I grinned. “Say that again.”
“Schedule.”
“Again.”
“Harriet Manners, don’t you dare affect my schedule.”
I pulled Nick to a stop and stood on my tiptoes so I could kiss him. “I love it when you talk itineraries to me, Lion Boy.”
Nick kissed me back. Then he leant forward until I could feel his breath in my ear and whispered:
“Timetable.”
There are 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in my body, and at that precise moment every single one of them was his.
“2,228 seconds,” I whispered back.
And he took my hand again and started running as I kept counting down: through the quieter streets, into the large, silver buildings of Roppongi. We ran over grey pavements, under an enormous, thirty foot bronze spider with an egg sac containing marble eggs and towards a huge, glass skyscraper.
Then we caught our breath in a lift that shot us fifty-seven floors into the air.
“At what point in our relationship,” I said, leaning against the wall and panting slightly, “did we decide there would be so much running? I mean, you’ve met me before, right? I’m not exactly renowned for my athletic abilities.”
“Well, my little geek,” Nick said as the lift doors opened, “did you know that when you run you spend more time in the air than you do touching the ground? So if it helps at all, that means it’s the closest we can get to flying.”
Then he wiggled his eyebrows at me.
I glared at him crossly. That did help, yes. Nick was officially the only person in the world who could make me voluntarily do physical activity.
“Whatever,” I said faux-grumpily. “If I really wanted to fly that badly I could just get on a trampoline and …”
I stopped talking.
While I was muttering we’d walked up tiny stairs on to a wooden deck surrounded by barriers of glass. People were scattered around us, taking photos, and in every direction was Tokyo. Stretched out and sparkling in the sunshine, leant against a backdrop of clear, bright blue.
And – far away – on the horizon, was a little cone shape.
Mount Fuji.
Nick reached out, tugged me into his side and kissed my head as I stared at it in amazement. I wanted to see Tokyo, and he had given me all of it in one go.
“Without equal,” he grinned, holding his arms out with a flourish and bowing. “Told you I could do it in the allocated time.”
“Oh my God, that’s so romantic. Say that again.”
“Allocated,” he said into my hair, “time.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, kissing the edge of his chin. Then I looked at my watch. “Although, you’ve still got fifty-two seconds left, according to my calculations.”
“Don’t need them,” Nick laughed. “Actually, I didn’t need any of them in the first place. I was just making you run for the sake of it.”
I blink at him. “What are you talking about? This isn’t your favourite bit of Tokyo?”
“Nope.” He touched the end of my nose with his finger. “I was there already. My favourite bit of anywhere is you.”
And then he kissed me.
lowly, I pull my satchel out from under a table.
Gently, I touch the little coloured beads hanging in a circle round my neck: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
My very last gift from Nick.
Then I open my bag, tug a box from inside it and start pulling everything out carefully, as if I’m playing a very volatile game of Operation.
A Clothes Show ticket from the first time I ever met Nick under a table.
An advert torn from a magazine, depicting a boy, a white kitten and a girl, jumping in the Russian snow: the first time he ever held my hand.
The tiny toy lion he brought me when I was sick with flu, and the (unused) tissue and (unopened) packet of Lemsip that were supposed to make me better, but I kept instead.
A little postcard with a T-rex on the front that arrived a few days after I said I had an inner dinosaur in Tokyo, and the letter that followed our race from the roundabout: Told you I was faster. xx
The folded, crumpled 1,000-yen note he gave me on the edge of Lake Motosu.
A very, very dry blue sock.
Finally – when the box has been excavated until it’s all lying in front of me, like a strange archaeological dig – I get a pristine envelope out. I pull a clean, smooth piece of paper from it and unfold it gently.
And I start reading.
stare at the box in my lap.
Oh, you thought I meant I carry the past around with me metaphorically?
No, I meant literally.
At the bottom of my satchel, under all my schoolbooks and fact books and dictionaries and thesauruses, so I know it’s there.
I don’t always tell you everything, you know.
I’m an unreliable narrator. We all are.
We don’t unfold ourselves like pieces of paper for everyone to see: that’s not how humans work. There are always parts of us we shut away or hide. Bits of ourselves we can’t touch because they’re too precious and buried too deep.
Fragments of truth we barely admit to ourselves.
Because sometimes editing our own story is the only way to get through it.
So here are the three facts you didn’t know.
Fact 1
My letters were going abroad, but they weren’t going to Australia. They were going to a little village in Brazil, so that Bunty could look after them.
“Darling,” she said when I rang her in tears from my bedroom in Greenway, New York, five weeks ago. “Sometimes all you need is a good cry and an even better pen. Write it all down and send it to me, and I’ll keep it safe for you.”
So that’s what I did.
When I couldn’t hold it in any more, I pulled my heartbreak out like a splinter and sent it to my grandmother to look after. Because it helped, somehow: knowing she would protect the parts of me I couldn’t hang on to any longer.
It made me lighter.
Fact 2
What happened on Brooklyn Bridge didn’t stop being true, just because it hurt.
