He strode towards us with firm, straight steps: purposeful. Furious.
I blinked as this angry, tense stranger pounded down the catwalk. There wasn’t a single twinkle or slouch. Not a jot of laughter or crinkle around his eyes.
Two hundred people watched keenly as my boyfriend got to the end of the catwalk, stopped and posed.
The blue whale has a heart big enough for a human to crawl through its ventricles. For just a few seconds, my heart felt so big, a blue whale could have swum through mine.
I waited for Nick to turn towards me. To notice me in the crowd.
Finally, just before he started back towards the curtains, he looked straight at me.
He winked.
And – just like that – I had my Lion Boy back.
Seriously.
If it had been on fire, I doubt I could have moved faster.
“Nick?” I say breathlessly as soon as I’ve shut the front door. “Nick? Are you there?”
Then I try to rephrase it so I sound a bit less desperate. “I mean, hi, whatever, how are you?”
“Hey,” he laughs warmly. “And whatever to you too.”
Apparently butterflies need an ideal body temperature of between eighty-five and one hundred degrees to fly. I must be exactly the right habitat, because my entire body is suddenly full of them. Red ones, blue ones, green ones, white ones. Fluttering like a rainbow inside me.
Then I remember the silence over the last few days.
“How’s Africa?” I say, and the butterflies suddenly go very still.
“Harriet, I’m so sorry. I’ve been out in the desert on a shoot, and there was zero reception. I even got the photographer to drive me to the nearest village, and there was still nothing. How did you do? I want to know everything.”
A wave of relief hits me so strongly that I have to temporarily lean against a statue that Nat’s mum thinks is Andromeda but is actually Artemis just to get my breath back.
Roughly forty-three per cent of Africa is desert, and it hadn’t occurred to me for a single second Nick might be stuck in any of it.
“It went kind of brilliantly,” I say, giving him a brief update on my result.
“I’m so proud of you.”
I beam at the phone, and then at the sky, and then at a random passing squirrel. I’m so warm the butterflies have given up flying and have started sunbathing instead.
“So,” and this time it’s a real, genuine question, “what is Africa like?”
“Hot. Lots of weird-looking tall creatures that can’t run properly hanging around with long necks and eyelashes and horns coming out of their heads.”
“Giraffes?”
“I was aiming for ‘models’,” Nick laughs. “But yeah, there’s some of them wandering about too.”
I giggle like an idiot.
Normally this would be the point where I’d break into an array of interesting facts. For instance, did you know that giraffes have four stomachs, and their spots are like fingerprints and no two giraffes have the same pattern?
Or that their necks are too short for their heads to reach the ground so they have to drink water by squatting?
Or that they are the only animal who moves two legs on one side of the body and then two on the other to walk?
Instead I clear my throat.
“Come on then,” Nick says. He’s smiling: the words are all stretched and snug. “Hit me with it.”
“Hmm?”
“Whatever is preventing you from telling me multiple facts about giraffes right now.”
Sugar cookies.
“I’m … umm.” I cough. “I think that …”
Of course. I should be approaching my news about America from a totally different angle.
“Nick, did you know Admiral Horatio Nelson started dating Emma Hamilton in 1798, and then went away for two years to fight the Napoleonic Wars? They wrote a lot of letters, and their budding relationship wasn’t affected in the slightest and remained strong and beautiful throughout.”
“Is that so?”
“And OK, he was fatally wounded by a musket ball at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and died before he could see her again, but that’s not really the point.” Wrap it up, Harriet. “So …”
“Harriet,” Nick says. “Are you going away to fight the Napoleonic wars?”
“No.”
“Are you at risk of getting hit by a stray musket ball fired from a French ship in suburban Hertfordshire?”
“No.”
“Are you planning on dying next to a man named Hardy and then having your body preserved in a large barrel of brandy?”
My boyfriend knows a lot more about Admiral Nelson than I thought he would. “No.”
“Then you probably don’t need to sound so worried.”
OK.
I need to pull this out all at once, before it gets all green and liquidy like the splinter in Year Two.
“I’m leaving England,” I say quickly. “My family is moving to New York for six months and I’ll be gone before you’re home but I’ll buy some pretty stationery and write you some poignant and heartbreaking letters and get novelty stamps and—”
“Harriet, that’s brilliant,” Nick interrupts. It’s a genuine, delighted brilliant.
I blink.
Right. It’s bad enough that Toby and Nat are thrilled by my departure, but my boyfriend? He’s supposed to be making impassioned speeches on the edge of bridges about the darkness of life without me. Not throwing a mini verbal celebration and cracking out the Harriet’s Finally Leaving
“Fine,” I snap, “if that’s the way you feel then you can just—” Nick’s laughter stops me mid-rage.
“That’s not what I meant, Harriet. New York Fashion Week starts soon, so I’m going to be there too. I get more modelling jobs in America than anywhere else. I’ll be able to see you loads. This is really brilliant news.”
I pull my phone away from my face while I get my emotions back under control.
“Harriet? You haven’t been attacked by any other kind of artillery, have you?”
“Really?” I say. “You’ll really be in New York?”
“Of course,” Nick laughs. “It’ll take a bit more than a couple of miles and an inch of water to stop me seeing you.”
I impulsively kiss my phone, even though Nick is seriously underestimating the size of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Harriet, did you just kiss your phone?”
“Umm. No. My