Model Misfit (10 page)

I’m already thinking about my abandoned Summer of Fun Flow Chart. Maybe I can re-use it after all. I just need to find the right colour pen so I can cross out
Nat
and replace it with
Toby
and my holiday will be none the wiser. “Hmmm?”

“I think you already have a visitor.”

My stomach suddenly flips and every hair on my body stands on end.
Nick?

I look up. There’s a bright pink Beetle parked outside my house.

The hairs flatten back down again. Oh no. No no. No no no no – I turn around and start walking in the opposite direction.

“Harriet?” a voice calls. “Come and give your favourite old person a nice big cuddle.”

And there – standing in the doorway covered in bells and sequins, like some kind of summery Christmas tree – is my grandmother.

I just want to make something perfectly clear.

There are many, many other old people I prefer to this one. My grandad, for instance. Nat’s grandad. Nat’s grandma. My old piano teacher, Mr Henry. The ancient lady who works in the local newsagent and gives me free sweets without being asked.

It’s not that I don’t love my grandmother. I just don’t really know her very well.

Or at all, actually.

“Sweetie!” she says as I approach with tiny steps, the way you might a rampaging hippopotamus. “Your hair is even redder than it used to be!” She sweeps me into her arms and all the bells on her wrists tinkle like she’s an enormous cat. “From a distance it looks like your head is on fire!”

I think I’m about to get an embroidered daisy imprinted permanently on my forehead. “It’s strawberry blonde,” I tell her left breast as politely as I can. She smells of wood and beetroot.

“Look how mucky you are!” she laughs, pulling back and spitting on her long wizard-like sleeve. Before I can escape she starts scrubbing it hard on my nose. “Oops. No. They’re freckles, just like Richard’s. Adorable! How long has it been since I saw you last? Five months? Six?”

“Three and a half years,” I say, staring over her shoulder at my parents who have finally emerged. Needless to say, Annabel’s eating. This time it appears to be toast with Neapolitan ice cream spread in a layer on top.

“Whoopsy,” my grandmother says, beaming at us. “I took over a coconut stall in India for an afternoon and next thing I knew I was running a
roaring
backpacker trade. Good for copious amounts of diarrhoea, coconut water.”

Toby races forwards with his hand out. “I am Toby Pilgrim, Harriet’s stalker. Nice to meet you, Mrs Grandmother Manners.”

“Bunty,” she says cheerfully, shaking it.

“And on that exciting note,” Toby says, wiping his nose on his finger, “I shall make my dramatic exit. I’ve got this new plate with a face on it and Mum’s made spaghetti so I’m eager to get home while it’s still hot and malleable enough to form realistic hair.”

Then Toby promptly waves and scoots back out of the door. We all try to pretend that we can’t see him immediately crouch down behind the hedge right outside.

“I didn’t know you were coming.” I look at my parents with round eyes. Does nobody tell me
anything
these days?

“Well, if somebody needs to take you abroad it might as well be somebody who spends most of her time there, right?”

I stare at her, then I stare at my parents, and then I stare at my grandmother again.
What?

“Apparently Tokyo is the place to be this summer,” she grins. “I think we should check it out, don’t you?”

I suddenly don’t care that I’ve probably met my nomadic grandmother a handful of times in my entire life. I don’t care that her hair is sort of baby pink, and I don’t care that she currently has what looks like a twig stuck in it.

I don’t even care that the last time I saw her we had a forty-five-minute conversation about the benefits of wiping your bottom with your hand instead of a piece of toilet paper to ‘save the rainforest’.

“Oh my God, I
love
you!” I yell, throwing myself around her neck. “Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!”

“Now,
that’s
the greeting I was looking for.”

Then I lob myself at Dad, and then – a little bit more carefully, in case I squish my sibling – at Annabel. “Thank you! Thank you thank you! You’ve
saved
my summer! Totally saved it!”

Dad laughs. “How could we argue with a Powerpoint presentation of such quality, Harriet? We’re not
monsters.
” He puts his hand over his mouth. “
She’s
a monster,” he pretends to whisper, pointing at Annabel. “But
I’m
not.”

“Go upstairs and get your things packed for tomorrow, Harriet,” Annabel says calmly, ignoring Dad. “I imagine your grandmother will want to help you write a brand-new Summer of Fun Flow Chart.”

“What’s a flow chart?” my grandmother asks. “Does it rank rivers?”

