“Don’t worry. It was inevitable that I’d do something stupid on this trip, so at least I got it out of the way early.”
Nat laughs, then leans a little closer to the camera. “What have you got on your feet, H? You look three inches shorter than you should.”
It’s times like these that I can’t believe I’m the only one in this friendship who gets A grades in physics.
Nat is clearly a spatial genius.
“Oh, I’m just, uh, squatting a bit,” I lie quickly. “It’s important to keep thigh muscles from atrophying … you know, while I’m posing.”
Then I can feel myself start to guiltily grin.
“On the upside, it went really well, Nat. I mean, I got shouted at and Wilbur’s going to kill me. But other than that, it went really well. The photographers loved your dress.”
Her face twists as she tries to look sympathetic and beam massively all at the same time. “Really?”
“Yup. They took loads of photos. Piles. A profusion. And I told them it was made and designed by Nat Grey, just like we planned.”
Nat whoops. “Toby’s making an awesome blog for me as we speak. I love you, Harriet Manners.”
“Sharpie love or just regular biro?”
“Full on face-tattoo love,” Nat laughs. “And –” she glances around furtively, even though the only thing she’s actually inspecting is her own bedroom – “Any sign of … you-know-who?”
I flinch.
In all the commotion of the past hour, I kind of forgot about the locked-up part of my brain.
“Which you-know-who?” I say cautiously.
Believe it or not, there are actually two boys I’ve been instructed to look out for in Paris this week.
One is my ex-boyfriend; the other is Nat’s.
“I very much doubt that François is cycling his trusty velo around a Fashion Week party on a yacht,” Nat says drily. “In his terrifyingly unfashionable green-Lycra shorts …”
“With his bottle of olive oil.”
“Trying to give all the supermodels exfoliating foot rubs with salt he’s stolen from the kitchen.” Nat laughs. “Actually, who am I kidding? He’s totally there. Check the galley.”
I laugh. The doomed relationship of Nat and François involved a secret Italian girlfriend and did not end well.
Then I peer into the party room with a grimace.
There are so many glamorous people here, and I have no idea who any of them are. And even though it pains me to say it, I hope that none of them are Nick. Because right now I cannot cope with being trapped on a one-thousand-metre-square floating luxury prison with the boy who broke my heart.
Or whose heart I broke, for that matter.
The breaking was really kind of simultaneous.
“OK,” I say, automatically holding my breath and trying to shove all thoughts of Nick back into the box in my head, “I’ll report back if I see anything.”
“Great,” Nat nods. “And remember …”
“Pictures?”
“I was going to say have fun,” she says, blowing a kiss. “But that too.”
We wave at each other fondly, grinning.
And the phone goes dead.
I’m just mentally preparing to make my way into the Purple Party – dressed in several vivid shades of green – when there’s a loud voice behind me.
“NO. WAY. NO-SCREWBALLING-WAY. GET OUT OF HERE!”
Eyes wide, I spin round slowly.
If the shouter means that literally, I’m going to have to swim.
“HARRIET!” screams a stunning and incredibly tall girl with black, glossy skin, pouty lips and no hair whatsoever. “As I live and breathe. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, BABE?”
And Wilbur was right: I do know somebody at Paris Fashion Week.
I just didn’t expect it to be Kenderall.
hich is quite naive, really.
If there are over 7.4 billion people on the planet, a proportionately small amount of them are jostling about the fashion world.
So, very much like electrons in a flow of electricity, we’re bound to bump into each other now and then.
At high energy, with vast impact.
And of all the people I’ve ever met, Kenderall – New York model-stylist, Brandist, Hyphenator and owner of a not-so-mini ‘teapot’ pig called Francis Bacon – must be one of the hardest to miss.
Not least because she’s screaming the yacht down.
“Harriet!” she shrieks, grabbing me firmly by the shoulders as a few people turn to stare at us curiously. “Babe, how long has it been? Too long! Like, three, four seasons?”
“S-six months,” I stutter as she shakes me.
“Whoa! Well, that’s what happens when you’re insanely busy and successful, I guess. It’s like, time just … what’s my word?”
“Flies?”
“That’s a cliché, babe,” Kenderall frowns, cheekbones glittering. “Don’t be a cliché. Come on, think outside the box. It’s like time, power-walks, you know?”
My mouth twitches as a vision of a clock wiggling down the road in trainers with its little hands swinging vigorously pops into my head.
“And what have you been doing? You, like, vanished from New York last year. I thought you were abducted by aliens. I was super-concerned because that would have been the best publicity stunt and I totally should have done it first.”
She demonstrates her latent fear for my earthbound health and safety by saying this while using an extended finger to curl her enormous eyelashes.
“Umm, I actually went back home to England, Kenderall,” I explain as a few other people spin round to look at us. “Sorry I didn’t let you know.”
“England?” she says absently. “Oh cute. And it’s not Kenderall any more, babe. It’s Siren. Some other model has a name that’s really similar and people were getting confused, even though I’m clearly better and taller so I switched it.”
I blink. “Siren?”
“Yeah. Apparently it’s some Greek goddess who was really hot. It makes me sound classy. Old-school.”