Nick and I had three choices.
a) He could carry on living a life he didn’t enjoy just to see me: doing a job he hated, putting his future on hold, flying to and fro across the world for a few grabbed moments together. I could watch him grow increasingly lost, unanchored and unhappy: divided between a real life and a girl he loved.
b) We could stay together, seven thousand miles apart, and watch as our connection slowly shattered every day: until the awkward silences lengthened, the frozen moments expanded, the distances pulled at us, until finally all we had left were memories and stars.
Or c) I could force Nick to move on.
Instead of tearing him to pieces so I could keep a few bits for myself, I could make him take all of it with him. To live wholeheartedly without me in a way that would, eventually, make him happier.
Which is – I think, from his voice on that video – what he’s started doing.
Because …
Fact 3
I got Nick’s letter six days before I left New York.
I’ve had it all along.
So he didn’t reply to my letters because he didn’t get them. He doesn’t know how much I miss him because I haven’t told him. And he doesn’t know why I broke his heart because I couldn’t let him know mine was broken too.
Over the last year, Nick has made so many sacrifices for me. He has been there when I needed him, gone when I didn’t: appeared and reappeared and disappeared, entirely for my sake. He has adored every bit of me, without question and without judgement.
He has given me the kind of romance some people never get in an entire lifetime.
And I’ll be honest: if he’d tried one more time – one more letter, one text, one single flower – I’d have crumbled and changed my mind: it would have been impossible not to. So
I guess the lonelier I got, the more I waited and hoped for it as hard as I could.
But he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed happiness and started moving forward again.
Which means I finally know I made the right decision.
I may not be the girl Nick thinks I am.
Over the last month, I’ve been lost, scared, weak, unhappy and – at points – quite shockingly stupid. I’ve lost my best friends, clung to the wrong people for the wrong reasons and done a whole lot of things I’m not proud of.
But this is not one of them.
The Oxford English Dictionary says that love is both a noun and a verb. And – because of Nick – I know now what I didn’t know a year ago.
It’s not enough to say it; it’s not even enough to feel it.
Love is a doing word: an action you have to complete continuously, every day, however much it hurts. Whatever it ends up costing you. And this time loving Nick properly means letting him go.
After all, he has saved me, over and over again.
It’s my turn now to save him back.
Even if it means being on my own.
uffice to say, the letter isn’t clean and smooth any more.
Two teardrops have hit the page, and are now making their slow, wobbly way downward: smudging the pen like little blue snail trails.
Which doesn’t really matter, to be honest.
I know every word so off by heart they might as well be engraved there.
Patiently, I wait until the tears drop off the bottom of the paper. Then I give my letter a gentle kiss, fold it in half again and put it back in my Nick Box. Followed by the yen note, the T-rex, the Lemsip and tissue, the toy lion, the advert, the ticket. I take the planets necklace off carefully and put it on top, straightening it out so it doesn’t get tangled.
Then I grab the lid.
“Harriet?”
Quick as a flash, I wipe a hand across my eyes, slam the lid on top of the box and cram it back into my satchel.
Should have locked the front door. Idiot.
“Mmmm?”
“Are you OK?”
I turn with wet eyes to the doorway, and through the sparkling shine in my eyes all I can see is purple.
“Absolutely,” I manage, nodding. “Fine. Superb. Coolioko. Why wouldn’t I be?”
India walks across the room quietly and then sits down next to me with her hair gleaming like ink.
“First of all,” she says, “because that was officially the most hideous party anyone has ever thrown in the history of parties, ever. For future generations, that party will be the one parents tell their children about to dissuade them from ever throwing parties.”
I nod. To say the least. “I know.”
“Second of all, because you’re sitting on the floor crying into a sock.”
I blink at Nick’s blue sock, still in my hand.
I thought I’d put it back in the box. Apparently I’m still clutching it to my face like a toddler with a tiny, faceless teddy bear.
“Ah.” Flushing, I shove it back in my satchel. “And third of all I just said coolioko and that’s a made-up word?”
“Nope,” India says, pointing at the ceiling. “Indus. Pavo. Carina. Mensa. Volans. Chamaeleon. Reticulum. Octans. They’re constellations in the southern hemisphere. You’ve stuck the sky on the wrong way up.”
uthenticity.
Spiritual awareness, truth, vision.
These are just a few of the psychological qualities we associate with purple, as I discovered when I was researching my immortal duck outfit.
It’s also the traditional colour of royalty.
This is because the original purple dye required 250,000 individual purpura shellfish – hence purple – to extract enough to make one single ounce. By the third century BC, Tyrian purple dye cost more than gold and wearing it was a sign that you were really worth something.
As I stare at India’s bright purple hair and cool but unshakeable expression, I’m starting to realise that maybe her hair colour is perfect for her in more ways than one.
“You came back.”
She grabs another sandwich from the table. “I like these,” she says, stuffing it in her mouth. Then she swallows. “Obviously I came back. I only left to tell Ananya she could walk home and then push her into a bush.” She points at a pink scratch glowing on the right side of her temple and another on her upper lip. “Sadly I ended up in it too. She’s always been a bit scrappy.”
