“Fifteen years old, plucked from obscurity less than a week ago.” Jane looks at her notes. “You caught legendary designer Yuka Ito’s eye straight away, I hear. Gosh. That doesn’t happen that often, does it? Isn’t that just a fairytale?”
I look at her blankly.
“Yes, Jane,” Yuka whispers. “It’s a fairytale come true for any girl.”
“Yes, Jane,” I say obediently. “It’s a fairytale come true for any girl.”
“And Yuka’s even designing a special outfit for you in her next show.”
This is news to me. I stare at Jane.
“She is,” Yuka says and I repeat. “I’m extremely lucky.”
“Truly amazing.” Jane shakes her head as if she wants to jump across the sofa and slap me jealously across the face. “Who wouldn’t want that at fifteen?” She laughs gaily. “Who am I kidding: who wouldn’t want that at any age? And it says here you’re her new muse. Wow. Tell me, Harriet, have you always wanted to model?”
“Ever since I was a child,” Yuka says clearly in my ear. “I used to dress up in my mother’s clothes and twirl around my bedroom in front of the mirror. I have always been captivated by fashion.”
“Ever since I was a child,” I say dutifully. “I used to dress up… in… my… m-m-m—” I swallow. Dad gave all my mum’s clothes to the charity shop when she died. There was nothing to dress up in. And when Annabel came along, the only thing available would have been a suit.
I briefly imagine a skinny little red-headed girl twirling around in a huge pinstripe suit complete with tie and clunky office shoes and have to stifle a giggle.
“Harriet,” Yuka snaps. “Say it.”
“…in my mother’s clothes and twirl around the bedroom in front of the mirror,” I continue, trying to straighten my face out and not cry at the same time. “I have always been captivated by fashion.”
“And how have you managed to balance it with your schoolwork so far?” Jane asks. “It must be hard, combining the two?”
“Baylee always puts my schoolwork first,” I chime after Yuka has spoken. “It’s of key importance to them.”
Apart from – you know – the bit where they made me take two days off to go to Russia. And this morning.
“And your favourite school subjects?” Patrick winks at the camera. “I think we can guess what they’d be!”
Maths. Physics. Chemistry.
“Textiles and art, of course,” I say diligently after waiting a nanosecond for my cue.
“And what about your school friends? You must be a very popular girl now.”
I think of Alexa’s scowling face and the shouts of Geek. I think of thirty hands in the air. “Uh-huh,” I say.
“Uh-huh was not what I just said,” Yuka snaps.
“As the new muse of one of fashion’s biggest players,” Jane says in excitement, “is the fashion life everything you thought it would be?”
Yuka clears her throat and I wince slightly: it’s really unpleasant having that sound shot straight into your head.
“Modelling is everything I dreamed it would be…” I repeat. “And I love fashion because it’s really about individuality, and creativity… and… and self-belief… and self-exp…” I trail off into silence.
Jane leans forward. “Self-exp?” she prompts.
“Self-expression,” I say in a small voice. Then I stare into the black space where my family are sitting. There’s a commotion behind the camera and somewhere in my ear I can hear Yuka starting to panic.
What the hell am I doing?
I’m sitting here, in front of five million people, repeating someone else’s lines about self-expression. I’m harping on about individuality in a dress somebody else put me in, with a haircut somebody else gave me, wearing make-up somebody else did. I’m talking about self-belief when I became a model because I didn’t have any.
Have I learnt nothing?
I take the microphone out of my ear and abruptly sit on it. Underneath my bottom, I can hear the tinny sound of Yuka yelling.
“It’s not true,” I say, taking a deep breath.
Jane flinches and I can see Patrick furiously reading the autocue.
“I didn’t dream about being a model,” I say firmly, refusing to look at Nick. “I dreamed of being a palaeontologist. I didn’t do any twirling when I was a child, my favourite subjects are maths and physics, nobody at school has ever liked me and I don’t think this is going to help much.”
“Well,” Jane says, laughing nervously, “isn’t that just…”
“And I don’t love fashion,” I say because I can’t stop now; this suddenly feels like the most important thing I’ll ever say. “It’s just clothes.”
There’s a gasp from around the studio and even the microphone under my bottom has stopped vibrating.
“And self-belief and self-expression and individuality are really important,” I continue, looking into the dark and talking too fast, “but if you’re wearing what everyone tells you to wear and saying what everyone tells you to say and thinking the way everyone tells you to think then – well… you don’t have any of those things, do you?”