As I race towards Heathrow, it feels like every step I take is easier and less overwhelming: as if the hill I’ve been struggling up doesn’t seem quite as steep any more.
Not now there’s somebody to climb it with me.
Feeling lighter already, I elbow my way to the front of the arrival gates and watch travel-weary people emerge: smiling, kissing and laughing. Looking eagerly around for the people they love most.
And then I see one of mine.
Pale yellow puffy dress covered in pictures of tiny purple lollipops; purple high-heeled shoes with ribbons on them; a short black bob curled into ringlets with a purple bow on top.
A beautiful face: radiant and rosy.
And as a rush of brightness pulses through me, there’s an enormous squeak, three unicorn-stickered suitcases are dropped on the floor and I’m covered in a storm of cheek-kisses, twinkle and under-netting.
It’s like being rugby-tackled by a particularly affectionate fairy.
And I’ve missed it so much.
“Harry-chan!” Kiss. “Oh my goshing! It is actually you!” Kiss kiss. “And I am here myself! In this happy place of United Kingdoms!” Kiss. “We will be having all of the fun.” Kiss. “Just you wait and saw!”
Kiss kiss kiss kiss.
And there – in tiny yellow-frilled ankle socks, like a Japanese superhero – is the one person I knew could really make a difference to Wilbur’s agency.
My second-best girlfriend in the entire world.
Rin.
know: great idea, right?
As Wilbur’s accountant pointed out in the restaurant, one girl isn’t a modelling agency: it’s just one girl. And you can say what you like about his lack of etiquette, but the maths was unquestionable.
Well, now Wilbur has three.
And Rin’s an incredibly successful model. She’s been promising to visit me ever since I left Tokyo last summer so all it took was a little extra nudge in the form of a persuasive Skype call and the offer of a spare bed at my house.
Then I sent Wilbur a cunningly subtle message asking him to find Rin some holiday work while she visits me, and BAM.
I’ve statistically doubled his chances.
And with Tabitha as well, I’ve tripled them.
Between the three of us, we’ve got the entire fashion world cornered. Rin can provide extraordinary natural beauty, sweetness and many years of experienced modelling for top designers around the world.
And Tabby and I can cover accidental modelling, criminal activities, infant workforce and badly thought-through lies.
As a team, we’re basically invincible.
“And,” I say happily once Rin and I have wedged ourselves and all of Rin’s unicorn luggage with some difficulty back on to the train, “did you know the bra was first patented in 1914 by Mary Phelps?”
I can barely see her any more.
With great excitement, Rin and I exchanged all our traditional Japanese omiyage gifts within the first thirty seconds of meeting each other, and now we’re both laden down with so many presents we’re practically immobile.
First, she gave me tuna sushi socks (“your feet will be like double fishes, Harry-chan!”) so I gave her my British Food Basket.
Then I got a dancing Totoro lamp and a forehead-wrinkle-iron and she got the complete works of Shakespeare and a Cambridge University mug. A fake bubble-wrap key ring is exchanged for a light bulb (invented in England in 1880); a tiny model steam train for musical chopsticks (technically of Chinese origin, but it’s the thought that counts).
By the time Rin finished emptying one entire suitcase and started on the second, I had nothing left to give her but the gift of knowledge. Which is the ultimate present, because you can keep it with you forever and it can’t cause a pile-up on an underground escalator like a giant fluffy yellow duck just did ten minutes ago.
“And,” I say from somewhere underneath my bounty, “the bikini was originally declared a sin by the Vatican! Can you believe it?”
I figured I could use the opportunity to train her up on as much in-depth fashion knowledge as possible on the way home. You never know when someone important will challenge you about the history of undergarments and swimwear.
“Gosh,” Rin says in a tiny voice, “that is top of the morning news, Harry-chan.”
Then she stares around us with enormous eyes.
Huge fake eyelashes have been stuck to the outer edges of them, silver glitter has been carefully applied on the inner corners and there’s a little black heart drawn on her left cheekbone. As always, off-duty Rin looks less like a small human and more like an enormous china doll.
