunches her mouth up, clenches her fists and furrows her brow right in the centre. It’s like watching somebody shake a bottle of fizzy drink without taking the lid off. “Toby,” she says in a low hiss. “Go. Now.”

“OK,” Toby agrees. “Anywhere in particular?”

“Anywhere. Just go. NOW.”

“Toby,” I say in a low voice, taking him by the arm. I’m really, genuinely scared for his safety. “I think maybe you should go inside.” I look at Nat. “As quickly as possible,” I add.

“Ah.” Toby contemplates this for a few seconds and then nods. “Ah. I see. Then I shall see you both anon.”

And – giving me what looks disturbingly like an attempt at a wink over his shoulder – he skips off through the swing doors.

When he’s gone and I know that Nat can’t rip his head off and feed it to a large flock of pigeons, I turn to her.

“Nat,” I say, chewing on a fingernail anxiously. “It’s not that bad. Honestly. We smell fine. And if you put my coat on over the top, nobody will see what you’re wearing. It’s longer than yours.”

“You don’t get it,” Nat says and suddenly the anger pops: she just sounds miserable. “You just don’t get it.”

I think Nat underestimates my powers of empathy. Which is a shame because I am a very empathetic person. Empathetic. Not pathetic.

“Sure I do,” I say in a reassuring voice. “You don’t like football. I get that.”

“It’s not that. Today was really important, Harriet. I really needed to look good.”

I stare at her blankly. After a few seconds, Nat rolls her eyes and hits herself on the forehead in frustration. “They’re in there.”

I stare at the revolving doors. “Who’s in there?” I whisper in terror. I think about it for a few seconds. “Vampires?”

“Vampires.” Nat looks at me in consternation. “You have got to start reading proper books.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about. Just because I own a lot of books about things that don’t actually exist in real life in no way indicates that I’m not connected to the real world. I totally am.

Nat takes a deep breath. “I put the prawns in Jo’s dinner,” she says, avoiding my eyes.

I stare at her. “Nat! Why would you do that?”

“Because I need you today,” she says in a tiny voice. “I need you for support. They’re in there.” And she looks again at the doors and swallows.

“Who?”

“Model agents, Harriet,” Nat says as if I’m an idiot. “Lots and lots of model agents.”

“Oh,” I say stupidly, and then think about it. “Ohhhhhhhh.”

And I finally understand what I’m doing here.

e were seven when Nat decided that she wanted to be a model.

“Gosh,” somebody’s mum said at a school disco. “Natalie. You’re getting gorgeous. Maybe you could be a model when you grow up.”

I paused from filling my party dress pockets with chocolate cake and jelly sweets. “A model of what?” I asked curiously. And then my greedy little hand went out to grab a mini jam roll. “I have a model airplane,” I added proudly.

The mum gave me the look that I was already used to by then.

“A model,” she explained, looking at Nat, “is a girl or a boy who gets paid ridiculous quantities of money to wear clothes they don’t own and have their photo taken.” I looked at Nat and already I could see her eyes starting to glow: the seed of the dream being planted. “Just hope you grow tall and thin,” the mum added bitterly, “because if you ask me, they all look like aliens.”

At which point Nat put her chocolate cake down and spent the rest of the night sitting on the floor, with me pulling on her feet to make her legs longer.

And I spent the rest of the night talking about space travel.

It’s finally here.

Eight years of buying Vogue and not eating pudding (Nat, not me: I eat hers) and we’ve finally made it to the very edge of Nat’s destiny. I feel a bit like Sam in The Lord of the Rings, just before Frodo throws the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Except in a more positive, magical way. With slightly less hairy feet.

Nat doesn’t look as excited as I thought she would. She looks terrified and as stiff as a board standing, totally still, in the middle of the NEC entrance. She’s staring at the crowd as if it’s a pond full of fish and she’s a really hungry cat, and – honestly – I’m not even sure she’s breathing. I’m tempted to put my head on her chest just to check.

The thing is: she’s doing it all wrong.

I know a lot about stories and magic – thanks to reading loads of books and also belonging to a forum on the internet – and the most basic rule is that it has to come as a surprise. Nobody hopped into a wardrobe to find Narnia; they hopped in, thinking it was just a wardrobe. They didn’t climb up the Faraway Tree, knowing it was a Faraway Tree; they thought it was just a really big tree. Harry Potter thought he was a normal boy; Mary Poppins was supposed to be a regular nanny.

It’s the first and only rule. Magic comes when you’re not looking for it.

But Nat’s looking for it, and the harder she looks, the less likely it is to turn up. She’s scaring the fashion magic off with her knowing, waiting vibes.

“Come on,” I say, trying to distract her by pulling at her (or technically my) coat sleeve. I need to get her to think about something else so that the magic can do its thing. “Let’s just go and shop, OK?”

“Mmm.”

I don’t think she can even hear me any more. “Look!” I say enthusiastically, pulling her to the nearest stall. “Nat, look! Handbags! Shoes! Hair bobbles!”

Nat gives me a distracted glance. “You’re dragging my coat on the floor.”

“Oh.” I bundle it back under my arm and start tugging Nat towards the next stall.

“What do you think?” I say, picking up a small blue sequined hat and plopping it on my head. When we were little, we’d spend hours and hours in department stores, trying on different hats and pretending we were going to a royal wedding.

“Uh-huh.” Nat gets a little bit more tense and looks over her shoulder.

“Come on, what about this one?” I pick up a large floppy hat covered in big pink flowers and put it on. “Look.” I wiggle my bottom at her.

Nat abruptly whips round. “Oh my God,” she whispers and it takes me a few seconds to realise that it has nothing at all to do with my bottom.

“Have you seen one?”

“I think so!” She looks again. “Yes, I think I can definitely see an agent!”

I peer into the crowd, but I can’t see anything. They must be like fairies: you can only see them when they want you to.

“Stay right here, Harriet,” Nat whispers urgently. She starts moving into the crowds. “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be back in a second.”

Now I’m confused. “But…” This makes no sense. “Don’t you need me with you?” I call after her. “Isn’t that why I’m here? For support?”