Good Lord. I’m going to have to start training her immediately. “We have new plans to make!” I shout, running up the stairs. “Itineraries! Schedules! Lists! Lists and lists and lists and—”

“Look, Harriet,” my grandmother says as she follows behind me, pointing at the garden. “A squirrel!”

“Make sure she has everything she needs,” Annabel calls after us.

“My darling daughter,” Bunty calls down the stairs. “That’s the beauty of foreign travel. You don’t need anything but yourself.”

“And a passport, Mum,” I hear Annabel say tiredly. “And tickets. And a visa. And clean clothes and quite a few changes of underwear.”

Uh-huh.

If you thought you saw a marked family resemblance between my maverick grandmother and my maverick father, you would be wrong.

Bunty isn’t Dad’s mum.

She’s Annabel’s.

y entire summer has just turned around.

And, as I start jubilantly packing all the important things into a suitcase – paper, dictionaries, pens, etc – I suddenly remember that I wrote Nick’s email address on an old bit of paper and tucked it into an ancient copy of
Anne of Green Gables
months and months ago.
Ha.
I am so much more cunning and better organised with contact details than Nat gives me credit for.

As
if
I’d let go of Nick that easily.

Mentally high-fiving myself, I think about it carefully and then write the following email on my phone:

Dear Nick,

Got your message. Would love to talk. I’ve been thinking about you lots! Of course I have! Am going to Japan for a few weeks for a modelling job but taking my phone with me. Send me another message or ring me? Or ask Wilbur and he can give you my new address?

I’VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH. :)

Harriet xxxx

I look at it happily – he
definitely
can’t misread or misinterpret that in any way – and then press SEND. Now it’s just a matter of time before Nick tracks me down and I have the best, most romantic summer
ever
.

I spend the next twenty minutes contentedly bouncing around my room as if I’m on an enormous imaginary Spacehopper: scanning travel documents, printing them out and arranging them carefully in alphabetical order. I make a list of all the lists I need to make. I sit Bunty on my bed, and read her fascinating snippets from a Visit Japan website: “Did you know that the word
karaoke
means
empty orchestra
?” and “Can you believe it used to be customary in ancient Japan for women to blacken their teeth with dye to make them look less toothy!”

My grandmother, in the meantime, sits on the windowsill and makes comments like: “Oooh – your glasses are making a rainbow on the wall, Harriet, isn’t that just
magical
?”

I’m so ridiculously happy, I don’t even feel the need to explain the difference between ‘magic’ and ‘refraction’. I bounce around hysterically until I remember I left my laptop downstairs. I’m probably going to need it at some stage so I can look up additional facts
in situ
.

With an unprecedented degree of physical dexterity, I bound down the stairs to get it.

“Annabel?” I chirp. “Dad? Did I leave my laptop in—” Then I stop, because they’re sitting at the kitchen table with their heads together, talking in low voices.

And all I can hear is the word ‘Harriet’.

ere’s the thing: my parents
never
talk in low voices.

Especially not to each other.

Now, obviously everybody knows that listening in on other people’s conversations never comes to any good. You usually end up hearing something you’re not supposed to hear or getting stabbed to death like Polonius in
Hamlet.
So the most sensible thing to do right now is interrupt my parents immediately, or leave before the conversation goes any further.

I have no explanation for why I duck behind the living-room wall and breathe as quietly as I can.

“I’m just so
exhausted
, Rich,” Annabel continues. “It feels like I’m wading through a thick river of treacle all of the time.”

“You’re not,” Dad says reassuringly. “Judging by the state of our cupboards, I’m pretty sure you’d have eaten that too.”

Then I hear the sound of a gentle smack round the head. “Seriously,” Annabel says, “I had no idea reproduction would be so much work. I would pay really good money to be a reptile or a chicken right now.”

Dad laughs. “You’re not doing this alone, Bels.” There’s a
swoosh
, which sounds like a shoulder being rubbed. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m tying myself to you like a mitten to its other mitten.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Through the coat sleeve of life. With the string of love.”

Annabel laughs. “OK, I think that’s enough of the mitten analogy.”

There’s the sound of a long, sloppy kiss, and I can feel myself making a
blurgh
face. According to statistics and what I overheard while waiting outside Parents’ Evening, everyone else has parents that are only together For The Sake Of The Children. It makes me feel a bit awkward, knowing that mine have a relationship that is so flagrantly nothing to do with me. They could at least
pretend
to have no interest in each other.

I’m just getting ready to interrupt when Dad says, “But it still doesn’t answer the question. What about Harriet?”