Picture Perfect (15 page)

It all starts perfectly.

I am up at the crack of dawn. The birds are singing. The sun is shining. The leaves are rustling. I beam, get my pen out and cross them off the list with a neat line.

On my phone are four texts already:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRECKLES! Can’t wait for tonight. LB xxx

O tanjobi omedetogozaimasu!! Much loving of you on speciality day, Harry-chan! Rin. xxxx

IT’S YOUR BIRTTTTTHHHDDAY! Ring you later. LOVE YOU LOVE YOU YAAAAYYYY!! Nat oxoxoxo

Many happy sixteenth returns, Harriet Manners. We’d send a kiss but we don’t want you to get the wrong idea again.

Hugo and Toby.

I stretch out happily, and then cross the next point off the list too. I think briefly about driving a moped and an invalid carriage, don’t do it, and cross both these points off as well.

Then I pull open the curtains.

“Good
morning
!” I shout to a little girl outside. “Isn’t it a
wonderful
day?”

She pauses from prodding a crisp packet stuck in a bush with the end of a stick. “Uh?”

“I hope you have a lovely morning!”

“Weirdo,” she says, going back to prodding, and I beam at her anyway.

Then I jubilantly cross my fifth point off the list.

Finally I pull on my dressing gown and bounce downstairs, to where my parents are slumped, scowling at each other exactly as predicted.

I swing the door open with a joyful BANG.

My sister immediately starts crying. She’s obviously in on it too.

“
Harriet
,” Annabel says, picking Tabby up with a
sssshhhh
. “Was that totally necessary?”

I beam at everyone, and then take my seat at the kitchen table. “Probably not,” I say nonchalantly. “It’s such a
boring day
. Such a
nothing day.
Why did we even bother waking up in the first place?”

Then I mentally kick myself.
Pull it back, Harriet. You’ll ruin everything
.

Dad gazes blearily at me whilst tightening his tie. “Have you been eating American breakfast cereal, Harriet? I’m not sure you’re built to handle that many E numbers.”

I look optimistically at Annabel. She’s going to say something really grumpy now too. I can feel it.

“Don’t leave your butter knife on the table like yesterday, Richard. Put it in the sink.”

Ha.

“But I don’t need a butter knife this morning, do I? There being no butter. Is there
anything
to eat in here?”

“There’s a piece of pizza in the fridge.”

“I’m off to work in the city and you want me to eat a piece of old pizza for breakfast?”

“There’s a can of mini sausages in the cupboard.”

“You want me to take
a can of mini sausages
on the commuter train?”

“Or a slice of plastic-looking cheese.”

“You want me to take a piece of
plastic-looking cheese
to work?”

“No, Richard,” Annabel says, putting her head in her hands. “What I want is for you to stop repeating everything I say in italics and understand that I was up all night with the baby and haven’t had time to shop. Can you do that?”

I blink a few times.

They’re taking it a bit far, to be honest. There’s no need to be
this
boring.

“So,” I interrupt, spreading my hands out on the table in a present-welcoming kind of way. “I have
no idea
what I’m going to do today.
No idea
.”

“Yes, you do,” Annabel says as Tabitha spits up on to a bib. “Miss Hall is coming. You’ve got school.”

“I’m going to be
late
for work,” Dad says, grabbing his suit jacket. “Do we have coffee, or should I be getting that at the station too?”

“Station,” Annabel says without looking at him.

“Amazeballs.” He scowls at Annabel, and then kisses the top of my head. “Have a good day, sweetheart. I’ll be back later, after the work drinks if I haven’t
starved
to death and am lying in skeletal form in the middle of Manhattan being prodded by scientists.”

And – before I can get a single word out – Dad’s gone, slamming the front door loudly behind him.

I stare at Annabel.

“
Don’t
,” she snaps softly. “Harriet, just
don’t
. I’m not in the mood. There’s a twenty-dollar bill in my handbag. Please grab something to eat from the shops.”

“But—”

“Harriet,
please
.”

“I thought—”

“Harriet.”

“Annabel—”

“Now.”

So I eat a solitary birthday muffin, sitting on the kerb outside the supermarket.

If they’re prepared to put on that kind of show the gift must be
amazing
. I may need to keep a handkerchief ready for all the unexpected emotion.

Miss Hall appears to be in on it too.

“Right,” she says when we’re tucked away in my bedroom. “I went easy on you yesterday. I think it’s time you showed me what you’re made of with some complex algebra.”

Of all my A level topics, algebra is at the bottom of my list. I was kind of hoping we could at least spend my birthday playing Scrabble. “You want me to do algebra
today
?” I say in dismay.

