“I’m Poppy.”
“Who?”
“Poppy. Like the flower?”
I blink and my eyes drift back over her shoulder again.
She’s standing maybe fifteen metres away: composed almost entirely of coats. Her yellow puffa jacket is so large and round she looks a bit like a bumblebee, there’s a second fluffy coat in her arms and chunky black cardigan piled on top, and she appears to be wearing a football kit.
Knee-length white socks and blue trainers, shiny neon-green shorts and a scratchy-looking orange nylon T-shirt with a large number seven drawn on it.
On top of her head is a large floppy blue hat covered in big pink flowers.
Honestly, she’s dressed like the kind of crazy person you cross the road to avoid in case they randomly stab your leg with a pencil or corner you in an hour-long conversation about bus timetables.
But none of this is what I’m staring at.
It’s her face that has stopped me mid-sentence.
Shadowed by the wide brim of the hat, it’s small and sharply heart-shaped – pointed at the chin and curved round to a little widow’s peak at the top – pale and rosy-cheeked and scattered with freckles. She has a slightly too-small nose, a sweet, gentle mouth, and bright, almost cartoon-like eyes: enormous and shining and vivid green.
She’s undoubtedly pretty – in a strange, quiet way – but it’s more than that. There’s something … eloquent about her. Luminous and delicate, like a character from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.
And she’s totally furious.
Her arms are crossed and she’s glaring around the room with a deep, fierce scowl, as if she can’t believe she’s been dragged here either.
For the first time today, I’ve just seen something unexpected.
“Hello?” Poppy prods my arm, a tiny bit too hard. “Earth to Nick? Are we going to the model stall now? I can’t wait to be introduced properly.”
“Sure.” I drag my eyes back to Poppy, as if they’re on lead weights. Her dimples swiftly appear again, but not before I see a terrifyingly impatient muscle in her jaw jump. “Just give me a minute.”
Frowning, I look past her again.
It’s a good thing the girl in the football kit has turned away and started examining hats on the stall behind her, because I’m beginning to feel like a total stalker.
Stop staring, Nick.
You’re being massively uncool.
Pouting her lip-glossed lips, Poppy follows my gaze then gives a sharp little laugh.
“Eww, who brought the bag-lady? Doesn’t she know this is a fashion event? What was she even thinking when she got dressed this morning?”
“Maybe about something other than herself,” I say flatly, breaking away. “The Infinity stall’s just behind you, Poppy. I’m sure you’ll do brilliantly. Good luck.”
And before I can process what’s happening – or why I’ve just totally overreacted – I’m walking towards the girl by the hat stall with no idea of what I’m going to do.
Or what I’m going to say.
*
Which is not a problem.
Mainly because this girl has apparently taken all the possible words available in the English language already.
As I get closer, I hear her voice.
It’s silvery, bell-like, clear and old-fashioned. Every word is formed carefully and neatly, with precision. As if she’s from a different time: parachuted in from the nineteenth century by accident.
And it literally doesn’t stop.
It lilts up and down and round and round and just keeps going, like light, bouncy music. Despite the totally blank expression of the shoppers next to her and the sighs of the people trying to get to a popular make-up stand on the other side.
With unabashed enthusiasm, she picks a red beret off the stall and chirpily informs everybody in the immediate vicinity that the earliest record of hat-wearing comes from a cave in Lussac-les-Chateaux, fifteen thousand years ago, and that Vikings never actually wore horned helmets and isn’t that interesting?
All signs of her fury, fifteen seconds ago, are gone: her anger already forgotten.
I feel my nose twitch.
This is clearly not a girl who holds on to a mood.
“Excuse me,” I hear the unimpressed woman behind the hat stall demand as I approach quietly from the side, “can you read?”
“Yes,” the girl replies in surprise, nodding. “Very well, actually. My reading age is over twenty. But thank you for asking.”
For the first time today, a genuine grin starts to stretch across my face. The woman’s expression wavers – unsure whether she’s being mocked or not – and then goes puce.
“Really? Can you read that sign there? Read it out loud.”
“Of course,” the girl agrees sweetly. “It says Don’t Touch The Hats …” She glances at the beret, still clutched in her hand. “Oh.”
“That’s a hat,” the woman snarls, pointing at it. “And that’s a hat. And you’re touching them all over.”
OK, I think this is my chance.
This is the perfect opportunity to jump in, interrupt with Hey there, I’m Nick Hidaka and I’m with Infinity Models, save this girl from an unnecessary level of wrath and then somehow lead her away to Wilbur. She’s definitely a Potential: she has an innocent, fairy-like daintiness that is exactly what Yuka has been searching for. She just needs to wear an outfit that isn’t a football kit.
Except for some reason, I can’t do it.
There’s something stopping me. And it’s not because she doesn’t have the right look, it’s …
I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t.
More importantly, I’m suddenly no longer sure if I should.
Instead, I feel myself take a step away.
