y entire summer has just turned around.

And, as I start jubilantly packing all the important things into a suitcase – paper, dictionaries, pens, etc – I suddenly remember that I wrote Nick’s email address on an old bit of paper and tucked it into an ancient copy of Anne of Green Gables months and months ago. Ha. I am so much more cunning and better organised with contact details than Nat gives me credit for.

As if I’d let go of Nick that easily.

Mentally high-fiving myself, I think about it carefully and then write the following email on my phone:

Dear Nick,

Got your message. Would love to talk. I’ve been thinking about you lots! Of course I have! Am going to Japan for a few weeks for a modelling job but taking my phone with me. Send me another message or ring me? Or ask Wilbur and he can give you my new address?

I’VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH. :)

Harriet xxxx

I look at it happily – he definitely can’t misread or misinterpret that in any way – and then press SEND. Now it’s just a matter of time before Nick tracks me down and I have the best, most romantic summer ever.

I spend the next twenty minutes contentedly bouncing around my room as if I’m on an enormous imaginary Spacehopper: scanning travel documents, printing them out and arranging them carefully in alphabetical order. I make a list of all the lists I need to make. I sit Bunty on my bed, and read her fascinating snippets from a Visit Japan website: “Did you know that the word karaoke means empty orchestra?” and “Can you believe it used to be customary in ancient Japan for women to blacken their teeth with dye to make them look less toothy!”

My grandmother, in the meantime, sits on the windowsill and makes comments like: “Oooh – your glasses are making a rainbow on the wall, Harriet, isn’t that just magical?”

I’m so ridiculously happy, I don’t even feel the need to explain the difference between ‘magic’ and ‘refraction’. I bounce around hysterically until I remember I left my laptop downstairs. I’m probably going to need it at some stage so I can look up additional facts in situ.

With an unprecedented degree of physical dexterity, I bound down the stairs to get it.

“Annabel?” I chirp. “Dad? Did I leave my laptop in—” Then I stop, because they’re sitting at the kitchen table with their heads together, talking in low voices.

And all I can hear is the word ‘Harriet’.