“I’m going to be late for work,” Dad says, grabbing his suit jacket. “Do we have coffee, or should I be getting that at the station too?”
“Station,” Annabel says without looking at him.
“Amazeballs.” He scowls at Annabel, and then kisses the top of my head. “Have a good day, sweetheart. I’ll be back later, after the work drinks if I haven’t starved to death and am lying in skeletal form in the middle of Manhattan being prodded by scientists.”
And – before I can get a single word out – Dad’s gone, slamming the front door loudly behind him.
I stare at Annabel.
“Don’t,” she snaps softly. “Harriet, just don’t. I’m not in the mood. There’s a twenty-dollar bill in my handbag. Please grab something to eat from the shops.”
“But—”
“Harriet, please.”
“I thought—”
“Harriet.”
“Annabel—”
“Now.”
So I eat a solitary birthday muffin, sitting on the kerb outside the supermarket.
If they’re prepared to put on that kind of show the gift must be amazing. I may need to keep a handkerchief ready for all the unexpected emotion.
Miss Hall appears to be in on it too.
“Right,” she says when we’re tucked away in my bedroom. “I went easy on you yesterday. I think it’s time you showed me what you’re made of with some complex algebra.”
Of all my A level topics, algebra is at the bottom of my list. I was kind of hoping we could at least spend my birthday playing Scrabble. “You want me to do algebra today?” I say in dismay.
Miss Hall frowns. “Is there a problem?”
Annabel must have told her why today’s special. Which means …
Ah.
Of course. My parents want to keep me out of the way in my bedroom because they’re doing something extraordinary downstairs. Like building a massive tree house, or filling the house with thousands of tiny colour-coordinated cupcakes in order of the rainbow spectrum.
I bet Dad hasn’t gone to work. I bet he’s out, picking up my new yellow legally approved scooter as we speak.
Or – slightly less excitingly – my invalid carriage.
“OK …” I say, winking elaborately at Miss Hall and getting my air-quote fingers ready. “Let’s do algebra.”
There’s a pause while she stares at my fingers.
“Harry, if you aren’t going to treat education with the respect it deserves, I can take my extraordinary skills elsewhere.”
“I’ll show education respect,” I agree, feeling slightly put out. “Of course I will.”
“Good,” Miss Hall barks. “Because I am not here to be told how to do my job by a teenager. Clear?”
“Yes,” I agree meekly.
“We are only as strong as we allow ourselves to be,” she says firmly. “And, Harry, I suspect that you are nowhere near as remarkable as I have been led to believe.”
I flinch.
This birthday present had better be really good.
Miss Hall settles back in her chair and closes her eyes. “Let’s stop wasting time and get on to higher circle theorems, shall we?”
So I spend the next eight hours doing exactly that.
y the time Miss Hall finally leaves, my excitement levels are dangerously high.
It is clearly going to be the best birthday ever.
I lurk at the top of the stairs, but it’s nigh on completely silent down there. If I listen really hard, though, I can almost hear my parents’ fevered whispers. “I hope Harriet likes it”, and “Won’t she be blown away?” and “This box is too small to fit a brand-new scooter and a puppy!”
Judging by the quietness they’re not quite ready for me, so I make the most of the time left and prepare myself for WMRBE.
First I have a shower and attempt to shave my legs with a few poorly balanced swipes. Then I clamber out and spray myself all over with Annabel’s best perfume. I dry myself, realise the towel now stinks of Chanel, tie my hair carefully into a top-knot and hop cautiously into my favourite dress.
Admittedly, it’s my only dress.
It’s red with little white hearts on it, and Nat gave it to me this summer for ‘all the sixth form and college parties we will be invited to’. She clearly forgot that I hate parties but I accepted it in the spirit of Best Friendship.
With a surge of joie de vivre, I raid Annabel’s make-up box and apply a smear of red lipstick, a fluff of powder and a few strokes of mascara: some of which actually goes on my eyelashes.
Then I stand in front of a full-length mirror and stare at the stranger in front of me.
I still look like me, but somehow different. Gone is the girl in a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt and in its place is a sixteen-year-old in a dress.
Sophisticated. Glamorous.
I lean a bit closer. There’s mascara in my eyebrows.
Well, I’m going in the right direction.
Nat would be so proud of me.
I do a swirly spin so that the white hearts on red fan out in a circle like a romantic bull-fighter’s cape, and then skip down the stairs with joyful steps.
“Dad?” I say, swishing into the hallway. “Tabitha? Annabel? I’m ready for my big surp—”
The kitchen is exactly the same as it was when I left it this morning. The empty tea mugs are still out, and the blinds are still half shut. The oven door is open, and there’s a vague smell of burning. The chair is in the exact same position it was when Dad pushed it back in a huff.
I walk into the living room.
The curtains are closed, and Annabel is lying on the sofa with an arm sprawled out, fast asleep. Her mouth is open, her blonde hair is straggled across her face, her jumper has ridden up and Tabitha is lying on her stomach with her tiny hands bunched up by her face: also unconscious.