But for the first time since I’ve known her, she’s kind of behaving like one too.
Over the last fifteen minutes, her usual bubbliness has slowly flattened, and with every second that passes she gets quieter and stiffer, and her eyes get a little larger. And I didn’t even know that was physically possible.
She already has the face of a baby owl.
“There are many people in London, Harry-chan,” Rin whispers, shrinking towards me. “There is much of the shouting.”
I blink at our carriage. It’s just a regular weekend train: people are chatting, yelling into their phones, crunching on crisps with unnecessary enthusiasm.
It’s noisy, but nothing out of the ordinary.
“Tokyo is one of the most populated cities in the world,” I reassure her comfortingly. “This is practically empty in comparison.”
Rin’s huge eyes wander the carriage as she smooths out her dress self-consciously. “Am I wrong, Harry-chan? Do they not liking my tyre? Am I not England enough?”
In truth everyone is staring at her, but obviously because they think she’s adorable. “They’re just not used to so much cuteness,” I tell her affectionately. “You are super kawaii.”
She looks around again.
There’s a young couple giggling and kissing incessantly a few seats across from us: hands entwined, eyes locked. Every time the girl says anything, the boy impulsively cups her face and kisses her as if he can’t control himself.
Huh. Nobody is that irresistible.
“I have once too, Harry-chan,” Rin sighs wistfully. “In Tokyo. I am with boy for three, four minutes?”
I nod. “Do you mean four months?”
“Iie, Harry-chan. We have one kiss and I am dump straight off. Now I am little bit …” She gets a translation dictionary out and pauses while she looks for the right word. “… Contusion.”
“Confusion,” I correct automatically, sympathetically patting her shoulder. “I think you mean you’re confused.”
She nods. “And Harry-chan,” she continues, “do you have new one now? Or are you still missing N—”
“Noodles?” I say quickly. “No no, I’m fine. Not missing noodles at all.”
Rin blinks.
“And don’t you worry,” I carry on, “I’ve got so much planned you’ll forget all about that.” I open my notepad at Rin’s Epic Modelling Holiday TM! “After any potential photoshoots or castings, I thought on Monday evening we could maybe head to Greenwich to see the Meridian Line, then have a look at HMS …”
I stop.
Rin’s not listening: she’s gazing at a piece of wet chewing gum stuck to the skirt of her pretty dress. “Why?” she whispers in bewilderment. “Why someone leave that there, Harry-chan? Why not in mouth?”
Then somebody yells “Give us a twirl!” across the train and she almost jumps into my lap.
Her whole body is trembling.
“It’s OK, Rin,” I say gently, starting to feel a bit sick. “Don’t be nervous. London’s just like a lot of other cities you’ve visited, except there’s probably more pigeons here.”
For some reason an abrupt image of the day Annabel first brought Victor as a kitten to our house has suddenly popped into my head. He was so disorientated, he spent his first twenty-four hours trying to get under the fridge.
“London not like Tokyo,” Rin says in a tiny vo
ice, shaking her head. “Or Nagoya. Or Osaka. Or Kyoto. Not like home.”
“No,” I admit. “But what about Paris? Milan? Barcelona? New York? It must be quite similar?”
Rin’s eyes get even rounder. “I have not been visiting there, Harry-chan. All only Japan.”
What?
This must be a language-barrier thing. Like when I said iruka-des-ka instead of ikura-des-ka and accidentally asked a shopkeeper if I could buy a dolphin.
“I mean as a model,” I smile. “You’re a successful top model, Rin. You were the face of Baylee before me. You must have travelled a little bit.”
“Only top model in Japan. This first time now to leave.” Then Rin lifts her chin and gives me the bravest smile I’ve ever seen. “I come for you, Harry-chan.”
And my stomach suddenly feels like I’ve just clambered off a merry-go-round that wasn’t very merry in the first place.
No.
No no no no no – Rin’s never been out of Japan before?
She’s never been anywhere?
Oh my God.
