I ignore him. I’m getting quite used to doing that now. They’re not my pyjamas, for the record. It’s a snowman-themed T-shirt and baggy patterned trousers from the Moroccan shop in town. These are the only clean clothes I have left.
“So what do we do first?” I ask nervously. “Do I have any lines to learn?”
“Even better than that, my special Sugar-peanut. I’ve got this.” And he holds out a small piece of plastic.
“A hearing aid?”
“I’m wiring you up, darling. With five million viewers, we reckon you might need some help.”
Five million? The internet lied to me?
I look at the little plastic thing with a mixture of relief and horror. “You’re going to tell me what to say?”
Wilbur throws back his head and laughs. “I’m not, Monkey-tiger. Can you imagine? I just don’t think my vocabulary would fit in your little mouth, darling. No, Yuka Ito is. Word for word.”
Oh, God. She’s here? “And all I have to do is repeat it?”
“And all you have to do is repeat it,” Wilbur confirms. He giggles again. “You see? I should so have been a model.”
I look at the earpiece apprehensively. OK, I can do this. Say whatever it is Yuka wants me to say and then get back to my normal life. School. Trigonometry. History club. Walking to school, instead of getting a taxi via Shepherd’s Bush and five million people.
“Now,” Wilbur says, “let’s get you ready and then we can get you both on to the sofa.”
My brain twangs. Both?
“But if Yuka’s sitting next to me,” I point out, “how can she…”
“Oh, Yuka’s not sitting next to you, Sweet-pudding,” Wilbur laughs, throwing open the closed door. “Nick is.”
My brain is now pinging in frantic little elasticated movements around the inside of my head.
Nick looks up, grins at me and then goes back to doodling on a notepad.
Would people please stop doing this to me?
“Did I forget to mention he was being interviewed too?” Wilbur adds, looking carefully at my face and then winking. “Oops.”
oes anybody – anybody – have any idea how hard it is to concentrate on getting ready to talk in front of five million people with an unexpected Nick sitting a few metres away?
Well, let me tell you: it’s like trying to tune a digital radio while Mount Vesuvius erupts in the background.
“Why is he here?” I whisper under my breath as a nice lady called Jessica does my hair and make-up. I’ve already been put into a blue dress that I would never, ever have picked for myself. Mainly because it doesn’t have cartoon characters on it.
“He’s the male face of Baylee, Plumptious,” Wilbur whispers back as if I didn’t already know this. “Maximum brand exposure.” He looks to the ceiling as if he’s just seen an angel. “Yuka’s a total publicity legend.”
“Hmm.” Nick’s lazing around on the sofa – flicking his pen in the air and catching it again – as if national television is something he does all the time. Which, actually, it might be. Today he is wearing a warm grey jumper and a pair of dark blue jeans. His hair is all sort of quiffed up at the front and now and then he puts his finger in his mouth and bites the—
“Hey, Manners,” he says, looking up.
I look away quickly. Sugar cookies. “Y-yes?” I stammer, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.
He gestures towards the coffee table. “It’s low, but if you really squidge, you might be able to do it.”
Is that all he’s going to say? After we held hands and everything? “I have grown out of my table-hiding days as it happens,” I tell him in a cold voice. “It was a childhood phase, that is all.”
“That’s a shame. If we lived somewhere with lots of earthquakes, you’d be a really good person to know.”
I glare at him. For somebody so gorgeous, he really knows how to be annoying. “Actually, there have been nineteen earthquakes in the UK in the last ten years,” I snap. “Which makes me a good person to know right now.”
“It does,” he agrees, grinning at me and going back to his doodle.
I grind my teeth and feel my cheeks get hot. What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m a good person to know, but only nineteen times in ten years? That’s not a very good ratio.
“Now then, my little Squabbling-beans,” Wilbur interrupts. He pushes a little bit of plastic in my ear, pulls the wire under my collar and pops another bit of plastic in a pocket at the back of my dress. “We don’t have time for all this adorable Darcy and Lizzie tension, Kitten-cheeks. Let’s get you on air so that your stepmother can stop texting me at three-minute intervals, Harriet. She’s extremely anxious that we get you to school on time today.”
I nod. I am too, actually. I don’t want something to go horribly wrong later in life because I’m supposed to know about metaphysical poets and don’t.
I notice that the little green light on my hearing aid has been switched on. I look at Nick. “Do you have one too?”
Nick and Wilbur both laugh.
“Harriet,” a cold voice in my ear says. “This is Yuka Ito.”
I look around, trying to locate her. “Don’t look around trying to locate me,” she snaps. “I’m in the production-control room.”
“Can you see me?”