“In spirit will do just fine, Harriet,” Nat shouts back. “Love you!”

And then she disappears completely.

s she kidding me? In spirit?

I could have done in spirit quite happily from my bedroom, thank you very much. I could have texted Nat support from my own fake deathbed. I pick up another hat crossly. Next time Nat wants me to go shopping, I am so throwing myself down the stairs.

“Excuse me?” a voice interrupts, and when I turn around, there’s a lady staring at me with a deep crease between her eyebrows. “Can you read?”

“Umm,” I reply in surprise. “Yes. Very well, actually. My reading age is over twenty. But thank you for asking.”

“Really? Can you read that sign there? Read it out loud.”

Poor lady. Maybe she didn’t go to all of her English lessons at school. “Of course,” I say in a friendly and – I hope – not patronising tone. Not everyone benefits equally from a full education system. “It says, Don’t Touch The Hats.”

There’s a pause and then I realise that she probably doesn’t have a literacy problem after all. “Oh,” I add as her meaning sinks in.

“That’s a hat,” she says pointing to the one in my hand. “And that’s a hat.” She points to the one on my head. “And you’re touching them all over.”

I quickly put the one in my hand back on the stall and grab the one on my head. “Sorry. It’s, erm, very…” What? How would you describe a hat? “Hatty,” I improvise, and then I pat it and put it back on the stall. At which point my chewed nail snags on a flower.

We both watch as the flower separates itself from the hat and throws itself on the floor, like a little child having a hissy fit. And then – as if in slow motion – what was clearly just one piece of thread breaks and, one by one, every other flower on the ribbon follows it.

Oh, sugar cookies.

“That’s a very interesting design concept,” I say after clearing my throat awkwardly a couple of times and starting to back away. “Self-detaching flowers? It’s very modern.”

“They’re not self-detaching,” Hat Lady says in a low, angry voice, staring at the pile on the floor. “You detached them.” And then she points at a felt-tip sign that says You Break It You Buy It, followed by the most inappropriately placed smiley face I have ever seen in my entire life. “And now you’re going to have to pay for it.”

God. She sounds a little bit like someone from the Italian Mafia. Maybe the Italian Mafia has a hat section.

“You know,” I say, backing away a little bit faster. “You are very lucky that hat didn’t kill me. I could have choked on one of those flowers and died. The playwright Tennessee Williams died from choking on a bottle cap. Then how would you have felt?”

“I’ll take a cheque or debit card details.”

I take a few more steps backwards and she follows. “Tell you what,” I say in the most lawyer-y, Annabel-like voice I can find. “How about I forget that you tried to kill me if you forget that I broke your hat? How does that sound?”

“Pay for the hat,” she says, taking another step towards me.

“No.”

“Pay for the hat.”

“I can’t.”

“Pay for the h—”

At which point fate or karma or the universe or a God who doesn’t like me very much steps in. And sends me flying bottom-first into the rest of her stall.

try to blame Nat’s coat dangling on the floor, but Hat Lady is having none of it. There is a lot of squeaking: mine, mostly, followed by hers. And then the crowd gets suddenly bigger.

Apparently I haven’t just knocked over the hat table. Her stall has dominoed into the stall next to it, which has dominoed into the stall next to that, and before I know what’s happening there are six stalls, strewn creatively over the floor, with me lying in a heap in the middle. It’s the fault of those silly fake partitions, in my opinion. They just aren’t stable enough.

Clearly, neither am I.

“This is why I didn’t want you to touch the hats,” Hat Lady is screaming at me as I struggle to get up. Every time I put my hand down, something crunches. And not in a good-crunch kind of way. In a hand-through-hat kind of way. “You’ve ruined everything!”

From my position on the floor I can see that the tables have crushed at least seven hats, and another three have been hit by the jug of water on one of the now tipped-over chairs. Along with the sign. Another four hats have shoe-shaped dents in them and footprints on the brim. I’m sitting on at least three.

OK, she has a point.

“I’m sorry,” I’m saying over and over again (crunch, crunch, crunch). Everywhere I look are the faces of people who don’t seem to like me very much. “I’m really sorry. I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay for all of it.”

I have no idea how, but I suspect it’s going to involve a lot of car washing and about six hundred years’ worth of groundings.

“It’s not enough,” the woman yells. “This is my biggest sale day of the year! I need to attract a client base!”

I look around briefly. From the size of the crowd, she’s definitely attracted something.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, with my face flaming – because I really, truly, honestly am – and I’m just about to burst into guilty tears when a man wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket and a jaunty black hat leans forward and grabs hold of my hand.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with me,” he says firmly. Then he looks at Hat Lady. “Don’t worry, Sugar,” he adds. “She’s going to pay for the hats. I’ll make sure of it personally.” And he starts leading me away from the carnage.

I gape at him, totally speechless.

So far today, I have nearly died of my own fake illness, fallen over – three times – been shouted at, humiliated, vomited on, abandoned and I’ve managed to trash an entire section of an indoor market. And now, just at the point where I thought it was impossible for things to get worse…

I’ve just been arrested.

his is what happens when I’m forced to go out in public.

“I didn’t do it!” I gasp as the man pulls me through the crowds. He’s holding my hand and – I have to be honest with you – I’m not sure he’s allowed. I think it might be against the law or something. “I mean,” I clarify, “I did do it. But I didn’t mean to. I’m just…” How can I put it? “Socially disadvantaged.”

And – just so you know – that’s what I’m going to plead in court as well.

“Cherub-cheeks, that sounds so fun,” the man says over his shoulder in a high voice that doesn’t seem to fit him properly. “Society is tedious, don’t you think? Sooo much better to be pushed out of it.”

What did he just call me?

“I haven’t been pushed out of it,” I tell him indignantly. “I just don’t seem to be able to get in it in the first place. Anyway,” I add as firmly as I can, “you should know I’m only fifteen.” Too young to go to jail, I want to add, but I don’t want to give him any ideas.

“Fifteen? Perfectomondo, my little Sugar-kitten. So much potential for free publicity.”

The blood drains from my cheeks. Free publicity? Oh, God, he’s going to use me as a warning to other underage wannabe hat vandals.

