Picture Perfect (38 page)

Everything’s going to be exactly as it was, except better.

There won’t be lists and plans; there won’t be expectations of boat rides in Central Park, or an elevator up the Empire State Building, or flowers and chocolates. I won’t try and make us jump in and out of fountains in a romantic fashion, or kiss in front of firework displays, timed to perfection.

I’ll just let us be
us.

The way we always have been.

“Ooh,” I say in excitement. “There’s an exhibition on Italian Futurism and Reconstructing the Universe at the Guggenheim! Maybe we can go, and stand in front of the paintings and kiss and—”

“Harriet, I need to talk to you.”

I smile and snuggle in even more.

“I know you do,” I say happily. “About anything. Anything at all.”

There’s a silence.

A silence so long you could climb it with a pickaxe and a rope, should you be interested in climbing up silences.

And suddenly I realise that Nick’s arms aren’t wrapped around me. He hasn’t grinned since I got here. There hasn’t been a laugh, or a twinkle or a joke.

He hasn’t even tried to kiss me.

I’ve been so busy seeing the romantic reunion I wanted, I didn’t even notice.

Again.

“R-right?” I prompt nervously.

“No,” Nick says, pulling back slightly. “This time I
really
need to talk to you.”

Then I look up and see his face.

It’s as if somebody is trying to pull it apart from the inside. As if it’s taking every bit of energy he has to keep himself in one piece. And, one by one, the stars inside me start flickering and switching off.

I don’t think I’ll need to visit the Guggenheim.

My universe is going to be reconstructed much sooner than I thought.

cientists say that every year, ninety-eight per cent of the atoms in our body are replaced.

In the following five seconds, mine are all exchanged in one go.

And as the atoms in my face shift and change until they’re unrecognisable, all I can think is:

This isn’t how things are supposed to end.

I know stories, and I know romance, but this isn’t how mine is supposed to end at all.

“You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you,” I say, sounding strangely calm. Strangely quiet.

Strangely like somebody else.

There’s another pause, and then Nick sits down heavily on the path. “Do you know
why
this is my favourite place in New York, Harriet?”

I look at the top of his curly head for a few seconds, and then sit down next to him. “Because it can bear the weight of quite a few elephants?”

Nick smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“A little bit. But mostly it’s because it’s the only part of this entire city that feels like
me.
I’m always nowhere. Between two places. Seeing everything from a distance. Never part of it.”

I stare at the profile of a face I know better than my own. I stare at the ski-slope curve of his nose, and the dark length of his eyelashes, and the little line next to his mouth that shouldn’t be there yet.

“What do you mean? You’re always
everywhere
, Nick. You’re like some kind of magic genie.”

“I’m not magic,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “And I’m definitely not a genie. That’s kind of what I’m talking about. Always being everywhere means never being anywhere. I’ve been a model for more than three years, and I’ve spent most of my teens living out of a suitcase.”

I don’t know what to say.

It suddenly hits me that Nick has always felt slightly other-worldly to me. It hadn’t occurred to me for a single second that he’s just a normal seventeen-year-old boy, and to pop up around the world constantly must take quite a lot of effort.

“I’m tired, Harriet,” he admits, finally looking at me. “I’m tired of photo shoots where no one knows my name. I’m tired of flights and taxis and waking up in the morning, not knowing where I am. I’m tired of parties I don’t care about. I’m tired of having to pack my bags. I’m tired of having my life broken into little sections that don’t join up. I’m tired of always leaving.”

I can suddenly see his face on the catwalk again. The blankness, the anger, the resentment. Every time he called to say he couldn’t see me because he was in Africa, or in a casting, or in California or at a fitting. I didn’t see his frustration for what it was, because I thought it was aimed at me.

And it wasn’t. Nick doesn’t like being a model.

He
loathes
it.

“You’re tired of not having a home,” I say as finally I begin to understand.

He nods. “And you kept running away from yours, and that made me angry. I’m so sorry.”

I duck my head in shame as the truth hits me: my family don’t just
ground
me. They are the things that keep me
grounded.
They’re what I’ve run from, but they’re what I come back to every time. They’re how I know I’m
me.

And I didn’t understand until right this moment that Nick might need that just as much as I do.

“The falcons,” I say, looking up and remembering his silence.

“As you said.” The corner of his mouth twists down. “Peregrine means
wanderer
. But even they have somewhere to come back to.”

