We were forced to keep our shoes on, and – while my trainers look quite normal – Nat’s red high heels… don’t.
“Do you know how long it took me to choose my outfit this morning?” she’s yelling at Toby as we approach the front doors.
Toby contemplates this like it’s not a rhetorical question. “Twenty minutes?” he offers. Nat’s face goes slightly puce. “Thirty?” Nat’s jawline starts flexing. “An hour and a half?”
“A really long time!” she shouts. “A really, really long time!” Nat looks down at herself. “I had a brand-new dress and leggings from American Apparel, Toby. Do you know how much they cost? I was wearing Prada perfume.” She picks up a piece of green nylon between her fingers. “And now I’m wearing a boy’s football kit and I smell of sick!”
I pat her arm as comfortingly as I can.
“At least my vomit was sort of chocolatey,” Toby says cheerfully. “I had Coco Pops for breakfast.”
Nat grits her teeth.
“Anyway,” Toby continues blithely, “I think you look awesome. You both match. It’s super trendy.”
Nat scrunches her mouth up, clenches her fists and furrows her brow right in the centre. It’s like watching somebody shake a bottle of fizzy drink without taking the lid off. “Toby,” she says in a low hiss. “Go. Now.”
“OK,” Toby agrees. “Anywhere in particular?”
“Anywhere. Just go. NOW.”
“Toby,” I say in a low voice, taking him by the arm. I’m really, genuinely scared for his safety. “I think maybe you should go inside.” I look at Nat. “As quickly as possible,” I add.
“Ah.” Toby contemplates this for a few seconds and then nods. “Ah. I see. Then I shall see you both anon.”
And – giving me what looks disturbingly like an attempt at a wink over his shoulder – he skips off through the swing doors.
When he’s gone and I know that Nat can’t rip his head off and feed it to a large flock of pigeons, I turn to her.
“Nat,” I say, chewing on a fingernail anxiously. “It’s not that bad. Honestly. We smell fine. And if you put my coat on over the top, nobody will see what you’re wearing. It’s longer than yours.”
“You don’t get it,” Nat says and suddenly the anger pops: she just sounds miserable. “You just don’t get it.”
I think Nat underestimates my powers of empathy. Which is a shame because I am a very empathetic person. Empathetic. Not pathetic.
“Sure I do,” I say in a reassuring voice. “You don’t like football. I get that.”
“It’s not that. Today was really important, Harriet. I really needed to look good.”
I stare at her blankly. After a few seconds, Nat rolls her eyes and hits herself on the forehead in frustration. “They’re in there.”
I stare at the revolving doors. “Who’s in there?” I whisper in terror. I think about it for a few seconds. “Vampires?”
“Vampires.” Nat looks at me in consternation. “You have got to start reading proper books.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about. Just because I own a lot of books about things that don’t actually exist in real life in no way indicates that I’m not connected to the real world. I totally am.
Nat takes a deep breath. “I put the prawns in Jo’s dinner,” she says, avoiding my eyes.
I stare at her. “Nat! Why would you do that?”
“Because I need you today,” she says in a tiny voice. “I need you for support. They’re in there.” And she looks again at the doors and swallows.
“Who?”
“Model agents, Harriet,” Nat says as if I’m an idiot. “Lots and lots of model agents.”
“Oh,” I say stupidly, and then think about it. “Ohhhhhhhh.”
And I finally understand what I’m doing here.
“Gosh,” somebody’s mum said at a school disco. “Natalie. You’re getting gorgeous. Maybe you could be a model when you grow up.”
I paused from filling my party dress pockets with chocolate cake and jelly sweets. “A model of what?” I asked curiously. And then my greedy little hand went out to grab a mini jam roll. “I have a model airplane,” I added proudly.
The mum gave me the look that I was already used to by then.
“A model,” she explained, looking at Nat, “is a girl or a boy who gets paid ridiculous quantities of money to wear clothes they don’t own and have their photo taken.” I looked at Nat and already I could see her eyes starting to glow: the seed of the dream being planted. “Just hope you grow tall and thin,” the mum added bitterly, “because if you ask me, they all look like aliens.”
At which point Nat put her chocolate cake down and spent the rest of the night sitting on the floor, with me pulling on her feet to make her legs longer.
And I spent the rest of the night talking about space travel.
It’s finally here.
Eight years of buying Vogue and not eating pudding (Nat, not me: I eat hers) and we’ve finally made it to the very edge of Nat’s destiny. I feel a bit like Sam in The Lord of the Rings, just before Frodo throws the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Except in a more positive, magical way. With slightly less hairy feet.
Nat doesn’t look as excited as I thought she would. She looks terrified and as stiff as a board standing, totally still, in the middle of the NEC entrance. She’s staring at the crowd as if it’s a pond full of fish and she’s a really hungry cat, and – honestly – I’m not even sure she’s breathing. I’m tempted to put my head on her chest just to check.
The thing is: she’s doing it all wrong.
I know a lot about stories and magic – thanks to reading loads of books and also belonging to a forum on the internet – and the most basic rule is that it has to come as a surprise. Nobody hopped into a wardrobe to find Narnia; they hopped in, thinking it was just a wardrobe. They didn’t climb up the Faraway Tree, knowing it was a Faraway Tree; they thought it was just a really big tree. Harry Potter thought he was a normal boy; Mary Poppins was supposed to be a regular nanny.
It’s the first and only rule. Magic comes when you’re not looking for it.
But Nat’s looking for it, and the harder she looks, the less likely it is to turn up. She’s scaring the fashion magic off with her knowing, waiting vibes.
“Come on,” I say, trying to distract her by pulling at her (or technically my) coat sleeve. I need to get her to think about something else so that the magic can do its thing. “Let’s just go and shop, OK?”
“Mmm.”
I don’t think she can even hear me any more. “Look!” I say enthusiastically, pulling her to the nearest stall. “Nat, look! Handbags! Shoes! Hair bobbles!”
Nat gives me a distracted glance. “You’re dragging my coat on the floor.”
“Oh.” I bundle it back under my arm and start tugging Nat towards the next stall.
“What do you think?”