Geek Girl

“Well, this isn’t going to work, is it?” Wilbur points out eventually. “At this rate you’ll be way too old to model by the time we get down to the shoot, Angel-moo. You’ll probably be in your early twenties and what good is that to anyone?”

  “I could put my trainers back on?” I suggest, getting them out of my bag.

  Wilbur visibly flinches. “A next season, perfectly cut, limited edition Baylee coat worn with… are they supermarket own-brand trainers?” He swallows. “I think I just sicked up in my mouth. Fashion sacrilege. I can’t allow it. Not while there’s a breath left in this beautiful body of mine.” He frowns and looks around the room. “Luckily I’m brilliant as well as stunning,” he adds happily. “And I have an idea.”

  Ten minutes later, I enter Red Square with my entourage behind me. It’s not exactly the entrance I was hoping for. In fact, I believe I’ve got my head in my hands for all of it.

  Nick takes one look at the wheelchair, accurately guesses why I’m in it and gives a very uncool shout of laughter so loud that pigeons fly off the top of a nearby statue. Yuka isn’t quite as impressed.

  “Would somebody like to tell me,” she hisses as she stalks towards where I’m sitting, glaring at the seven people standing behind me, “who broke my model?”

  legant. Dignified. Graceful.

  Three words that don’t describe me in the slightest. Five people have to pick me out of the wheelchair and carry me to where Nick is waiting in the snow, in front of St Basil’s Cathedral, and when they plop me down, it takes another few minutes to get me balanced enough to remain vertical on my own. Which I can just about manage. As long as I focus really hard, don’t move a muscle and scrunch my toes up into claws inside the shoes for leverage. And keep my hands out at the sides like a tightrope walker. None of which is aided by Dad’s continuous laughing.

  Or – for that matter – Nick’s.

  I’m briefly introduced to the photographer, Paul, who is a thin blond man without – as far as I can see – one single flamboyant tendency. He looks totally focused on the job, which is actually even more worrying. At least with Wilbur, it’s possible to forget that there’s a great deal riding on me.

  It’s not a little metamorphosis experiment any more. It’s a job. It’s very expensive. It’s very important. And it matters to a lot of people.

  “Look at me doing wheelies in the snow!” Wilbur screams in the background, spinning around in the wheelchair.

  The photographer takes one look at him, grinds his teeth and looks back at Nick and me. “I just need to set up lighting,” he says in a tense voice, looking up at the sky. It’s starting to snow harder and the sky is a little darker than it was before. “Can somebody get my light reflector?”

  A young boy races off and then runs back with a big gold circle.

  “Just make yourself comfortable for a few minutes,” he says, fiddling with a little black box as the boy starts flicking the gold circle around. “I’ll take a few test shots when everything’s perfect.” He fiddles with the box again and then looks up. “Somebody might as well get Gary.”

  Gary? Gary? Who the hell is Gary?

  I look at Nick, who I’ve managed to avoid making eye contact with since I came back from the hotel. I feel extremely self-conscious now that my hair’s all gone. Like the Wizard of Oz after the curtain’s come down. Nick has his hands in the pockets of a large army-style coat and his hair gelled into a Mohican. He scrunches up his nose at me and my internal organs turn inside out again.

  Shouldn’t I be immune to him by now? Or is he like the human version of the common cold?

  “You want to watch out,” he says in his slow drawl. “Gary’s vicious.”

  I look around in alarm. “Is Gary another model?” I whisper in terror. “A stylist? A hairdresser? Yuka’s assistant?”

  “Nope,” Nick says and the corner of his mouth is twitching. “Worse. He’s a monster. Raises hell wherever he goes.” And then he looks past me and nods. “Here he comes. Watch yourself.” And out of the crowd comes a woman holding the teeny-tiny white kitten.

  OK, first impressions are deceiving. As soon as the lady hands him over to me, Gary nips my finger and starts clawing his way up my shoulder, hissing like an angry kettle. It’s just not natural for something so cute and fluffy to be so nasty.

  I look at Nick in distress. “Why is he spitting at me?”

  “Maybe he thinks he’s a llama.”