Miss Hall frowns. “Is there a problem?”

Annabel
must
have told her why today’s special. Which means …

Ah.

Of course.
My parents want to keep me out of the way in my bedroom because they’re doing something
extraordinary
downstairs. Like building a massive tree house, or filling the house with thousands of tiny colour-coordinated cupcakes in order of the rainbow spectrum.

I bet Dad hasn’t gone to work. I bet he’s out, picking up my new yellow legally approved scooter as we speak.

Or – slightly less excitingly – my invalid carriage.

“OK …” I say, winking elaborately at Miss Hall and getting my air-quote fingers ready. “Let’s
do algebra
.”

There’s a pause while she stares at my fingers.

“Harry, if you aren’t going to treat education with the respect it deserves, I can take my extraordinary skills elsewhere.”

“I’ll show education respect,” I agree, feeling slightly put out. “Of course I will.”

“Good,” Miss Hall barks. “Because I am not here to be told how to do my job by a teenager. Clear?”

“Yes,” I agree meekly.

“We are only as strong as we allow ourselves to be,” she says firmly. “And, Harry, I suspect that you are nowhere near as remarkable as I have been led to believe.”

I flinch.

This birthday present had better be
really
good.

Miss Hall settles back in her chair and closes her eyes. “Let’s stop wasting time and get on to higher circle theorems, shall we?”

So I spend the next eight hours doing exactly that.

y the time Miss Hall finally leaves, my excitement levels are dangerously high.

It is clearly going to be the best birthday
ever
.

I lurk at the top of the stairs, but it’s nigh on completely silent down there. If I listen really hard, though, I can almost hear my parents’ fevered whispers. “I hope Harriet likes it”, and “
Won’t
she be blown away?” and “This box is too small to fit a brand-new scooter
and
a puppy!”

Judging by the quietness they’re not quite ready for me, so I make the most of the time left and prepare myself for WMRBE.

First I have a shower and attempt to shave my legs with a few poorly balanced swipes. Then I clamber out and spray myself all over with Annabel’s best perfume. I dry myself, realise the towel now stinks of Chanel, tie my hair carefully into a top-knot and hop cautiously into my favourite dress.

Admittedly, it’s my
only
dress.

It’s red with little white hearts on it, and Nat gave it to me this summer for ‘all the sixth form and college parties we will be invited to’. She clearly forgot that I hate parties but I accepted it in the spirit of Best Friendship.

With a surge of
joie de vivre
, I raid Annabel’s make-up box and apply a smear of red lipstick, a fluff of powder and a few strokes of mascara: some of which actually goes on my eyelashes.

Then I stand in front of a full-length mirror and stare at the stranger in front of me.

I still look like me, but somehow
different
. Gone is the girl in a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt and in its place is a sixteen-year-old in a dress.

Sophisticated. Glamorous.

I lean a bit closer. There’s mascara in my eyebrows.

Well, I’m going in the right direction.

Nat would be so proud of me.

I do a swirly spin so that the white hearts on red fan out in a circle like a romantic bull-fighter’s cape, and then skip down the stairs with joyful steps.

“Dad?” I say, swishing into the hallway. “Tabitha? Annabel? I’m ready for my big surp—”

The kitchen is exactly the same as it was when I left it this morning. The empty tea mugs are still out, and the blinds are still half shut. The oven door is open, and there’s a vague smell of burning. The chair is in the exact same position it was when Dad pushed it back in a huff.

I walk into the living room.

The curtains are closed, and Annabel is lying on the sofa with an arm sprawled out, fast asleep. Her mouth is open, her blonde hair is straggled across her face, her jumper has ridden up and Tabitha is lying on her stomach with her tiny hands bunched up by her face: also unconscious.

I glance around the room. There are no flowers. No cupcakes. No signs of any kind of tree house or chemistry kit. No scooter. No puppy. There isn’t a single bit of wrapping paper anywhere. No Sellotape, no scissors.

Nothing.

Then I glance at the door. Dad’s jacket is missing from its hook.

And it finally hits me.

I have to lean against the doorframe while I try to wrap my stupid, slow-moving brain around it. I’d have seen it before, if it hadn’t been so totally unbelievable.

This isn’t an elaborate subterfuge. This isn’t the world’s most carefully planned, epic surprise.

It’s half-past six on the evening of my sixteenth birthday, and my family aren’t pretending to forget me.

They’ve actually
forgotten
.

tatistically, the chances of having a birthday on any particular day is 1/365.