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She looks at Wilbur without a flicker of expression on her perfect, pale face. “I saw you eight minutes ago. Which I believe is two minutes longer than we agreed.”
“Precisely! Tooooooo long!” Wilbur runs back to me, totally unfazed, and pushes me forward. “I had difficulty retrieving this one,” he explains happily, as if he’s Hugo and I’m some kind of really nice stick. “But retrieve her I finally did.”
He gives me another nudge with his fingertips until I’m standing awkwardly in front of Yuka. There is something so queenly about her that I find myself suddenly dropping into a curtsy, the way I was taught to in ballet class before the teacher asked Annabel not to bring me back because it was “impossible to teach me grace”.
Yuka Ito looks at me with a stony face and then – almost without moving – touches a little button on a remote control on her lap. A bright spotlight fades in dramatically, almost directly above me, and I jump a little bit. Seriously. What kind of room is this?
“Harriet,” she says as I squint upwards. There’s no inflection to her voice, so I’m not sure whether it’s a question or a statement or whether she’s just practising saying my name.
“Harriet Manners,” I correct automatically.
“Harriet Manners.” She looks me up and down slowly. “How old are you, Harriet Manners?”
“I’m fifteen years, three months and eight days old.”
“Is that your natural hair?”
I pause briefly. Why would anyone dye their hair this colour? “…Yes.”
Yuka raises an eyebrow. “And you’ve never modelled before?”
“No.”
“Do you know anything about clothes?”
I look down at my grey pinstripe suit. It must be a trick question. “No.”
“And do you know who I am?”
“You’re Yuka Ito, Creative Director of Baylee.”
“Did you know who I was before Wilbur told you thirty seconds ago?”
I glance at Wilbur. “No.”
“But she’s very bright,” Wilbur bursts enthusiastically, clearly no longer able to contain himself. “She picks things up ever so quickly, don’t you, my little Bumblebee? Once I told her who you were she didn’t forget straight away at all.”
Yuka slowly slides her gaze over to him. “At what point exactly,” she says in an icy voice, “did it seem as if I was attempting to engage you in conversation, Wilbur?”
“None at all,” Wilbur agrees and takes a few steps back. He starts gesturing at me to get behind him.
“And,” she continues, looking at me, “how do you feel about fashion?”
I think really hard for a few seconds. “It’s just clothes,” I say eventually. Then I close my mouth as tightly as possible and mentally flick myself with my thumb and middle finger. It’s just clothes? What’s wrong with me? Telling the fashion industry’s most powerful woman that It’s Just Clothes is like telling Michelangelo, It’s Just A Drawing. Or Mozart, It’s Just A Bit Of Music. Why is there no kind of net between my brain and my mouth to catch sentences like that, like the one we have in the kitchen sink to catch vegetable peel?
“Would you mind explaining why you want to be a model in that case?”
“I guess…” I swallow uncertainly. “I want things to change.”
“And by things she means,” Wilbur interrupts, stepping forward, “famine. Poverty. Global warming.”
“Actually, I mean me mainly,” I clarify uncomfortably. “I’m not sure fashion is going to help with anything else.”
Yuka stares at me for what feels like twenty years, but is actually about ten seconds with a totally blank expression on her face. “Turn around,” she says eventually in a dry voice.
So I turn around. And then – because I’m not sure what else to do – I keep turning. And turning. Until I start to worry that I’m going to be sick on the floor.
“You can stop turning now,” she snaps eventually, and her voice sounds high and strained. She flicks her finger again and the light above me abruptly switches off and plunges me back into the dark. “I’ve seen enough. Leave now.”
I stop, but the room continues spinning, so Wilbur grabs me before I fall over.
I can’t believe it. That was my chance and I blew it. That was the escape hatch from my life and I managed to shut it on myself within forty-five seconds. Which means I’m stuck being me forever.
Forever.
Oh, God. Maybe I am actually a moron after all. I might have to recheck my IQ levels when I get home.
“Go, go, go,” Wilbur whispers urgently because I’m still standing in the middle of the room, staring at Yuka, totally paralysed with shock. “Out, out, out.”
And then he bows to Yuka, shuffles backwards out of the room with me behind him and shoves me back into the real world.