“Before you take me anywhere,” I say quickly, “I need to find my best friend. She’s not going to know where I’ve gone.”

He stops walking and swivels round with his spare hand on his hip.

“Mini-treetop, once I have a photo of you, you can go wherever the tiddlywinks you like.” And then he tinkles with laughter.

I freeze. “A photo?”

“Well, yes, my little Peach-melba. I could draw a picture, but Head Office thought that was ever so unfunny last time.” He giggles and pushes me away with a limp wrist. “Oh,” he adds casually. “I’m Wilbur, by the way. That’s bur not iam. From Infinity Models.”

My knees abruptly buckle, but Wilbur-not-iam keeps tugging as if I’m on wheels. Suddenly I know how Toby feels when he tries to do the high jump.

Infinity Models?

No.

No, no, no, no.

No no no no no no NONONONONO.

“Oh, it has just been a mare this morning,” Wilbur continues as if he’s not dragging me bodily across the floor.

“But w-w-why?” I finally managed to stutter.

“Oh, you know, total chaos. The Birmingham Clothes Show: highlight of the fashion year etcetera etcetera. Well, apart from London Fashion Week, obviously. And Milan. And New York. And Paris. Actually, it’s quite far down the list, but hey, it’s still a blast.”

I can’t really feel my mouth. “N-n-not why is it busy. Why would you want my photo?”

“Oh, Baby-baby Panda,” he says over his shoulder. “You’re, like, so tomorrow you’re next Wednesday. No, you’re the Thursday after. Do you know what I mean?”

I stare at him with my mouth slightly open. I think it’s safe to say that the answer to that question is no. “But—”

“And I am loving this look,” he interrupts, pointing at the football kit. “So new. So fresh. So unusual. Inspired.”

“My jeans had sick on them,” I blurt out in disbelief.

“My Jeans Had Sick On Them. I love it. Such an imagination! Darling-foot—” and here Wilbur pauses so that he can pull me through a particularly dense crowd of really angry-looking girls – “I think you might be about to make my career, my little Pot of Tigers.”

One of the girls behind me mutters in confusion: “Hey, she’s ginger.”

(She’s wrong, by the way: I’m not. I am strawberry blonde.)

“I don’t underst—”

“All will become clear shortly,” Wilbur reassures me. “Maybe. Maybe not, actually, but hey, clarity is so overrated.” He pushes me against the wall. “Now stand there and look gorgeous.”

What? I don’t even know how to start attempting that.

“But—” I say again.

Wilbur takes a Polaroid picture, shakes it and puts it on the table. “Now turn to the side?”

I stare at him, still frozen in shock. None of this is making sense. He tuts and gently pushes my shoulders round so I’m facing the other wall, and then takes another photo.

“Wilbur—” I turn to frantically search the crowd for Nat’s dark head, but I can’t see anything.

“Baby-pudding,” Wilbur interrupts, “you know you look just like a treefrog? Darling, you could climb up a tree with no help at all and I wouldn’t be shocked in the slightest.”

I pause and stare at him with my mouth open. Did he just say I look like something with suckers on its feet? Then my mind clears. Focus, Harriet. For God’s sake, focus.

“I have to go,” I explain urgently as Wilbur twists me round and takes a final photo. “I have to get out of here. I have to—”

But I can see Nat heading straight towards us. And I know two things for certain:

iding under the table probably isn’t the best impromptu decision I’ve ever made, but it’s the only one I can think of. Which is a problem.

First of all, because Wilbur knows I’m here. He just saw me drop to my knees and crawl away. Second, because the table cloth doesn’t quite reach the floor. And third, because there’s already somebody else under here.

“Hi,” the person under the table says, and then he offers me a piece of chewing gum.

There are times in my life when the synapses in my brain move quite fast. For example, during English exams I’ve normally completed the essay with plenty of time to doodle little relevant pictures in the margin in the hope that it gets me extra points. However, there are other times when those synapses don’t do anything at all. They just sit there in confused silence, shrugging at me.

This is one of them.

I stare at the chewing gum in shock and then blink at the boy who’s holding it. He’s so good-looking, it feels like my brain has collapsed and my skull is about to fold in on itself. Which is actually not as unpleasant a sensation as you might think.

“Well?” the boy says, leaning back against the wall and looking at me with his eyelids lowered. “Do you want the gum or not?”

He’s about my age and he looks like a dark lion. He has large black curls that point in every direction and slanted eyes and a wide mouth that curves up at the edges. He’s so beautiful that all I can hear in my head is a high-pitched white noise like a recently switched-off television.

It takes an interaction of seventy-two different muscles to produce human speech, and right now not a single one of them is working. I open and shut my mouth a few times, like a goldfish.

“I can see,” he continues in a lazy accent that doesn’t seem to be English, “that it’s an extremely important decision and you need to think about it carefully. So I’ll give you a few more seconds to weigh up the pros and cons.”

He has really sharp canine teeth, and when he says Fs, they catch on his bottom lip. There’s a mole under his left eye and he smells sort of green, like… grass. Or vegetables. Or maybe lime sweets.

One of his curls is sticking up at the back, like a little duck tail. And I’ve just realised that I’m still staring at him, and he’s still looking at me, and he’s still waiting for me to answer him. I quickly trawl my mind for an appropriate response.

“Chewing gum is banned in Singapore,” I whisper. “Completely banned.” And then I blink twice. It’s probably not the best introductory statement I’ve ever opened with.

His eyes shoot wide open. “Are we in Singapore? How long have I been asleep? How fast does this table move?”

Nice one, Harriet.

“No,” I whisper back, my cheeks already hot,“we’re still in Birmingham. I’m just making the point that if we were in Singapore, we could be arrested for even having chewing gum in our possession.”

Stop talking, Harriet.

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” I gulp. “Luckily we’re not in Singapore, so you’re safe.”

“Well, thank God for UK legislation,” he says, leaning his head against the wall again. His mouth twitches. And then there’s a long silence while he closes his eyes and I go red all over and try to work out whether it’s possible to make a worse first impression.

It’s not.

