Head Over Heels

  Also, I’d like to make the point that he’s the only one in the room not wearing a suit.

  His irritation is visibly rising.

  “Frankly, your uncontrollable father cost this agency thousands of pounds. And now you have the audacity to break into my company, my lunch, in front of my clients, dripping with sweat, jumping the queue, giggling, phone ringing, wearing whatever that is …”

  “A home-made JINTH T-shirt and dungarees.”

  “… no portfolio, unregistered agency, no idea what you’re doing or what time you should arrive or why you’re here or what job it is you’re even trying to get.”

  His argument is undeniably strong.

  “But I—”

  “And we’re … what, exactly? Supposed to be won over by your eccentricities? Charmed by your quirks? Besotted with your totally unprofessional attitude and lack of respect for this industry and everybody in it?”

  I’m so hot with shame there’s a chance I’ll combust and they’ll have to identify me from the name written on the inside front cover of my Russian literature.

  Swallowing, I lift my chin. “I’m very sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean it.”

  “From what I can tell, model Harriet Manners, you never seem to mean anything.”

  I’m completely speechless.

  “So I suggest,” he says, sitting back in his chair and making a triangle with his fingertips, “that you stumble out of the modelling industry and leave room for somebody who actually wants to be there.”

  Mr Trout picks up the last mouthful of his baguette and points with it at the door.

  “Now you can go.”

  xperience is apparently genetic.

  Scientists discovered that the knowledge one mouse acquires is passed on to future generations, buried deep in their DNA: which means a lesson learnt by a parent can permanently alter the behaviour of its children.

  This clearly doesn’t work for the Manners family.

  Neither Dad nor I have learnt anything.

  Staring at the floor, I manage to scoot out of the room backwards like a humiliated hummingbird.

  I close the door behind me.

  Holding a shaking hand over my eyes, I take a deep breath.

  Then I look up and try not to notice the dozens of beautiful, glossy, neatly dressed girls lining up quietly along the corridor with shiny portfolios tucked under their arms.

  Brushing their hair and checking they look presentable.

  Waiting to be called into the casting.

  Being professional. Poised. Prepared.

  i.e. all the things I failed to be.

  Because apparently my surname is ironic.

  “How did she get in so early?” someone mutters as I grab my phone and scuttle back down the corridor as invisibly as possible. “I travelled two hours to be here. I will kill my agent if the job’s already gone.”

  I think I can say with some certainty it’s not.

  Cheeks burning, I retrieve my phone from a tangle of scarf.

  Then with a twist of my stomach I click on the email that’s been sitting in my inbox for nearly an hour.

  Re: URGENT CASTING

  Harriet,

  As promised, here are maps, train timetables and suitable connections. Casting starts at 6:30pm sharp, and you’re meeting Peter Trout – Creative Director of DBB. A well-known American brand is launching a new fizzy drink and this will be very competitive so I suggest the close-up snowflake shot goes in the front of your portfolio, followed by the lake shot. We can rearrange properly next time I see you.

  FYI my new agency is called PEAK MODELS.

  You’ve got this, my girl!

  Wilbur

  I blink at the screen.

  All the words in the message are acknowledged by the Oxford English Dictionary, so I’ll assume this was written by his new secretary.

  Then I click on a flurry of texts from Nat that could not have arrived at a worse possible moment.

  Are you nearly back yet? We’re almost hungry enough to eat your sandwiches. xx

  LOL only joking. The world will end and your sandwiches will remain uneaten. x

  TOBY JUST ATE ONE WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM. Where are you? X

  I glance at my watch.

  It’s been fifty-eight minutes since I left the park. Every single calculation I’ve made this afternoon has been wildly wrong.

  Quickly, I type:

  So sorry – please wait just a little longer! Hx

  Phone still in hand, I head towards the front door, past the two white sofas now filling with yet more girls.

  Actually, you know what?