  I grab the kitten, who has changed his mind and is now scrabbling back down and trying to use my arm as a springboard. I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s small and white: if he lands in the snow, there’s a really good chance we’ll never find him again.

  “OK, guys,”Paul finally says. “We’re ready to do some test shots.” He pauses and looks at me. “Harriet. What are you doing to that animal?”

  I look down to where I’m sort of hanging on to Gary by his back legs while he scrabbles away with his front ones. “Bonding?” I offer weakly.

  “Could you bond in a way that looks a bit less like animal cruelty?”Paul clears his throat. “Right, I’m going to take a dozen or so frames. It’s not too important what you do now, but this might be a good time to practise.”

  I nod nervously, grimly hold on to the cat and try to pretend that there isn’t a large group of people in a semicircle, all watching every single thing we do.

  Right, this is it. I’d expected a little more training – perhaps a little step-by-step instruction sheet on modelling – but… this is fine. I’ll just go with it. Let the inner model out. Wilbur and Yuka obviously saw something deep within me, which has just been waiting to burst forth and impress everyone. Like a… dragon. Or a really big dog.

  I stare at the camera with my most modelly face. There’s a pause and then Paul looks up. “What are you doing, Harriet? What’s that face?”

  I gulp. “It’s my modelling face.”

  “Your…” Paul says in confusion and then he rolls his eyes. “You have a modelling face, Harriet. You don’t need to strain it as if you’ve got a bad case of constipation. Relax.” There’s another silence. “Now what are you doing?”

  “Smiling?”

  Paul sighs. “Have you ever seen a fashion magazine in your life? Take a look at Nick, Harriet. What is he doing?”

  I look at Nick. “He’s, erm… Just standing there.”

  “Precisely. He’s being natural, in the best-looking way possible. Just pretend the camera’s not here, sweetheart, and focus on being as beautiful as you can be.”

  The cat’s clearly not convinced that I’m capable of this either; he makes a mewling sound and scratches in terror at my other shoulder. Which makes me wobble dangerously on the heels, so I have to reach out and grab Nick’s shoulder.

  “Sorry,” I mumble in embarrassment and stare hard at the snow.

  Why didn’t anyone explain that there was actually some kind of skill involved in being a model? Why didn’t somebody tell me I’d have to actually do something? Why didn’t they know I’d be rubbish?

  I can feel my eyes starting to well up, and somewhere in the background I hear the make-up artist starting to panic loudly about my mascara. I look at Nick in open desperation and he gives me a crooked smile.

  “Right,” he says under his breath. “Give me the cat,” and he takes it off me. Gary immediately makes a small meowing sound, curls up happily in Nick’s arm and goes to sleep. Even Gary is in love with him.

  “Now blow a raspberry.”

  I look at him for a few seconds in silence. “You want me to blow a raspberry?”

  “Yup. Loud as you can. Make it a nice wet one.”

  I can feel my cheeks getting pink under the foundation. “I’m not blowing a raspberry,” I tell him in a dignified voice. “I’m nearly an adult.”

  “Blow a raspberry.”

  “No.”

  “Blow it.”

  “No.”

  “Blow.”

  “Fine,” I snap in exasperation and I blow a half-h
earted raspberry.

  Nick frowns at me. “That wasn’t even a strawberry.”

  “Oh, for the love of…” I sigh and then I blow a much louder raspberry. I’m not even going to look at Yuka. I don’t think this is why she employed me. “Happy now?”

  “Much better. Now wiggle your shoulders. And your neck.”

  I wiggle my shoulders and my neck.

  “Knock your knees together.”

  I knock my knees.

  “And do the funky chicken.”

  I giggle and obediently do the funky chicken.

  “Can you handle cold feet? Because if you can, I reckon you should take those stupid shoes off and hold them.”

  I glance at Paul, who is concentrating on adjusting one of the lamps to his right. And then I glance to the left where Yuka Ito is sitting in a black chair, glaring at us both with the face Annabel pulls when she eats oysters.

  “OK,” I say, shrugging, and take my shoes off. I’m so nervous I can’t feel my feet anyway. Plus, I’m not sure I can get much worse at this. The only way is up.