“I’m Harriet Manners,”I admit finally and then I put my hand out to shake his, realise it’s sweaty with nerves, swoop it back in and pretend I’m scratching my knee instead.

“Hello, Harriet Manners,” Lion Boy says and all I can think is: I know there’s something outside the table that I’m supposed to be running away from, but I can’t quite remember what it is.

“Erm…”Think, Harriet. Think of something normal to say. “Have you been here long?”

“About half an hour.”

“Why?”

“I’m hiding from Wilbur. He’s using me as bait. He keeps chucking me into the crowd to see how many pretty girls I can come back with.”

“Like a maggot?”

He laughs. “Yes. Pretty much exactly like a maggot.”

“And have you… caught anything?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he says, opening one eye and looking straight at me. “It’s too early to say.”

“Oh.” I glance briefly at my watch. “It’s not that early,” I inform him. “Actually, it’s nearly lunchtime.”

The boy looks at my watch – which has a knife, fork and spoon instead of hands – raises an eyebrow and stares at me hard for a few seconds. His nose wiggles a little bit. And then – clearly fascinated by the mesmerising first impression I’ve made – he closes his eyes again.

With Lion Boy apparently unconscious, I suddenly feel a great need to ask him all sorts of questions. I want to know everything. For instance, what is his accent and where is he from? If I get a world map out of my bag, can he point to it for me? Does it have strange animals and really big insects? Is he an only child too? Were the holes in his jeans there when he bought them, like Dad’s, and if not, how did he get them?

But nothing is coming out. Which is lucky, because people don’t tend to like it very much when I interrogate them relentlessly while they’re trying to sleep.

“Do you often hide under furniture?” I manage eventually. He grins at me and his smile is so wide that it breaks his face into little pieces and my stomach immediately feels like a washing machine on spin-dry mode.

“I don’t make a habit of it. You?”

“All of the time,” I admit reluctantly. “All of the time.”

Whenever I panic, actually. Which means, because I panic a lot, that I’ve been under many types of things. Dining tables, desks, side tables, kitchen counters… Any kind of furniture that allows me to disappear. Which is, actually, how I met Nat.

And I’ve just remembered what I’m doing here.

n case you’re wondering, I met Nat under a piano.

It was the second day of school and I’d had enough. Alexa had already taken a shine to me – or whatever the opposite of that is – and I had become the butt of all of her most intricate five-year-old jokes. Who smells the most? Harriet. Who has hair like a carrot? Harriet. Who spilt their milk on their lap, but actually, it’s pee? Harriet.

So I’d waited until everyone else had gone outside and then I’d crawled under the piano. Where I’d found a heartbroken Nat, crying because her dad had just run off with the check-out girl at Waitrose. We bonded straight away, probably because we both only had half of a parenting team left: a bit like discovering the missing bit of a friendship necklace. I’d offered her a part-time share in my dad, she’d offered me a bit of her mum and – just like that –we’d become Best Friends. And we have been ever since.

At least, from that moment until… this one.

*

“Harriet,” a voice says from somewhere outside the table cloth. Two red shoes can be seen underneath it. “I don’t know whether you’re under some kind of impression that you’ve become invisible in the last thirteen minutes, but you’re not. I can still see you.”

My stomach swoops again and this time it has nothing to do with the boy sitting next to me. “Oh.”

“Yes, oh,” Nat agrees. “So you may as well come out now.”

I look back at the Lion Boy, who still has his eyes shut, whisper, “Thanks for sharing the table,” and struggle back out of my terrible, terrible hiding place.

Nat looks furious. Even more so than when I accidentally knocked her new bottle of Gucci perfume out of the window as a result of an impromptu dance routine that she didn’t want to see in the first place.

“What,” she whispers to me, glancing in confusion at Wilbur, “are you doing, Harriet?”

“I…” I start, already panicking. “It’s not what it—”

“I can’t believe this,” Nat interrupts. Her cheeks are getting redder and redder and her eyes keep flicking to Wilbur. “I know you don’t like shopping, Harriet, and I know you didn’t want to come today, but hiding under this table… I mean, of all the tables…” She looks at Wilbur again in total embarrassment.

I frown. What is she talking about? Then I realise, in a horrible rush. Nat doesn’t know I’ve just been spotted. She didn’t see me having my photo taken. She just saw me here and assumed I’d followed her and then crawled under a table because being a total plonker is the only thing I really excel at. And – at exactly the same moment – I glance at Wilbur and a jolt of shock hits my stomach. His expression is totally blank. He’s not interested in Nat. She hasn’t been spotted. Which means – and my stomach suddenly feels like it’s been electrocuted – that I haven’t just accidentally hitched a ride on the back of Nat’s lifelong dream.

I’ve stolen it.

I look at Nat in alarm. “Well?” she says and her voice starts to wobble. “What’s going on, Harriet?”

I can save this, I think in a rush, it’s not too late.

I don’t have to break Nat’s heart and crush her dream, and I don’t have to do it in the most humiliating way possible: in the very place she thought it would come true, in front of the very person who could have given her what she wanted.

“I was looking for unusual table joints,” I say as quickly as I can. “For woodwork homework.”

A beat and then,“Huh?”

“Woodwork homework,” I repeat, trying hard to look into Nat’s eyes. “They said local craft can be very interesting and we had to look in other parts of the country. Like… Birmingham.”

Nat opens her mouth and then closes it again. “What?”

“So,” I say, my voice getting fainter, “I thought from a distance that this particular table looked very… solid. In terms of construction. And I thought I’d have a closer look. You know. From… underneath.”

“And?”

“And?” I repeat blankly. “And what?”

“What were they?” Nat asks, her eyes narrowing even more. “What kind of table joints? I mean, you were under there quite a long time. You must have been able to tell.”

She’s testing me. She’s checking to see if I’m telling the truth and I can’t really blame her. After all, I started the day by covering my face in talcum powder and red lipstick.

“I think that…” I start, but I have absolutely no idea. And there’s a really good chance that Nat’s about to kneel on the floor and check.“They’re…” I say again and the sentence trails to an end.

“They’re dovetail,” a voice says and Lion Boy climbs out from under the table.

