All That Glitters

I’m just chipping a bit of melted chocolate off a pound so that the machine recognises it as something other than a snack when something small and shiny flies through the air and lands in my lap.

I blink at the newly arrived coin, then at the empty room.

Maybe there’s some kind of strange gravitational pull levitating the money out of the machines and throwing it at my head. I suppose I could do my science project on that instead.

Reaching into my bag, I pull out another ten pence and there it is again: money, soaring through the air.

Except this time it’s a pound, which is even better.

I look around the empty room – still nothing – and am just quickly calculating how long I’ll have to stay here before I am rich enough to buy a castle when somebody laughs.

“You actually think it’s magic flying money, don’t you?”

Then I see the shoe in the pile moving. A pointy, silver shoe that stormed down my driveway yesterday morning, attached to my best friend.

“Nat?”

A dark, curly head pokes out from behind an enormous pile of clean jumpers and trousers. She’s obviously been lying in them, like some kind of enormous cat.

“Obviously. God, you took ages. I was starting to think I might actually have to do some washing.” She stands up, puts Vogue down and picks off a pair of huge beige knickers attached by static to her jumper.

“Gross,” she adds, flinging them into the corner so they hit the wall with a fffpp. Then she turns to where I’m still sitting, frozen in surprise. “How’s it going, Manners?”

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eriously.

I have got to start checking rooms before I walk into them. Apparently chameleons and dragonflies have 360-degree vision, and I am clearly neither. If I were a small animal, I’d definitely have been eaten by now.

“Nat, what are you doing here?”

She hops on top of one of the machines. “Finding you, obviously. I’ve got a selfie with Vivienne Westwood – she was nowhere near as difficult to pin down.”

I jump with considerably less nimbleness on to the machine next to her. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s going on? I’m so worried, I’ve just spent an hour sitting in a laundry basket, covered in old-lady clothes. I may never fully recover.”

I take a deep breath and decide to confront the metaphorical elephant in the room head-on. “I’m fine, Nat. Honestly. Nick quit modelling and went back to Australia, and we both decided together that a long-distance relationship was too painful. I know we made the right decision, I just don’t want to talk about it, that’s all.”

“Really?”

“Really really.”

“Really really really?”

“All of the reallies.”

“So you’re OK?”

“Yes,” I say as confidently as I can.

Nat studies my face carefully, then her shoulders relax very slightly. “Thank God, because I need to tell you something and if I don’t I’m going to explode all over my second-best dress and then we really will need a launderette.”

Suddenly I notice again how perfectly curly her hair is.

In fact – now I’m not hiding in a bush fifteen metres away, being attacked by spiders – I can see a general shininess about Nat, as if her insides have just been dipped in something twinkly. Her eyes are sparkling and her cheeks are pink; there are little dimples in the corners of her mouth and her skin looks like it could glow in the dark.

I look down: the varnish has been chewed off every single one of her nails.

Then I remember her on my doorstep yesterday.

I really need to talk to her.

Oh my God, why did I automatically assume it was about me? Ugh. Maybe Jasper has a point after all.

“Is it François? Are you back with him?”

“Who?” Nat frowns. “Oh, the French dude. Ugh: no. He won’t stop sending me postcards with rabbits cuddling in front of the Eiffel Tower. This one is called Theo. He’s studying photography at college, and we kissed on Friday night for the first time. He’s all right, I guess. For a boy.”

My best friend is playing it cool, but her entire face is luminous as if something has been set on fire behind it.

I stare at Nat in confusion. She has left literally fifty-six messages on my phone over the last few days, and not a single one of them mentioned this.

“But … why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because you’re my best friend and you’ve just had your heart broken and this is terrible timing and I didn’t want to make you sadder.”

I suddenly love my Best Friend so much it’s hard to swallow.

“Nat,” I say finally, “do you know what happens to metal when it touches another piece of metal in outer space?”

“It makes a really loud screeching sound and the universe goes aaaaaargggh stop it?”

I grin at her. “There’s no sound in space, so no. What happens is that those two bits of metal weld together permanently. Nothing that makes you happy could possibly make me sad, Nat. We’re welded.”

She considers this briefly and then pulls a face. “Remind me never to go into space with Toby, in that case.”

We both laugh, then sit in comfortable silence for a few seconds with one shoulder touching.

“So how did you know I’d be here, anyway?”

Nat stretches and yawns. “I tagged you with an electronic chipping device while you were sleeping. Like a cat.”

My hand automatically goes up to my neck.

“Plonker. As soon as I got that last text I knew where you’d be, Harriet. You never use exclamation marks in a text unless you’re lying. So I figured your first day back had blown, and you’d be heading straight here.”

I blink at her in amazement.