Model Misfit (38 page)

Authors: Holly Smale

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Humorous Stories, #Girls & Women

Sunshine is streaming through a window, and there’s a small, comforting beeping sound. Annabel’s sitting calmly in bed in a clean white nightgown. Her blonde hair is smoothed into its normal impeccable bun, her face is peaceful and her cheeks are rosy. If it wasn’t for the fact that she isn’t wearing a suit and there’s a small, snuffling bundle of material in her arms, you wouldn’t know anything had changed at all.

Except it has.

I lurk nervously in the doorway while Dad bounds straight into the room like an excited Labrador. “WIFE-FACE!” he says loudly, and then claps his hand over his mouth. “Sorry,” he says in a fake whisper. “I meant wife-face, lower caps.” He leans over the bed and peers at the lump in Annabel’s arms. “When do her eyes open?”

“I didn’t give birth to a kitten, Richard. Her eyes have already opened. She’s asleep.”

“Don’t be so sure, Annabel,” Dad says firmly. “They’re smarter than they look. Harriet used to have this trick of pretending to be asleep when actually she was listening and storing it all up and getting ready to spout it all back out again just when you least expect it. We need to be prepared. This one looks wily too.”

“Good,” Annabel says, affectionately rearranging a few of the blankets. “The wilier the better.” Then she looks up to the doorway. “Mum? Can I have a word?”

Bunty nods and jingles into the hospital room. She’s surprisingly quiet.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” Annabel continues. “I’ve been far too harsh. You’ve done an amazing job taking care of Harriet. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

There’s a pause and I see Annabel searching for the right words, which is something I have literally never seen before.

“I’ve changed my mind about your kind offer. We’d love to have you stay with us for the first month or two.” There’s a pause. “
I
would love you to stay.”

Bunty kisses Annabel on the forehead.

“Thank you, darling. I know I haven’t been around in the past as much as I should, but I’d really like to change that.”

She can be such hard work sometimes, you know.

I don’t think I can handle any more.

It’s my first baby, and you know I love her to pieces but …

I just think it’s best for everyone if she’s not here.

They weren’t talking about me.

They were talking about Bunty.

A tiny squeak escapes from my throat, and Annabel looks up. She stares at me for a split second and then twists towards Dad.

“Take Tabitha, please,” she says, gently thrusting the bundle at him.

“
Tabitha?
” Dad says. It’s only when he takes the baby and fits her swiftly into the crook of his arm that I remember he’s actually done this before. “Tabitha Manners? As in Tabitha from
Bewitched
?”

Annabel laughs. “It’s also Aramaic for
gazelle
and the cat in Beatrix Potter
so it should keep us all happy. I’m sure if we do enough research we can find a few record-breaking owls and koalas too.” Then she turns back to me. “Come here, Harriet.”

I walk towards her and sit gently on the bed. With a slight wince, Annabel bends down and gets a piece of paper out of her handbag. She hands it to me.

On it, written in perfectly neat handwriting, double underlined, it says:

The Manners Family

Harriet
Tabitha
Richard
Annabel
Bunty

“You see that?” she says quietly, pointing to it. “You’re still at the top of my list, Harriet.”

She nudges me with her shoulder, and my world suddenly falls straight back together as if it never exploded in the first place.

“Oh,
what
?” Dad moans, leaning over us. “Are you
kidding
me? I’m
third
? It’s my surname in the first place: I gave it to you little name-stealers.” He looks at the bundle and gently prods it with a finger. “I’ve got your card marked, Missy, and I know where you live.”

“Can I see her?” I ask nervously. “My sister?”

Dad grins and carefully hands me the bundle, and I stare down at Tabitha.

I don’t believe it. I actually do not believe it.

Not only is my new sister a maverick with no respect at all for timetables and plans, apparently she has no interest in statistics either. Less than two per cent of the world has red hair and it’s a recessive gene.

She’s even more ginger than I am.

“Another top model in the making,” Dad says proudly, looking at both of us. “Annabel, you are so incredibly lucky I’m genetically such a hotty.”

At that precise moment, Tabitha opens huge blue eyes and looks at Dad with a calm, unimpressed expression that says:
Seriously? Billions of fathers in the world and I got landed with this plonker?

And I am suddenly absolutely certain that I’m going to love her more than I’ve ever loved anything, ever. Even maths. Even English. Even history.

Even more than
physics
.

My phone beeps. I quickly give my tiny, adorable sister a gentle kiss on the head and then hand her back to Dad.

Coming back to England tomorrow. ;)

Nick. xxxx

I grin happily and then look over at Bunty, who’s vaguely sniffing some flowers next to the bed. Then at Tabitha, yawning and wrinkling her little red nose. Then at Dad, humming under his breath and trying to get Tabitha to high-five him with her tiny palm. Then I look at Annabel, still gazing calmly at me.

She wrinkles her nose and I wrinkle mine back, and I suddenly realise that it doesn’t matter how far I go, or how lost I am, or how lonely I feel. I fit in here. I always will.

That’s how I know I’m home.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my wonderful editor, Lizzie Clifford, for helping me discover ‘the statue in the stone’, and to my agent Kate Shaw, whose patience and kindness gave me the time to find it. Thanks to the whole team at HarperCollins, who have supported both Harriet and myself with passion and tireless creativity from the start, and to Pippa Le Quesne, whose guidance is always illuminating.

Thanks to my family: to my amazing Mum and Dad, always proud of me whether I deserve it or not, and my grandparents, for the world’s best cuddles, advice and jam tarts. Thanks to Flossy, for trying so hard to kill my keyboard, and to my little sister, Tara: my best friend, and the only person I’d give up my giant teddy-bear with the blue bow for.

Enormous thanks to Julian and Naho for their incredible generosity, and for re-translating my terrible Japanese withou
t mocking me too heartily. Thanks also to Kristin, Laura and Sarah, for years of support and friendship. You have made many dramas so much smaller.

Finally, to everyone who has read and loved Harriet: you have brought her alive, and I couldn’t have done it without you.

Thank you. x

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About the Author

Photograph © Georgina Bolton King

Holly Smale
is the author of
Geek Girl
and
Model Misfit
. Clumsy, a bit geeky and somewhat shy, she spent the majority of her teenage years hiding in the changing-room toilets. She was unexpectedly spotted by a top London modelling agency at the age of fifteen and spent the following two years falling over on catwalks, going bright red and breaking things she couldn’t afford to replace. By the time Holly had graduated from Bristol University with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare she had given up modelling and set herself on the path to becoming a writer. Between then and now she also spent two years living in Japan. Holly is currently writing the third book in the
Geek Girl
series.

Copyright

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB.

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Cover photographs ©
shutterstock.com
; Cover typography © Mary Kate Mcdeveritt; Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780007489466

Ebook Edition © September 2013 ISBN: 9780007489473

Version: 2013-09-04

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