I’m not one to moan unnecessarily. In fact, I like to think of myself as a positive, life-affirming person, albeit one who also has a full grasp of the darkness and tragedy inherent in modern living.
But it has to be said: today is turning out to be just full of sugar cookies.
The rest of my Thursday can be summarised thus:
By the time we get back to school I’m so high on my own carbon dioxide and deodorant fumes that my powers of apology have been severely stunted. Before I can even focus my eyes properly Nat has raced off the bus and disappeared, and I’m left to walk home on my own.
And no, in case you’re wondering. None of this makes sense to me either. I’ve turned the facts over and over in my head like Chinese marbles for eight hours, but there is still no feasible explanation for anything that has happened today. Unless I have somehow landed in an alternative universe where everything is inside out and all the trees are upside down and people talk backwards and we walk in the sky with the earth as a ceiling and flowers growing downwards. And that seems unlikely.
I’ve even worked out an equation for the situation.
Here, M stands for Model, W is Weight, H is Height, P is Prettiness, NSN is Nice-shaped Nose, C is Confidence, S is Style and X is Indefinable Coolness. Each element (apart from Weight and Height, obviously measured by the metric system) is given an objective mark out of ten, and the higher the overall result, the better you would be as a model.
By my calculations, Nat comes out at 92.
I’m 27.2. And I was being quite kind about my nose.
Anyway, I’ve given up thinking about it. There has clearly been some kind of mistake, and at this precise moment somebody is smacking Wilbur round the head and putting him in a nice jacket that ties his arms behind his back.
And – just so you know – I’m not thinking about Nick either. He hasn’t popped into my head once, with his big liony curls and his lime-green smell and his duck-tail tuft at the back. In fact, I can barely remember him. I meet head-smashingly beautiful foreign boys all the time. I can’t hide under a table without finding one there. There is no reason whatsoever that this one would stick in my memory or make my stomach twirl at intervals.
And I definitely didn’t walk past the Infinity Models stall six or seven times during the rest of the day in case he was there. Which he wasn’t.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot else to think about. My head feels like it’s fallen off the top of a great wall and I’m waiting for all the king’s soldiers to come and put it back together again. There’s only one thing left to occupy myself with. And it isn’t that much fun to dwell on. Can you guess what it is yet?
Uh-huh.
Now I have to go home and tell my parents.
The problem with making meticulous and well-constructed plans is that people tend to ignore them. Other people. Not me; I stick to them religiously.
As I open the front door, I’m already clearing my throat. I’ve decided to lead with the modelling because hopefully my parents will be so paralysed with confusion and shock that I can slip the vast quantity of money they now owe various stallholders in there without them noticing: like doing a root canal after local anaesthetic.
“Dad?” I say nervously, shutting the door behind me. “Annabel?”
Hugo immediately barrels into my legs and starts pawing at my stomach. He has obviously just been to the hairdresser’s because I can now see where his eyes are instead of just guessing by their proximity to his nose.
“Hey, Hugo,” I add, bending down. “You’re looking very elegant.” He licks my face, which I think means, “Thanks very much,” or possibly, “You smell of hotdog.” Then I look back up. “Dad? Annabel?”
Silence.
You know what? The welcoming atmosphere in this house needs to be worked on. I’ve been away all day and it’s dark. Why aren’t they standing in the hallway, waiting anxiously for me to arrive home safe and in one unharmed piece? What kind of parents are they?
“Dad?” I repeat again, getting a bit snarly. “Annab—”
“Harriet?” Annabel interrupts from the living room. “Come in here, please.”
I sigh loudly, put my satchel down on the floor and then do as I’ve been told. Annabel is sitting on the sofa in her office suit, inexplicably eating sardines out of a tin, and Dad is in the armchair opposite her.
You know what I was saying about young children, and how non-uniform doesn’t really exist? It’s the same for lawyers. Annabel’s either in her suit, or her dressing gown, or she puts her dressing gown on top of her suit. When she goes out for dinner, she has to buy an outfit especially.
“What are you eating?” I ask immediately, sitting down on a chair and looking at Annabel’s tin.
“Sardines,” Annabel says – as if I didn’t mean why are you eating that? – and she pops another one in her mouth. “Now, Harriet,” Annabel says as soon as she’s swallowed it. “Your dad’s in trouble at work.”