And I have to be honest: it’s not going as I’d hoped.
I mean, obviously flirting is not exactly my key speciality or talent.
But the last thing Rin just said after a five-minute silence was “I like apples,” to which Jasper replied, “Really? I prefer pears,” and I don’t think that’s typically how many eternal fires of the soul are started.
I deliberate for a moment.
Then, with a quick wiggle, I ram my heel into the mud and loudly exclaim: “Oh dear, I’m stuck!”
“Speaking of apples,” I say airily when they’ve caught up, “did you know that the Ancient Greeks used to declare love by throwing apples at each other? Fascinating, don’t you think?”
I’m not saying Jasper should start throwing apples at Rin, but a little more wooing would be nice.
Although that’s how the Trojan War started, so you do have to be quite careful.
“Why would you know that?” Jasper asks bluntly. “Seriously, how much Ancient Greek history do people normally have to hand?”
“Okashii desu, ne?” Rin laughs. “I love how Harry-chan is always saying the things.”
At least they’re agreeing on something.
“Right,” Aiden says as we reach the edge of a beautiful, cultivated garden with flowers in neat shapes and a tiny fountain in the middle. “I’ve had an idea.” He points at me. “Can everybody please keep an eye on this one in case she decides to cover herself in Shakespearean quotes while I’m gone?”
Then he hurries off towards an outbuilding.
In the meantime, Sophia’s put her huge gold crown down on a small bench and is now massaging her neck, while Tabitha attempts to cement her reputation with Vogue by forcing Dunky into the face of its fashion editor.
Rin and Jasper have lapsed into silence once more.
Do something, Harriet.
Reach into the box and pull something romantic out.
“Umm,” I say, swallowing, “why don’t you play a game? Maybe with …” I swallow. A roundabout. “A wheelbarrow and …” Stamps. “Stickers and …” A race to the postbox with a letter. “A skipping competition?”
They both stare at me blankly.
“What?” Jasper says after a lengthy pause.
“Or …” I’m carefully picking through, trying not to touch anything too dangerous. “Maybe you could …” Throw mints at the window early in the morning. “Chuck chewy sweets at a … greenhouse? Or …” Buy her sixteen purple balloons. Walk across New York hand in hand. Sit on the pavement together. “Sit down on the grass?”
“What?” Jasper says again, still staring at me. “Harriet, have you been electrocuted in the last two minutes?”
It’s no good. I can’t rifle through any more.
“Or … you could just have a staring match?” I say abruptly, slamming closed the lid again. “Let’s say, I don’t know … A hundred and twenty seconds? Go.”
Scientists have discovered that staring into a stranger’s eyes for two minutes increases the likelihood of falling in love on the spot.
I don’t know if it works but it seems worth a shot.
“Nani?” Rin says, brow crumpling up.
“You’re being really weird, Harriet,” Jasper frowns, folding his arms. “Even more so than normal and the bar’s pretty high.”
Fudge nuggets.
The atmosphere between them is so awkward you could open your mouth and take a chunk of it out of the air.
Ugh. Maybe Nat was right.
I’m really not making anyone happier here, am I?
They were getting on so well yesterday, but I’ve taken a natural, organic connection and put too much pressure on it, too soon and in public.
I need to give them space.
“I’m back,” Aiden announces unnecessarily, carrying a ten-foot ladder under his arm. “I’m thinking action. I’m thinking movement. I’m thinking this is where they shot Batman.”
It is, actually.
And Harry Potter, Shakespeare in Love, Tomb Raider, Sleepy Hollow and Get Him to the Greek (although nobody ever talks about that one).
“Ready!” Sophia says cheerfully, standing up and putting her crown back on. “Where do you want us to go?”
Aiden points to his left. “We’re doing the next shot in there.”
We all turn towards the huge maze that looms behind us.
It’s made of two-hundred-year-old yew trees, it’s eight feet high, and my insides have just done an immediate dolphin-like backflip of excitement.
I love solving puzzles.
Especially when my progress is being recorded.
Plus, I’ve always wanted to do this particular maze, but it’s not open to the public: it’s another moment of sheer wish fulfilment.
I’m going to be so good at this.
“We’ll do single shots first and then end with a shot in the middle,” Aiden adds. “So assuming the models are focusing on modelling and not the maze –” he looks at me sharply – “somebody needs to go ahead and find the centre for us. Guys?”
He gestures at the four poor assistants and my brain suddenly lurches.
Hang on …
Privacy and quietness. Nothing to distract them. Solving problems together and overcoming strife. Potentially getting lost for the next two hours with nothing but each other for company.
“Wait,” I blurt suddenly, “why don’t you send Rin and Jasper? They can find the centre of the maze for you.”
Tabby’s in safe hands with Charlotte; in fact, she seems positively delighted to have some more fashionista one-on-one time.
“Uh,” Jasper says after a pause. “Sure. Why not.”
“I go in big dark hedge,” Rin agrees in a tiny voice, nodding nervously. “It is not kowai at all.”
“Fabulous,” Aiden says, clapping his hands. “Off you go, then. Chop chop. The rest of us have work to do.”
