Geek Girl and Model Misfit. Holly Smale
a little private bubble that’s half the speed of everything around it. It’s mesmerising. Even if it does make me feel like everything I do and say is too fast and frantic and sort of unravelling like the cotton on my grandma’s sewing machine.
“And you want the really good news about modelling?” Nick says, abruptly turning round.
I glare at him suspiciously and try and ignore the flip-flop feeling as my stomach turns over and starts gasping for air, like a stranded fish. “What?”
“It’s an industry full of tables to hide under. If you decide you don’t like it, you can literally take your pick.”
Then Nick laughs again and disappears through the agency doors.
Forty-eight hours ago, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me was having my hand accidentally touched by the least spotty boy in the local bookshop, and that was just because he was handing me a book. Now I’m expected to get off the pavement and follow the best-looking boy I have ever seen into an internationally famous modelling agency as if it’s the most natural, normal thing in the world.
So let me clarify something, in case you don’t know me well enough by now.
It’s not.
It’s no use: Nick stays just ahead of me, as if he’s the carrot and I’m the eternally optimistic donkey. By the time I reach the reception of Infinity Models (three floors up) he has disappeared completely, and all that’s left is a slightly swinging door to convince me I didn’t just invent him in the first place.
One quick glance, however, shows me that he was right and Annabel is totally fuming. While Dad bounds around the room, annoying the hell out of the receptionist, Annabel is sitting in total silence, bolt upright, with her back nowhere near the chair. The tendons in her neck are standing out like the bubbles in our living-room wallpaper.
Then I realise why. Somewhere in the direction Annabel keeps looking, I can hear the distant sound of a girl crying.
“Where have you been?” she demands as soon as I walk in, but I’m saved by Wilbur, who bursts through the reception door in an explosion of orange silk trousers and a shirt with paint splashes all over it, except they’re clearly not a result of anyone painting.
“Gooooood mooooorrrnniiiinnng,” he squeals, clasping his hands together. “And if it isn’t Mr and Mrs Baby-baby Panda! Just right there in front of me, like two little matching pots of strawberry fromage frais! Ooh, I could just eat you both up. But I won’t because that would be terribly antisocial.”
Annabel’s eyes have gone very round and her mouth has dropped open. Even Dad has stopped bounding and he takes a slightly frightened seat next to her.
“What?” she whispers to him. “What did that man just call us?”
“This is fashion,” Dad murmurs reassuringly, taking her hand gently as if she’s Dorothy and he’s the White Witch. “This is how they speak here.”
“And it’s Mini-panda herself!” Wilbur continues obliviously, waving at me. “In a suit this time, no less! What’s the inspiration this time, Monkey-chunk?”
I glance quickly at Annabel and see that she’s mouthing Monkey-chunk? at Dad, who shrugs and mouths Mr Baby-baby Panda? back. “My stepmother’s a lawyer,” I explain.
“My Stepmother’s a Lawyer,” Wilbur repeats slowly, a look of growing amazement on his face. “Genius! I’m Wilbur, that’s with a bur and not an iam,” he continues happily, semi-skipping over and grabbing Annabel and Dad’s hands, “and I am so thoroughly, thoroughly giddy to meet you both.”
“It’s an – erm,” Annabel manages, and Wilbur holds his fingers up to her mouth to stop her speaking.
“Ssssshhh. I know it is, my little Pumpkin-trophy. And I have to tell you I’m totally incandescent right now about your beautiful daughter’s visage. It’s special. New. Interesting. And we don’t get much of that round here. It’s all legs up to here,” (he points to his neck) “and eyelashes out here,” (he moves his hand a few centimetres in front of his face) “and lips out here,” (he keeps his hand in the same place).“Dull, dull, dull.” He turns to me, beaming. “You don’t have any of those things, do you, my little Box of Peaches?”
I open my mouth to answer, and then realise he’s telling me I don’t have any of those things. Otherwise known as beauty. Fantastic.
In the meantime, Dad is still staring at the hand Wilbur is holding. “Um,” he says, trying to tug it away as politely as he can.
“I know,” Wilbur agrees, holding on tighter. “Doesn’t it feel like a whirlwind of adventure?”
And before either of them can say anything else he pulls both Annabel and Dad to their feet and starts dragging them across the reception floor.
“Right!” Dad says and high-fives him.
“For crying out loud,” Annabel sighs as Wilbur shows us to little plastic seats. “Will somebody other than me please take this seriously? And you should know that I’m making notes,” she adds sternly, getting out her notepad.
“How funalicious!” Wilbur cries. Annabel writes one word down, but I can’t see what it is. “Now,” he continues, “are we definitely set on the name Harriet?”
We all look at him in shock because… well, it’s my name. I’ve been sort of set on it for the last fifteen years.
“My name,” I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, “was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died.”
There’s a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, “Who told you that?”
“Annabel did.”
“Well, it’s not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world.”
There’s a silence while I stare at Dad, and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. “Richard,” she moans quietly.
“A tortoise?” I repeat in dismay. “I’m named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?”
“Longevity?”
I stare at Dad with my mouth open. I don’t believe this. Fifteen years of the worst name ever and I can’t even blame my dead mother for it?
“We could try Frankie?” Wilbur suggests helpfully. “I don’t believe there were any famous reptiles, but I’m sure there must have been