“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Then let’s get her back, my little Sugar-peanut,” Wilbur says. He bends down and unties Kylie, who immediately starts prinking and purring like the contrary little madam she is. Then Wilbur drops a polka-dot holdall on the pavement, climbs on top of the wall and pats the spot next to him.
“I suggest you tell me exactly what the sugar-monkeys has been going on since I last saw you, Teeny-possum.”
I take a deep breath and hop up next to him. “I don’t even know where to start.”
Wilbur nods wisely. “Then begin at the end and work your way through to the front. We can piece the story together from there.”
Over the next hour, I tell Wilbur everything. I tell him about the octopus and the dress, my alarms, oversleeping, the pink shoes, the sumo shoot, smashing the arcade game. I tell him how much Haru hates me. I tell him about my new flatmates. I tell him about Bunty. I even tell him about Nick.
For the first time since I’ve known him, Wilbur listens without a single word.
“OK, Peach-plum-pear,” he says when I finally draw to a flushed halt. “Just one question: is there any chance you’ve been abducted by aliens and that the girl in front of me is actually from a world a billion miles away?”
Exactly what kind of magazines has Wilbur started reading?
“No chance,” I say reluctantly.
“Because that would make it an awful lot easier to get Yuka back on side.”
I remember with a sickening thump that it’s not just me my behaviour has consequences for.
“I’m so sorry, Wilbur. I just don’t think I’m cut out for modelling.”
“Baby-baby Giraffe,” he says firmly, “not a single thing that’s gone wrong has been anything to do with your modelling skills. I thought that you’d have figured that out for yourself by now.”
I stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“Tinkle-berry,” Wilbur says tying the harness back on to the cat and picking his spotty bag up. He swings it over his shoulder like a slightly podgy Huckleberry Finn. “I mean it’s time to find out what the diddle cat is going on.”
y first instinct on entering the flat is one of panic. Bunty’s lying flat on the living-room floor in a shower of flashing lights. It’s only when she holds up a crystal necklace that I realise I probably don’t need to call an ambulance. She’s lying in a small patch of sunshine, waving the necklace so that tiny rainbows bounce around the walls.
Suffice to say, Kylie immediately runs in and tries to violently kill one.
“Bunty-boo,” Wilbur says, walking over and prodding my grandmother with a stripy sneaker. “May I join you?”
“Of course, darling. Take a pew.”
Wilbur lies down next to her, and they both watch the rainbows in silence. Finally he says, “Any ideas?”
“Quite a few, as it happens.”
“About—”
“Exactly.”
“And the—”
“I thought so too. Nothing yet but it’s getting there.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing to worry about, my little Paper-flip-chart,” Wilbur says with a smile.
“Harriet, darling, why don’t you go into the bedroom and have a little look round? See if there’s anything missing?”
The mouse in my brain suddenly wakes up and takes another nibble. I shift uncomfortably.
“Harry-chan?” a small voice says from the doorway. “Do we have visit? Is it Ted? Do we need more presents?”
“Is it Nick?” Poppy says from behind her. “I’ve been calling and calling him and …”
They spot Wilbur, and there’s suddenly silence. A strangely long and uncomfortable silence. The kind of silence you could drink, if you were interested in drinking silences.
“Poppy,” my agent says. “Cherry-winkle, I haven’t seen you since you jumped shipski to that other agency without cancelling our contract first. How’s tricks, Pumpkin?” There’s a slight edge to Wilbur’s voice that I haven’t heard before.
“Umm – hi, Wilbur,” Poppy says awkwardly, tucking her golden hair behind her ear and standing on a different foot. “Nice to see you again. How are you?”
“Fandabby, naturally, Darling-cake.” Then he looks straight at Rin. “And how’s my little Rin-chops?”
Wilbur knows Rin? How does Wilbur know Rin?
Then I see that Rin has gone bright red, and has immediately grabbed Kylie and buried her face in Kylie’s fur. “Wilbur-San,” she says, dropping into a low, formal bow. “Iamfinethankyouandyou?”
