Which is otherwise known as shopping.
“It’ll be fun,” Nat says from a few metres ahead of me. “They’ve got everything there, Harriet. Everything anyone could possibly ever want.”
“Really?” I say in the most sarcastic voice I can find, considering that I’m now running so fast that my breath is starting to squeak. “Do they have a triceratops skull?”
“…No.”
“Do they have a life-size model of the first airborne plane?”
“…Probably not.”
“And do they have a John Donne manuscript, with little white gloves so that you can actually touch it?”
Nat thinks about it. “I think it’s unlikely they have that,” she admits.
“Then they don’t have everything I want, do they?”
We reach the coach steps and I can barely breathe. I don’t understand it: we’ve both run the same distance, and we’ve both expended the same energy. I’m an entire centimetre shorter than Nat so I have less mass to move, at the same speed (on average). We both have exactly the same amount of PE lessons. And yet – despite the laws of physics – I’m huffing and purple, and Nat’s only slightly glowing and still capable of breathing out of her nose.
Sometimes science makes no sense at all.
Nat starts rapping in a panic on the bus door. We’re late – thanks to my excellent acting skills – and it looks like the class might be about to leave without us. “Harriet,” Nat snaps, turning to look at me as the doors start making sucking noises, as if they’re kissing. “Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown by Lenin in 1917.”
I blink in surprise. “Yes,” I say. “He was.”
“And do you think I want to know that? It’s not even on our exam syllabus. I never had to know that. So now it’s your turn to pick up a few pairs of shoes and make ooh and aah sounds for me because Jo ate prawns and she’s allergic to prawns and she got sick and couldn’t come and I’m not sitting on a bus on my own for five hours. OK?”
Nat takes a deep breath and I look at my hands in shame. I am a selfish, selfish person. I am also a very sparkly person: my hands are covered in gold glitter.
“OK,” I say in a small voice. “I’m sorry, Nat.”
“You’re forgiven.” The coach doors finally slide open. “Now get on this bus and pretend for one little day that you have the teeniest, tiniest smidgen of interest in fashion.”
“All right,” I say, my voice getting even smaller.
Because – in case you haven’t worked this out by now – here’s the key thing that really divides Nat and me:
I don’t.
o, before we get on the bus, you might want to know a little more about me.
You might not, obviously. You might be thinking, Just get on with it, Harriet, because I haven’t got all day, which is what Annabel says all the time. Adults rarely have all day, from what I can tell. However, if – like me – you read cereal boxes at the breakfast table and shampoo bottles in the bath and bus timetables when you already know what bus you’re getting, here’s a little more information:
My mother is dead. That’s usually the bit where people look awkward and start talking about how rainy the sky looks, but she died when I was three days old so missing her is a bit like loving a character from a book. The only stories I have of her belong to other people.
I have a stepmother, Annabel. She married Dad when I was seven, she’s alive and she works as a lawyer. (You would not believe the amount of arguments my parents have over those two facts. “I am living,” Annabel will scream. “You’re a lawyer,” Dad will shout back. “Who are you kidding?”)
Dad’s In Advertising. (“Not in adverts,” Annabel always points out when they have dinner parties. “I write them,” Dad replies in frustration. “I’m as In Advertising as you can get.”
“Apart from actors,” Annabel says under her breath, at which point Dad stomps off to the kitchen to get another bottle of beer.)
I’m an only child. Thanks to my parents, I am destined to a life of never having anyone to squabble with in the back seat of the car.
Nat isn’t just my Best Friend. She gave herself this title, even though I told her it was a bit unnecessary: she’s also my Only Friend. This might be because I have a tendency to correct people’s grammar and tell them facts they’re not interested in.
And put things in lists. Like this one.
Nat and I met ten years ago when we were five, which makes us fifteen. I know you could have worked that out by yourself, but I can’t assume people like doing equations in their heads just because I do.
Nat is beautiful. When we were young, adults would put a hand under her chin and say, “She’s going to break hearts, this one,” as if she couldn’t hear them and wasn’t deciding when would be the best time to start.
I am not. My impact on hearts is like an earthquake happening on the other side of the world: if I’m lucky, I can hope for a teacup tinkling in its saucer. And even then it’s a bit of a surprise and everybody talks about it for days afterwards.