Model Misfit

“Archibald, the world’s smallest bull?”

Annabel looks calmly at Dad. “I think it’s time to give Harriet back her Guinness Book of Records.”

Dad shakes his head. “I’m surprised at you, Annabel. Do you have no respect for the majesty of the animal kingdom?”

“I have plenty of respect for it, Richard. I just don’t particularly want it coming out of my uterus.”

“Liz?”

“You’d better be referring to the Queen.”

“Of course I am,” Dad says indignantly. “Two of them, in fact. Both fierce examples of female power, independence and majesty.” He pauses. “And, you know … Hurley.”

I quickly cough from the doorway before there’s only one parent left alive to appeal to. Then I walk regally into the centre of the room.

“Father. Annabel.” I look at Hugo who scampered down here at the first whiff of cheesy-bacon. “Dog. I would like to open this session by apologising profusely for my behaviour yesterday. It was an untimely display of vivaciousness due to the unexpected ruination of my Summer of Fun Flow Chart. I should have found a way to express my entirely valid opinions more reasonably.”

I pause to see if this heartfelt apology has sunk in. They’re both staring at me with wide eyes. Ha. I feel a bit like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m totally going to nail this.

“Secondly,” I say, putting my laptop down on the table and pressing a button so that it shines at the wall. “I have something very important to show you.”

There are a few seconds of impressed, awed silence.

Then my parents burst into laughter so loud that Hugo steps back and starts barking at the ceiling.

“Brilliant,” Dad gasps. “What’s she wearing this time?”

“I think it’s her bridesmaid dress from Margaret’s wedding,” Annabel whispers, wiping her eyes. “You can still see where she sat on a candle during the after-dinner speeches.”

“Oh, thank God. I thought my daughter had turned into an enormous toilet-roll holder.”

I wait patiently for them both to stop giggling. I’m totally going to remember this moment when it comes time to put them in a retirement home.

“This outfit,” I say, nobly deciding to rise above both of them, “may be a bridesmaid dress, but if you use your imagination it represents something much bigger.”

I press a button on my laptop, and an image of a cygnet shines on to the wall. “I was once an ugly duckling—”

Dad puts his hand up. “With feathers all stubby and brown?”

I stick my tongue out at him and press the button again. The picture changes from cygnet to swan. “But in the last six months, I have grown up a lot. I have transformed.” I click quickly through a few photos of tadpoles and frogs, caterpillars and butterflies I copied from Google. “But what happens at the end of a transformation … is that where the story ends?”

I point at the slide that says:

TRANSFORMATION → WHAT NEXT?

“Yes.”

I scowl. “It’s a rhetorical question, Dad. The implied answer is clearly no.”

“Keep going, Harriet,” Annabel says through a mouthful of ketchup pear. “I’m curious to see where this will end up.”

“Does a caterpillar sit on the same leaf when it’s a butterfly? No! It goes for a little fly and sees something of the world. Does the tadpole stay in the same pond once it’s a frog? No! It stretches its legs, goes for a jump, explores other waters.” I gesticulate energetically with my matching fake flower bouquet. “Did Cinderella go back to cleaning hearths once she married the prince?”

“Probably,” Dad says. “They didn’t have women’s rights back then. She had to do the cooking too, and probably a bit of laundry.”

“For the love of sugar cookies, Dad, stop answering rhetorical questions.”

I take a deep breath and compose myself again.

“Transformation means moving forwards. If a butterfly stays on the same leaf and a frog stays in the same pond, then they may as well have stayed a caterpillar or a tadpole. There was no point in metamorphosing.”

“Wrap it up now, Harriet,” Annabel says gently.

I had an entire slide about a dragonfly, but maybe I’ll leave that for the encore. I click to the final slide, and a picture of Mount Fuji shines on to the wall with my face hastily copied and pasted on top of it.

“So, in summary: I assert my right to go to Tokyo for a modelling job. Thank you for listening.” And I plonk myself triumphantly down on a chair.

Excellent. That should do it.

Maybe I won’t be a physicist after all. I’ll be a lawyer, and my poetic and powerful Powerpoint presentations will be made into poignant fridge magnets for years to come.

Dad’s expression reminds me of Hugo when we get takeaway pizza. “Japan? The agency wants Harriet to go to Japan? Annabel, that’s where those little trees that look like big trees but smaller come from. Can I go with her, Annabel? Please?”

“Richard,” Annabel says, “if you had a full-sized koala lodged in your abdomen, would you want me to stay with you?”

Dad looks horrified. “Definitely.”

“Then let’s assume I feel the same way, shall we?” She turns back to me with a softer voice. “We can’t take you to Japan, sweetheart. I wouldn’t be able to get through the doors of the aeroplane, for starters, and I need your dad here because I could go into labour at any moment. You understand, don’t you?”

I nod. Of course I understand that.

Annabel’s eyes widen. “So what you’re actually asking is to go to Tokyo, entirely on your own? At fifteen years old?”

“Yuka will be th—” I start, and Annabel looks at me sharply.

She has a point: Cruella De Vil would make a more reassuring guardian.

I clear my throat and clutch my fake flower bouquet as tight as I can. “Like Cinderella, I believe it is my turn to stop cleaning hearths.”

“Harriet,” Dad points out. “You don’t even make your own bed.”

“I’m talking symbolically.” Dad clearly doesn’t understand the subtleties of the English language. “Please?”

Annabel smiles. “Come here,” she says affectionately, and when I perch on the sofa next to her she nudges me with her shoulder and spikes another pear with her biro. “Listen, we know things are hard for you at the moment, Harriet. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.”

I shrug.

“But I’m sorry, you can’t go to the other side of the world on your own. You might be older than your age in some ways, but in quite a few of them you’re also much, much younger.”