  I don’t think I’d really want to promote fizzy drinks anyway. We consume six million litres of them every year in Britain: they don’t really need any more attention.

  Plus, they’re bad for us.

  In fact, fizzy drinks indirectly kill 184,000 people a year, and have been shown to cause hyperactivity, memory loss and –

  And –

  And …

  I’m tugging on the mirrored front door when my phone starts ringing and ANNABEL appears in a flash across the screen.

  With a swooping stomach, I tug on the door again. I know I wrote a text to Dad but did I actually send it?

  Still staring at my phone, I tug a bit harder.

  Then again.

  Finally, I look up at the door with a jolt of surprise.

  My reflection has started tugging back.

  t least, I assume it’s me.

  All I see is bright red hair and pale white skin, a pointy chin and button nose. Lots of freckles, pink cheeks and large far-apart green eyes.

  It’s only when I scowl and my reflection doesn’t scowl back that I realise the door’s actually transparent.

  Also that my side says PUSH.

  Only ten species on the planet are able to self-identify: I’m officially less intelligent than a dolphin.

  My double and I stare at each other. No longer distracted by my phone, I can see we’re not actually identical: we’re just similar enough to be disorientating.

  Her skin is translucent and spot-free: her eyelashes are long and dark. Her hair is perfectly curled and shiny; her eyebrows tidier, her lips slightly fuller.

  She’s smartly dressed in a black dress, black coat and black leather boots, and nothing she’s wearing has been personalised with marker pen.

  She’s not sweating or flushed, which indicates she walked here calmly, knowing where she was going.

  Basically, she’s me but better.

  Harriet Manners 2.0: upgraded with all my bugs fixed and crashes wiped, my best qualities enhanced and my instabilities improved.

  And I already know her.

  This is the model who replaced me in the Levaire watch advert last year. The girl who wandered the Sahara dunes, looking ethereal, content and super-coordinated.

  And who at no stage got attached by the ear to a Moroccan market stall or threw herself into the sand and attempted to dance like a crumpet.

  My phone starts ringing once more and I finally snap to my senses and stop battling with the door. My doppelganger pulls it open with a polite smile: one that indicates she sees nothing of herself in me whatsoever.

  She flashes two sweet dimples I don’t have.

  Then the superior, upgraded version of Harriet Manners glides smoothly into the mess I’ve just left behind me.

  Again.

  K, I officially give up.

  The Whistler Sliding Centre in British Columbia is the steepest and fastest bobsleigh track in the world. It starts off at 938 metres high then hits a 152-metre vertical drop, allowing amateurs to hurtle downhill at 125 kilometres per hour.

  Headfirst, without any brakes or control or idea how to stop it.

  Pretty much exactly like today.

  Breathing out, I blink at the London streets.

  In less than fifteen minutes, it’s gone from being dusky to night-time and I have a feeling I’m about to be in a lot of trouble. Annabel did
n’t even bother leaving voicemail: that’s how little interest she had in shouting at me indirectly.

  I hesitate for a few seconds – maybe she’ll get bored and give up redialling – then I realise the sun will explode before that happens and click the green button.

  “Umm, hello?”

  “Where are you? It’s dark, Harriet. I know you’re sixteen but you can’t just disappear for hours without telling anyone where you’re going.”

  “I’m in the … park,” I edit optimistically. “Just enjoying the wonder of nature, flowers and … whatnot.”

  I am walking past a patch of semi-dead grass right now. The fact that it’s in our capital city is neither here nor there.

  There’s a tree, a pot plant and a pigeon.

  It’s a park.

  “Right,” Annabel sighs. “Well, we’ve lined up a documentary about stars and we thought you might like to watch it with us.”

  “Ooh yay,” I hear Dad say loudly in the background. “Tell my eldest it just wouldn’t be the same without an elaborate running commentary all the way through.”

  I sense sarcasm.

  In my defence, I do know nearly as much as the official narration.

