Apart from me, obviously.
And – as I start shuffling after him in my little leather slippers – that’s suddenly all I want to talk about. How every human has between two to four million sweat glands, and how on just one square centimetre of our skin live eight million microscopic animals.
All I want to do this weekend is play scrabble and debate in great detail which of the twelve Dr Whos is the best. Toby asked me to stay away from him until the end of this week, so I’ve obediently done exactly that. But his secret project should be finished now. It’s time to spend some proper time together.
I had absolutely no idea how much I would miss him.
Unfortunately, I also hadn’t realised how fast Toby was capable of walking. By the time I’ve finally caught up with him, every one of my three million sweat glands has done its job and I’m covered in a fine film of water.
I suspect our PE class would be similarly surprised at his speed.
Had Tobes shown this kind of athletic capacity over the last five years, he could have spared himself a lot of wedgies.
“Toby?” I say for the fifteenth time. “Toby? Tobes? Toby Pilgrim?” He keeps walking, so I try to run in front of him. “Toby?”
Then I grab his arm. “Hello, Toby?”
“Oh, hello, Harriet,” he says finally, taking enormous white headphones off and clipping them backwards round his neck so he looks a bit like a vicar. “I was busy listening to vocal and instrumental sounds combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony and expression of emotion.”
I beam at him. Only Toby would say all that instead of music.
“How are you, Tobes? I haven’t seen you at all this week. Did you finish your project? Did it go well? Because if you have, I was thinking maybe we could spend this evening—”
“I’ve got a new jacket, Harriet,” he interrupts. “It’s a Secret Agent jacket, and it has thirty-five pockets. Here’s one to warm my hands. One for a torch. One for ID. One for glasses. One for sunglasses. One for spare glasses …”
We may be here some time.
“Brilliant! Why don’t you come to my house and have a cup of tea, and we can look at all of them together! We can find other things to put in them and …”
“Here’s one for a laser.”
“Yes …”
“And one for an iPod.”
“OK.”
“But I’m afraid I need no pocket in which to put the time I have for you right now, Harriet,” Toby says, putting his headphones back on. “Because I sadly have none at all at this precise moment.”
I stop walking and stare at his back blankly. “What?”
“I’m spending this evening with Jasper,” he explains over his shoulder, while fiddling with his iPod. “We’re going to fight.”
For a few seconds, I’m not sure which of those two statements is more astonishing. “Fight? Jasper? You’re going to fight Jasper?”
A wave of relief rushes through me.
I knew Toby would come to my aid eventually. I just hadn’t realised it would be with such uncharacteristic violence.
“Tobes,” I say, running after him again. “That’s so sweet of you, but just because Jasper and I don’t get on it doesn’t mean you have to dislike him too.”
“I don’t,” he says in surprise, fiddling with his iPod again. “Why would I dislike him? He’s a thoroughly nice chap with many interesting and valid points. We’ve become excellent friends.”
I blink. “… Oh.”
“Did you know that he’s a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu, Harriet? As I have just discovered Bartitsu, a classic gentleman’s martial art from the 1800s, we’re going to see which one we like best. It should be rather fun.”
I blink again in response.
“Although,” he adds slightly sadly, “my fighting involves umbrellas, snuffboxes and top hats and was used by Sherlock Holmes, so I will probably vanquish him effortlessly. Hopefully he won’t hold it against me.”
Then he clicks a button.
Giraffes have no vocal chords, and it seems neither do I right now. Jasper? Despite my noble statement thirty seconds ago, obviously I wanted Toby to dislike Jasper on my behalf. Of all the people he could have befriended, Toby’s picked the one who hates my guts?
In a sudden rush of suspicion, I lean over and look at Toby’s iPod. There’s no light: just a dark battery picture, lodged in the middle of the screen.
Which means he could hear me.
Which means he carried on walking anyway; which means he was ignoring me.
I suddenly feel a bit dizzy. I’m now trying desperately to remember what was drawn on the paper he hid from me in the art room last week. All I actually saw was a rabbit and a badly executed outline of Darth Vader.
Oh my God. Is there even a science project?
Has there ever been one?
“What about tomorrow?” I blurt, racing after him again. I’m wrong: I have to be. This is Toby. “Saturday evening? Sunday?”
“I’ll be very busy,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “Super busy with many interesting and exciting things that don’t involve you.”
I stare at him for a few seconds, eyes beginning to prickle. “Toby, that’s incredibly hurtful.”
“Oh.” He looks confused. “I’m so sorry, Harriet. I didn’t mean it to be. What’s a more sensitive way of saying I’m not allowed to spend time with you right now?”
Giraffes have nothing on me. An oyster is more capable of putting together a coherent sentence.
“Uh.”
“Well, this has been a very interesting catch-up,” Toby says finally as I stare at him in silence. “It was nice to see you, Harriet Manners. I hope you are enjoying all your brand-new friends.”
Then, without another word, Toby makes an abrupt left and dives straight through a hole in a hedge.
And crawls out the other side, away from me.
stand for a few minutes and watch Toby army-crawl across the grass as if I can’t see him.