“Sorry,” the girl replies, abruptly grabbing the floppy hat off her head as her cheeks begin to go a pretty shade of pink. A fluffy mass of bright red hair shoots out from underneath, tied up with the kind of straggly green hair elastic that indicates she thinks that if she can’t see the back of her head it doesn’t exist. “It’s, erm, very … hatty.”
At which point a pink flower promptly falls off.
Then another flower. And another. And a fourth: until all the flowers that were on the hat are lying in a pile at her feet.
There’s a long silence.
The kind of silence that indicates that these kind of silences happen quite regularly.
“That’s a very interesting design concept,” the redhead says finally, clearing her throat and taking a quick step backwards, nearly stepping on my feet. I scoot backwards again. “Self-detaching flowers? It’s very modern.”
“They’re not self-detaching,” the woman hisses. “You detached them. And now you’re going to have to pay for it.”
The girl takes another step backwards.
Ditto, me.
“You know,” she says in her silvery voice, cheeks now starting to flame, “you’re very lucky that hat didn’t kill me. I could have choked on one of those flowers and died. The playwright Tennessee Williams died from choking on a bottle cap. Then how would you have felt?”
“I’ll take a cheque or credit card details.”
“Tell you what, how about I forget that you tried to kill me if you forget that I broke your hat? How does that sound?”
“Pay for the hat.”
“No.”
“Pay for the hat.”
“I can’t.”
“Pay for the h—”
And as the redhead takes one more, panicked step to the side, I see it happening just a fraction of a second too late. Before I can reach out a hand to grab her, she smashes – hard – into the corner of the L-shaped table.
For the briefest moment, she wobbles, paused in mid-air, eyes wide and mouth in an O shape.
Like an anime cat.
Then – with a loud crash – everything falls down.
*
And by ‘everything’ I mean everything.
The hat stall.
Every hat and fake plastic head on it. The stall next to it, and the stall next to that: three stalls in the opposite direction. A jug of water, perched precariously on a chair, and a clothing rod which has just shattered a stall full of hand-painted mirrors and light bulbs.
There’s ink and water and clothes and flowers and sequins and tables and barriers strewn everywhere, like the wreckage of some kind of fashion tsunami.
And in the middle is the redhead girl.
Sprawled in an awkward position: white football-socked legs in the air, face so dark with embarrassment her freckles look white, and her bright green eyes slowly filling with tears.
“I’m s-sorry,” she mumbles over and over as the hat-stall owner screams at her. “I’m so sorry.”
Then she glances in humiliation around her at the gathering crowd: eyes just missing mine by the tiniest fraction.
Something in my gut is starting to twist.
Every single instinct in me is telling me to reach forward and pull her out, to block the voyeurs who are rubber-necking with no sensitivity or helping hands at all.
But it’s too late.
If I grab her now, not only am I going to make her embarrassment worse – hey! I’m a guy your age and I just saw you fall over and break everything ha ha ha! – but I’m going to look like the worst kind of creep.
The dude who swoops in, an imaginary S drawn on his puffed-out chest: cape and ego flying and hands on his hips, inexplicably speaking in the third person.
Don’t worry, young damsel in distress. Nick is here.
Nick shall save you.
I don’t want to be that guy, but I also can’t just leave her there.
I have to do something.
Abruptly, I turn and pound across the floor to Wilbur.
“Wil,” I say, grabbing his arm without preamble, “come with me now.”
Wilbur turns in obvious relief from a strained conversation of decreasing animation with Poppy, takes one look at the urgency written across my face and follows me.
“Her,” I say, pointing into the middle of the hat stall chaos.
That’s all I need to say.
*
I have no idea what to do next.
As Wilbur nods and launches abruptly towards her with his hand out – black hat bobbing – I turn away feeling surprisingly disorientated.
Where should I go?
I scan the crowd and make a snap decision: start striding through the crowds, automatically heading back to the Infinity stall, as if I’m being pulled there on a string.
Wilbur’s going to return with the girl any minute, and for some reason I suddenly feel an urgent need to be there too. She is exactly what Yuka is looking for, and is about to be offered the opportunity of a lifetime.
So why do I feel so guilty?
Over the last four days, I’ve been telling myself – over and over again – that at least I’m helping: that the girls we pick want to be here. That we’re giving them a dream I may not want, but they probably will.
But – as I spot Poppy, still pouting by the stall, and promptly swing behind a column so she can’t see me – I realise that’s exactly why I didn’t grab the green-eyed girl immediately in the first place.
Something’s telling me this is wrong.
That we might be inadvertently about to sweep this silvery-voiced, bright-faced girl away on a wave she won’t know what to do with, won’t know how to manage: that she won’t just get carried away, she might go straight under.
And I don’t want to do that to her.
I don’t want to give her the crazy, disjointed, unstable life I’ve had for the last three years: the life I’ve been so desperately trying to hand back.
I glance around the Infinity stall. There’s a lame rope barrier holding the crowds away, but no privacy on the raised stand: Poppy’s eyes are subtly sweeping the crowd – trying to work out where Wilbur has gone – and any second now she’s going to spot me.
From round the corner, I hear a clear and yet very shaky voice.