“Marvelly,” Wilbur says, sitting up. “And tell me, Sheep-pudding: have you found much work since Yuka dropped you from the Baylee campaign and replaced you with Harriet?”
Rin abruptly steps backwards until she’s pressed against the wall with Kylie held protectively in front of her.
What the sugar cookies is going on?
“Not so much,” she says in a small voice.
“Not at all, I’ve heard,” Wilbur says, flashing a glance my way.
I suddenly realise that although Rin said she was a model, she hasn’t actually mentioned a single modelling job since I got here.
“I am OK. I enjoy the chill time.” Rin’s cheeks are now scarlet.
“Of course you do,” Wilbur says. “Who doesn’t just adore penniless, anonymous unemployment, Rabbit-nose?”
My head is starting to make an incomprehensible buzzing sound. Rin used to be the Baylee model? I replaced her? I ruined her modelling career and I didn’t even know? I’ve Googled everything in the world that has ever happened ever, and it never occurred to me to look up the model I replaced last year?
“B-but I don’t understand,” I say, looking at both of my flatmates. “What are you saying—” and suddenly the mouse in my brain stops chewing.
Annabel changed the time on my alarm clocks.
While I was getting ready to leave the house for the airport, she changed my watch, my phone and all three alarm clocks. Dad had to help her screw on the back of the little bird because it was too tight.
A fraction of a second later, the mouse sighs and clonks me gently round the head.
I charged my phone the night before the sumo shoot. I know I did, because I had to get my six-piece adapter kit with snap-on plug out of my suitcase. And plug it in next to the doorway. Not under my bed.
There was no note about the doorbell next to my bed when I went to sleep.
The shoes at the sumo ring were pink, glittery and too small.
My brain continues making a few more whirring sounds, and – finally – the mouse stands up, rolls its eyes and punches me straight in the face.
No. No.
NO.
Feeling sick, I turn round and run to the bedroom; hoping I’m wrong, hoping I’ve made a mistake, hoping I’ve jumped to irrational conclusions. But I haven’t.
The corner of the room is empty.
The cockroach trap is gone.
ix months ago, I had a list.
It was a list of all the people I thought hated me, and I carried it around with me everywhere. I added to it, and I studied it, and it grew and grew and grew. Eventually, I realised I was wrong and I crossed the names off and threw the list away.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to do that.
I’ve travelled halfway around the world and fooled myself into thinking that there’s a place for me here. That I fit in. That people actually want me to.
But now I’m back exactly where I started.
It looks like somebody still hates Harriet Manners after all.
unty and Wilbur don’t leave my side for the next twenty-four hours. It’s no longer my New and Infinitely Less Glorious Plan 3 (NAILGP3).
It’s theirs too.
They take me for slightly rubbery sushi from a conveyor belt. They take me to see a Hollywood blockbuster at the Waseda Shochiku Cinema. They follow me to the Meguro Parasitological Museum, and then promptly go outside to vomit (it
has the longest ever tapeworm found in a human: it’s nearly nine metres long).
By the time I meet Wilbur at Tōkyō train station the next morning, I’m pretty sure that one of them is standing outside the bathroom every time I go to the toilet, just to make sure nobody’s followed me in.
“Cooo-eeeee!” he screeches across the enormous, incredibly busy concourse, pushing his way to meet me. “Over here, my little Chicken McNugget!” He’s wearing a bright pink suit with sparkly wings drawn on the back, and a leopard-print cap. “Back to genius attire, I’m incandescent to see.” He looks me up and down. “What’s the inspiration this time, Buttercup?”
I smile. “My father made it for me.”
Wilbur looks carefully at my denim dungaree dress, stripy leggings, neon-green trainers and the white T-shirt with the huge word MODEL written on it in red marker pen.
Let’s just say: Dad finally noticed my satchel.
“My Father Made It For Me,” he sighs happily. “You light up my life, Sugar-lump. You really do.”
Bunty nods from behind me. “Your turn,” she says, pushing me gently towards him.