Enjoying all my brand-new friends?
Not allowed to spend time with me?
What the sugar cookies have Jasper and Toby been talking about for the last two weeks in the art room? How many excellent and valid points has Jasper made, exactly, and what about?
Or – more specifically – about whom?
I blink back the hurt as my ex-stalker attempts an enthusiastic somersault and disappears round a wall. He asked me to stay away last week, so I did. Why is he being so weird now? What have I done wrong? Is he angry with me for something?
Then I swallow and tighten my hands into little balls.
If Toby wants to take sides against me, fine.
He wasn’t really part of my gang anyway: he was a late insertion, an involuntary addition who forced his way in via totally socially unacceptable methods, such as stalking. If he’s going to be like this, it can just return to normal again: Nat and I together, like fish and chips, or ketchup and mustard or banana and Marmite, which I quite like even though nobody else I know does.
Except …
I haven’t really heard from my best friend all week either. We’ve exchanged a few messages – having a great time, super busy, etc. – but other than that she’s been pretty quiet. I’ve been giving her some space to enjoy the first few heady days with her new boyfriend.
But I think I’ve finished doing that now.
So I get my phone out.
Hey – want to hang out this weekend? Hxxx
My phone beeps almost immediately.
You OK? N xxx
Brilliant! I just thought we could watch that model show you like. I think somebody gets punched this week. Hxx
Love to! But super busy again. Another time? Nx
Monday or Tuesday? Wednesday? H
Something in my throat is starting to hurt.
I may not understand relationships, but I understand punctuation.
This is rapidly growing tension composed entirely of kisses and passive aggressiv
e emoticons. Three kisses to two to one to none: we’re both getting irritated. Strategically placed smiley and sad faces: she’s feeling guilty, I’m getting needy.
And there’s really no way Nat’s that sad.
She lives three minutes’ walk away: not in the outer Hebrides.
I wait an inordinately long time – given that we are in the middle of a conversation – then my phone beeps.
Out every night this week too. I’ll ring soon? Love you. Nat xxxx
I stick my tongue out at my phone – two sad faces and four kisses is really pushing it – then type:
No worries! Let me know when you’re free! Hxx
Insincere winky face.
A part of me totally understands: of course it does.
I know exactly what happens when you meet someone you really, really like. I know how it feels as if the world is shutting down and opening up at the same time: as if it’s somehow getting bigger, but only for the two of you. How every sentence of a book, every line of a song, every scene of a film, has a little fragment inside it just for you.
How anything that doesn’t starts to melt away.
But no matter how much time I wanted to spend with Nick, I always tried to find a way to put Nat first. To include her. To make sure she didn’t feel shut out. Always. Because falling in love doesn’t have to mean dropping your best friend in the process.
Except – as I put my phone back in my pocket and start wandering slowly home again – I’m starting to realise I might be wrong.
Maybe sometimes it does.
very hour in Britain we throw away enough rubbish to fill the Albert Hall. It looks like they’ve just found a new place to put it.
The house has exploded, yet again.
As I push the front door open slowly, I spot about eighteen different receptacles scattered at random all over every possible surface: cups, mugs, glasses, vases, the yellow bucket we normally keep in the garden. Tiny bits of debris are scattered all over the hallway, as if a particularly stupid Hansel and Gretel got lost somewhere near the entrance.
So far this week I’ve tidied the house every single night before Annabel got home.
And – frankly – I’ve had enough.
“Dad,” I say, slamming my satchel on the floor. “Do you think we have pixies or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” My father pokes his head round the corner of the living-room door. “I don’t believe in pixies, Harriet, or fairies either for that matter. I’m a fully grown man in his forties. Do I look like an idiot?”
I stare at him for a few seconds. I can’t believe that appears to be a genuine question.
“You have a tea towel on your head.”
“Yes, well.” He sticks his nose in the air in a gesture I may have to stop doing sharpish. “Your sister and I have spent the day adventuring, and I was keen to give her as realistic an experience as possible.”
“With a tea towel on your head?”
“I couldn’t find my Indiana Jones hat, and Tabitha thought it was hilarious.” He holds Tabby out from behind the doorframe. She has a tiny towel on her head and is grinning widely. “So, don’t you want to know what we found?”
At any other time, I absolutely would: yes. I admit I’d be donning a tea towel and marching around the house with my compass.
But right now, I’m not really in the mood.
“No,” I say a little too sharply, putting one foot on the stairs. “Feel free to discover-stroke-destroy the house without me, Father.”
“First we found a half a hamster wheel in the shed, which is very mysterious given that this family has never had a hamster.”
Another step and a sigh.
“We did, Dad. It ran away on day two.”
“Ah. Smart little man. We also found a quarter of a person, which your sister thought was hysterical.”
He pulls out the Hug Pillow Rin sent me from Japan a few weeks ago, straight after I got back from New York. It consists of half a torso, one arm and a pink T-shirt that says I am made for the loving of us.
“A gift from a friend,” I say, taking another grumpy step. Then I turn back slightly. “Actually, give me that.”
