K, are you kidding me?

Now that I just want to go straight to bed without being hassled my parents have finally started working on the house’s welcoming atmosphere?

“What’s going on?” I ask, embarrassed and quickly rubbing my eyes with my hand. Hugo jumps up at my trousers and starts experimentally licking at the mud. “Is everything all right? Dad, did you have your meeting?”

Annabel frowns and peers at me. “What’s wrong, Harriet? Have you been…” And then she stops, confused. I can see her searching her mind for a word that matches my face. “Crying?” she finishes uncertainly.

“I have a cold,” I explain firmly, sniffing. “It started this morning.” And then I look at Dad, who has his mouth clamped shut. “Dad? Your important meeting? Did it go OK?”

“Huh?” Dad makes a face. “Yeah, no problem. They said I was a maverick like I predicted they would, but I asked for a pay rise and they said no.” Then he looks at Annabel and bounces up and down on his toes a couple of times. “Tell her, Annabel.” Dad nudges her with his elbow. “Tell her.”

“Tell me what?” I look at Annabel and she stares back in silence. “What?”

Annabel sighs. “They rang, Harriet,” she finally says in a reluctant voice. “The modelling agency. They rang. While you were at school.”

My mouth opens slightly in shock. “They rang? But…” I stop for a few seconds in total confusion. “I didn’t give them my number. How could they ring?”

“Well, they found it anyway and they rang!” Dad shouts, exploding and punching the air. Hugo responds by taking a few steps backwards and barking. “Infinity Models, Harriet! This is massive! This is more massive than massive! This is massiver! They rang and they said they love the photos and they want to see us all! Tomorrow, first thing! In the agency! With them! And us! And them again!”

“Massiver is not a word, Richard,” Annabel sighs. “Anyway, what they want is irrelevant. As we discussed, Harriet’s not doing it. She doesn’t even want to do it.” Then she looks at me. “Right?”

There’s a long silence.

“Right?” Annabel repeats in confusion.

I look at my parents – Annabel with her hands on her hips and Dad bobbing around like a happy little duck – and suddenly I can’t really see them. I can’t really see anything at all. It’s as if the whole world has just gone strangely dark and quiet and I’m standing in the middle, waiting for everything to start making light and noise again.

And then it hits me, like a metaphorical train or a hammer or a fist or something fast and heavy and absolutely inescapable. And it’s so clear I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, except that maybe I couldn’t because I didn’t need it like I need it now, at this exact moment.

This is it.

This is what I can do to change things.

This could be my metamorphosis story, like Ovid’s or Kafka’s, or Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling or even Cinderella (originally called Rhodopis and written in Greece in 1BC). I could go from proverbial caterpillar to butterfly; from tadpole to frog. From larva to dragonfly (which is actually only a half metamorphosis, but still – I think – worth mentioning).

MODELLING COULD TRANSFORM ME. And I’d no longer be Harriet Manners – hated, ignored, humiliated. I’d be… someone else. Someone different. Someone cool. Because if I don’t do something now, I’m going to be me forever. I’m going to be a geek forever. And people are just going to keep hating me and laughing at me and putting their hands up. Forever. And things will never, ever change.

Unless I do.

 

“I…I…” I start stammering, and then I stop and swallow because I can hardly believe what I’m about to say.

“Well?” Annabel and Dad say, except with totally different tones.

“I… think maybe I want to see them.”

There’s a stunned pause. “What?” Annabel finally gasps. “You want to what?”

“I want to see them,” I repeat, but this time my voice is clearer. For a few seconds, Nat’s face flicks into the back of my mind. My Best Friend’s tense, flushed, miserable, heartbroken face. And then Alexa’s flicks up next to it like a double slide show and I switch them both off. “I want to go and see the modelling agency,” I confirm.

Dad jumps up in the air. “You said, Annabel!” he crows. “Do you remember? We fought and I won and you said if she wanted to do it, we’d go and see them!”

“I didn’t think she’d actually want to,” Annabel huffs. “You tricked me, Richard. I can’t believe you tricked me.”

“Please?” I say, looking at her with my widest eyes. When I look to the side, Dad’s doing the same thing. “Just to see? Please, Annabel?”

Annabel opens her mouth and then shuts it again. She’s looking at my face as if it’s a maths sum and the answer is harder than she was expecting it to be. “You actually want this?” she asks in a totally shocked and slightly disgusted voice, as if I’ve just said I’d like to pick fleas from stray cats for the rest of my life, and possibly eat them. “Clothes, Harriet? Photographs? Fashion? Modelling?”

“Yes,” I say and I look her straight in the eye. “Maybe,” I clarify.

Annabel looks straight back for a few seconds and then sighs and puts her head in her hands. “Has the world gone topsy-turvy?”

“Definitely,” I confirm.

“Then…”And Annabel breathes out crossly. “Well, I’m sort of trapped by my own integrity, aren’t I?”

“Yesssss,” Dad shouts as if he’s just scored a goal, and – when Annabel gives him a short, sharp look – he clears his throat. “I meant, good decision, darling. Excellent. Very sensible.”

“Don’t get carried away, Richard,” Annabel snaps. “I said we’d see them. That is all. I’ve made no other promises. I’m not agreeing to anything right now.”

“But of course,” Dad says in an apparently insulted voice. “That’s also very sensible, darling.”

But as Dad winks at me and runs off into the kitchen to do a celebration dance, I realise I’m not really listening. Because all I know is – after ten years – I’m finally doing something to make things better.

And – frankly – it’s about time.