“But …” How do I put this delicately? “Traditionally sirens were half women, half bird-monsters, who used to lure men to their death by singing.”
And as a result it now means loud warning noise.
Actually, that kind of suits her.
“Cool,” she says, obviously pleased. “Big fan of alluring.” Then she looks me up and down. “Babe, you finally took my advice on board. Wearing green when everyone else is wearing purple? Nice way to be remembered.”
I flush. Having a Kenderall-endorsed Unique Modelling Point and Self-Branding exercise was not the aim of this outfit. “I didn’t …”
“You don’t have to convince me. We’re playing the same game, right? I’m just annoyed I didn’t think of it first. I’m wearing the same as everyone else, like a loser.”
On a boat full of pretty sleek purple dresses, Kenderall (I’m just going to keep calling her Kenderall) is wearing a bright, sequined lilac catsuit with enormous orange glittery platforms that make her at least six-foot-five. So that’s not totally accurate.
“And what happened with your model-slash-what was he again?” she adds loudly, looking over my shoulder. “You know, the boyfriend? Roughly my height, Asian, curly hair, super hot. Leaves you little boxes at parties and then disappears.”
A human stomach is about the size of a fist.
Which is appropriate, because it feels like one has just entered mine: hard.
“Nick?” I manage to breathe.
“Yeah, NICK!!” She bellows at the top of her lungs. “Are you still dating? Or did you end up driving him away after all like I told you not to?”
Weird: now it feels like my fist is about to try and enter Kenderall’s stomach too.
Pain rips through my chest area.
“Uh,” I manage with a dry mouth, swallowing with difficulty, “we broke up and he went back to Australia … some time ago.”
Four months, twe
lve days and seven hours, roughly.
Not that I’m counting.
“For reals?” Kenderall frowns. “Because I could swear I saw him ten minutes ago. That’s not a face you forget easily, babe. Although you probably know that already. Am I right?”
She holds her hand up to high-five me.
The fist in my stomach has rotated and is slowly reaching up towards my chest, preparing to punch me with a wallop there too.
The box in my head feels like it’s about to explode and scatter its contents all over the bright, sparkling heart of Paris.
Nick’s actually here? Nick’s here. Nick’s—
No. No. No. NO.
“I don’t …” I blurt in a panic, spinning around wildly. “I can’t … It’s not …”
There’s nothing I can do. I’m trapped on a boat sailing down the middle of the Seine.
I’m Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott.
Half-sick of shadows and incapable of not turning round and seeing the boy I love, I’m going to end up dying of heartbreak and entering a large body of water.
Again.
“Come on,” Kenderall demands as I desperately search for a piece of furniture to crawl under. She grabs my arm and begins dragging me towards the party. “Nick’s here, I’m certain of it. Let’s go find him.”
he frigate is a bird found across the majority of tropical and subtropical oceans.
It is well known for having one of the most dramatic mating calls of any species. When approaching a member of the opposite sex, the male will abruptly inflate a red, kidney-shaped sack under its throat so big it’s nearly twice the entire size of the bird.
And it looks quite a lot like a beating heart.
I may not be male – or a frigate bird, for that matter – but I think I have one now too.
As Kenderall drags me bodily into the busy main room of the party, I can feel my heart getting bigger and bigger and moving up my throat until it’s stuck there for the whole world to see.
Throbbing and visible like a startling red balloon.
*
“Oooh,” Kenderall says, momentarily pausing by a plate of hors d’oeuvres and grabbing a tiny violet-topped muffin. “I really shouldn’t, but I’ve been lifting weights this morning so my metabolism is sky-high.”
I open my mouth and shut it again.
Nope: still can’t breathe.
I wasn’t prepared for this. I suddenly feel like a human motion sensor: every single movement or sound in the room is heightened, magnified, piercing and raw.
A beautiful girl in a purple mini-dress laughs loudly to my left and I jump. A guy with a shaved head and full beard in a purple shirt takes a step to the right and every single cell in my body feels like it’s been electrocuted.
A waiter taps my arm and I almost vomit on my feet.
There’s a blinding flash of light.
“Look hot,” Kenderall reminds me as somebody dives in front of us with a camera. She firmly grabs my waist and poses. Flash. “Paps everywhere tonight. We are what we project, babe. Fame is within us. We have to be it and live it.”
Oh God. This is too much.
I want to get off I want to get off I want to get—
There’s another flash and the designer with the blonde crop shakes her head at me from across the room.
“Well, hi there,” a model with piercing grey eyes says, approaching us with his hand out. “You’re Harriet, right? Wilbur has told me so much about—”
“Oooh,” Kenderall hisses, grabbing me and smacking his hand away. “Sorry, Jackson. Hold that thought.”
Then she spins me around until it feels like I’m just going to keep spinning and spinning until either I collapse or the world does.
Whichever comes first.
“There,” she hisses, suddenly letting go. “Told you.”
And everything goes dark.
When I’ve come back to my senses – which is actually about two seconds later because all I’ve done is shut my eyes – there’s a tall boy approaching us.
Slim and dark, with coffee-coloured skin and high cheekbones: curly hair and a wide smile.