I glance around the room. There are no flowers. No cupcakes. No signs of any kind of tree house or chemistry kit. No scooter. No puppy. There isn’t a single bit of wrapping paper anywhere. No Sellotape, no scissors.
Nothing.
Then I glance at the door. Dad’s jacket is missing from its hook.
And it finally hits me.
I have to lean against the doorframe while I try to wrap my stupid, slow-moving brain around it. I’d have seen it before, if it hadn’t been so totally unbelievable.
This isn’t an elaborate subterfuge. This isn’t the world’s most carefully planned, epic surprise.
It’s half-past six on the evening of my sixteenth birthday, and my family aren’t pretending to forget me.
They’ve actually forgotten.
tatistically, the chances of having a birthday on any particular day is 1/365.
With a world population of 7.046 billion, that means that approximately 19,304,109 people are having birthdays today. All over the world, they’re celebrating.
In Russia and Hungary, they’re having their ears pulled.
In North Germany, flour is being poured on top of their heads.
In Canada, they’re having their noses greased with butter.
In Venezuela, faces are being plunged into cakes.
In Scotland, they’re being repeatedly smacked on the bottom.
And I’d still choose any of those nineteen million vaguely violent birthdays over spending the day sitting in my bedroom with a governess who makes me feel like an idiot on the wrong side of the world.
Doing algebra.
As quietly as I can, I let myself out of the house and walk swiftly to the train station with my chest aching.
I can’t think about it now. I only have five and a half hours of sixteenth birthday left.
I have to focus on making them special.
Greenway Station isn’t what I was expecting. I’m used to a big brick building, lots of people in suits and a deep, electrocuted track you have to stand really far away from or somebody in a uniform shouts at you.
Here, there’s a tiny wooden hut next to two
single metal tracks you can walk across. There’s just a bench, a ticket machine and a plastic timetable stuck to a pin-board.
And it’s totally empty.
I sit down, breathe as slowly as I can and adjust my dress so my new adultness doesn’t get all creased.
Then I wait.
And wait.
Finally, a tinny bell starts ringing and the wooden barriers start closing. A black car rolls to a stop behind them. An enormous silver double-decker train starts approaching from the distance, like something out of an old Western.
The average heart beats 100,000 times a day, and mine suddenly decides to get today’s all out of the way at once. My chest is hammering so fast it feels like one really long beat.
With infinite slowness, the train stops and the doors open.
I stand up, clutching my hands tightly together.
A little old lady climbs off the train, adjusts her skirt and starts walking towards the exit.
Then the doors shut and the train starts moving off.
With a blank brain, I grab my phone out of my satchel. It says 7.02pm. Then it rings.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” Nick says as I spin around looking for him. “Are you hiding? I’ve checked the stairs leading up to the shopping mall but you don’t appear to be there.”
“Stairs?” My ears suddenly go numb. “Shopping mall?”
“Yeah, I can see some kind of coffee place. Are you in there buying doughnuts? I told you I’d bring cake.”
I look up and down the empty platform. The barriers are back up and the car is driving slowly away.
“Nick, there’s no shopping mall in Greenway.”
“What are you talking about?” he laughs. “It’s right by the sign with the …” Then he stops. “Did you say Greenway?”
My entire stomach flips over. “Greenway. Greenway Station.”
“Greenway Station?” There’s a pause, and then Nick says: “Harriet, I’m at Greenways Station.”
No.
No. No no no no NO.
This can’t be happening.
“There’s no s,” I say in a tiny voice that feels very far away.
“It really sounded like there was an s.”
“But …” My brain is spinning silently, like a scratched CD. Click. Click. Click. “Nick, I don’t understand. I emailed you a map. And directions. And a train timetable. I emailed you a detailed history of the entire local area. You had everything you needed to get here.”
“I …” There’s a long pause. “I didn’t have time to look at them, Harriet. I was rushing in and out of jobs and I thought I knew where I was going. I’m so sorry.”
I close my eyes and manage, “So where are you?”
“Hang on. Just checking the map.” There’s a silence, and then he makes an eeeeurgh sound. “I’m two and a half hours in the wrong direction. I thought the train journey was taking too long.”
Two and a half hours in the wrong direction. Which means four hours from me, not including transfer times.
I can feel myself starting to panic. “But …” I swallow. “Maybe you could get on another train? Maybe if you leave now, you can get here before midnight and then we can—”
“Harriet,” Nick says gently. “The trains stop at eleven-thirty and I have another fitting at 7am tomorrow.”
“But it’s my birthday.”
I know it sounds pathetic, but it’s the only fact I have left to cling on to.
“I know.” He sounds devastated. “I can’t believe I screwed up this badly.”
“It’s my BIRTHDAY.”
My voice is getting higher and louder. A stray dog at the other end of the platform turns to look at me anxiously before scampering off.
“Harriet, I know. I’m standing in the middle of nowhere, two and a half hours from New York, with sixteen purple balloons I blew up on the train and then could only just get out of the door, and sixteen cupcakes. Trust me, I want to be there. I’m one strong puff of wind from being blown away like Mary Poppins.”
I look down at my stupid heart dress through my stupid mascara-d eyelashes. I look at my stupid hairless legs, and my stupid purple flip-flops. Then I put my hand up and touch my stupid hair, tied up in its stupid top-knot.
