“Three and a half years,” I say, staring over her shoulder at my parents who have finally emerged. Needless to say, Annabel’s eating. This time it appears to be toast with Neapolitan ice cream spread in a layer on top.
“Whoopsy,” my grandmother says, beaming at us. “I took over a coconut stall in India for an afternoon and next thing I knew I was running a roaring backpacker trade. Good for copious amounts of diarrhoea, coconut water.”
Toby races forwards with his hand out. “I am Toby Pilgrim, Harriet’s stalker. Nice to meet you, Mrs Grandmother Manners.”
“Bunty,” she says cheerfully, shaking it.
“And on that exciting note,” Toby says, wiping his nose on his finger, “I shall make my dramatic exit. I’ve got this new plate with a face on it and Mum’s made spaghetti so I’m eager to get home while it’s still hot and malleable enough to form realistic hair.”
Then Toby promptly waves and scoots back out of the door. We all try to pretend that we can’t see him immediately crouch down behind the hedge right outside.
“I didn’t know you were coming.” I look at my parents with round eyes. Does nobody tell me anything these days?
“Well, if somebody needs to take you abroad it might as well be somebody who spends most of her time there, right?”
I stare at her, then I stare at my parents, and then I stare at my grandmother again. What?
“Apparently Tokyo is the place to be this summer,” she grins. “I think we should check it out, don’t you?”
I suddenly don’t care that I’ve probably met my nomadic grandmother a handful of times in my entire life. I don’t care that her hair is sort of baby pink, and I don’t care that she currently has what looks like a twig stuck in it.
I don’t even care that the last time I saw her we had a forty-five-minute conversation about the benefits of wiping your bottom with your hand instead of a piece of toilet paper to ‘save the rainforest’.
“Oh my God, I love you!” I yell, throwing myself around her neck. “Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!”
“Now, that’s the greeting I was looking for.”
Then I lob myself at Dad, and then – a little bit more carefully, in case I squish my sibling – at Annabel. “Thank you! Thank you thank you! You’ve saved my summer! Totally saved it!”
Dad laughs. “How could we argue with a Powerpoint presentation of such quality, Harriet? We’re not monsters.” He puts his hand over his mouth. “She’s a monster,” he pretends to whisper, pointing at Annabel. “But I’m not.”
“Go upstairs and get your things packed for tomorrow, Harriet,” Annabel says calmly, ignoring Dad. “I imagine your grandmother will want to help you write a brand-new Summer of Fun Flow Chart.”
“What’s a flow chart?” my grandmother asks. “Does it rank rivers?”
Good Lord. I’m going to have to start training her immediately. “We have new plans to make!” I shout, running up the stairs. “Itineraries! Schedules! Lists! Lists and lists and lists and—”
“Look, Harriet,” my grandmother says as she follows behind me, pointing at the garden. “A squirrel!”
“Make sure she has everything she needs,” Annabel calls after us.
“My darling daughter,” Bunty calls down the stairs. “That’s the beauty of foreign travel. You don’t need anything but yourself.”
“And a passport, Mum,” I hear Annabel say tiredly. “And tickets. And a visa. And clean clothes and quite a few changes of underwear.”
Uh-huh.
If you thought you saw a marked family resemblance between my maverick grandmother and my maverick father, you would be wrong.
Bunty isn’t Dad’s mum.
She’s Annabel’s.
y entire summer has just turned around.
And, as I start jubilantly packing all the important things into a suitcase – paper, dictionaries, pens, etc – I suddenly remember that I wrote Nick’s email address on an old bit of paper and tucked it into an ancient copy of Anne of Green Gables months and months ago. Ha. I am so much more cunning and better organised with contact details than Nat gives me credit for.
As if I’d let go of Nick that easily.
Mentally high-fiving myself, I think about it carefully and then write the following email on my phone:
Dear Nick,
Got your message. Would love to talk. I’ve been thinking about you lots! Of course I have! Am going to Japan for a few weeks for a modelling job but taking my phone with me. Send me another message or ring me? Or ask Wilbur and he can give you my new address?