They look at each other in bemusement, then disappear without complaint into the life-size puzzle.
Nat was totally right, as always.
Now we just need to let nature take its course.
he first model up is Tabitha.
“OK, little one,” Aiden says gently as Charlotte passes her to me. “Harriet, can you take her in for us?”
He’s standing on the ladder, ten foot in the air, with his camera strapped to his shoulder.
Carrying my sister in my arms, I walk into the centuries-old maze. I take a right, into a particularly green and glossy corner, and wait as the stylist puts an elaborate, pale blue silky pillow on the floor.
Then I gently plop Tabby on top.
She grabs one of her tiny feet, stares at the little green boot on it for a few seconds, then beams and starts waving her arms around.
I don’t think I need to worry about any potential future damage to her mental health: I’ve never seen her more in her element.
“OK, up here, sweety-pie.” Aiden waves Dunky in the air. “Look at me.”
With a tiny gurgle, Tabs immediately looks up.
Her blue eyes open wide.
And she stares at that camera with the sweetest, most open and trusting expression I’ve ever seen her give anyone that isn’t me, Annabel or Dad.
Or Dunky, obviously.
Although right now she’s not even looking at him. Tabby’s love is clearly fickle.
“Ridiculously cute,” Aiden says as the camera goes click. “Adorable.” Click click. “Vogue should be all babies, all the time.” Click click click.
Gurgling happily, Tabby plays with the tassels on the cushion, examines an interesting leaf next to her, then reaches out for a sparkling bead on my dress.
And before we know it, she’s done.
My sister has completed her first solo photo shoot with more natural charisma, grace and charm than I’ve managed in my entire career.
I am so incredibly proud of her.
Maybe when we get home she can give me lessons.
“OK,” Aiden says, climbing off
the ladder so he can shift it to another part of the maze. “Perfect. Sophia? You’re up next.”
Watching Sophia work is mesmerising.
I have no idea how old she is – she could be forty, fifty, sixty, a hundred – but she’s completely ageless: her skin is lined but flawless, her features beautiful and delicate, her figure elegant and tall.
With a quick wink at me, she rearranges her knickers underneath her enormous dress and repositions her boobs. She takes a deep breath and blows a loud raspberry.
Then she pulls her shoulders back, lifts her head and walks enigmatically further into the maze. Curiously, I let Charlotte tend to Tabby while I stand on a bench and peek over the top of the hedge so I can see what’s going on.
Sophia grins up at me from between two bushy green aisles.
“Let’s DO THIS,” she shouts loudly.
Then her face suddenly goes very still, her long arms become effortless and every muscle in her body relaxes. Dozens of expressions start shifting across her face, changing every few seconds, and she begins to move as if she’s dancing: floating, striding, bending, turning, flicking.
She spins and pivots, waves and crumples.
And every time the camera clicks, she gives the picture something else.
A new emotion, a new pose, a new angle.
It’s like watching Queen Elizabeth come alive again, over four hundred years after she died and became a legend.
Sophia is a master of storytelling.
“Right,” Aiden says after the final camera click. He hasn’t said a single word for the entire shoot: not a single direction or comment. He just let Sophia do her thing and took as many pictures as he could. “Nailed it, as always. Sophia, you are ever the consummate professional.”
“Forty years of practice,” she grins, swigging from a can of Diet Coke. “You can wheel me on in forty more.”
Then she unceremoniously tucks her crown under her arm like a rugby ball and swaggers back to the palace behind us to “find a cheese and pickle sandwich”.
There’s a pause, then Aiden turns to me.
Charlotte’s taken Tabby back to the house to get changed into her onesie and the assistants are preparing the elaborate dining room for Sophia’s next solo shoot.
Jasper and Rin are still gone.
“You know,” Aiden says thoughtfully, cracking his knuckles, “nobody could work out why Yuka Ito allowed you to do what you did in her photo shoots without ripping you to pieces and distributing you through her breakfast cereal like tiny Harriet marshmallows.”
That’s a very alarming image.
And also very accurate: she remains the most terrifying person I’ve ever met.
“But I think Yuka knew what she was doing,” he continues, flicking through his camera. “She saw something the rest of us didn’t. And you’re ten times the model now that you used to be, Harriet.”
He holds the back of his camera out to me.
The photos are tiny and untouched, but they’re beautiful. The colours, the clothes, the history of the place we’re standing in.
And I look … right.
Dignified, poised and beautiful.
A rush of unexpected warmth floods through me. I’ve wanted to be many things in my life: an award-winning palaeontologist, a history-changing astrophysicist, an acrobatic woodlouse (I was five).
But a good model was never a goal.
Except … I’m genuinely touched by this compliment.
Maybe – after sixteen months of falling through it – I’m starting to take the fashion industry and the people in it seriously after all.
“Thank you,” I say, blushing slightly.
“I’d have fired you if it was me,” Aiden grins. “Just for the record. Now get into that maze, model. Let’s see what else you’ve got.”
his time, I give it everything.
As I walk purposefully into the maze with my silk gown trailing behind me and Aiden bouncing around three steps in front with a camera shoved in my face, I focus like I’ve never focused before.