Dad throws it and I catch and hug it to my chest.
It might just be time to start using it.
“Don’t you want to know what else we found, Harriet? They appear to be addressed to you.”
“If they’re flyers from the Chinese takeaway then it’s because I told the man in the shop that fortune cookies were actually invented in San Francisco and …”
I stop.
Dad’s grinning and wiggling his eyebrows.
With a sudden lurch, I glance back at all the glasses, mugs, vases and buckets. They’re not randomly distributed at all: they’ve been placed carefully. And the debris looks like … petals and leaves.
Oh my God.
I knew it. I knew I’d hear from Nick again.
In a single day, one human heart produces enough energy to drive a truck twenty miles. As I leap back down the stairs and start following the trail, mine suddenly feels like it could propel me around the country.
The petals are scattered in the kitchen, out on to the back step and down the garden. I run after them, with Dad jogging carefully after me with Tabby in his arms.
Then I open the shed and my little sister gives a shout of happiness that’s only very slightly louder than mine.
There are flowers everywhere.
Hundreds of yellow roses, pink alstromemeria, purple and white sweetpea, pink gypsophila, cream freesias and red carnations. They’re arranged in bunches on every available surface: on top of the lawnmower, hanging off a large rusting fork and lined along the window ledge.
It smells like Granny Manners’ house, except it doesn’t come from a spray or a potpourri inside a particularly creepy teddy bear.
I open my mouth and shut it again.
“I spent all day arranging them for you,” Dad grins from behind me. “They came with that.”
He points at the old hamster ball, balanced haphazardly on a chair in the middle.
In it is a little yellow envelope that says:
HARRIET MANNERS
And my heart abruptly shoots like a truck to the moon.
’ve never been sent flowers before.
Or I have – obviously – because I’m sixteen and what kind of self-respecting teenage girl has never received flowers?
I’m just not entirely sure they count if they’re from your family, you’re ten and you’ve just had your tonsils out. Gifts don’t seem to mean quite as much if you have to chop a bit of your body off first to get them.
But as I run back into the house with my hug pillow over one shoulder, my arms full and my hand clenched tightly round the envelope, it hits me: these aren’t just proper flowers, romantic flowers.
They’re fairytale flowers.
The kind you send someone when they win an Oscar, or have their first opening night in a theatre, or break a world record.
Or if you love them unstoppably.
Hands shaking, I reach my bedroom, close the door gently behind me and sit on the floor. I carefully place some cornflowers so I can stare at them, chest still zooming upwards.
Then I turn over the little yellow card.
With infinite slowness – the kind that really, really irritates Nat every Christmas – I peel it open. Carefully, delicately. As if I’m performing some kind of open-heart surgery.
Which, in a way, I kind of am.
Then I stare at the paper inside it.
And my nose abruptly starts to prickle.
Wilbur.
I feel like I’m splitting in half again: divided between being incredibly touched by this gesture, missing Wilbur so hard it hurts, and hating myself for …
For wishing it was from someone else.
No wonder I never get sent flowers. I’m a horrible, ungrateful hat and I deserve to have things cut out of my body without receiving any floral arrange
ments at all.
Blinking, I stare at the letter a little longer.
Then I give it a gentle hug, put it on the floor and fiddle with a blue cornflower petal while I wait for the annoying prickle in my nose to go away.
But it doesn’t.
Slowly, it spreads across the bridge of my nose, along my cheeks, into my forehead and creeps between my eyebrows. Like ivy, it tendrils outwards: stinging and bristling and spiking all the way across my face until finally it wraps itself round my throat and crawls into my eyes.
I try to take a deep, calm breath: It’s OK, Harriet, it’s OK, Harriet, it’s OK it’s OK it’s OK it’s OK …
But it’s no good.
The vines wrap tighter and tighter until I can feel the panic rising: my eyes wobbling, my chin crumpling.
I can’t do this any more.
I need Nick here, right now. I need to put my head on his chest and have his feet on top of mine; I need the smile that goes all the way round; I need his calmness and his kindness. I need his fresh green smell, and the scar he got from a seagull, and the way he brings things down from high shelves in supermarkets for strangers without being asked to.
I need him to tell me things are going to be OK.
That he hasn’t gone for good; that I can do this without him. Because he’s coming back.
But I just don’t know if I believe any of it any more.
So I do the only thing I can to bring him closer. I sit up; I wipe my face and grab a piece of paper and a pen.
And I start writing again.
have never run so fast in my entire life.
With my envelope in my hand, I fly down the stairs, out into the street and towards the postbox as if my feet are on fire.
As if there are tiny wings on my heels and six rocket engines on my back. As if I have a magical cape; as if I’m a paper aeroplane.
As if I’m a comet, or a falling star.
And as I run, I chase Nick.
Tokyo – June (4 months ago)
“3,358 seconds.”
We passed through tiny side streets, past dark wooden houses with white fabric hanging from the doorways like half-open gifts, under little archways and curved roofs, popping out into bustling, noisy roads and then back into the quietness again.