  “We have popcorn,” Annabel adds cunningly. “And chocolate buttons. Also some kind of chilli-mango worm.”

  “Salsagheti,” Bunty says cheerfully into the phone. “I bought them in Mexico and there’s a picture of a duck wearing sunglasses on the box so they should be immense fun.”

  “When can we expect you?”

  “I’m really sorry, Annabel,” I say, glancing at my watch. “I’ve already got plans.”

  I turn down the road towards the tube station. London is glowing and lit from within. Every building I walk past has something exciting happening inside it. Friends huddled in restaurants and coffee shops: eating, laughing, talking.

  Having fun in their happy little groups.

  All I want is to get back to mine.

  “This is important too.” There’s the click of a door being closed quietly. “Harriet, you’re coming home right now. I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

  Oh, what?

  Quickly, Harriet. You have an IQ of 143: make up an impressive reason not to. Weighty, unquestionable. Profound in its deep reflection of the human race.

  “But I don’t want to,” I hear myself whine. “I want to hang out with my friends.”

  “Well,” Annabel says sharply, “sometimes growing up means doing things you don’t want to do, Harriet. I’m sorry that spending a single hour with your family is one of them.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “You have fifteen minutes and then I expect to see you walking through the front door. Do I make myself clear?”

  And the phone goes dead.

  pparently the human brain doesn’t stop growing until your early twenties.

  I am clearly very advanced.

  Given my complete inability to:

  My phone beeps.

  Scowling, I click on the message.

  It’s dark and cold. Went home half an hour ago. India

  This day has officially thundered down the slope, crashed through a fence and shot into a snowbank.

  Grumbling, I switch my phone off and start scuffing my trainers along the pavement.

  Stupid parents. Stupid ruined sandwiches that nobody fully appreciates. Stupid castings and fizzy drinks and men named after fish and unstable door locks and unstable knees and doppelgangers and exams and friends leaving and—

  Something in my peripheral brain goes ping.

  Huh. That’s weird.

  I take a few steps backwards and peer in through the brightly lit window of a small Italian restaurant. There are red-and-white checked tablecloths, almost burnt-out candles and lots of couples ordering spaghetti and pretending to be in Lady and the Tramp.

  Making a slight blugh face, I peer a bit closer.

  There’s a man sitting in the corner, surrounded by piles of paper. He’s wearing a faded grey suit and a grey tie. He’s peering blearily into a laptop, slumped as if he’s been popped with a pin.

  He looks exhausted and like he just wants to go home.

  So far, so usual for rush hour in London.

  What’s a lot less commonplace is who is doing all of this. Because as the man shakes his head wearily at a waiter, my mouth pops open in shock.

  I nearly walked straight past: that’s how unfamiliar this man looks.

  But he’s not a stranger – I know him very well.

  The sad grey man is Wilbur.

  couple of months ago, on one of his long art rants, Jasper told me that most people can see one million colours.

  Those with colour-blindness can see far fewer.

  But once or twice in a generation, someone is born with tetrachromacy: an ability to differentiate between a hundred million different shades.

  Jasper said that for those people, snow isn’t white: it’s lilac and pink and red. Rain is purple and turquoise, grass is blue and orange, skin is violet and green.

  The only difference between them and everyone else is just one extra kind of cone cell in the eye, and the whole world erupts into colours the rest of us can’t see. Colours that we don’t even know exist.

  For them, everything is a rainbow.

  As I tiptoe through the restaurant door, I realise that’s what Wilbur is like. You think the world is full of colours, and then he turns up with ninety-nine million of his own.

  There must be a logical explanation for this sudden monochrome.

  Maybe it’s laundry day.

  Maybe Wilbur is operating as the world’s least convincing James Bond, or pretending to be a lawyer. Maybe he’s going to jump up and reveal a sparkly pink cape hidden inside that wrinkly suit.