“M-my jeans had sick on them.”
“My jeans had sick on them!” Wilbur repeats jubilantly. He’s talking even louder than he usually does (and that’s pretty loud): he’s either silly excited or trying to warn me that they’re coming. “I love it! Such an imagination!”
Feeling unexpectedly alarmed, I glance around again.
I need to be here, but not here at the same time. I need to check she’s OK, without her knowing it. To make sure she’s being looked after, without her realising someone’s trying to. Without her knowing that what could be a major fork in the road of her life is completely my fault.
To my left, Poppy begins to tap her fingernails on her sleeve impatiently and her eyes start drifting towards me.
“Darling-foot,” I hear Wilbur say to my right, even louder, “I think you might be about to make my career, my little Pot of Tigers.”
Shoot. There’s literally no other choice.
I glance down at the large table I helped Wilbur set up this morning: covered in a white tablecloth, dozens of Polaroid photos of girls and pink authorisation forms.
Then I roll my eyes.
On the upside, at least I don’t want to be attacked by seagulls any more.
And I drop under the table.
*
I probably should have done this days ago.
It’s kind of nice under here.
Quiet. Calm. Cool. Nobody trying to rip off tiny pieces of my T-shirt to take home as a keepsake.
“Now,” I hear Wilbur say and the sound of some coats being dumped on the floor, “stand there and look gorgeous.”
“But …”
There’s the familiar click of a Polaroid camera.
“Now turn to the side?”
From the two inches of space under the edge of the tablecloth, I can just about see Wilbur’s shiny orange loafers – dancing around with the jubilation of somebody who knows he’s won a bet – and a pair of blue trainers and the ankles of the white knee-high socks, completely stationary.
Wilbur tuts and moves the girl around.
“Wilbur …”
“Baby-pudding, you know you look just like a treefrog? Darling, you could climb up a tree with no help at all and I wouldn’t be shocked in the slightest.”
Nice, one, Wil.
There’s not scaring girls away and then there’s comparing them to a slimy green amphibian.
Although frogs are kind of adorable, so they do have something in common.
“I have to go,” the girl says, panic audibly rising. “I have to get out of here. I have to …”
And my former alarm pulses through me.
The blue trainers have suddenly moved closer to the table, and I stare at them in concern. Where’s she headed? There’s nothing in this direction but wall and table.
I watch as they move a little bit closer again.
Wait, she’s not going to …
I mean, there’s no way on earth she would …
Oh my God, is she actually going to …
Yup.
Before I can do anything, the girl drops to her knees and crawls under the table next to me.
*
Well, this is awkward.
For a few seconds, we blink at each other in surprise.
Up close, her face is even more incredible.
Her skin is so pale it’s almost transparent, and it’s scattered all over with pale gold flecks. Her large, intelligent eyes tilt down at the inner corners and are dozens of greens – moss and olive and teal – starred with pale, light gold eyelashes, giving her a faraway, distant expression.
Her top lip lifts up a fraction, her ears are very slightly pointed, and the mop of wavy, bright red hair is entirely escaping from the green hairband: curls shooting out around her face.
She smells of something pink and powdery, like sugar mice.
But it’s the movement of her face that makes her more t
han pretty.
I can literally see emotions running across it like ripples: thoughts flickering through the water like fish.
It’s totally fascinating.
And with a bolt of horror, I realise I’ve been examining her in silence for at least four seconds and if I don’t say something quickly, she’s going to think I’m some kind of troll hiding under a bridge and climb straight back out again.
“Hi,” I say abruptly, reaching into my pocket, pulling out a piece of chewing gum and offering it to her like a cyborg vending machine.
She blinks at it and then at me.
OK, where did that come from? What is this sudden urge to give her a random gift? What am I, a giant cat?
With questioning eyes she assesses me carefully.
“Well?” I say as the awkwardness kicks up another notch. “Do you want the gum or not?”
Nice one, Nick. Make that offer worse by sounding vaguely aggressive and obsessed with chewy snacks.
How long has it been in there, anyway?
I’m pretty sure I haven’t chewed gum for at least a month.
“I can see,” I continue, nose starting to twitch, “that it’s an extremely important decision and you need to think about it carefully. So I’ll give you a few more seconds to weigh up the pros and cons.”
“Chewing gum is banned in Singapore,” she says out of the blue, frowning cutely. “Completely banned.”
“Are we in Singapore?” I say, trying to make light of this curveball. “How long have I been asleep? How fast does this table move?”
I haven’t been asleep, obviously, but how else do I explain being under here?
“No,” she whispers, cheeks flaming. “We’re still in Birmingham. I’m just making the point that if we were in Singapore, we could be arrested for even having chewing gum in our possession.”
I can feel a grin pulling at my face again, so I make a huge effort to flatten it back out.
I love the way she seems to take everything so literally.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Luckily we’re not in Singapore, so you’re safe.”
“Well, thank God for UK legislation,” I smile, then close my eyes so I can get my mouth under control again.
There’s a short silence.
“I’m Harriet Manners,” she says after a few seconds.