A couple of years ago, Perdita auditioned for her school talent show. She spent weeks arranging the notes of G-Dragon’s “Black” for optimal flute-playing. Harriet looked up an English translation of the lyrics. The first words were “The color of my heart is black . . .”
Undaunted by her failure to qualify for the preliminary round of the talent show, Perdita performed the piece for Harriet and Margot one midsummer night, a velvet-clad Titania swaying between lit candelabras. She needed a little percussion, which her mother provided by rapping her knuckles against the tabletop, but otherwise Perdita’s was a minimalist rendition of the original, as much silence as it was song. The notes had this aural flash to them . . . it was like glimpsing a swan through reeds. It made no impact when placed alongside the rambunctious charms of her classmates’ capoeira routines, comedic rap battles, and inexplicably moving impersonations of Ariana Grande impersonating Céline Dion. But when Perdita played her cover song for Margot and Harriet, they called for an encore. Which was, of course, completely out of the question.
Perdita considers Harriet’s effort to take part in her surroundings excessive. Whenever they pass people happily taking selfies in front of some landmark and Harriet steps in to take an additional picture, Perdita says, “We talked about this.” Harriet stops people she sees struggling with surplus shopping, and she tapes the handles of their carrier bags together with washi tape so they won’t lose anything. Perdita calls upon her mother to repent, and Harriet repenteth not. She points out that tryhards rarely get enough traction to make a significant nuisance of themselves. For instance: Perdita’s school has a PPA, a Parental Power Association instead of a Parent Teacher Association, and, determined to take her own place in this pantheon, Harriet filled nine tins with gingerbread, wrapped rainbow-colored ribbon around each tin, and attached notecards with the names of each PPA member. Every single one of the PPA members left the tins on, under, or behind their chairs without even opening them, leaving Harriet to wonder whether she had caused offense by misspelling names or misidentifying people—she could have been more diligent. She’d been a bit tired when she wrote the notecards, her head full of the GCSE coursework she’d sat up all night correcting. Even so, effort was not the issue. When she told her mother about it, Margot said: “This is sounding exactly like the time you kept saying, ‘It can’t be the gingerbread,’ when it was the gingerbread. It really, really was.”
Gioia Fischer, head of the PPA, wears no scent and no makeup apart from a touch of berry-red lipstick; her chestnut-colored hair bounces from scalp to shoulder, and she exudes well-being with an aggression that’s difficult to deflect; before you know it, her health is arm-wrestling yours. Her living room is a sort of delirium of blue and white, like fighting your way through clouds on a mountain peak. Harriet arrived half an hour early for the meeting, and all the other PPA members were already there in their heartbreakingly casual clothing; catwalk casual, really. They traded gossip and witticisms and current affairs commentary, and Harriet stared and listened. They talked about Felix Nguyen’s parenting blog, which seemed to be all about raising twin boys in adherence to a family tradition of “supreme banter” (SO FUNNY, FELIX . . . almost wet myself. And if I had, I’d have sent you the dry-cleaning bill, mate). Harriet looked up the blog on her phone—access password-protected, yes, of course it was. And as these beautiful people talked, they politely discarded the tins of gingerbread that had been forced on them out of the blue. Gioia ran through a list of items and repairs the PPA intended to make contributions toward. Harriet can’t remember if she made any fundraising suggestions or not. She does remember picking up her gingerbread and making another attempt to force it on one of the more approachable PPA members. The biscuit tin fell into the void between Harriet’s outstretched arms and Abigail’s folded ones, and gingerbread tiles spilled out, tessellating with an air of intelligent design. There was so much of it, and it all fitted together so fastidiously . . . it was spreading, and it had to be stopped. Houses are houses and biscuits are biscuits and people are people, and we all know nothing good comes of relaxing boundaries such as these. This is the only reason Harriet can think of for the mass trampling. Gioia bellowed, “Er, excuse me,” a couple of times, then gave up when she saw the damage had been done. Harriet spent the rest of the PPA meeting on her knees, dustpan and brush in hand as she chased clumps of sand-colored powder into corners and under tables.
Harriet thought they must be famous, the other parents. She found their faces familiar, and they were either indifferent or accustomed to being gawked at. Days later, walking through the lobby of Perdita’s school, she stopped before the wall with all the photos of previous prefects on it, and there they were, every single member of the PPA laughing together in a twenty-one-year-old photo. Gioia Marchesi (now Gioia Fischer), Emil Szep, Abigail Klein, Hyorin Nam, Gemma Jones (now Gemma Ahmad), Felix Nguyen, Noah Finlay, Alesha Thomas (now Alesha Matsumoto), Mariama Guled Ismail. Then, as now, each was an appealing example of a physical type, utterly at ease with his or her genes and with one another. Collectively they were an embodiment of Cool Britannia before the concept had even had a name. And this set of parents certainly is one body—it’s impossible to speak to any of them individually. Group communication or deafening silence . . . your choice. Harriet can see why the other parents don’t bother with the PPA. Harriet has asked about her fellow PPA members’ kids, has seen the offspring around, has not stalked them, not exactly . . . they’re Perdita’s classmates. There are eleven of them in all, including two sets of twins, one identical and one fraternal, every base covered. And they’re shaping up nicely to be members of another impenetrable in-crowd. So Harriet maintains her point, which is that joining isn’t a question of effort or overextension thereof. You miss your chance to join several generations before birth.