Not just for Wilbur, or for Aiden, or for the money I’m being paid, but for me too.
I want to be the best model I possibly can be.
With immense concentration, I narrow my eyes, throw back my shoulders and try to harness the majestic ghost of Elizabeth.
Click. I am fierce.
Click. I am regal.
Click. I am a powerhouse of nobility, capable of defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588 thus securing one of the greatest military victories in English history and …
“No,” Aiden says, stopping abruptly. “No, this is all wrong, Harriet. Who are you trying to be?”
I blink at him.
Then up at my tiara and down at the princess dress and the palace garden I’m standing in. “Do I really need to answer that question?”
“You’re not an actress, Harriet. I want to see something genuine. Try again.”
Swallowing, I keep walking.
The maze is getting darker the further we move into it: the floor is dappled and green and the leaves are getting glossier and packed closer together, the paths more twisty and narrow. Aiden runs ahead and dives into little nooks in the hedge as I do my best to find something else to give him.
Except I’m not really sure what he wants.
Honestly, I’m not actually sure I have anything else left.
We take a sharp left and I turn so I’m facing the light and give the camera my most imperious, haughty stare: the kind Elizabeth must have given the Pope when she was excommunicated in 1570.
“Nope,” Aiden says patiently. “That’s not it either.”
So I lower my chin and try sheer rage.
“Nu-uh.”
With growing desperation, I turn towards the hedge, shake my waist-length hair then spin back and attempt unbridled joy, even though a strand of it is now caught on a bit of maze bush.
“Looking a bit mad now, sweetheart.”
And I can feel myself starting to panic.
I can’t screw this one up too; I can’t. Not after Levaire last year. It’s too important. I owe it to everyone who has believed in me and helped me over the last fifteen months: to Wilbur, to Yuka, to Rin, to Bunty and Nat, to Ni–
Click.
“That’s better,” Aiden nods. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s try even softer. You’re only sixteen, Harriet. Even Elizabeth wasn’t in charge at your age.”
This is true. As a teenager, Hatfield House was actually the prison she was locked in.
I think about Nat, holding a cut-off ponytail and a pair of art-room scissors.
“More,” Aiden says as he jumps in front of me. Click click. “I’m thinking vulnerable. I’m thinking real. I’m thinking something that matters.”
So I dig a little deeper.
Alexa commanding a classroom full of hands up; banana sweets flying at my head; a pinstripe suit and a crossed-off list …
Click. “Yes! This is better! Keep going!”
Vomit on my lap and a stall full of broken hats.
Click. “More!”
A table. A table. A table.
And – without any warning – the box in my head starts to tremble.
Singapore chewing gum. Dovetail joints. A wooden chest full of treasures, pushed under my bed.
I’m trying to hold it down, but with a deep rumble it’s beginning to shake uncontrollably: contents flying around and crashing against the sides with enormous bangs.
Click click. “Brilliant, Harriet!”
Now tiny memories are starting to slip out from under the lid: spilling and splashing all over the floor.
A cuddly toy lion. A hundred yen note.
A blue sock.
Three stars, a necklace of planets.
Click click click. “Beautiful! Keep going, Harriet!”
A sunset, a mountain, a lake full of lights. A bridge and a peregrine falcon and a pair of gloves; skates and a cinnamon-scented kiss by a sparkling Christmas tre
e.
Click. “Stunning!” Click.
And I’m not sure I can hold it any more.
Everything I put in the box and locked up so tightly all those months ago is still in there, and now it’s trying to get back out as hard as it can. And I don’t know what I’m going to do if it does. I’ve used all my energy up just holding it together: just keeping everything under control.
I can feel tears starting to prickle.
The maze is getting even darker and narrower and I suddenly don’t know where I’m going: I don’t remember what I’m doing.
Click.
I don’t know how to get out.
Click.
I don’t know how to make it stop.
Click.
Make it stop make it stop make it—
“Harriet?”
Trembling, I emerge with a pop into the bright sunshine at the centre of the maze as the lid of the box slams shut just in time.
Jasper’s sitting on a bench with Rin.
They’re laughing and lit by sunshine: right at the start of making their own memories.
Happy.
Which is why it makes no sense that with a sharp sob, I fling my hands over my face, feel my chin crumple up into a little paper ball.
And burst into noisy tears.
up: this is exactly why you should always be careful what you wish for.
Vogue wanted emotion, and they got it.
Loudly and in soggy, snotty streams all over my beautifully styled hair, make-up and priceless dress.
Let’s see if they want a photo to immortalise that.
There’s a stunned silence for about thirty seconds while I bawl into the crook of my arm. A thick layer of powder and foundation is melting all over the fabric, my eyes are inflating and my eyelashes are sticking together in clumps, but I don’t seem to be able to stop.
And that’s when the yelling starts.
“What the hell is going on? What did you DO? WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HER?”
“Umm.” Aiden’s confusion sounds genuine, even through my sobs. “I have absolutely no idea. I was just directing her.”
“TO WHERE?” Jasper shouts. “To the edge of a cliff? Into a gas oven? Off a bridge somewhere? What the HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?”