I was so carried away with my brilliant idea of getting her to help save Wilbur’s agency, it didn’t occur to me how big a favour I was asking. I didn’t consider the fact that maybe not everyone finds travelling as exciting as I do, or that Rin loves me so much she’d say yes to anything just because I asked.
Or that she might absolutely hate it here.
And now one of the sweetest, most gentle people on the planet is 5,936 miles from home, scared and on the verge of being completely miserable.
And it’s all my fault.
“Now I am an adventuriser and exploringer too,” Rin says, forcing a smile and grabbing my hand a little too hard. “Just like you, Harry-chan.”
I can’t believe what I’ve just done.
had so many great plans for our journey home.
Stops we were going to make through London, museums we could pop into, interesting architectural details I intended to point out (the geometrical staircase in St Paul’s Cathedral being just one).
I immediately abandon all of them.
By the time we get to the next station, Rin is culture-shocking so badly it’s clear I need to get her to the safety of my home as fast as possible, before she shrinks so small I have to keep her in my pocket for the rest of the holiday.
As it is, we don’t escape the van driver.
“Oy oy!” he yells out of the window as we trundle Rin’s many suitcases down the street towards my house.
Rin jumps so far she ends up in a bush.
“I’m not knowing oy oy,” she says to me when I’ve pulled her gently out again. “Is this new English greeting?”
“Sometimes,” I growl, making a face at the van receding into the distance.
By the time we get through the front door, Rin’s such a jittery, discombobulated mess she only just about manages to bow shyly to Dad and Annabel, nervously pat Hugo and greet my grandmother again with tiny, shaking hands.
It’s only when she sees Victor that her little inner Rin-light begins to glow.
“Oh Harry-chan!” she breathes happily, grabbing him off my bed and holding him tightly to her face. “He is just like my neko-baby, Kylie Minogue. Ne?”
Victor looks furious but hangs there limply while Rin covers him in thousands of tiny kisses.
Then she plops abruptly to the floor in a puff of lace, rummages through her third suitcase and drags out four teeny socks, a miniature pink dress and a tiny strap-on tiara.
“Don’t worry,” she tells Victor as he scrabbles urgently towards the door and gets dragged back into her lap, still scrabbling. “You will be kawaii in no times!”
With renewed vigour, she energetically forces a tiny white sock on to each paw.
Then – with Victor tucked tightly under a surprisingly strong arm – she reaches into her suitcase and begins distributing Japanese things around the room: a ruffled duvet cover and comforter on the air bed, heart pillows, a dangling mobile with tiny photos of Kylie the cat and Rin’s family hanging from it.
“I think maybe I will like England,” she says with forced chirpiness, not quite meeting my eyes. “Maybe I will be very happy here in Harry-chan’s England bedroom.”
“Rin …”
“Don’t be worry!” she says earnestly, looking up just in time to see my distraught expression. “If Wilbur has job for me I will be coming out. I promise I will be help.”
That’s not what I’m worried about.
My bedroom is basically Rin’s version of the fridge, and she’s just disappeared right under it.
“Sure,” I say desperately, giving Princess Victor a sharp look that says, You owe me and this is your karmic punishment. “Whatever will make you happy, Rin.”
ut nothing seems to work.
No matter how hard I try over the next few days, Rin just gets smaller and smaller. On Sunday night I spent two hours begging her to come to school with me because no matter how sad I am, education can always cheer me up.
“I will learn here,” she insisted, holding up How To Speak Like a British Person! and So You’re In England – Now What? books. “My English slurps so bad, Harry-chan. I practise, then I come to school.”
Then she grabbed Victor – who was furiously wearing dungarees and a bandana – and disappeared behind A Thousand Fascinating Things To See And Do in London!
On Monday I tried food: another source of great personal pleasure. The average girl eats an average of 651,525 calories a year and I look forward to every single one of mine.
“Mmm,” Rin says, gagging slightly after one bite of a Marmite sandwich. “Burny mouth. Delicious, Harry-chan.”
And when she thinks I’m not watching she spits it into a pink hankie and gets a seaweed snack out of her suitcase.