“Nick!” Wilbur cries, looking delighted. “There you are!” And then he looks at the table in astonishment, as if it’s some kind of door to an alternative universe. “How many more of you are there under there?”

Nat stares at Lion Boy and then at me. And then at him again. The creases in her forehead are getting deeper. “Dovetail?”

“Yep, dovetail,” Nick confirms, flashing her a lopsided smile.

Nat looks at me and blinks three or four times. I can see her trying to process the situation, which is obviously totally unprocessable.

“Mmm,” I say in a faint voice. “That’s what I thought too.”

There’s a silence. A long silence. The kind of silence you could take a bite from, should you be interested in eating silences. And then – just as I think I might have got away with it and everything is going to be OK – Nat glances at Wilbur’s hand. There, in his grip, are the three damning Polaroids of me. Developed purely to show Nat the truth of my evil lies, like three miniature pictures of Dorian Gray.

The silence breaks. Nat makes a sort of sobbing noise at the base of her throat, and I automatically step forward to try and stop it. “Oh, no, Nat, I didn’t…”

Nat steps away from me with her face crumpled. She knows, and she found out in the worst way possible. In public, smack bang in the middle of me lying to her.

I should have stayed in bed this morning.

Or at least under the table.

“No,” Nat whispers.

And with that final word – the one neither of us can take back – she jumps off the stage and runs away.

ack-stabber. Betrayer. Fink. Apostate. Miscreant. Quisling. Snake. It’s a good thing I brought my thesaurus with me because Nat refuses to speak to me for the rest of the day so I have an awful lot of time to ponder my wrong doings.

Quisling. I quite like that word. It sounds like a baby quail.

What’s even worse is that by the time I’ve pulled myself together enough to move from the dirty little corner I’m scrunched up in, a real security guard has found me and dragged me into an office full of yet more people who look angry with me. Apparently I – or my legal guardians – owe The Clothes Show stallholders £3,000.

This is what happens when you set tables covered in ink pots next to tables covered in dresses next to tables covered in hats next to tables covered in hot wax candles and every single one of them has a YOU BREAK IT YOU BUY IT sign and insufficient insurance.

I’m not one to moan unnecessarily. In fact, I like to think of myself as a positive, life-affirming person, albeit one who also has a full grasp of the darkness and tragedy inherent in modern living.

But it has to be said: today is turning out to be just full of sugar cookies.

The rest of my Thursday can be summarised thus:

By the time we get back to school I’m so high on my own carbon dioxide and deodorant fumes that my powers of apology have been severely stunted. Before I can even focus my eyes properly Nat has raced off the bus and disappeared, and I’m left to walk home on my own.

And no, in case you’re wondering. None of this makes sense to me either. I’ve turned the facts over and over in my head like Chinese marbles for eight hours, but there is still no feasible explanation for anything that has happened today. Unless I have somehow landed in an alternative universe where everything is inside out and all the trees are upside down and people talk backwards and we walk in the sky with the earth as a ceiling and flowers growing downwards. And that seems unlikely.

I’ve even worked out an equation for the situation.

Here, M stands for Model, W is Weight, H is Height, P is Prettiness, NSN is Nice-shaped Nose, C is Confidence, S is Style and X is Indefinable Coolness. Each element (apart from Weight and Height, obviously measured by the metric system) is given an objective mark out of ten, and the higher the overall result, the better you would be as a model.

By my calculations, Nat comes out at 92.

I’m 27.2. And I was being quite kind about my nose.

Anyway, I’ve given up thinking about it. There has clearly been some kind of mistake, and at this precise moment somebody is smacking Wilbur round the head and putting him in a nice jacket that ties his arms behind his back.

And – just so you know – I’m not thinking about Nick either. He hasn’t popped into my head once, with his big liony curls and his lime-green smell and his duck-tail tuft at the back. In fact, I can barely remember him. I meet head-smashingly beautiful foreign boys all the time. I can’t hide under a table without finding one there. There is no reason whatsoever that this one would stick in my memory or make my stomach twirl at intervals.

And I definitely didn’t walk past the Infinity Models stall six or seven times during the rest of the day in case he was there. Which he wasn’t.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot else to think about. My head feels like it’s fallen off the top of a great wall and I’m waiting for all the king’s soldiers to come and put it back together again. There’s only one thing left to occupy myself with. And it isn’t that much fun to dwell on. Can you guess what it is yet?

Uh-huh.

Now I have to go home and tell my parents.

The problem with making meticulous and well-constructed plans is that people tend to ignore them. Other people. Not me; I stick to them religiously.

As I open the front door, I’m already clearing my throat. I’ve decided to lead with the modelling because hopefully my parents will be so paralysed with confusion and shock that I can slip the vast quantity of money they now owe various stallholders in there without them noticing: like doing a root canal after local anaesthetic.

“Dad?” I say nervously, shutting the door behind me. “Annabel?”

Hugo immediately barrels into my legs and starts pawing at my stomach. He has obviously just been to the hairdresser’s because I can now see where his eyes are instead of just guessing by their proximity to his nose.

“Hey, Hugo,” I add, bending down. “You’re looking very elegant.” He licks my face, which I think means, “Thanks very much,” or possibly, “You smell of hotdog.” Then I look back up. “Dad? Annabel?”

Silence.

You know what? The welcoming atmosphere in this house needs to be worked on. I’ve been away all day and it’s dark. Why aren’t they standing in the hallway, waiting anxiously for me to arrive home safe and in one unharmed piece? What kind of parents are they?

“Dad?” I repeat again, getting a bit snarly. “Annab—”

“Harriet?” Annabel interrupts from the living room. “Come in here, please.”

I sigh loudly, put my satchel down on the floor and then do as I’ve been told. Annabel is sitting on the sofa in her office suit, inexplicably eating sardines out of a tin, and Dad is in the armchair opposite her.

You know what I was saying about young children, and how non-uniform doesn’t really exist? It’s the same for lawyers. Annabel’s either in her suit, or her dressing gown, or she puts her dressing gown on top of her suit. When she goes out for dinner, she has to buy an outfit especially.