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he real world, as it turns out, is even icier than the fashion one.
I stomp back miserably into the little office where my parents are waiting: Annabel, with her head in her hands, and Dad, pointedly ignoring her and staring out of the window in huffy silence.
“Tell your stepmother you don’t mind being named after a tortoise,” Dad immediately demands, still staring out of the window. “Tell her, Harriet. She won’t talk to me.”
I sigh. Today is really going downhill. And given the start, I wasn’t sure that was possible. “I suppose I should just be grateful you weren’t browsing the FBI’s Most Wanted lists as well as scanning the Guinness Book of Records, Dad.”
“Tortoises are incredible creatures,” Dad says earnestly. “What they lack in elegance and beauty they more than make up for in the ability to curl up and defend themselves from predators.”
“What, like me?”
“That’s not what I was saying, Harriet.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“No,” Annabel snaps suddenly, lifting her head.
Dad remains nonplussed. “They do, Annabel. I saw a documentary about it on telly.”
Annabel whips round and her face is suddenly the colour of the paper she’s still gripping in her hands. “Why you felt the need to tell her about that bloody tortoise I have no idea. What’s wrong with you?” Dad looks at me for help, but I’m not going to drag him out of this one. “And,” she continues, turning to look at me, “I mean no; you’re not modelling. Not now, not next year, not ever. Full stop, the end, finis, whatever you want to put at the end of the sentence that makes it finite.”
“Now hang on a second,” Dad says. “I get a say in this too.”
“No, you don’t. Not if it’s a stupid say. It’s not happening, Richard. Harriet has a brilliant future in front of her and I’m not going to have it ruined by this nonsense.”
“Who says it’s brilliant?” I ask, but they both ignore me.
“Have you been listening to a single word that crazy man has been saying, Richard?”
“You just want her to be a lawyer, don’t you, Annabel!” Dad shouts.
“And what if I did? What’s wrong with being a lawyer?”
“Don’t get me started on what’s wrong with lawyers!”
They’re both standing a metre away from each other, ready for battle.
“Do I get a say in this?” I ask, standing up.
“No,” they both snap without taking their eyes off each other.
“Right,” I say, sitting down again. “Good to know.”
Annabel puts her handbag over her shoulder, quivering all over. “I said I would think about it and I have. I’ve even made notes and I have seen nothing that convinces me that this is right for Harriet. In fact, I’ve only seen things that convince me of exactly the opposite: that this is a stupid, sick, damaging environment for a young girl, it was a terrible idea and it needs to stop now before it goes any further.”
“But—”
“This conversation is over. Do you understand? Over. Harriet is going to go to school like a normal fifteen-year-old and she is going to do her exams like a normal fifteen-year-old and have a normal, fifteen-year-old life so that she can have a brilliant, successful, stable adult one. Do I make myself clear?”
I could point out that it’s irrelevant – seeing as I’ve just blown any chance I have – but Annabel looks so scary and we can both see so far up her nostrils that Dad and I both duck our heads and mutter, “OK.”
“Now, when you’re ready, I’ll be outside,” Annabel continues from between her teeth. “Away from all this rubbish.”
And Dad and I continue to stare at the table until we hear the front door close, with Annabel safely on the other side of it.
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e continue to stare at the table for quite some time: me absorbed in thought and Dad possibly just really interested in the table.
You know, the human brain never stops surprising me. It’s always evolving: not just through the centuries, but from day to day, and minute to minute. Always in a constant state of flux. Forty-eight hours ago, I would have laughed if somebody had told me I couldn’t be a model or perhaps stared at them as if they were strange alien beings with feet coming out of their heads. I’ve always wanted to be a palaeontologist, or maybe a physicist. But… I don’t want to go back to my life the way it was.
Not now I’ve imagined an alternative.
I look at Dad and realise he’s studying my face. “What do you want, Harriet?” he says gently. “Never mind Annabel, I think it must be her time of the month. You know, when she turns into a werewolf. What is it you want to do?”
I think about Nat and how devastated she would be if this went any further. I think about Annabel and her fury, and then I think about Yuka Ito and her open contempt.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say in a small voice. “It’s not going to happen anyway.”
