oes anybody – anybody – have any idea how hard it is to concentrate on getting ready to talk in front of five million people with an unexpected Nick sitting a few metres away?

Well, let me tell you: it’s like trying to tune a digital radio while Mount Vesuvius erupts in the background.

“Why is he here?” I whisper under my breath as a nice lady called Jessica does my hair and make-up. I’ve already been put into a blue dress that I would never, ever have picked for myself. Mainly because it doesn’t have cartoon characters on it.

“He’s the male face of Baylee, Plumptious,” Wilbur whispers back as if I didn’t already know this. “Maximum brand exposure.” He looks to the ceiling as if he’s just seen an angel. “Yuka’s a total publicity legend.”

“Hmm.” Nick’s lazing around on the sofa – flicking his pen in the air and catching it again – as if national television is something he does all the time. Which, actually, it might be. Today he is wearing a warm grey jumper and a pair of dark blue jeans. His hair is all sort of quiffed up at the front and now and then he puts his finger in his mouth and bites the—

“Hey, Manners,” he says, looking up.

I look away quickly. Sugar cookies. “Y-yes?” I stammer, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.

He gestures towards the coffee table. “It’s low, but if you really squidge, you might be able to do it.”

Is that all he’s going to say? After we held hands and everything? “I have grown out of my table-hiding days as it happens,” I tell him in a cold voice. “It was a childhood phase, that is all.”

“That’s a shame. If we lived somewhere with lots of earthquakes, you’d be a really good person to know.”

I glare at him. For somebody so gorgeous, he really knows how to be annoying. “Actually, there have been nineteen earthquakes in the UK in the last ten years,” I snap. “Which makes me a good person to know right now.”

“It does,” he agrees, grinning at me and going back to his doodle.

I grind my teeth and feel my cheeks get hot. What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m a good person to know, but only nineteen times in ten years? That’s not a very good ratio.

“Now then, my little Squabbling-beans,” Wilbur interrupts. He pushes a little bit of plastic in my ear, pulls the wire under my collar and pops another bit of plastic in a pocket at the back of my dress. “We don’t have time for all this adorable Darcy and Lizzie tension, Kitten-cheeks. Let’s get you on air so that your stepmother can stop texting me at three-minute intervals, Harriet. She’s extremely anxious that we get you to school on time today.”

I nod. I am too, actually. I don’t want something to go horribly wrong later in life because I’m supposed to know about metaphysical poets and don’t.

I notice that the little green light on my hearing aid has been switched on. I look at Nick. “Do you have one too?”

Nick and Wilbur both laugh.

“Harriet,” a cold voice in my ear says. “This is Yuka Ito.”

I look around, trying to locate her. “Don’t look around trying to locate me,” she snaps. “I’m in the production-control room.”

“Can you see me?”

“No. I just know that’s what you’re doing. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” I say as clearly as I can. Nick is standing just behind me, yawning and rubbing his face with the sleeve of his grey jumper. How come Yuka Ito isn’t shouting in his ear like the little caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland?

“Just say what I tell you to,” Yuka says, “and everything will go as planned. And please, Harriet…”

“Yes?”

“Try and behave yourself this time.”