On Tuesday while I’m at sixth form, I leave her with piles of guidebooks to read and interesting facts about England to look up. And in the evening we watch Korean soap operas on the internet and play Janken (Japanese Rock Paper Scissors). I even try to make sushi to make her feel more at home (it all falls apart within seconds).
By the time I get in on Wednesday afternoon, Rin hasn’t left my room – apart from brief trips to the bathroom and the one time Victor escaped and she had to run down the stairs and drag him back again – and I’m starting to panic.
If I don’t do something fast, Rin’s going to shrink so much I’ll be able to post her back to Tokyo stuck to the back of a postcard.
“Harriet,” Annabel says anxiously on Wednesday after school, “sweetheart, as responsible adults we can’t just leave your friend locked away upstairs. What will her parents think of us?”
“That we treat our prisoners excellently,” Dad says cheerfully, wiping down the kitchen table, “and that the Manners family run the best teenage jails in the country.”
Annabel’s eyes widen in alarm. “Richard.”
“I’m joking, darling. Harriet’s barely ever in the house. We clearly suck at it.” Then he looks at me. “But it’s a valid point. Any suggestions?”
“I’ve tried everything,” I say, admitting defeat. “Monopoly, graph-drawing, map studying, dictionary perusing …”
Dad lifts his eyebrows. “I didn’t realise Rin was an eighty-year-old physics professor.”
I stick my tongue out at him.
But a little light bulb has just gone on in the back of my head.
Maybe I need a new perspective.
Grabbing my phone, I text:
JINTH emergency at my house. Please bring all resources. Hxx
Fifteen minutes later, I knock on my bedroom door. “Rin? I’ve got a few people here who want to say hello.”
There’s a short silence.
Then the door opens a crack and a tiny white face appears: completely stripped of all make-up and twinkle and somehow even prettier than it was before.
Rin is alarmingly beautiful.
Even in old grey tracksuit bottoms, big white socks, a huge Winnie-the-Pooh T-
shirt and some kind of ratty green blanket I think Bunty must have snuck in while I was at school.
“Hello,” Nat says cheerfully. “I’m Natalie, and I’ve been sent by the fashion police to destroy those sweatpants. Kind of like Bruce Willis in Armageddon except instead of a meteor it’s a style abomination.”
“Nat,” I say indignantly. “They’re mine.”
“I know. No wonder Rin’s not having much fun. That outfit has literally sucked the life out of her.”
“Hello,” Jasper says, stepping forward. “I’m Jasper. And I’m here to protect you from Natalie.”
Rin giggles softly.
“Did you know,” Toby says from the back, staring at the ceiling, “that there’s a worm called the Eoperipatus totoro because it was discovered by Studio Ghibli fans and looks just like the Catbus?”
Rin takes a step forward.
“You know Catbus?” Then she frowns. “I know you. Were you being in Tokyo with Harry-chan? You wear piano shoes and your name is Ted.”
“Toby Pilgrim, actually. Sadly those laces were not musical although the packet gave the distinct impression they were.”
Nat face-palms herself.
“So,” Jasper says, clearing his throat, “Rin, we were just heading to the local coffee shop. Would you like to come with us? We have excellent hot chocolate and I can make the cream into a bear shape, if you like?”
Oooh. That’s an excellent idea.
Rin’s face has gone rosy pink, and I give Jasper a grateful smile.
He subtly winks back.
“Y-ees,” Rin says slowly. “I think I will like very much to see this. Just wait one tickity.”
The door closes abruptly and there’s the sound of a lot of zipping and clacking and meowing and banging.
Then it opens again.
Rin has transformed. She is now wearing a blue silk dress covered in tiny blue flowers, white ankle socks and little blue shoes. She hasn’t had time to do any make-up, so her face is still naturally pearly and slightly flushed: her hair a tidy black bob.
Victor is also in a blue dress, and I can’t help feeling again that this is his cosmic comeuppance for stealing Dunky.
“I am ready for the cream-bear now,” she says with great dignity. “Please lead me the way.”