“Got her,” he says, grabbing my arm as if we’re playing Harriet Relay. “Go home and guard those two backstabbers.”
“On it. Poppy’s having a bath, and I may or may not have propped a chair outside the door. Rin’s trying to train her cat to roll over, so that should keep her occupied for the rest of the day.”
“Just don’t let them leave the house,” Wilbur says, and then blows my grandmother a kiss and starts leading me through the train station with his arm tucked through mine as if we’re two teenage girls, not one and a slightly portly fashionista.
I assume we’re going on the metro, and am already weak with relief that it’s not rush hour so we won’t be physically crammed into a carriage by a little man wearing little white gloves and a hat, like a really aggressive Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine. But Wilbur steps on to the up escalator.
“The shoot isn’t on the underground?”
Wilbur tinkles with laughter. “You think we’d risk making you stand up on a moving vehicle?”
OK, I asked for that. “So where are we going?”
“Think about Yuka’s subverted thingummy-jiggery. You’re a smart cookie, Coffee-bean, why don’t you tell me?”
The butterflies in my stomach go completely bonkers.
“Mount Fuji?” I squeak, gripping his arm. “We’re going to Mount Fuji?”
At that precise moment, we get to the top of the escalator and Wilbur points at the instantly recognisable, long, shiny white train pulling into the station.
A pointy-nosed train with a blue stripe running down the side of it.
The most famous train in the entire world. Apart from Thomas, obviously.
“We certainly are,” he says, patting my head. “And we are getting there on that.”
The first time Dad brought Annabel home, she brought me a book about mountains. Everest. K2. Kanchenjunga. But Fuji was always my favourite because – unlike the others, hanging out in the Himalayas – it didn’t have any friends.
I guess I felt a certain empathy with it.
In a flash, I suddenly understand what it is Yuka’s doing. She’s using fashion to challenge cultural stereotypes: living fish in a dead fish market. Women on a sumo stage. People trapped inside a computer game instead of by it.
The more I know Yuka, the more I admire her.
It’s just a shame the feeling is almost definitely not mutual.
Wilbur and I wait by the smooth white electronic barriers that stop people climbing on to the track. Then we clamber up the stairs on to the Shinkansen and take our seats. I’m so excited, if the windows opened I’d be like Hugo on long car journeys: head out, tongue halfway down my chin, drool hitting the unlucky person behind me.
“By 2008 these Bullet Trains had made enough trips to circle the earth 30,000 times,” I tell Wilbur breathlessly.
“At top speed it takes a train three minutes and 45 seconds to stop,” I inform him as the train starts gently accelerating.
“In 47 years there have been 7.1 billion trips made on the train, and never a fatal accident,” I say as a beautifully dressed woman in a hat and gloves starts walking down the aisles with refreshments, like an air hostess from the 1950s.
“Ooh, peanuts,” I add happily.
As we slide out of Tokyo, everything slowly changes. The buildings get smaller and smaller, and the gaps between them get bigger and bigger. Suddenly – with an almost audible pop – there are big green stretching fields and tractors and little squat houses with peacock-blue tiles on the roof and dogs barking. The ground gets very flat, the sky gets close and bright, and there are people: bent over, wearing big flat hats and picking rice. We’re going so fast that I’m literally pinned to my seat: my entire body is heavy and I have to pull myself down the aisle to the toilet like a little tree-swinging monkey.
There’s a sudden peace, and for the first time in days I feel like I can breathe.
The only thing I can’t really wrap my head around is how everyone else on the train can be so nonchalant. In fact, the majority of the people on here are actually fast asleep: eyes rolled back and heads lolling against the people sitting next to them.
“People can get used to anything, Possum-breath,” Wilbur says quietly. “You don’t go into raptures every time you see the London Eye, do you?” Then he raises an eyebrow. “Actually, my little Kidney-bean, you probably do.”
I look at my lap. Well, it is the world’s largest cantilevered observation wheel.
Fifty minutes and six hundred breathless observations later, the train stops and an electronic voice says in a cut-glass American accent: “Now arriving at Shin-Fuji station.”