I’VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH. :)
Harriet xxxx
I look at it happily – he definitely can’t misread or misinterpret that in any way – and then press SEND. Now it’s just a matter of time before Nick tracks me down and I have the best, most romantic summer ever.
I spend the next twenty minutes contentedly bouncing around my room as if I’m on an enormous imaginary Spacehopper: scanning travel documents, printing them out and arranging them carefully in alphabetical order. I make a list of all the lists I need to make. I sit Bunty on my bed, and read her fascinating snippets from a Visit Japan website: “Did you know that the word karaoke means empty orchestra?” and “Can you believe it used to be customary in ancient Japan for women to blacken their teeth with dye to make them look less toothy!”
My grandmother, in the meantime, sits on the windowsill and makes comments like: “Oooh – your glasses are making a rainbow on the wall, Harriet, isn’t that just magical?”
I’m so ridiculously happy, I don’t even feel the need to explain the difference between ‘magic’ and ‘refraction’. I bounce around hysterically until I remember I left my laptop downstairs. I’m probably going to need it at some stage so I can look up additional facts in situ.
With an unprecedented degree of physical dexterity, I bound down the stairs to get it.
“Annabel?” I chirp. “Dad? Did I leave my laptop in—” Then I stop, because they’re sitting at the kitchen table with their heads together, talking in low voices.
And all I can hear is the word ‘Harriet’.
ere’s the thing: my parents never talk in low voices.
Especially not to each other.
Now, obviously everybody knows that listening in on other people’s conversations never comes to any good. You usually end up hearing something you’re not supposed to hear or getting stabbed to death like Polonius in Hamlet. So the most sensible thing to do right now is interrupt my parents immediately, or leave before the conversation goes any further.
I have no explanation for why I duck behind the living-room wall and breathe as quietly as I can.
“I’m just so exhausted, Rich,” Annabel continues. “It feels like I’m wading through a thick river of treacle all of the time.”
“You’re not,” Dad says reassuringly. “Judging by the state of our cupboards, I’m pretty sure you’d have eaten that too.”
Then I hear the sound of a gentle smack round the head. “Seriously,” Annabel says, “I had no idea reproduction would be so much work. I would pay really good money to be a reptile or a chicken right now.”
Dad laughs. “You’re not doing this alone, Bels.” There’s a swoosh, which sounds like a shoulder being rubbed. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m tying myself to you like a mitten to its other mitten.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“Through the coat sleeve of life. With the string of love.”
Annabel laughs. “OK, I think that’s enough of the mitten analogy.”
There’s the sound of a long, sloppy kiss, and I can feel myself making a blurgh face. According to statistics and what I overheard while waiting outside Parents’ Evening, everyone else has parents that are only together For The Sake Of The Children. It makes me feel a bit awkward, knowing that mine have a relationship that is so flagrantly nothing to do with me. They could at least pretend to have no interest in each other.
I’m just getting ready to interrupt when Dad says, “But it still doesn’t answer the question. What about Harriet?”
I abruptly stop breathing.
Annabel sighs. “I don’t know, Rich. I just don’t know. After today” – I can hear her tapping on the table anxiously with a biro – “She can be such hard work sometimes, you know. I don’t think I can handle any more. It’s my first baby, and you know I love her to pieces but …”
My whole body goes numb. But? But?
There isn’t supposed to be a ‘but’.
I poke my head around the edge of the door just in time to see Annabel put her head in her hands as Dad gently kisses the top of her head. “I just think it’s best for everyone if she’s not here.”
he human brain consists of 200 billion nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone there are 125 trillion synapses, which is roughly the amount of stars as in 1,500 Milky Way galaxies. It feels like every single one of them is exploding simultaneously.
They’re not sending me away for me. They’re sending me away for them.
