Picture Perfect (36 page)

Apparently so is mine.

I spin in wild circles, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of Nick’s curly head amongst the glittering crowd.

“Hey, babe,” Kenderall says as I start spinning in the opposite direction, just in case that helps. “I finally met
Nick.
He’s mega
hot
, babe
.
Probably doesn’t need a hyphen. You want to hang on to that one.”

I stare at her, aghast.

She has got to be kidding me.

“You
saw
him?” I nearly shout, hope rising. If I can just talk to him, I can explain everything. “He’s still here
?
”

“Oh no,” she says calmly. “He’s long gone.
Told
you the plan would work. He’s totally
crazy
about you now. He left this for you on his way out.”

She hands me a tiny blue box.

I hold it tightly in my hand. For a second, I am a whisker away from sticking it straight down her stupid long model throat. “
This
was the plan? Getting someone else to kiss me in front of my boyfriend was the
plan
?”

This is why I should
always
get people to write their plans down for me.

“Well, I didn’t
know
he’d
see
you and Cal, did I? But I was hoping he’d have his suspicions after your little ‘date’. It worked out even better than we could have hoped for.”

She stretches her arms above her head and yawns hugely.

The strongest organ in our body may be the tongue, but for a few seconds I can’t get mine to say anything constructive at all.

“
How is this better?
”

“Boys don’t know what they’ve got until they’ve lost it to someone else,” Kenderall states. “Everyone knows that. I was
helping
you.”

“But I don’t
want
to lose Nick,” I shout. “THAT WAS THE POINT.”

Kenderall blinks. “Well it’s not a
science
, babe. Jeez.”

I stare at Kenderall. Then I stare down at my stupid dress through my stupid fake eyelashes and the silly orange cards strapped to my arm. I think of all the stupid texts I’ve been sending, and all the forced silences.

And weirdly enough my anger with her abruptly disappears.

Kenderall’s not a bad person. She just doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know Nick, and she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.

Unfortunately, I obviously know even less.

I have been
such
an idiot.

Trembling, I rip open the little box and pull off the tiny white note attached to it.

Inside, wrapped in white tissue paper, is a silver necklace.

It has nine brightly coloured beads on it in different sizes. Three blue, two red, one orange, one purple, one yellow and a tiny mottled blue and green one.

It’s our solar system.

Nick has given me the planets.

I didn’t want to lose my boyfriend.

But it looks like I just did.

July 21st

“So,” I said, curling up next to Nick. David Attenborough was talking about sharks ascending from the cold dark depths, and I couldn’t find my slippers.

“So,” Nick said, wrapping his warm hands around my feet.

“So,” I said again.

“So,” he laughed. “Say it, Manners. Whatever it is you’re fretting about and pulling apart like a puppy with a ball of tissues, just say it.”

I cleared my throat.

“So, I was just wondering … Because the thing is … I just wanted to know …” I took a deep breath. “Am I your girlfriend yet?”

“Officially?”

“Yes.”

“Write-it-down official?
Diary
official?”

I flushed. How did he know that I’d left a space for this express purpose right at the back? “Have you been looking through my personal secrets, Nick Hidaka? That’s not very gallant of you.”

“I don’t need to,” he said, grinning. “I just know you pretty well, Harriet Manners.”

“Well, yes then,” I said, trying to stick my nose in the air. “Am I your girlfriend,
diary
official?”

“Yes,” Nick said, wrapping his arm around me and pulling me into his jumper. “Of course you are.”

“In pen?”

“Harriet,” he laughed, and suddenly my feet didn’t feel cold any more. “You can write it in permanent marker if you like.”

So I did.

hey say that life is just a blank chain, and precious moments are the beads we hang off it to make it beautiful.

As I hobble down the front steps of Gotham Hall clutching my satchel against me, I can suddenly see them all, glittering and flashing in front of me.

I see Nick under the table at The Clothes Show Live in Birmingham, offering me chewing gum. I see him on the pavement outside Infinity Models when I asked if he wanted to sniff my hands. I see him leaning against the lamp-post in the snow in Russia, and holding my hand when I was scared.

I see our first kiss, in the darkness of a television studio.

I see him leaning against a doorway in Tokyo.

I see him sitting on the steps outside a Sumo hall, and standing on the stage opposite me with a little curl sticking up like a duck tail. I see him holding me steady in the water of Lake Fuji, surrounded by stars.

I see him sitting down on the pavement next to me in Shibuya; his nose twitching as I shouted and made little T-Rex claws. I see him on a roundabout, spinning us round in circles. I see him racing me to a postbox, and writing something silly just to make me laugh.

I see him making me part of his life, and winking at me on a catwalk.

I see him ringing me from the back of an elephant and travelling two hours with sixteen purple balloons and sixteen cupcakes just to see me on my birthday.

I see him on Brooklyn Bridge, with New York lit up behind him: angry because he was worried about me.

I see him always knowing who I am without me ever having to tell him.

Being there, without me ever having to ask him.

And as the bright beads start slipping away, one by one, I suddenly realise I don’t need the fairy-tale romance. I don’t need the big gestures; I don’t need to be shown the heavens or flowers and horse-drawn carriages and boat rides at sunset. I don’t need everything to be
perfect
. For me, it already was.

And I don’t need Nick to say he loves me.

Because I already know.

Apparently we each shed a million skin cells every day, and I must be losing mine all at once because I feel like I’m suddenly falling apart.

I ignore the protesting seams of my horrible dress and sit on the red-carpeted steps of Gotham Hall. Then I pull my phone out of my satchel. There are fourteen missed phone calls from Nat.

I stare at them, then curl myself into a tight ball.

If there was any kind of table out here, I would be hiding underneath it within four seconds.

The etymology of the word
friend
comes from the Proto-Germanic word
frijand
, which means
to love.
Love and friendship: friendship and love. They come from the same place.

I’ve just been too blinkered to see it.

Oh God.

Oh God oh God oh God.

Of all the messes I’ve ever got myself into, this is by far the worst. It’s elephantine. Whopping. Colossal. Gargantuan.

Whatever word you want to pick that means:

Really, really horribly huge
.

And then – as if by magic – the night manages to get just that tiny bit worse.

“Harriet?” a familiar voice says, and I lift my head. “Would you like to explain what the
hell
is going on?”

And there, standing on the red-carpeted pavement of New York City, is my father.

t’s funny how sometimes you can’t see yourself until somebody else does it for you.

As Dad stares at me with his arms crossed, I suddenly see me.

And I mean really, really
see
me.

I’m supposed to be curled up in my bedroom in my penguin pyjamas, reading an interesting book about the Tudors and making notes.

I’m supposed to be listening to the BBC World Service and looking up facts about animals on the internet and emailing my friends witty anecdotes about them that they’ll pretend to be interested in. I’m supposed to be making lists and plans and organising everything in my life down to the minutest detail.