At which point Wilbur bursts back into the room and flings himself dramatically into the chair that Annabel just vacated. He doesn’t seem to realise that anyone’s missing.
“You got the job,” he says abruptly, flinging his arms out in a wide motion. “She loves you.”
I stare at him in silence. “B-b-but – no, she doesn’t, she hates me,” I finally manage to stammer. “She turned the light off on me and everything.”
“Hates you?” Wilbur tinkles with laughter. “Golly-knickers. Did you see what she did to the other girls? Well, no, obviously not. We’d have all sorts of tribunals on our hands if anyone did. She does not hate you, my little Goldfish. She didn’t even turn the light on for most of the other candidates.”
“What’s going on?” Dad is still saying. At least, I think he is. My brain is making that high-pitched TV noise again. “What job?”
“The job of the century, my little Crumpet of Loveliness; the position of the millennium. The employment opportunity to end all employment opportunities.”
“Which is?” Dad snaps crossly. “Drop the jazz, Wilbur, and just tell us.”
Wilbur grins. “Gotcha. Yuka Ito wants Harriet to be the new face of Baylee. We’re on a deadline, so we start shooting tomorrow. In Moscow. For a twenty-four-hour whirlwind of fashion.”
I feel like I’m in an elevator, dropping thirty storeys in three seconds. My stomach doesn’t even feel remotely attached to my abdomen.
Dad opens and shuts his mouth a few times.
“For real?” he says eventually, and even in my catatonic state I cringe. I wish Dad would stop trying to be ‘street’.
“So real it could have its own TV show,” Wilbur confirms seriously. “We’ve been looking for the right person for ages. The advertising spaces are already booked and the crew is on standby. Now we’ve found her, it’s lift-off.”
“Gosh,” Dad says and he suddenly looks strangely calm. I thought he’d be up and dancing around the room, but he looks very composed and very – you know – fatherly. “Right,” he says in a faraway voice. “Wow.” He looks at me again. “So it’s actually happening then. Who’d have thought it?”
The white noise in my head is getting louder and louder. “Dad?” I manage to squeak. “What do I do?”
Dad clears his throat, leans toward me and puts his hand on my head. “Harriet,” he says gravely, in his most un-my-dad-like voice. “Think about it carefully. If you don’t want this, we walk now. No questions. If you do want it, I’m behind you.”
“But Annabel…”
Dad sighs. “I’ll deal with Annabel. She doesn’t frighten me.” He thinks about this. “OK, she frightens me. But I’ll just frighten her back.”
I try to swallow, but I can’t. The door has just been thrown wide open when I thought it was locked. This is the forked road that the poem talks about. I can take my old life back. I can be Harriet Manners: Best Friend to Nat, Prey to Alexa, Stepdaughter to Annabel, Stalkeree to Toby. Stranger and total Hand-sniffing Weirdo to Nick. Geek.
Or I can try to become something else entirely.
Something inside me breaks. “I want to do it,” I hear myself saying. “I want to try and be a model.”
“Well, duh,” Wilbur says happily.
“But what happens now?” Dad asks, taking hold of my hand and squeezing it. I squeeze it back. My whole body is trembling.
“Now?” Wilbur says, laughing and leaning back in his chair. “Well. Let’s just say that Harriet Manners is about to become very fashionable.” And he laughs again. “Very fashionable indeed.”
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o Dad and I have worked out a cunning plan. It’s not particularly complicated and it consists of one simple step: lie. And that’s it.
We debate the telling-the-truth option for about thirty seconds, and then decide that it’s probably much better all round if we just… don’t. Because we’re scared mainly. As Dad says, “Annabel is absolutely bonkers at the moment, Harriet. Do you really want to awaken the Kraken?”
So we’re going to lie to Annabel. And – I add this silently in my head – Nat. We’re obviously not going to lie to them forever. That would be ridiculous. We’re just going to keep the truth from them until the timing is right. And it feels like a suitable moment.
And we have absolutely no other alternative. Which makes me feel no better about anything at all, so as soon as we’re home from the agency, I make my excuses and go straight to the only place in the world I go when I need to run away.