“What are you eating?” I ask immediately, sitting down on a chair and looking at Annabel’s tin.

“Sardines,” Annabel says – as if I didn’t mean why are you eating that? – and she pops another one in her mouth. “Now, Harriet,” Annabel says as soon as she’s swallowed it. “Your dad’s in trouble at work.”

“Annabel!” Dad exclaims. “For the love of… Don’t just throw that at her! Lead up to it, for God’s sake!”

“Fine.” My stepmother rolls her eyes. “Hello, Harriet. How are you? Your dad’s in trouble at work.” Then she looks at Dad. “Better?”

“Not even slightly.” Dad scowls. “It’s nothing, Harriet. Just a small difference in opinion.”

“You told your most important client to go and French Connection UK himself, Richard. In the middle of reception.”

Dad picks a bit of fluff off the sofa. “Well, he wasn’t supposed to hear it, was he?” he says in his most defensive voice. “It just came out loudly because of the acoustics. That place is all stone walls.”

“And we’re keen that you have a sterling example of adult behaviour to follow, Harriet.”

“It was the walls,” Dad shouts in exasperation.

I look at Annabel. Under a cosy layer of flippancy she looks really worried. “How bad is it?”

Annabel puts another sardine in her mouth. “Bad. They’ve called him into a disciplinary tomorrow.”

“It’s just a formality,” Dad mutters. “I’m creative: I’m supposed to be unpredictable. I’m the sort of guy who wears brown suede shoes when it’s raining; they just don’t know what to do with me. I’ll probably get a pay rise for being such a maverick.”

Annabel lifts one eyebrow and then rubs her eyes. “Let’s hope so because we really can’t afford to just live on one salary at the moment. Anyway. What about you, Harriet? Did you have a nice day? I hope you had a fragrant day at least because when I went into the bathroom, it was knee-deep in your grandmother’s vanilla talcum powder.”

“Oh.” I look at the floor. “Sorry. I meant to clean that up.”

“Of course you did. If only your actual cleaning was as good as your intended cleaning, we would have a very tidy house indeed. Did you manage to get out of whatever it is you were trying to avoid this time?”

“Actually,” I say, ignoring this extremely slanderous insinuation, and then I take a deep breath and stand up. “I have something to tell you both.”

On second thoughts, maybe I won’t tell them about the money right now. Honesty is very important within families. But so is timing. Especially when it comes to amounts like £3,000 while your father is in the process of throwing his job out of the window.

“Well?” Annabel prompts after a pause. “Spit it out, sweetheart.”

“I, uh,” I start. “Well, it’s…” I take a deep breath and prepare myself for the…well, whatever reaction you get from parents to news like this. “I’ve been spotted,” I finally manage to blurt out. There’s a silence. “Today,” I clarify. “I’ve been spotted today.”

There’s another silence and then Annabel frowns. “What?” she snaps. “Let me see.” She puts the sardine can down and drags me up from the chair and pulls me under the light. She looks carefully at my face, and then she looks at my hand and turns it over. She stares at my wrist and the inside of my upper arm. Then she gets Dad to stand up and look at my wrist and the inside of my upper arm. What the hell are they doing?

“No, Harriet,” she finally says firmly. “There’re a couple on your forehead, but I think that’s just teenage acne.”

“Since when is spotted a human adjective?” I snap impatiently. “I’m not a leopard or a stingray. Spotted. Verb, not adjective. Scouted. Picked up. Discovered. Found.” They still look blank, so I continue even more crossly. “By a model agent. By Infinity Models, to be more specific.”

Annabel looks even more confused. “To do what?”

“To pack potatoes.”

“Really?”

“No! To be a model,” I yell in distress. It’s one thing thinking you’re not pretty, but it’s quite another having that confirmed by the only people in the world who are supposed to think otherwise.

Annabel frowns again. When I look at Dad, however, he appears to be shining with the light of a million smug fairies. “They’re my genes, you know,” he says, pointing to me. “Standing right there. That’s my genetics.”

“Yes, dear, they’re your genes,” Annabel repeats as if she’s talking to a child. And then she sits down again and picks up her newspaper.

I look from Annabel to Dad. Is that it? I mean, seriously?

OK, I didn’t expect them to start dancing round the coffee table, waving their Sudoku books in the air like exotic bird feathers, but a bit more enthusiasm would be nice. Fantastic, Harriet, they could say. Maybe you’re not as totally disgusting to look at as we all thought you were. How wonderful for the whole family.

Or something that acknowledges that this would be the most exciting thing that had ever happened to anyone, if I was someone else and this was a totally different family.

Annabel looks up to where I’m still standing, mouth open. “What?” she says. “You can’t do it, Harriet. You’re too young and you’ve got exams coming up.”

“She can’t do it?” Dad repeats in an incredulous tone. “What do you mean she can’t do it?”

Annabel looks at him calmly. “She’s fifteen, Richard. It’s totally inappropriate.”

“It’s Infinity Models, Annabel. Even I’ve heard of them.”

“Hundreds of beautiful women in one place? I bet you have, darling. But the answer’s still no.”

“Oh my God,” Dad yells at the top of his voice. “This is so unfair.”

You see the problem? It’s really hard being a child in my family when that space seems to already be taken.

“I don’t actually want to do it,” I interrupt. “I’m just telling you. But you could say well done or something.”

“You don’t want to do it?” Dad yells at me.

Oh, for God’s sake.

Annabel looks at me. “It’s modelling. Fashion.” She pulls a face. “What’s there to be excited about? Why is everyone getting so worked up?”

I look from her to Dad and then at Hugo. Hugo gets off the chair, tail wagging, and promptly licks me. I think he knows I need it.

“Right,” I say in a slightly deflated voice. “Fine.”

The only remotely exciting thing that has ever happened to me and it’s over already. It lasted about as long as I thought it would. I feel a little bit like sulking. Dad still looks totally shell-shocked.

