Nat pulls a bit of black satin out of her bag to show me, gives me a tight hug, then starts trotting towards the bus stop. “Call me when it’s sunk in, OK?” she yells over her shoulder.
I nod, but honestly: she may be waiting some time.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word epic can mean impressive or remarkable.
It can also mean heroic or grand in scale.
Since I was five years old, I’ve thought about all the ways I might eventually make my mark on the world. Dragons I could fight and winged horses I could fly and elements I could magic into being with my bare hands. Then – when I got a little older – I dreamed about diseases I could cure, dinosaur fossils I could unearth and stars I could discover and then name.
I’ve spent eleven years of my life studying as hard as I can in the hope that one day – with enough knowledge, enough commitment and enough dedication – I might eventually achieve something worthwhile.
Something heroic. Something grand.
Something epic.
I just never thought for a single second that my most tangible achievement would come at sixteen years old for sitting in a lake, wearing somebody else’s clothes and staring at a camera.
Doing absolutely nothing.
n the upside, somebody else knows what I look like too now. As soon as Nat’s gone, I somehow stumble to the bench near my house, plonk myself down and make the obligatory call-back.
My hands are shaking, my head is spinning.
My fingers are so sweaty it takes four attempts before I can get my phone to stop taking accidental selfies up my nostrils.
“Lovely girl! How are you, darling? We haven’t spoken for simply ages!”
I pull my phone away from my face and stare at Stephanie’s voice for a few seconds. We haven’t spoken for simply ages because last time I rang Infinity Models I heard her say:
“Who? Tell her I’m out.”
“But I can hear her,” I observed, and the receptionist passed the message on.
“Then tell her I’m dead. Freak polo accident.”
“I can still hear her,” I said sadly. “But thanks for trying.”
I’ve rung Infinity Models thirteen times over the four months since my return from Tokyo, and this is the first time Wilbur’s replacement has ever picked up. It’s quite difficult to really get to know someone properly when they’re pretending to fall off horses.
“I’m fine, thank you.” I’m slightly tempted to point out she sounds pretty buoyant for a recently deceased person.
“That’s ‘triffic!” she trills. “And how’s your …” There’s a pause while she tries to remember anything about me. “Anyway, I was just calling to say that my phone has been on fire this morning with love for my best model. Those photos are just scrummy. What a seuw-per time you must have had in China!”
“Japan.”
“Exactly! I just adore Mount Kilimanjaro!”
“Fuji.”
“Yah! I have some very big designers who want to see you, ey ess ey pee. Gucci, Prada, Versace, you name it. Pop in on Monday and I’ll set up some meetings.”
I blink. “I’m sorry, Stephanie, but I’m at school.”
“Are you, darling? How delightful! What for?”
“Umm.” I’ve never had to explain the concept of education before. “Knowledge. Learning. Books and my future and so on.”
“Ri-iiiiight. And that can’t be cancelled?”
I haven’t actually met Stephanie before, but I suddenly remember that Wilbur isn’t exactly a fan, to say the least.
“Not really, because … you know. It’s school.”
“That’s terribly inconvenient. Perhaps we should consider phasing it out. You know, gradually doing less of it.” There are a few loud taps on a keyboard. “Yah, no, yah. I’ll work something out. In the meantime, how does first thing tomorrow sound?”
“Sorry, sound for what?”
“Three days in Marrakech. Lovely job for Levaire, just come through today.”
We each blink an average of 6.25 million times a year, but if I’m not careful this phone call is going to use up the rest of my year’s rations and I’ll have to walk round until Christmas with my eyes shut.
“Levaire? As in Jacques Levaire, the jeweller?” Even I’ve heard of him. Nat’s unsuccessfully had a Levaire necklace on her Christmas list ever since she realised Santa was actually her mother. “Marrakech as in … Marrakech?”
“Yah, darling. Spain, Europe. Vah hot. Sand and so forth.”
“Morocco,” I say automatically. “North Africa.” I’m starting to wonder if Stephanie needs me to send her a world map.
“Exactly, darling. That’s what I said.”
I stare at my phone.
An hour ago, I assumed my fashion career was completely done. Now my face is all over town and I’m being invited to Africa to shoot for Jacques Levaire.
With an abrupt lurch, my heart does a familiar, excited humpback whale leap: into the sky, twisting around.
I’d love to go to Morocco.
I know quite a lot about it already: it’s the westernmost country in the Arab world, and some say Hercules himself forced apart Europe and Africa with his bare hands, thus forming the Straits of Gibraltar. It’s also considered by many as one of the most dramatic, exotic and compelling destinations there is, and I’ve studied all the guidebooks already.
Just – you know – in case.
It would mean modelling again, and I’ve actually kind of missed it.
It would be an adventure.
Plus, most importantly, it’ll give me something to do other than sitting on my doorstep, staring at the sky and waiting.
“I’ll—” I start, then stop.
The whale crashes back into the water again with an enormous splash.
I can’t keep using modelling to run away, can I? I have polynomials and factor/remainder theorem to learn at school tomorrow.
My parents will go mad.
