Model Misfit

I high-five her. “Be slightly shorter and less fragrant, I’d imagine.” Then I pick up the scissors and start neatly cutting through a few pages of a beautiful model with blonde waves down to her waist.

After several hours of industrious productivity, during which I tell Nat all about the awesome trip to Japan that I won’t be going on, I say, “Seriously, Nat, what am I going to do without you? At least you’ll be in France. I’m going to be stuck here on my own.”

“And Toby. Don’t forget Toby.” Nat wrinkles her nose at me so I hit her with the magazine. I said small doses. “I’ve got it worse. I’m staying on a farm. An actual working farm with animals in it and stuff. What’s the prison on that island called?”

“Alcatraz?”

“Yeah. I’d rather have been sent there. At least I could have jumped out and swum to the shops in San Francisco. I’m going down in style though.” She holds up a lipstick. “I’m going to look like one of the women who works behind a beauty counter in John Lewis by the time I’m finished.”

“Are you going to milk cows and make butter and collect eggs?”

“I most certainly am not.” Nat shudders. “You realise eggs come out of chicken’s butts, right?”

“They don’t, Nat,” I laugh, cutting through another piece of paper. “They’re actually called cloacas, and all birds and amphibians and reptiles have them. For joint reproductive and digestive purposes.”

“Ew. That’s actually more gross.” Nat sits on the bed next to me, looking miserable. “Oh, God, Harriet. This summer is a total disaster. I bet there’s going to be some disgusting boy on the farm with a little wispy moustache and a habit of accidentally walking into my bedroom while I’m getting changed.”

I giggle. “And every time you take a shower he’ll lurk outside so when you come out in a towel he’s right there.”

“Yeah,” Nat says, starting to laugh. “And he’ll ask for the salt at the dinner table with, like, meaning.”

“And every ten minutes he’ll offer to give you a massage with olive oil he stole from the kitchen.”

“I bet he wears shiny green lycra cycling shorts around the house and his T-shirts are too short.” We’re both giggling uncontrollably now, and rolling around on the bed making vomiting sounds.

“I’m going to have to run away,” Nat says decisively. “I’m going to steal a pig and ride it into Paris.”

My phone beeps and I grab it out of my pocket. “Pigs can trot at up to eleven miles per hour at top speed,” I say, clicking on a message from an unknown number. “It’s definitely faster than walking.”

“Or a tractor. I can’t drive but I reckon if you’re in a tractor everything else gets out of the way for you. Do you think a tractor has gears, like a car …”

Nat continues chattering but I can’t really hear her any more.

The human brain consists of eighty per cent water, and for the first time in my life that’s exactly what mine feels like: as if it’s swishing and swirling around inside my head. My ears fill with the roaring sound you get when you sit at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Because I’ve just received this:

Hope you smashed your final exam. Would love to talk. Thinking of you. Nick x

(#ulink_3d17afa3-7843-57a5-9f66-94057ff75ad7)

Reasons Not to Think About Nick

1 He told me not to.

2 I have much more life-changing things to think about.

3 It’s all I do.

January 22nd (156 daysago)

“A seagull,” Nick said, leaning his head against the rope of my tyre-swing.

We were both wrapped up in big coats and scarves; I was wearing the big furry hat I got from Russia with the flaps in the sides. I leant back and looked at him, pointing at the faint scar just above his eyebrow. “A seagull gave you that?”

“Yeah. So I wrestled it to the ground with my bare hands. Then another seagull joined in so I fought that too. By the end there were, like, fifteen seagulls, all totally defeated. They called me Seagull Dundee after that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “How old were you?”

“Four. I was a very strong little boy.”

I laughed. “Now tell me the truth.”

Nick’s mouth curved up at the corner. “I cannot believe you don’t trust that I wrestled fifteen seagulls with my bare hands before I was out of kindergarten. What kind of rubbish girlfriend are you?”

“The kind with quite detailed knowledge of seagulls, unfortunately for you. No knowledge of boys but it balances out.”

He shouted with laughter. “I knew I should have gone for the girl on the Dolce & Gabbana shoot.” Then he pushed my swing a few times while I stuck my tongue out at him. “OK. What actually happened is I ran away from my parents when we were collecting rocks at the beach. I was pretty tiny so I didn’t get very far, but a massive seagull freaked me out and I fell over and smacked my head on a rock. When I woke up a few minutes later, it was standing on my chest.”

“Were you scared?”

“No. Heroes don’t get scared.” Nick thought about it. “One of us definitely pooped, though. I’m pretty sure it was the seagull.”

I laughed again. “I hate seagulls. Did you know that they’re so smart that they hang around bridges so they can steal the heat coming off the roads, and that they tap on the ground with their feet and pretend to be rain so earthworms come out?”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all. They’re so sneaky.”

“How big was this one?”

“The size of a tiger. Comparatively, anyway.”

I tried to imagine Nick small and frightened, but I couldn’t quite do it. “So what gave you the scar? The rock or the seagull?”

“The rock. Although the seagull got really close to my face too. Really, really close. Like, this close.” Nick suddenly stopped the swing and put his face near mine.

I held my breath. I could see the different shades of black and brown in his eyes, and the tangle of black lashes underneath them. I could see my hat reflected in his pupils. I could see the little mole on his cheek and smell the greenness which – I had finally managed to establish – was the result of a fondness for lime shower gel combined with a tendency to constantly sit on wet grass in his jeans.

“That’s pretty close,” I just about managed to say as he put his hand gently on my cheek and brushed away a bit of hat fluff.

“Yup,” Nick said with a smile that went up in one corner and seemed to stretch out forever. His hand stayed where the fluff had been. “But not quite close enough to hurt me.”

And he leant in and kissed me.

(#ulink_e213d29c-7647-58fe-8243-e59242fea30e)

cientists say that music can literally change the speed of a heartbeat. They failed to add:

So can a text message.