“Now,” Annabel says, shaking the remote control to get the batteries working and turning the television on. “Who wants to watch a documentary about locusts?”

sulk for about twenty-five minutes and then get bored and spend the rest of Thursday night a) not thinking about Nick and b) getting ready to woo Nat into Best Friendship again. Flowers, cards, poetry: I even bake special, personalised, sugar-free muffins with photos of me and her on top (not edible photos – I didn’t have time – real photos). And then I put them all in my satchel and prepare to take them to school, where I will ambush Nat and convince her of my guilt and/or innocence.

Whatever it takes to make her anger with me disappear.

It’s all a total waste of time and effort and flour. Apparently I don’t need to woo Nat at all. On Friday morning, at precisely 8am, the doorbell rings.

“Nat! You’re here!” I gurgle in surprise, halfway through a jam sandwich. It comes out a sticky, strawberry-flavoured, “Nnnnnaaatcchh uuuhhh hhiiii!”

“For breakfast?” she says, looking pointedly at the other half, which is perched in my left hand.

I stick my nose in the air in my most dignified way. “Jam sandwiches have all the necessary nutrients needed to survive. Sugar, vitamins, carbohydrates. I could live entirely on jam sandwiches and lead a totally normal life.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Nat says, pulling me out of the door. It’s lucky I already have my shoes on or I’d be walking to school in my socks. “You’d be The Girl Who Only Eats Strawberry Jam Sandwiches and that’s not normal.” She looks at me and then coughs. “Can I have the other half, though? I’m totally starving.”

I give her the other half in surprise and then look at her while she eats it. Firstly, Nat never eats food with high sugar content. Ever. Not since that fateful disco, eight years ago. And secondly, is this it then? The big dramatic scene I’ve been dreading all night? I made muffins without sugar especially and now nobody is going to eat them.

“Nat,” I start and at exactly the same moment she says “Harriet?” and then she clears her throat.

“I’m sorry. For getting mad at you and stomping off.”

“Oh.” I blink in shock. “That’s OK. I’m sorry too. For… getting spotted and stuff.”

“The lying was the main problem, Harriet.” Nat twists her mouth up in an awkward half-smile and licks her fingers. “Can we just forget about yesterday?”

“Of course we can,” I beam at her.

A huge wave of relief washes over me: it’s all OK. I was being neurotic and oversensitive as normal.

And then – just like waves – the relief abruptly disappears. Nat clears her throat and I look at her again, but a little more carefully this time. Suddenly I can see what I didn’t notice before: that her neck is tense and her shoulders are all bunched up. Her collarbones have gone red and splotchy. The rims of her eyes are pink. She keeps biting her bottom lip.

“Cool,” Nat says after an infinitely long pause, and then an anxious flush climbs up her cheeks and sits there, staring at me. “So…”And she clears her throat. “Did they…”She swallows. “You know… ring you?” She clears her throat for the third time. “Infinity? Did they ring you?”

She hasn’t forgotten about yesterday at all. Not even a little bit.

“No.” I didn’t give them my number, I add in my head, but somehow I’m not sure saying that out loud is going to help.

“Oh.” Nat’s cheeks get darker. “That’s a shame. I’m sorry. So let’s just put it behind us, right?”

I frown. I thought we’d already done that. “OK.”

“And pretend it never happened,” Nat adds in a tense voice.

“…OK.”

Every time she tells us to put it behind us, it’s becoming more and more clear that Nat hasn’t done that.

“We’ll just carry on as normal,” Nat adds.

“…OK.”

Then there’s a long silence and it’s not comfortable. In ten years, it might be the first uncomfortable silence there has ever been between us. Apart from the time she peed herself on the ballet-room floor and it hit my foot. That was a little bit awkward too.

“Anyway,” Nat says after a couple of minutes, as she pats her hair and straightens her coat and pulls up her school tights with one hand. “So, Harriet.” She looks at the bite of sandwich left in her hand. “Where’s the protein in this thing, huh? I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’ve done your research properly.”

Finally, the topic has moved back to territory I can handle.

“I have done my research properly!” I shout back, pretending to be totally outraged. “The protein’s in the…” What can I say to move the conversation as far from modelling as it is possible to move it? “Chicken,” I finish and then grin at her. “There’s chicken in it too. Did I forget to mention that? Strawberry and high-protein chicken sandwiches. Mmmm. My favourite.”

“Strawberry and chicken?” Nat laughs and my shoulders relax a little bit.

“You can totally live on strawberry and chicken sandwiches,” I clarify, trying not to meet her eyes. Is there any way we can just avoid the subject of yesterday until it goes away completely? Is that how Best Friendship works? Maybe. Maybe not.

But we both spend the rest of the journey to school trying to find out.

he really great thing about Toby Pilgrim is that you can always rely on him to treat a delicate situation with sensitivity and consideration.

“Woooooaaah,” he says as Nat and I walk into the classroom. We’ve got to school in one piece – just. I’ve talked about the Greek origin of the delphinium flower (delphis, because it looks like a dolphin), just how many wives Henry VIII actually had (between two and four, depending on whether you’re Catholic or not) and the fact that the Egyptian pyramids were originally shiny and white with crystals on the top. Nat has stared into the distance, nodded and grown progressively quieter, stiffer and pinker around the collarbone.

But the important thing is we’ve managed to avoid talking about modelling or dream stealing or the bone-crushing disappointment of thwarted lifelong ambitions. Or the fact that there’s palpable tension between us.

Anyway. “Wooooooaaaah,” says Toby. “Look at the palpable tension between you! It’s like the Cold War, circa 1962. Harriet, I think you’re probably America. You’re sort of trying to make lots of noise in the hope it goes away. Nat, you’re more like Russia. All kind of cold and frosty and covered in snow.” Then he pauses. “Not literally covered in snow,” he clarifies. “Although it’s terribly wintry today, isn’t it? Do you like my new gloves?”

And then he holds out a pair of black knitted gloves with a cotton-white skeleton hand attached to the back. There’s an embarrassed silence while Nat and I put a lot of energy into getting our books out of our bags. All our morning’s hard work has just been totally undone.

Thank you, Toby.

“You know,” Toby continues obliviously, turning his gloves over and over with an affectionate expression, “I had to sew these bones on myself. I was inspired by an old Halloween costume, but it just wasn’t warm enough for December.” He holds a glove up to my face. “Plus, I thought it would be an excellent way of developing my medical knowledge.”