Not to mention the fact that I’ve just discovered I don’t really like seeing my face on posters very much. It gives me anxiety attacks on the floors of shopping malls.
But … Morocco.
“Stephanie, may I have a couple of minutes to think about it?”
“Absolutely. And Hannah, dahling?”
“It’s Harriet.”
“Yah. This one is fifteen.”
I blink a few more times. Fifteen years? Fifteen carrots? Fifteen bottles, hanging on the wall?
“Pounds?” That’s not a huge amount of money, but I’m really not super experienced, I haven’t worked in a month, the flights must cost quite a lot and then there’s hotels to think about and …
“Fifteen grand, darling. Think about it.”
And the phone goes dead.
Stephanie may be gone – although probably not to the Other Side just yet – but I’m still staring at the phone.
Fifteen thousand pounds? Somebody wants to give me fifteen thousand pounds for something I’d happily do for free?
That is an awful lot of money.
Not just for a sixteen-year-old, either. It’s three years’ income for a single man in possession of a good fortune, according to Pride and Prejudice. It’s 911 times what Jo March sold her hair for in Little Women and nearly two months of James Bond’s salary. It’s – perhaps slightly more relevantly – one and a half whole years at Cambridge University.
My head is starting to spin; my hands are shaking.
So I take an enormous breath and decide to ring the only person left in the world who might actually have some answers.
And that is really saying something.
Wilbur.
t takes eighteen attempts to finally reach him, but I just keep staunchly going until I do.
Frankly, I have never played it cool in my entire life.
I don’t think now is the time to start.
“Squirrel-hips!” he squeaks finally. “Hold your Shetland ponies, this boy has written
the wrong name on my pumpkin-spiced latte.” Wilbur’s voice gets a little more distant. “It’s with a bur, not an iam. Yes, like the pig in Charlotte’s Web…. Excuse me?”
“My little sugar-lump,” he says, coming back to the phone. “I don’t care how adorable this American barista is, if he oinks at me again I will report him to the RSPCA.”
It suddenly feels like there’s a piece of apple lodged in my throat. I hadn’t realised when Wilbur left England for a new fashion job in New York quite how big the hole he’d left in my life would be.
“Wilbur, what outfit are you wearing?” I really need to visualise him. “At this precise moment, what have you got on?”
He takes this very creepy question completely in his stride. “A fake fur panda poncho with sticky-up ears and fluoro pink trousers that just scream I’m All That And A Bag of Kale Chips, darling. I look fabulous. Everybody wants to be me, or date me, or dehydrate me and keep me forever. Like a fig or maybe a raisin.”
I smile in satisfaction. I could be in New York right now, trying hard not to cuddle him like a massive rainbow kitten.
“So what’s cookin’, my little pookin’? Did you get my text?”
“Umm. Yes.” I swallow and to my horror, there’s a slight wobble in my voice. “That’s actually why I’m ringing. Wilbur, I don’t understand. What’s happening? Why is my face everywhere? I thought Yuka’s campaign wasn’t going ahead any more.”
Wilbur snorts loudly with laughter.
“Oh, dilly-dandelion,” he giggles. “That was never going to happen. Yuka obviously took Baylee to court immediately, like the rabid Rottweiler of fashion she is. After she won she decided to go hugeungous with her new label to make a point. Shoe-fungous, moo-gungous, boo-gungous.”
One day – when we’ve got less to discuss – I’m going to ask Wilbur why he doesn’t just say big.
“But why with me?”
“I thought that was obvious, monster-munch. You’ve always been her favourite ginger-frog. So much love in the room.”
Over the course of my modelling career, Yuka Ito has shouted at me, turned lights off and on over my head, locked me in glass boxes, thrown me into cold water, surrounded me with dead things and fired me. She must put models she’s not fond of in the oven and then eat them.
“But what about the gold-painted photo?” I ask in confusion. “That was for Baylee, wasn’t it?”
“Indeed it was,” Wilbur laughs. “Yuka poached you off them too: I think this is their way of fighting witch with fire. Oooh, that reminds me. She had a message for you and I’ll remember it just as soon as this caffeine hits my bloodstream. It’s a triple shot so it won’t take long.”
I can hear him blowing on his coffee 3,459 miles away: bright blue sky above him, yellow and orange leafy Central Park behind him, Empire State Building looming over. Brooklyn Bridge is suddenly so close I can almost see it.
I feel a homesick pang in my chest. Which is weird because I’m sitting right next to the house I actually live in.
“Boom,” Wilbur continues jubilantly. “She says: done.”
“Done? What does that mean?”
“Sugar-munch, if I understood what Yuka Ito was talking about I’d be the only person in the world and would have an entirely different and very lucrative career as a Yuka-whisperer.”
I frown. She probably means done, as in cooked: marinated and ready for frying, quite possibly.
And then it hits me.
Last December, I stood in Infinity Models with a spotlight over my head and told Yuka I wanted to model so that things would change.
More specifically: me.
That’s what she’s done: she’s given me exactly what I asked for. It just didn’t happen according to the schedule I originally laid out for it, that’s all.
I’m starting to realise maybe nothing ever does.