  Apparently Nick’s thinking the same thing. Literally. “Now,” he says, grinning. “I’m going to hold your hand. And when I say jump, jump, as high as you can. Look straight at the camera, keep your face calm and jump. OK?”

  I nod, with my head now numb.

  “Relax?”

  I nod.

  “Funky chicken?”

  I nod and waggle my arms a bit.

  “OK, jump,” Nick whispers.

  And I jump.

  ’m holding Nick’s hand.

  I’m actually holding Nick’s hand. And nobody made him do it. He did it for free.

  Or, you know. For a modelling fee. But he didn’t have to.

  It was his idea.

  Not that this is the only thing going through my head for the rest of the shoot, obviously. I’m a professional. I think about lots of… modelling related things. Like clothes, and make-up, and hair, and sticky eyebrows made out of mice.

  And… and… no.

  That’s all I think about. The fact that Nick is holding my hand and I’ve never had my hand held by a boy before in my entire life unless you count when I was eight and forced into being Prince Charming’s mother in the school play, and I don’t.

  And this time it’s Lion Boy.

  This time it’s Nick.

  *

  It turns out that when Nick said jump, his idea was that he also jumped, and so we both leapt into the air at the same time as high as we could. Nick held on to the kitten, I held on to the red shoes and we both jumped together.

  And everyone loved it. Paul loved it. Wilbur loved it. Dad loved it. The crowd loved it. Even Yuka stopped threatening to sack everyone in a ten-mile radius. Gary wasn’t quite as keen, but you can’t please everyone.

  When we’ve finished jumping in the air from a standing position, we throw caution to the wind and try running along from left to right, jumping. And then from right to left, jumping. Eventually I’m so relaxed and having so much fun they actually manage to get me to not jump for a few shots, just for variety. They even get close to my face and I don’t flinch or start twitching because I’m too busy thinking about… erm. Make-up. And clothes. And hair. And mice. And so on and so forth.

  Before I know it, we’re done.

  I’m a model.

  “My little Pea-pod!” Wilbur squeals as soon as Paul shuts down the camera. Nick immediately lets go of my hand, and by the time I turn around he’s gone again. Poof. Like the proverbial genie. “Look at you, just bouncing around like a little kangaroo in the snow!”

  Dad pushes past him. “All right, kiddo?” he says, and it looks like his face is going to snap in half, he’s smiling so hard. “Chip off the old block, that was. I used to do high jump for the under-sixteens. Won trophies and everything.”

  “Dad, you won a bronze medallion on Sports Day once when you were thirteen. It’s still on top of the fireplace.”

  “Trophy, medallion, who’s counting? Anyway, I’m very proud.” He gives me a hug. “I thought for a horrible minute there we were going to have to pay for our own flight home. Now did someone say free vodka?” And he scampers off happily in the direction of the hotel.

  I look at my empty hand again. I can’t believe Nick’s gone already. I’ve never seen anyone capable of becoming invisible quite so quickly or unexpectedly. And I can’t help wishing he wouldn’t.

  “London, Poppet,” Wilbur says kindly, patting my shoulder.

  “Hmm?” I’m still gazing in the direction I think Nick went.

  “He’s gone back to London. He has another shoot for a different designer in the morning.”

  I swallow in embarrassment and quickly look away. “Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, please, Petal-pants. You’re all lit up like Lenin, and you don’t have the excuse of a lightbulb in the back of your head.”

  I clear my throat crossly. “Nick and I are just colleagues,” I say with as much indifference as I can muster and an improvised shrug. “We work together.”

  “Not any more you don’t,” Wilbur says matter-of-factly, patting me on the head. “His bit’s over. Yuka’s not as bothered about the male fashion end of the spectrum. Not bad money for a four-hour gig, hey?”

  A swoop of disappointment hits my stomach and I bite my bottom lip in case it reaches my face. I should have realised. I’ll probably never see Nick again, unless it’s on the pages of a magazine in a doctor’s surgery and half his face will probably be missing from where somebody’s ripped out a coupon from the other side.

  I can feel my cheeks tingling. And he didn’t even say goodbye.