I can now see that on quite a few of the 27 white bones in the hand he’s written in grey pen the Latin name for them: carpals, metacarpals, proximal phalanges, intermediate phalanges, distal phalanges.

“Very nice, Toby,” I say in a distracted voice because Nat’s already getting out of her seat.

“I’ve just got to go hand in my biology homework,” she says in an awkward voice. “See you at breaktime, OK?”

For the record, Nat and I don’t have any lessons together. Despite trying very hard to get put in the same sets last year (Nat studied more and I did my best to answer things wrong), I’m still in the top sets and Nat is in set two or three for everything.

“OK,” I say. She’s still not really looking at me. “Meet you in the school canteen?”

“Sure,” she says, and then she flicks me a smile and shoots out of the classroom faster than I’ve ever seen Nat shoot out of anything.

The rest of the day can be summarised thus:

By the time the final class comes around and she tells me she’s going to be kept behind after school as well, I’m fairly convinced that Nat is specifically getting detentions just to avoid me. I’m torn between being devastated and simultaneously impressed by her extremely cunning strategic bad behaviour.

Toby has been making the most of Nat’s absence to follow me around like a small kitten follows a ball of wool; he even pats me now and then to check that I’m still there.

“Harriet,” he whispers during sixth period English literature. “Isn’t it lovely to spend so much time together?”

I make a noncommittal grunt and doodle another eye on my textbook.

“I really feel that I know you better now,” Toby continues enthusiastically. “For instance, I know that at ten o’clock exactly you tend to go straight to the toilet, and when you come back out, your hair is much neater so I can only assume that you redo your ponytail in front of the bathroom mirror.”

I continue doodling.

“And,” he whispers in excitement, “at five past twelve you go back to the bathroom and when you come out at twelve fifteen, your eyes are sort of pink and gummy around the edges. Which I can only conclude means that you go in there to cry in private.”

I glare at him. “I don’t do that every lunchtime, Toby.”

“No?” He gets out a little notepad and opens it to a page that appears to have a list on it. He draws a line through the corresponding entry.

I can sense that I’m about to lose my temper. I’ve hurt Nat, it’s been a rubbish day and I suspect that Toby is about to bear the brunt of it.

“And,” he continues, “at approximately three pm you go to the bathroom again, but this time you’re in there for the entire break so I believe you might be avoiding me. Either that or you’re… you know. Engaged in intricate bowel activities.”

I can feel my cheeks suddenly flame. He was right the first time, but I’m not happy with that second insinuation. I don’t like talking about bowel activities, regardless of intricacy.

“Could you just leave me alone perhaps?” I whisper and I can feel my voice getting louder with every word. “I mean, is there any chance that you could – I don’t know – find someone else to stalk?”

Toby looks astonished. “Who?” he says, looking around. “There’s nobody else worth stalking, Harriet. You’re the only one.”

I grit my teeth. “Then don’t stalk anyone.” My voice is getting more abrasive. “How about you just don’t stalk anyone, Toby? Otherwise known as LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.”

And then there’s a silence. Toby looks at me in astonishment. A low snigger ripples round the classroom.

When I look up, Mr Bott has paused writing on the board and is staring at me with an expression that a geek like me doesn’t see very often. One of anger, frustration and a fervent desire to punish.

It looks like I might be seeing Nat after school today after all.

look at Mr Bott with round eyes.

“Miss Manners,” he says icily from the front of the classroom, and I suddenly remember that we’re supposed to be reading act four, scene five of Hamlet. “Do you have a thought you would like to share with us?”

“No,” I say immediately and stare at my desk.

“I find that very hard to believe,” Mr Bott says in an even sharper voice. “You always have a thought to share with us. In fact, it’s usually difficult to stop you from sharing it with us.”

“I’ve no thoughts,” I tell him in a meek voice.

“Good to know. That’s what I like to see: a student approaching her exams with nothing at all in her head.”

Alexa looks up from where she’s been texting somebody under the desk and snorts with laughter.

Oh, yes, Alexa’s in the top sets too. Unfortunately, she’s both mean and smart. I have at least another three years left of her to look forward to, and then she’ll probably follow me to university. Although, given the amount of time she spends on her phone in our classes, I can only assume she’s really, really good at last-minute cramming.

“Alexa?” Mr Bott snaps, whipping round to face her. “Is something funny?”

Alexa looks over to me and raises an eyebrow. “No,” she says in a meaningful voice. “Quite the opposite. Mostly sad, I’d say.”

Nice. She’s managed to insult me in front of the teacher and he hasn’t even noticed.

“Well,” Mr Bott says, but he doesn’t look happy either. In fairness, he rarely looks happy. I don’t think he teaches because it fills him with a deep inner light. “How about Little Miss Shouter and Little Miss Giggles both come up to the front here and give us your perspectives on a little question I have.”

Alexa’s face goes suddenly pale, and as we walk to the front, she’s throwing metaphorical daggers in my direction.

“Now,” Mr Bott says, “turn and face the whole class, please.”

My cheeks are getting hotter and hotter. I turn so that my body is in the right direction, but try to focus on the floor.

“So, Alexa Roberts and Harriet Manners.” Mr Bott sits down and gestures gracefully to the board. “As you are both clearly fascinated by this text, would you like to explain the significance of Laertes in Hamlet?” He looks at Alexa. “Please go first, Miss Roberts.”

“Well…” Alexa says hesitantly. “He’s Ophelia’s brother, right?”

“I didn’t ask for his family tree, Alexa. I want to know his literary significance as a fictional character.”

Alexa looks uncomfortable. “Well then, his literary significance is in being Ophelia’s brother, isn’t it? So she has someone to hang out with.”

“How very kind of Shakespeare to give fictional Ophelia a fictional playmate so that she doesn’t get fictionally bored. Your analytical skills astound me, Alexa. Perhaps I should send you to Set Seven with Mrs White and you can spend the rest of the lesson studying Thomas the Tank Engine. I believe he has lots of buddies too.”

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