“So …” I’m ripping at the skin around my fingernails with my teeth. “What happens next, Wilbur? What do I do?”
“Chipmunk,” he laughs. “I’m your fairy godmother, not your fortune cookie. Tell me, is Stephanie still wearing scrunchies without any kind of irony? She should not be allowed in fashion. The woman is single-handedly preventing velvet from coming back in again.”
It’s only now starting to hit me that I’ve never done this before without him and I’m not sure I know how to.
“Wilbur, if I take the job in Morocco, will you come with me? Please?”
“I’d love to, munchkin,” he sighs. “I am so over New York I could hurdle it in eight-inch heels. But fairy godmothers don’t go to the ball, as much as we might want to. We simply get you ready and send you on your way.”
I stare at the pavement, because maybe that’s the problem. “But what if I’m not ready?”
“Then don’t go,” Wilbur says more gently. “Fame, fortune, success: you can take them or leave them, baby-baby-panda. We’ve given you the fairytale. What you do with it now is up to you.”
ead still spinning, I say goodbye to Wilbur.
Then, slowly, I open the sweaty, crumpled photo I have scrunched in my hands.
I stare at the glittering girl in the lake.
Underneath in small, gold letters is a picture of a glass perfume bottle that looks like a flame: frosted white glass that starts dark gold at the bottom and gets clearer and lighter towards a tip that curves upwards. There’s a tiny light built into the base, so the entire bottle looks like it’s glowing from the inside.
Beneath that is one large, silver word:
And I suddenly feel like I’m splitting down the middle: torn into two pieces.
On one side is Harriet Manners, geek.
Shy, clumsy, anxious and unpopular. Awkward and constantly apologetic. Collector of stick insects, inventor of personalised Monopoly games, dryer of socks. Dressed like a duck, hyperventilating on floors and hiding under tables.
Embracer of other people’s stories instead of her own.
Heartbroken, lonely and left behind.
On the other side is Harriet Manners, model.
Traveller through exotic foreign countries, grabber of opportunities, chaser of adventures. Successful and interesting. Wearer of designer clothes, desired employee of the fashion industry, explorer of strange cities and adored girlfriend of Nicholas Hidaka.
Loved, wanted and remembered.
Today at school suddenly flashes in front of me.
That’s what has changed, isn’t it?
Thanks to these impossibly beautiful and glossy photos, everybody has seen another side to me. The geek they’ve known for years has evaporated overnight, and in her place is the seemingly confident, successful version of me. Fearless and mysterious; intrepid and brave.
They’ve seen this glittering girl and they like her.
And you know what?
I think I do too.
I stare at the photo for a few more seconds, and – with an abrupt crack – I suddenly know which one of these two girls I want to be. And clue: it’s not the one who hides under her duvet, crying and wishing life was different.
“Stephanie?” I say when she picks up on the second ring. “I’m taking the job. In fact, from this point onwards I’ll be taking all of them.”
“Seuwper,” she says, tapping on a few keys. “I’ve just put the phone down on Gucci, Wang and McQueen so we’ll sort something out for when you’re back. This is just the start, darling. You’re going to be huge. Deets on the way.”
As I hang up, a tidal wave rushes over me again, except this time it’s not cold or panicky.
It’s warm and hopeful, and it leaves me glowing.
Everything in my life has already changed, and this is my only chance to change with it. To pick up my own story and turn the pages.
To start moving forward again.
Because whether I wanted to or not, nearly a year ago I split in half. There are now two Harriets, two lives, two people I can be.
Wilbur was right: it’s up to me which one I want.
And I choose the one that shines.
o, here are some interesting facts about lying:
Like, a lot a lot.
I don’t mean to, obviously. It’s just that I’ve worked out over a period of sixteen years that the chances of upsetting people, not getting what you want and finding yourself in trouble tend to be considerably higher if you tell the truth.
However, I have also learnt that building an intricate web of deceit almost always results in me getting caught in the middle of it, like a really stupid spider.
So I sit on the bench for a few minutes and think really hard. I do a little internet research. I make a couple of important decisions.
Then I decide to try something brand new.
Something unprecedented; something nobody would ever expect me to do in a million, billion years.
For the first time in known history, I resolve not to wear a thematically brilliant costume or make a fiercely relevant PowerPoint presentation. I won’t be typing out any clever arguments about insects or writing pie charts or flow charts or area graphs and then forcing them on my parents.
I’m not going to run away, or cry, or cover myself in dots of lipstick and coat myself in a fine layer of talcum powder to feign sickness, and I won’t pretend to fall down the stairs or break an arm or fake my own death with a very noisy vacuum cleaner.
Nope.
This time really matters, so I need to bring out the big guns. I need to concentrate all my persuasive powers and give it everything I’ve got.
So I do something I’ve never, ever done before.
I walk calmly home. I walk calmly into the living room. I sit down calmly with my parents.
And I tell them everything.
Or nearly everything, anyway.
I give them the leaflet and explain in detail about the impact of this campaign on my fashion career, and how Jacques Levaire now wants me to go to Morocco for a shoot.
But I keep my new mission to myself.
The truth can be a powerful thing; it’s not sensible to overdo it.