I blink at her. “Always?”
“Yeah. Grandad was worried she’d got in with a bad crowd, so when we moved here I promised to pry her back out again.”
All known mammals have tongues.
In which case I’ve no idea what I’ve just turned into: all I can do is stare at India in total silence.
“You didn’t know Ananya was my cousin?” India says, black eyebrows creasing back into essay ticks. “We’ve got the same surname, Harriet. Didn’t you think that was a bit of a coincidence?”
Well, obviously now I think it is.
But I was far too distracted by everything else over the last fortnight to make the connection.
Actually, now I’m thinking of it, I should probably have guessed anyway. They have the same dark skin, the same icy expressions: the same subtly terrifying demeanour. And I thought it was weird that after only six weeks India was bossing Ananya around and calling her Banana.
“So you’re not disappointed with me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” India says sharply, taking another sandwich. “I knew you weren’t still with Nick straight away: nobody stares at a desk for twenty-five seconds in silence if they’re still in a happy relationship. I’ve hated Alexa from the beginning, and I liked you as soon as I saw you chatting to Steve and helping him pick up tissue. I knew what side I wanted to be on.”
My brain makes a little clicking sound.
OK, that’s enough now. India, stalking coldly to my side in the rain. Icily standing up for me in the common room. Forcing Ananya and Liv to follow her.
But all the long, cold stares of disdain …
“I know,” she sighs, rolling her eyes. “I have resting mean face. It’s a problem.” She grimaces. “Believe it or not I’m actually quite nice.”
I totally and utterly believe her.
Despite the similarities, I’ve just noticed the key difference between India and her cousin. When Ananya smiles, it doesn’t reach her eyes: with India, it’s the opposite way round.
“So I’m not a let-down at all?” I just need to check. “You haven’t been conned into thinking I’m cool by my fake social status and glamorous part-time job?”
“Harriet,” she sighs, standing up, “I recognise the constellations of the southern hemisphere off by heart and can classify the properties of crystal. I’m not sure cool is on my radar.” She glares towards the door. “Sadly, I’m going to have to tell Grandad I can’t get Ananya away from the bad crowd. She is the bad crowd.”
Slowly, warmth starts to spread through me: as if I’m sitting in sunshine, coated in rainbows, curled up in the middle of a hot-water bottle.
I did it.
After everything, I made a real friend. A proper one. One who likes me for the right reasons: because I throw terrible star parties and pick up loo roll and make buddies with caretakers called Steve. (I don’t know where he is, by the way. His house must be considerably further than twenty minutes away.)
And more importantly, I like her.
I always have.
“Do you want to go to my house?” I say enthusiastically, standing up. “I have a game of scrabble we can play, and there’s the rest of the star quiz to do and—”
“Yeah, go on then,” India says, grabbing the tray of sandwiches. “That sounds cool. Can we take the lights? It’ll help me focus.”
She unplugs Tabby’s night-light and starts heading smoothly towards the exit, hair like a chocolate bar wrapper.
Quickly, I grab my satchel and wipe my eyes on my wr
ist to make them as dry as possible.
Then I start following her.
“Oh I don’t think so,” an angry voice says. “Stop right there before I rip your flaming eyes right out of your sockets and use them as ping-pong balls.”
“Yeah,” another voice says, not quite as angrily. “Ping-pong balls. For mice.”
And standing in the doorway are Nat and Toby.
can only see the back of India’s head, but I’m pretty sure her face hasn’t altered.
I guarantee it’s set in exactly the same expression as always.
“That’s sweet,” she says flatly, eating another sandwich. “Who are you?”
“I’m your worst nightmare,” Nat hisses at her, folding her arms. “I’m the girl who’s going to tug your toenails off and turn them into earrings and then make you wear them. I’m the girl who’s going to pull out your eyelashes and eyebrows, hair by hair, until you’re totally bald.”
“Yeah,” Toby says, scowling and folding his arms too. “And then she’s going to turn them into wigs. Little tiny wigs. For hamsters.”
“Stop talking about rodents, Toby,” Nat sighs. “Seriously. Rodents have no part in this threatening process at all.”
“Again,” India says calmly. “Who are you?”
“Toby Pilgrim,” Toby says chirpily, his face clearing abruptly. He holds his hand out and I can see he’s wearing a T-shirt that says I AM A, followed by a picture of a rock next to a star. “It’s very nice to meet you properly, India. I believe you’re in my year at school, aren’t you? I’ve heard you’re an absolute whizz at physics.”
Nat rolls her eyes. “Oh my God, Toby, you’re useless.”
Then she turns back, all fierce again.
“So, you’re the famous India, are you? That makes sense. Well you can just put the sandwiches down, missy. You make Harriet cry again and I swear, I will conjure accessories out of body parts you didn’t even know you had.”
I’ve been watching this entire conversation with my hand still up to one eye, frozen in shock.