Suddenly every thought I’ve been pushing out of my head for six months is roaring in, the way air rushes into a vacuum. This is what I’ve been scared of. This is what has been building and building, and squashing my excitement about the baby. That the mother panda would choose, and she wouldn’t choose me.
And this is just the start, isn’t it?
In a year or two, it will take my room.
It will take my bed and my dog.
It will take the slice of sunshine by the window where I sit when I’m reading.
It’ll take the bit at the back of the cupboard where I keep my old train set and the loose floorboard where I hide my poems and the shelf where I keep my dictionaries.
It’ll take my hook in the bathroom and my time slot in the shower and the pencil lines on the side of the door that have taken nearly sixteen years to draw.
It will take my dad throwing them about in a swimming pool and messing up their hair and being an idiot.
It will take all of Annabel.
And nudge by nudge, I’ll be pushed further and further away. Until I’m all on my own.
I lean against the hallway wall, breathing hard through my mouth. Then, quietly, cautiously, I open the box in my head that I haven’t touched in six months.
Carefully – one by one – I start putting people inside. I put in Annabel and Dad. I put in the baby. I put in Nat. Finally, I close the lid of the box and sit on it.
It’s just best for everyone if she’s not here.
If that’s how they feel, I’ll go somewhere else. Somewhere better. Somewhere more exciting. I’ll see the world, and I’ll do it by myself.
Because that’s the thing about a transformation: there’s no stopping it. Once the tadpole has legs it jumps out of the pond. Once the caterpillar has wings, it flies away.
And once you’ve metamorphosed, you can’t go back.
Even if you want to.
Agreement of Responsibility
THIS AGREEMENT is made between Annabel Manners and Bunty Brown, with reference to the guardianship of Harriet Manners as agreed to by Richard Manners, witness and father.
THEREFORE, intending to be legally bound hereby, the parties agree as follows:
Bunty Brown will act like a mature and responsible adult, regardless of how fervently she believes that ‘age is just a number’.
Bunty Brown will acknowledge the fact that Harriet Manners is a minor and will accompany her AT ALL TIMES. She will not wander off because she sees something sparkly or rare or ‘feels like it, darling’.
Bunty Brown will not discuss with Harriet Manners anything she did or did not do in the sixties.
Or the seventies.
Or the eighties.
Bunty Brown will not attempt to convert Harriet Manners to: Druidism, Paganism, Zoroastrianism, Baha’i, Prince Philip Movement, Scientology, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Christianity, Shinto, Judaism, Wicca, or any other belief system that Bunty Brown is currently devoted to.
Bunty Brown will not pierce, henna, tie-dye or attach flowers, feathers or sequins to any part of Harriet Manners.
Bunty Brown will put Harriet Manners first.
Signed:
Annabel Manners
Bunty Brown
SpiderMan Brad Pitt Richard Manners
he next seventeen hours can be summarised thus:
I avoid my parents.
And that’s it.
By the time Annabel and Dad have waved goodbye with the happiest facial expressions I’ve ever seen on adults, I’m so desperate to go I don’t even care that they can’t take me to the airport because of a hospital appointment.
Even though we all know that by hospital they mean Harriet leaving and by appointment they mean massive party. And by ‘tidying up’ they mean blowing up balloons and turning my bedroom into an impromptu home cinema.
I promise to ring them as soon as I arrive and then focus on:
Studying for the entire car journey.
Trying not to get knocked out by Bunty’s pink dream-catcher, swinging merrily from the rear-view mirror.
By the time we reach the airport, I’ve managed to distract myself completely by acquiring a good ten to fifteen Japanese words and working out a detailed itinerary. Shrines I want to light incense at and theatres I want to visit and food I want to eat and parasitological museums I want to take photos of and show to Toby.
So when my grandmother and I walk into the airport departures lounge and there’s a high-pitched squeal, I don’t even turn around. That’s how much I’ve forgotten what it is I’m actually supposed to be doing here.