He’s grinning shyly at me and I don’t know what to do; I don’t know what to say.
Kenderall’s holding out her hand to him.
“There,” she says in triumph, presenting him to me while rubbing his arm vigorously like he’s a lamp and she’s expecting a genie to pop out. “Told you. I so knew he was here.”
I may have finally stopped spinning in body but my brain’s somehow still going: spiralling on the spot with a loud whirring sound, like a helicopter rotor.
“Hi,” I say blankly.
“Hi,” he says. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks. You?”
“Fine, thanks.”
We stare at each other, pinned to the spot.
There’s no way around saying this: he’s so beautiful, it’s almost unfair. It’s the kind of beauty that happens so rarely – that’s such a freak anomaly of genetics – that people will literally pay thousands of pounds to capture it for other people to simply look at and appreciate.
I study his perfect face carefully, taking mental notes.
Eighteen months ago, I’d have blushed, stuttered, stared at the floor. Gone into some kind of embarrassed meltdown and looked for some furniture to hide beneath.
But this handsome boy could be anyone.
The canine teeth aren’t pointy enough and there are no dents in his lips; there’s no little duck tail at the back of his head. He doesn’t smell green; there’s no mole above his left eyebrow. No scar from being attacked by a seagull/rock as a little boy. I bet his eyes don’t crease into crescents when he smiles and his mouth doesn’t curl upwards in the corners even when he’s tired.
He doesn’t blink just slightly too slowly, like a calm, dark lion.
He’s just a boy.
Just another really, really good-looking boy.
Because he’s not Nick.
“Awkward,” Kenderall says jubilantly, waggling her eyebrows at this total stranger. “God, you can taste the tension in the air.”
The poor boy looks as bewildered as I do.
“Ah,” I say slowly as both intense relief and strange disappointment start to pulse through me, “Kenderall, I’m afraid we’ve never actually m—”
“Ssssshhhh,” she interrupts, putting a perfectly manicured red-nailed finger on my lips. “Don’t overtalk it, babe. Tell him how much you hate him with your eyes.”
I look at the stranger and he blinks back.
“Kenderall,” I whisper into her ear as the male model looks around for an escape, standing on my tiptoes, “that’s not him. It’s not Nick.”
“It’s not?” she says, spinning to stare at him. “Well, why are you still standing there, then?” She pushes the stranger away with a hand and there’s a bright flash from photographers standing nearby. “Some people are just so desperate for attention. Now pose, girl.”
She grabs me by the green waist and swings me towards them.
There’s another flurry of lights.
And – even though I’m standing in the sparkling centre of an impromptu photo shoot – for the first time in over a week I can feel myself starting to very carefully unwind.
Nick’s not here.
He was never here. He’s not leaning sleepily against a lamp-post just round the corner; he’s not about to appear and throw my brain into total turmoil.
My heart’s not about to break all over again, in yet another foreign country.
And I don’t know how to feel about it.
Finally, after a few minutes, Kenderall lets go of me, says she’s hungry and wanders off to find some more bright purple muffins.
Blinking, I turn to watch the lights of Paris float by – the Eiffel Tower twinkling in blues and whites over the river, the yellow orbs of Le Louvre dancing in the water – and slowly the red heart in my throat stops throbbing.
It moves out of
my throat.
And – little by little – it deflates until it’s small enough to go back inside the box again.
he rest of the evening can be summarised thusly:
Although I can’t be totally sure.
He could just be a really popular blond man surrounded by lots of models and the paparazzi are discussing summer horoscopes at unnecessary volume.
By the time the party yacht docks again, it’s nearly 11pm and I’m genuinely exhausted. Working into the night for demanding fashion designers is surprisingly challenging.
Even if they are also your best friend.
“After-party?” Kenderall says as we walk back down the gangplank together, surrounded on both sides by waiting photographers. “Chanel’s is at La Grande Galerie de l’Évolution in Le Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and I heard Rihanna’s going to be there.”
I blink in surprise: Kenderall’s French accent is absolutely impeccable.
Also, that sounds like my kind of party.
The museum has a Noah’s Ark procession of taxidermy animals running right through the reception area.
“Or the after-after-party?” Kenderall continues, turning to the side and giving the photographers a quick pout. “Or the after-after-after-party?”
Grabbing her arm for balance, I can’t stop a yawn escaping as there’s another flash of light.
Sugar cookies.
Do they have to capture everything?
“I think one party a day is quite enough for me,” I say sleepily, rubbing my eyes vigorously and then realising that thanks to the layers of mascara I now look like my suitcase. “I’ve actually got two shows to do tomorrow.”
Another flash of light.
Kenderall laughs. “Babe, we’ve all got jobs tomorrow. It’s Paris Fashion Week. You’ve just got to live it, you know? Be it. Harness it.”
There’s a sudden roar of commotion as a group of next-level beautiful girls walk down the ramp and the crowd of paparazzi erupts: screaming and shoving at each other to get to the front.
“Girls! Les belles! Over here!”
Kenderall glares as she gets pushed unceremoniously out of the way by a particularly enthusiastic man with a huge camera.
“Should have copyrighted my old name,” she mutters darkly. “Or at least bought a trademark.”