“Is this it?” I burst out, standing up too quickly and smacking my head hard on the overhead compartments. Ouch. “Are we here? Are we at Mount Fuji? Can I see it? Can you show it to me?”
As if it’s a shy kitten, and not a volcano 3,776 metres high.
“This is us, my little Butternut-squash,” Wilbur says, then he points out of the window. “And who’s that?”
I turn, but even as I’m turning I know, because Wilbur’s got that twinkle.
That Well-What-Do-You-Know twinkle.
That What-A-Coincidence twinkle.
That Fairy-Godmother-Before-The-Ball twinkle.
That One-Day-I’m-Going-To-Get-Shot-By-Harriet-Manners-And-It’ll-Be-All-My-Own-Fault twinkle.
My eyes meet Nick’s and every single one of the one hundred trillion cells in my body leaps into the air. With difficulty, I lift my hand. “Hey,” I finally mouth through the glass.
“Hey,” he mouths straight back.
ne day, I’m going to be the kind of ex-girlfriend who moves in a bubble of composure and indifference, leaving former suitors sobbing in her wake.
Today is clearly not it.
Not only did Nick see me smack my head on the overhead luggage compartments, he also sees me miss my first step off the train and fall straight on to the platform floor. He immediately reaches out a hand to pick me up, but I shake it off, put my hands on my hips and thrust myself off the ground. “Exercise,” I tell him imperiously, bending a couple of times to demonstrate. “It’s important to practise lunges wherever possible.”
“Obviously.” Nick nods. “It’s rule 452 in the Fashion Modelling Handbook.”
What? Why has nobody given me this book yet?
He smiles. “And rule 593 is Break Everything in a Twenty-Metre Radius, so you’re clearly a natural.”
Oh.
I blush and pretend to look for my train ticket in my satchel, even though I know it’s in my pocket.
“Come and give me a kiss, Prince C,” Wilbur announces as I search fruitlessly for a suitable comeback. “I haven’t seen you for yonks and diddly yonks. How’s that big brute of a country treating you?”
“Fine. Freezing cold, though.”
“Australia
’s a contrary mare, and no mistake,” Wilbur agrees, shaking his head. “Sunny at Christmas, cold in summer. What does Santa wear there, I wonder?”
“Red board-shorts,” Nick says as he starts leading us out of the tiny station. “He’s big into surfing.”
“Well,” Wilbur exclaims triumphantly, “no wonder he’s got such red cheeks and nose by the time he gets round to us.”
“Did you know,” I blurt out, “that if Santa Claus was real, in order to deliver presents to 378 million Christian children all over the world, his sleigh would have to move at 3,000 times the speed of sound with 214,200 reindeer and the air resistance and the centrifugal forces involved would cause both the reindeer and Santa to explode?” I pause. “Not that I think Santa’s real,” I add. “I’m just saying if he was real.”
Oh, for the love of sugar cookies. Nice way to not look like a silly child, Harriet.
“Aaaand she’s back,” Wilbur says, patting me on the head as if I’m a slightly dim-witted Labrador.
“Did you bring any Polaroid with you?” Nick asks as we start walking towards a large white van with blacked-out windows. “Haru’s run out.”
“I’m a professional, darling. Of course I have Polaroid film.” Wilbur opens a flowery bag with a rabbit printed on it. “Now, is Yuka ready for this cherub?”
“That’s not exactly how she’s referring to Harriet at the moment, but – yes.”
“And how about the … you know?”
“Ready. It pains me to say it, but my aunt is a genius.”
“That good?”
“Uh-huh.”
It’s like they’re talking in code. To be honest, I’m not even sure I want to know what they’re on about.
So far my modelling career has consisted of: jumping around in snow with bare feet; being covered in gold paint; getting attacked by an octopus; feeling humiliated in front of 20,000 people and being put in a glass box.
Judging by past experiences, I would imagine they’re now planning to wrap me in clingfilm and drop me off the top of a mountain attached to an elastic band. It’s for the best all round if I just don’t ask.