“Co-eeee, my little Monster Munches!” a voice shouts. A man in a leopard-print onesie and pink wellies starts stomping enthusiastically towards us. “I’ve been waiting for minutes and minutes and I was spectacularly bored so I went to the Duty Free. Smell me! Close your eyes and I’m unwanted Christmas soap!” He wafts in a jutting, pigeon-like circular motion, and then holds his hand out to my grandmother. “Enchanté,” he adds, curtsying deeply. “Which is French for enchanted because they obviously stole it from us, the naughty little Munchkins.”
I stare at Wilbur in bewilderment. “Erm, they didn’t,” I say. “Both enchanté and enchanted come from the Latin verb incantare, which means to cast spells. Hello, Wilbur. Are you coming with us?”
I can’t decide if I’m delighted or not. I love Wilbur, but in combination with my grandmother?
“Wilbur,” he says, pushing me aside and kissing Bunty’s hand. “That’s with a bur, and not with an iam. I’m agent to this little chicken-monkey.” He points at me, just in case anyone gets confused with all the other chicken-monkeys in the immediate vicinity.
“Bunty,” my grandmother smiles, totally unfazed.
He points to my grandmother’s pink floral dress with lace trim, beige, fringed blanket and mirrored waistcoat. “I am loving this. What are we calling it?”
My grandmother’s eyes twinkle. “Spangled Nepalese goat-herder disco-dances by river in moonlight?”
“Oh my holy dolphin-cakes!” Wilbur shouts at the top of his voice. “That is superlatively fantabulazing! Could I borrow the waistcoat one day?”
“You can have it now, if you like,” Bunty says, taking it off and handing it over. “I have dozens.”
“You!” Wilbur squeaks, putting it on over his onesie and spinning around in little circles. “If you were liquid I would just pour you all over ice cream and sprinkle you with hundreds and thousands and gobble you up! You would be hell on my waistline and laden with calories but I just wouldn’t care.”
See what I mean?
“Are you coming with us?” I repeat politely as my grandmother beams and then wanders towards some fluffy key rings in a nearby shop.
“No, my little Turkish delight. I’m just here to prep you.”
I frown. “Wilbur—” How do I put this nicely? “At no stage at any poi
nt in my entire modelling career have you ever prepared me for anything. Ever.” I pause. “Like, ever.”
Wilbur’s eyes open wide. “I am hurt,” he says with his hand on his chest. “Nay, wounded. Nay – what’s another word for hurt, my little Carrier-bag?”
“Offended? Stung? Aggrieved?”
“Précisement. How can you say I am ever anything but one hundred per cent professional?”
“For my last photo shoot you sent me to your dentist.”
“They had very similar business cards and I thought I’d just seen Sting walk past and it was all very confusing.” Wilbur tries to look indignant, and then sighs. “OK. I’m a terrible, terrible agent. But this time it’s mahoosive, Sugar-plum. Like, Calvin Klein mahoosive. Like, mamoosive mahoosive. Yuka’s broken away from Baylee to start up her own label. It’s huge, Peach-plum, and I need to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
I suddenly feel a bit sick. You can look at it any way you like, but last time I attempted to model I ended up covered in gold paint and attached to a curtain rod. “She’s launching her new label with me?”
Wilbur starts giggling. “Oh, bunny, you do crack me down the middle. Can you imagine?”
I patiently wait for him to stop being so insulting.
“No: the main” – he pretends to cough – “taller models are being flown out today to China, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea …”
“Mongolia and Taiwan?”
He abruptly stops laughing. “How do you know that?”
“They’re the seven countries in East Asia, excluding North Korea.” Wilbur’s gone a strange, pale shade of mustard. “It was just a guess. Are you OK?”
Wilbur breathes out hard. “This is all top secret, Moo-noo. We need to get the campaign done before Yuka tells Baylee she’s leaving. If I can just organise it” – he leans forward slightly and grabs my shoulders – “Poodle, it might be my way out of here.”