Picture Perfect (17 page)

hat’s one good thing about our new house.

The doors have locks on them.

My parents sit outside my bedroom, pleading, apologising and making really bad jokes. Dad pushes a biscuit and a little envelope under the door that says:

Inside it is $100 in cash.

I scrawl
across the envelope in enormous letters, take the money out and push it back under the door. Then I turn the BBC World Service up so loudly that the floors start rattling.

Finally – when every biscuit in the house has been pushed under my door and then thrown out of the window – my parents eventually get the message and leave me alone.

I lie face down on my bed in my Mickey Mouse T-shirt and turn my phone on. It immediately beeps five times.

H, sorry I didn’t call earlier – stuck in college. Can we Skype tmrw? So sorry. :( Bet you had the best birthday in NY EVER. Miss you so much. Nat xoxoxoxo

I’m SO SORRY. I screwed up. Please talk to me. LBxx

PS I’m sorry I’m sorry xxx

PPS You can have ALL the postscripts

PPPPPPPPPPPS? x

With my nose pressed into my duvet I delete everything, and then click on my email. Among offers to enlarge various parts of my body which I don’t actually own, there’s just one waiting in my inbox.

Just one email from somebody I recognise.

FROM: Alexa Roberts

TO: Harriet Manners

I thought Twilight was boring but your delusional fantasies are even worse.

I’d stay in New York if I were you.

A

The only person without an apology on my birthday is the person currently wading through my most precious memories for something to hurt me.

That’s nice.

I stare blankly at the empty walls of my new bedroom.

Not a single thing in this house has a memory wrapped around it. I don’t know what has been accidentally dropped between the floorboards or what’s been secretly stored at the back of these cupboards. I don’t know what the stains on the carpets are, or what angle the sunshine hits my bed in springtime.

I can’t climb down the stairs in the middle of the night without turning a light on. There’s nobody waiting for me in the bush outside. Nobody sitting on the bench on the corner of my road with her legs on the armrest.

It’s just a house. With floorboards and cupboards and carpets and unrecognisable sunshine and empty bushes and benches.

It’s not my home.

For the first time in my life, I am totally on my own.

I sulk for the next three days non-stop. I refuse all offers of belated birthday weekend fun from my parents. I don’t even bother switching my phone on again. I think about Skyping Nat but decide she’ll be too busy drinking coffee with Jessica to answer. And Toby will be too busy stealing the affections of my dog to have time for me either.

So on Sunday evening when I finally switch my phone back on and it immediately starts ringing, I reach down to cancel the call. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not Nick, not Nat, not my parents who are probably ringing me from downstairs like obsessive weirdos.

It rings again, and I cancel it.

Then again, and I cancel it again.

Finally – on the fourth call from an unknown number – curiosity gets the better of me. “
What?
”

“My little Bacon-chops,” a voice says. “Let’s try for something a little more welcoming than that.
Hello
is a traditional way to start a conversation. Go again.”

I stare at the phone and then put it back to my face.

“
Wilbur?
”

“Trunkle-bum, I like that even better. Answer
every
phone call like that forever. We could start a trend.”

“Wilbur, is that really you?”

“Why of course it is, my little Storm in a Teacup.” Wilbur tinkles with laughter. “Who in diddle-cats else was it going to be?”

or a few seconds, I don’t say anything.

Luckily I don’t have to, Wilbur continues talking regardless.

“Possum-feet. Isn’t this fun? It’s just the same as normal, except we’re in a different country again. At least, I assume we both are, Kitten-munch, or this is a very strange number for you to have.”

“Where
are
you?”

“New York, Bunny-buttons. Where else?”

“But …” I don’t even know where to start. “How did you get this number?”

“I have my sources,” he says. “I’m like Tom Cruise except with a better physique and swishier hair. And I don’t move my arms so much when I run.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.”

“Don’t be such a silly Sausage-cake. I was just biding my time. Gaining infinite power, like an iPod plugged into the mains.”

As usual, I have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s so comforting. “OK.”

“And now we must reunite for the benefit of mankind, like Take That. So where
precisement
are you? A tiny birdy tells me you’re in NYC too. Is this true, or is it like the time somebody told me Oprah was in the bagel shop and she wasn’t and I was
devastated
?”

“I’m an hour and a half away.”

“Close enough. You’ll just have to get up at super-dawn, like an early worm so the birds can catch you. I need you here first thing tomorrow morning. There’s a magazine job I want to put you forward for.”

“But …” How do I put this nicely? “I’m not actually a model any more, Wilbur. Infinity Models dumped me.”

There is literally no way to put that nicely.

“Nobody here knows that, so potato potato.” He says them both the same.
Potato potato
. “Just meet me in Manhattan and we can take it from there
. Don’t
eat any chocolate between now and then. We can’t have any more skin explosions, Baby-baby Panda. They’re a lot less forgiving about that in America.”

I blink a few times.
Baby-baby Panda. Manhattan. A job.
A familiar, excited wriggling starts at the bottom of my stomach.

“But—” I object, about to sensibly tell Wilbur it’s Monday tomorrow, I have to study, my parents will never allow it and then I stop.

I’m sixteen and I’m not a child any more.

Miss Hall clearly thinks I’m useless anyway and I appear to be learning nothing so it’s not as if I’m missing anything here and …

I’ll finally get to see New York.

I can model again.

And I can live the dream, just like Nat.

What other options do I have? Sitting here, waiting for everybody to get on with their lives without me?

I close my eyes.

I can either stay here, ignored and alone. Failing and being forgotten about.

Or I can run away and have the life I choose.

Scientists say that if you went into space without a spacesuit, you would explode before you suffocated because there is no air pressure. I may not be in space, but that’s precisely how I feel now. As if – if I don’t do
something
– that’s exactly what’s going to happen to me.

“I’ll do it,” I say defiantly, opening my eyes.

“Of course you’ll do it, Bunny-face,” Wilbur laughs. “It’s fashion. New York. What else is there?”

he next morning, I simply get up and leave.