I should have just stayed as I was. Fluffy and wearing clothes intended for an eleven-year-old.
At least then I wouldn’t be standing alone on a station platform on my birthday, feeling like a nobody.
I pull my birthday plan out of my pocket. I think it’s safe to say there won’t be any more crossing-off today.
“I have to go,” I say quietly, ripping it in half and dropping it on the floor. The pieces lie there for a few seconds and then blow straight on to the track.
“No, Harriet. Listen, we can do something tomorrow, I’ll get on the right train and—”
“I have to go,” I say again.
And I hang up before Nick can say anything else.
ne of my favourite ever facts is this:
Because of the electromagnetic repulsion between their components, every atom floats an infinitely tiny distance away from the atoms around it.
Which doesn’t sound like much, until you realise that atoms make up everything. Which means you’re not really holding a pen: it’s levitating very slightly in your hands. You’re not really sitting in that chair: you’re hovering just a fraction above it.
Frankly, I’m not sure I believe it any more.
As I walk home, my feet are very much touching the ground. I’m not electromagnetically hovering anywhere.
I start walking heavily up the stairs.
“Harriet?” Annabel is standing in the doorway. “Are you OK?”
I turn around slowly.
Dad appears next to her, grinning. “I’m sorry I was such a terrible grump this morning, chickpea. Work is a bit harder than I expected – even for a genius like me. But I went shopping on the way home. Look.”
He points proudly at five plastic carrier bags, stuffed with the sort of things dads buy when they go shopping. Multi-packs of biscuits, enormous bottles of cola, unnecessarily large packs of toilet rolls. All Man Size, as if to prove that only girls need things in reasonable quantities.
I look at them, then at him.
“And look,” he says, bouncing towards me. “Look what work gave me as a belated welcome gift!” He holds out his wrist. There’s a thick black rubber band circled around it. “It’s a PowerBand.” I glance at it. “It shows me how much Power I’m using!” Then he clicks a button on the side. Numbers shine in green. “I’ve used 2,354 Powers today!”
“A Power is not a universally recognised measurement of energy, Richard,” says Annabel. “Unless you’re He-Man.”
“Maybe I am, Bel,” Dad says, wiggling his eyebrows and then kissing his bicep. He waves his arm frantically above his head and then presses the button again. “I’ve used five Powers just waving!”
“Have you, indeed,” Annabel says, rolling her eyes.
“Annabel, are there any household chores I can help with? Ironing?” He makes large ironing motions with his right hand. “Painting fences? Any orchestras you need conducting?”
Annabel sighs. “You could rock Tabitha to sleep. How’s that for hand-based Power consumption?”
“Perfect,” Dad says, starting to push Tabby’s cot so energetically that she immediately starts crying.
I start walking back up the stairs.
“Harriet, what is wrong with you?” Annabel says, holding on to the banister. “Did something happen with Miss Hall?”
Slowly, I turn around.
“Dad?” I say. “What else does that thing do?”
“Well,” he says, looking at it proudly, “if you click it three times, it’ll tell you how many Hours you’ve Won. Then calories and distance. If you click it five times, it’ll show you the time. Like a proper watch.”
He clicks it five times and holds it out to me.
“Does it show you t
he date?”
Dad frowns. “I think if you hold the button down … Yup. There you go. It’s the 31st of Aug—”
He goes very quiet.
I look at Annabel. Her entire face has drained of colour.
“No.” She steps over to Dad and grabs his wrist hard. “NO.”
“Annabel,” Dad says. “I know you keep the diary around here, but isn’t the 31st Harriet’s …”
“Yes, but it’s the 30th today. Press it again, Richard. Press it again.”
“I’m pressing it,” Dad says urgently. “Annabel, it’s still the 31st of August.”
They both stare at the stupid green digits on the stupid black rubber band and then back at me.
“What a useful gift,” I snap, starting up the stairs again. “I’m glad somebody got one.”
“Oh my God.” Annabel’s hand is over her mouth and she sounds like she’s going to cry. “Harriet. It’s your birthday.”
Dad says a loud word that a tiny baby probably shouldn’t hear.
“Yup,” I snap. “Happy sixteenth birthday to me. Many felicitations, etc., etc. May my day be full of joy and so on. Except it wasn’t.”
“Harriet, listen—”
“No,” I say sharply, reaching the top of the stairs and spinning round to face them. My parents are staring up at me from the dark hallway, like two round white pebbles at the bottom of a pond. “You brought me here. You took me away from my entire life, and now I have nothing and nobody. I’m sixteen years old and I don’t have to listen to either of you. Ever again.”
With a final heavy step I walk into my bedroom and slam the door behind me.
And then I lock it.
hat’s one good thing about our new house.
The doors have locks on them.
My parents sit outside my bedroom, pleading, apologising and making really bad jokes. Dad pushes a biscuit and a little envelope under the door that says:
Inside it is $100 in cash.
I scrawl across the envelope in enormous letters, take the money out and push it back under the door. Then I turn the BBC World Service up so loudly that the floors start rattling.