I’ve never seen Nick like this before. He looks so … lost. I shuffle a little bit on the pavement so my knees are touching his.

“I haven’t been home for more than ten days in three years,” he says quietly. “I miss being shouted at by Mum because I haven’t taken my shoes off at the front door or because my dirty laundry is in a smelly pile in the corner of my room. I miss my friends. I miss surfing and sunshine and playing the piano and waking up knowing where I am and who I am. I miss being in one place.”

After the last few weeks, I think I can finally understand that.

“You play the piano?” I say in surprise.

“Used to. They’re not that easy to fit on an aeroplane.”

“You could have got a mini keyboard. Or one of those electronic piano T-shirts.”

Nick laughs. “Should have thought of that.” Then he frowns. “But I’m not tired of you, Harriet. I can’t imagine
ever
being tired of you. So what can I do? If I stop modelling, I can’t be physically with you. But if I continue, I’m never here either. I don’t know what to do.”

And suddenly I know just how much I love Nick.

I love him with every single atom of me. With every one of my thirty-five billion cells; with every skin cell, hair cell, liver cell, kidney cell, heart cell and bone cell.

I love him with every single one of my old atoms, and I know I’ll love him with every one of my new atoms too. However many times I’m replaced, whoever I become, I will still love him.

Because I love him enough to say this:

“You need to go home.”

Nick stares at me for a few seconds, and then his face twists up. “But I
can’t
, Harriet. Because that means—”

“I know what it means,” I say, because Australia is over 9,000 miles away and Nick can’t be there properly if I keep any part of him with me.

“
Shoot
,” he says, putting his head against mine.

I laugh. “You really have choice moments of using that word, you know.”

There’s a long silence while we sit with our heads together.

That’s the thing with breaking up. There’s no need for language. No need to reduce emotions to basic words, to limit the immensity of how you feel to the paltry confines of the English—

“I love you, Harriet.”

Oh. So, maybe there is.

“I love you too,” I say, nudging my nose against his. “No biggy.”

ad and I sit in silence all the way back to Greenway.

He puts his arm around me, and I curl up tightly on the leather seat and stare blankly out of the taxi window.

I watch the bright lights of New York getting smaller, the buildings shrinking, the noise fading and the world I thought I wanted evaporating behind me.

It’s way past 11pm when we finally get back, staggering with tiredness up the driveway.

The front door swings open before we even knock.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Annabel,” I say without meeting her eyes. “I think there might be a few things I need to tell you.”

“Yes,” she says, stepping back into the hallway. “I would imagine there probably are.”

Like with Dad, I make no excuses.

I don’t fantasise how the story was supposed to go, or how I wanted it to go, or what I thought my role in it should have been. I don’t dramatise, and I don’t paint it in a way that will get me out of trouble.

I just tell Annabel the truth.

All of it.

Then I stand anxiously on the carpet in front of my stepmother and clutch my hands tightly together.

There’s a long silence while Annabel takes in the state of me: the smeared and tear-swollen face, the ridiculous outfit, the blisters on my bare feet, the fact that I’m so tired I can barely stand up straight.

Finally, she says, “Take your sister, Harriet,” and holds out Tabitha. “My bicep muscles are nowhere near as developed as I’d like them to be and after a while babies are
really
heavy.”

I hold out my arms and Tabby immediately curls into my chest with a little squeak. I bury my nose into her milky curls and a wave of love abruptly washes over me. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed my little sister.

“This is all very illuminating,” Annabel continues calmly. “Considering I thought you were in your bedroom the whole time.”

I look at the floor. I am going to be locked in my bedroom so long this time there will be thorn hedges growing around the house like Sleeping Beauty, except I’ll be wide awake.

“So let’s address the first point, shall we?” Annabel leans back on the sofa. “You are not stupid, Harriet. Or
academically challenged
, or
weak
, or
unremarkable,
or whatever it is you were told. Your tutor was a fraud.”

“What do you mean a
fraud
?” A rush of guilt washes over me. “No, Miss Hall was only covering for me, Annabel, and it’s not fair if she gets blamed for—”

“She was covering for herself, actually, Harriet. And I mean a
fraud.
A fake, a sham, a charlatan. A trickster, a hoodwinker. The woman doesn’t have a single real qualification to her name. Not one.”