ow I don’t want to be smug or anything, but not having a plan seems to be working miraculously well. In fact, you could say that the plan of not having a plan – because that’s how I’m now thinking of it – is working a treat. I’ve fixed Dad and Annabel pretty much single-handedly and left them in the launderette. And next on my not-plan plan is Nat.
My phone rings again.
“Pamplemousse?” Wilbur says as soon as I pick it up. It’s been vibrating in my pocket at three-minute intervals for the last four hours and I can’t ignore it any more. There’s a really fine line between playing it cool and just being rude, and I think any more than four hours is pushing it. “Is that you, my little Pamplemousse?”
“It’s still me, Wilbur.”
“Oh, thank holy chicken monkeys. Where have you been?”
“The launderette.”
“I can’t help but feel your priorities are a little out of whack, my Chestnut-bean. But if clean clothes are what you need to be a star, who am I to argue?”
I sigh. I couldn’t feel less like a star now if I tried. I’m covered in splashes of mud and I smell vaguely of washing powder and socks. “Did you want something, Wilbur?”
“Banana-muffin, I need to talk to you about an opportunity that’s come up, but they need to see you tomorrow mor—”
“I can’t do it.” I look at my watch and immediately pick up speed: I need to get where I’m going faster. I frown, and then bend down in a moment of pure inspiration and click the little button on the side of my trainers so that the little inbuilt secret wheels pop out. And no, I am not of an age group too old to be wearing these. No matter what Nat says. Just in case you were wondering. They wouldn’t make them in this size if I was.
Anyway.
“You can do it,” Wilbur protests.
“No,” I say again as I start wheeling down the pavement. “Whatever it is, I can’t do it, Wilbur.”
“But you don’t underst—”
“I’m sure it’s great, I’m sure it’s amazing, I’m sure that every girl in the world wishes she had the same opportunity.” I wheel-hop over a double drain. “But I don’t, OK? This isn’t me, Wilbur. None of this is me. I’m not the swan. I’m the duckling. No, I’m the duck. I just want things to go back to how they were before I met you.”
Wilbur laughs. “You really do make me giggle, my little Darling-pudding,” he titters. “As if that makes any difference!”
I’m so busy calculating if I’ll get where I’m going faster if I start running rather than wheeling, but have to stop again in a few minutes – average speed versus immediate speed – that I’m hardly listening to him.
“Difference?” I say distractedly, skipping over a crack in the pavement.
“Kitten-ears, you’re under contract.”
I slam the stopper on the toes down and abruptly stop in the middle of the road, with the sound of the wheels still whizzing behind me. “I’m under what?”
“Contract, Sweet-bean. You know the pieces of paper you signed? That’s what they call them in the legal industry apparently. Visa-vee: Yuka owns you. Plumptious, she wants you to do this so you have to do it. Or she’ll just go right ahead and sue you.”
My stomach abruptly folds in half. Why do people keep trying to sue me?
“A contract?” I finally repeat in disbelief. Was I so blinded by the excitement of my own metamorphosis that I signed a contract without actually reading it first? Without making notes? Without looking at every single word of the small writing and then looking it up in a legal dictionary? I mean, of course Dad did. Dad would sell his soul for a pink marshmallow. But me?
Who have I been this week?
“I know! Isn’t a ‘contract’ just the least fun name for anything in the world ever? Annabel was furious that you did it, but it still stands: just one parental signature needed, my little Squeaky-kettle. So I’ll ring you with details about tomorrow later, OK? Toodle-pip, bella.”
I make a few confused mumbling sounds, say goodbye and hang up. I can’t believe I’m in trouble with the law again. For the second time this week. Doesn’t nine years living with a lawyer rub off at all?
I can’t think about this now. I’ll think about it later. There’s somewhere I need to be and it’s far more important.
And I abruptly click the button on my shoes so that the wheels disappear and start running.
was only here a couple of days ago, yet everything feels so different.
It even looks different. Everything is lit by a bright green light and there’s a little red flask on the ground. Somewhere in the background, I can hear the faint, tinny sound of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky coming out of a wind-up, hand-held radio. Which was actually performed first at the Bolshoi Theatre in Russia, so everything seems to be fitting into place like a magical puzzle.
Or, you know. A normal one packed simply full of coincidences.