  I’m carefully creeping through the restaurant door – preparing to shout BOO! at the top of my voice – when another man in a suit walks out of the toilets and sits down heavily in the chair opposite Wilbur.

  I quickly grab a menu and hold it in front of my face.

  Ah ha. Things are starting to slot into place: nobody knows how to dress on a date, do they?

  “So,” the man says brusquely, “where were we?”

  “About halfway through my fourth breadstick, honey,” Wilbur says, waving one in the air. “I’m on my fifth now.”

  The man sighs.

  “This isn’t a joke, Wilbur. Did you listen to a word they said at the bank? There are insolvency consequences, balance-sheet issues, lack of liquidity, fees to apply …”

  Wilbur tries to smile, but he’s shrivelling up like an old grey balloon. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “It is that bad. You’re in a mess.”

  Flushing, I lift the menu higher and start trying to tiptoe backwards out of the restaurant.

  This has got to be the worst date ever.

  “But—”

  “Wilbur, your bank manager just told us you spent far too much in America. You were already in debt and now you have no job and no income.”

  Apparently lizards can’t move and breathe at the same time: neither can I.

  What?

  “You can’t expect me not to buy sassy typographic advice pillows from Brooklyn flea markets,” Wilbur says indignantly. “That’s my fundamental human right.”

  “Food is a fundamental human right. Water. Shelter. Warmth. Having access to a decent accountant like me. None of which you’ll be able to afford unless you file for bankruptcy.”

  Huh?

  But Wilbur’s only just started his business. He’s signed all his biggest models and designers. It’s really exciting and it’s been planned for ages: he told me so himself.

  So what are they talking about?

  “I’ve got my agency,” Wilbur says quickly, waving a hand around. “I just need a week to get things off the ground. Ten days. Just give me a fortnight.”

  Peering closer, I look again at the papers on their table: scribbled phone numbers, Google search
print-outs, maps of Soho with advertising agencies circled.

  There are piles of modelling photos stacked in heaps: photocopied hastily, with the tops of heads and arms accidentally cut off. Wait: is this restaurant his new office? This is Peak Models? I don’t want to be rude, but it doesn’t even look like peak Italian food.

  My brain is making ominous clicking sounds.

  Is the grey outfit Wilbur’s attempt to be taken seriously? Was the lifeless email from him? Is he so sad and trying so hard it’s knocked the colour right out of him?

  And suddenly I can hear our conversation again. The formality. The forced breeziness. The scripted speeches. If I hadn’t been so distracted, I’d have heard the panic in his voice too.

  Harriet, will you come with me?

  “You’re hot-desking in Pizza Pronto, Wilbur. And you don’t have an agency.” The accountant points at a pinboard I didn’t notice before, propped up against the wall. “You only have one girl.”

  Blinking, I stare at the photo pinned to it.

  Red hair. Green eyes. Freckles. Pointy nose. Snow caught in the eyelashes. For the first time this hour, I’m definitely staring at myself.

  “She’s not only one girl,” Wilbur says fiercely, lifting his chin. “She’s Harriet Manners.”

  But his shoulders are hunched, his skin is grey and it’s as if his hundred million colours are spilling out on to the floor.

  The accountant stands up and puts a form in his suitcase. “Well, let’s hope you’re right,” he says firmly. “Because now Harriet Manners is all you’ve got.”

  omehow, I escape unnoticed.

  Against all odds I manage to scuttle out of the restaurant without falling over, knocking anything to the ground or taking a tablecloth covered in china plates with me.

  Then I round the corner, slump to the kerb and cover my face with my hands. The Pygmy Marmoset is the smallest monkey in the world, but I feel so tiny right now I could climb on to its back and it wouldn’t even notice.

  Wilbur doesn’t know about the casting.

  He doesn’t know that his only model went into that big, important audition he so carefully arranged and screwed it up. That I did so badly I actually made him look unprofessional for even sending me.