Picture Perfect (14 page)

“
Dingowombatikan?
” I smile. “That sounds like some kind of tiny marsupial.”

“I’m Australian,” my boyfriend laughs. “I’ve got imaginary indigenous species on the brain. This particular one looks like a dog crossed with a kangaroo.”

And suddenly my brain feels just fine.

July 15th

“I’ve got an idea.”

Nick and I were lying against each other on the roundabout in the park near my house, watching the sky rotate above us and the sun flash in and out of the trees.

We hadn’t spoken in more than thirty minutes, other than little kisses strewn throughout, and I was very nearly asleep.

“Mmmm,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “We should make a note of it and bury it in the garden for posterity.”

Nick laughed. “Do you want to hear it, or do you want to be a smart-arse?”

“I want to be a smart-arse,” I said firmly, sitting up and holding my hand out. “Hi, I’m Harriet Manners. We obviously haven’t met before.”

“Nice to meet you,” Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.”

“OK …”

“Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.”

I thought about it briefly.

Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was.

“Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?”

“Just wait and see.”

A few seconds later, I understood.

As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout.

One of Nick’s ended up on his nose.

And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur.

Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this.

So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths.

Then I reached out my hand.

“Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head.

So I promptly leapt off too.

Straight into a bush.

Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me.

With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open.

“I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox.

A few seconds later, I wobbled after him.

And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize.

Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall.

Like Humpty Dumpty.

Or some kind of really unathletic cat.

“Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!”

“Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.”

And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish.

I had to wait three days.

Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there.

Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass.

tell Nick everything.

Well, not
everything
, obviously.

I’m not insane.

But I tell him a carefully edited version of events. Or – as Annabel would put it – I just don’t
elucidate the facts accurately.

I don’t tell him, for instance, that my governess thinks I’m stupid and she might be right. Or that I haven’t made any friends or that I’m so bored and lonely I’m tempted to draw eyes on my cupboard and just start talking to that instead.

I don’t tell him Hugo seems to have let Toby supersede me in his affections already.

I don’t tell him that it’s taken Nat precisely five hours to find a new best friend called
Jessica
who looks exactly like me.

Or that they’re already drinking coffee together.

No, I lock myself in my bedroom so Annabel can’t hear me, and I simply tell him that things aren’t exactly going to plan.

And, as I talk, I can feel my voice getting higher and tighter and my breath getting faster until Nick says:

“Hang on, just how far away
are
you?”

“An hour and a half.”

“That’s not that far, Harriet. You haven’t moved to the moon. I’ll just come to you. No biggy.”

Of all the things I love about Nick, this is what I love most. I love his calmness. I love the way my brain spirals out of control while next to it his moves in a straight and steady path. As if I’m a little tug boat in a storm, being thrown about by the waves and the currents, and he’s the big ship I’m anchored to for safety.

My breathing starts to slow. “Really? You’ll do that?”

“Of course I will.”

“Will you come tomorrow?”

“What’s tomorrow?”

My stomach sinks. “Nick, it’s my b—”

He laughs. “Your birthday. I know. You’ve been reminding me for the last two months. I’m pretty sure you put it into my phone calendar. Three times.”

And I set an alarm for him, just in case.

“I only turn sixteen once, Nick. Just because your sixteenth birthday has slipped into the foggy mists of time doesn’t mean that everybody else is so complacent.”

“I’m only seventeen, Harriet. I can remember it quite clearly.”

“Sure you can. You probably carved it into a rock with another rock.”

We both start snorting with laughter.

“You know, I’ve worked out that if I lived on Mercury I’d be sixty-six years old tomorrow. I’d be twenty-six on Venus, and half a year old on Saturn. I’m only sixteen because I’m on
this
planet.”

“Just,” Nick says. “Sometimes with you it’s debatable.”

I stick my tongue out at the phone even though he can’t see it. “So can you come?”

“Of course. I’ve got a show at Versace but I should be done by five so I can hop on a train and get to you by seven?”

“Then we can have a really romantic evening,” I say hopefully, grabbing HNRNYP out of my pocket and staring at it. “
Ooooh
, can we have a picnic? Under an oak tree? With a field of corn blowing in the breeze and the sunlight falling just
so
against our faces and a dove with its wings spread and cooing and—”

“Sure,” Nick grins. “Birthday oaks, corn, breeze, sunlight, faces, cooing wing-spread dove. Done.”

“And cake? Will there be lots of cake?”

“Yes, Marie Antoinette. There will be cake.”

I beam so hard I’m sure he can tell. Although this does mean that I’ve only got about twenty-four hours to find some kind of field. I’m not entirely sure there is one. We might have to make do with the supermarket car park and a slightly dazed-looking pigeon.

I jump up in excitement. Everything’s starting to look perfect again. “So I’ll meet you at Greenway Station at seven tomorrow then?” I squeak.

“Count on it.”

And I settle down to write my new romantic American birthday plans in earnest.

y sixteenth birthday plans are now:

• Wake up in America with birds singing, sun shining, leaves rustling, etc.
  
• Read exuberant text messages from loved ones.
  
• Think about the fact that I am a legal adult, capable of driving a moped or an invalid carriage, joining a Trade Union and buying a lottery ticket.
  
• Do none of those things.
  
• Open the curtains jubilantly to face a world that feels entirely different.
  
• Bounce down the stairs, where my parents will pretend they have forgotten all about what day it is.
  
• Pretend to be surprised when they jump up and shout SURPRISE! and hand me an enormous, expensive and very thoughtful gift.
  
• Do fun stuff with thoughtful gift all day.
  
• Have the World’s Most Romantic Birthday Evening (WMRBE) with Nick.