  “So,” I say as calmly as I can, “is my bit over too then?”

  I’ve done a shoot, I’ve got a new haircut, I’m wearing make-up and I’ve held a boy’s hand, but…

  I still feel like me. Something’s not working the way it’s supposed to.

  Wilbur starts pealing with laughter. “Is my bit over? Is my bit… Oh, my little Bookworm,” he sighs eventually, bending over and putting his hand in the crease of his waist. “You do crack me right down the middle.”

  Honestly, I wish people would just answer questions properly when I ask them.

  “It’s not over then?” I reiterate.

  “Nope.” Wilbur wipes the tears of laughter out of his eyes. “Now is the really fun bit. We’re going to another part of Moscow.”

  For some reason, I’m not feeling as excited as I should be. Nick’s gone and I’m on my own this time.

  “For dinner?”

  Wilbur starts squealing again. “Dinner? You’re a model, Sugar-plum: you no longer do dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast, actually, unless you plan on regurgitating like a little snake. No, we have a Baylee fashion show to attend.”

  “A fashion show? And I’m going too?”

  “Well, I hope so, my little Chicken-wing,” Wilbur says, straightening out my fringe affectionately. “Because you’re starring in it.”

  K, how the hell am I supposed to concentrate on turning into a butterfly when I don’t have a clue what’s going on from one minute to the next?

  Although – to be fair – I’m not sure what I’d have done if they’d told me. I am not a big fan of fashion shows. That’s not a gloomy, defeatist attitude either. It’s hard-won knowledge that comes from plenty of experience. I spent a large portion of my ninth summer walking up and down a ‘catwalk’ (the patio at the bottom of Nat’s garden), holding on to a skipping rope pulled in a straight line down the middle.

  It was part of a deal Nat and I made: I practised ‘The Walk’ with her, she rehearsed lines from The Song of Hiawatha with me and we both pretended to enjoy it. But no matter how hard I tried, or how carefully Nat shaped our ‘couture’ plastic bin-bag dresses or arranged daisies on our heads as accessories, something always went wrong. A stumble. A rip.

  A trip over a piece of pavement that resulted in a trip to A&E and seven stitches.
/>
  Until Nat decided it was probably less dangerous if I handled half-time refreshments and ‘directed’ the show from the safety of a deckchair on the lawn. And she got on with the modelling.

  Nat.

  Ugh. The metaphorical box in my head feels like it’s going to open and the contents are about to burst all over the floor, so I mentally stick an extra nail in each corner.

  “Fashion shows are fantabulous,” Wilbur reassures me as he forces me into yet another taxi. “Obviously we’re going to need to work on your walking skills, Chuckle-bean, because I don’t think the wheelchair is going to fit on the catwalk, but we’ve got at least twenty minutes to train you up.”

  I feel a bit like vomiting.

  I get the Bubble Chart of Lies out of my bag and switch my phone on. “Dad,” I say, turning to him, “You need to send something to Annabel to make her believe you’re in a really boring business meeting that’s running over.”

  “Like what?” Dad asks in confusion.

  “I don’t know,” I snap back irritably. “I can’t do everything. Just send whatever you’d normally send.”

  Dad frowns. “First of all, if I’m in a meeting, I don’t normally text people under the desk. It’s not school. Second of all, Annabel and I have been married for eight years: we don’t send texts updating each other on our emotions about everything. And third of all, I’m a man. I never send texts updating people on my emotions about everything. Anything in fact.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I grouch because my head feels like it’s about to explode. “Send a text message, Dad. Just follow the Bubble Chart, OK? I don’t have the energy for your maverickness today.”

  Dad looks at me, shrugs and gets his phone out. “All right. Don’t blame me if she gets suspicious. This is your adventure: I’m just the sidekick.”

  “You’re not the sidekick, Dad.”

  “I am. I’m like Robin. Or maybe Dr Watson.”

  I scowl at him. “Try Chewbacca,” I mutter under my breath. My phone has been going crazy on my lap. I’m trying to pretend I haven’t heard it because I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with the rocket of guilt and shame I’m about to have launched at me.