over her shoulder.
“Come on, what about this one?” I pick up a large floppy hat covered in big pink flowers and put it on. “Look.” I wiggle my bottom at her.
Nat abruptly whips round. “Oh my God,” she whispers and it takes me a few seconds to realise that it has nothing at all to do with my bottom.
“Have you seen one?”
“I think so!” She looks again. “Yes, I think I can definitely see an agent!”
I peer into the crowd, but I can’t see anything. They must be like fairies: you can only see them when they want you to.
“Stay right here, Harriet,” Nat whispers urgently. She starts moving into the crowds. “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be back in a second.”
Now I’m confused. “But…” This makes no sense. “Don’t you need me with you?” I call after her. “Isn’t that why I’m here? For support?”
“In spirit will do just fine, Harriet,” Nat shouts back. “Love you!”
And then she disappears completely.
I could have done in spirit quite happily from my bedroom, thank you very much. I could have texted Nat support from my own fake deathbed. I pick up another hat crossly. Next time Nat wants me to go shopping, I am so throwing myself down the stairs.
“Excuse me?” a voice interrupts, and when I turn around, there’s a lady staring at me with a deep crease between her eyebrows. “Can you read?”
“Umm,” I reply in surprise. “Yes. Very well, actually. My reading age is over twenty. But thank you for asking.”
“Really? Can you read that sign there? Read it out loud.”
Poor lady. Maybe she didn’t go to all of her English lessons at school. “Of course,” I say in a friendly and – I hope – not patronising tone. Not everyone benefits equally from a full education system. “It says, Don’t Touch The Hats.”
There’s a pause and then I realise that she probably doesn’t have a literacy problem after all. “Oh,” I add as her meaning sinks in.
“That’s a hat,” she says pointing to the one in my hand. “And that’s a hat.” She points to the one on my head. “And you’re touching them all over.”
I quickly put the one in my hand back on the stall and grab the one on my head. “Sorry. It’s, erm, very…” What? How would you describe a hat? “Hatty,” I improvise, and then I pat it and put it back on the stall. At which point my chewed nail snags on a flower.
We both watch as the flower separates itself from the hat and throws itself on the floor, like a little child having a hissy fit. And then – as if in slow motion – what was clearly just one piece of thread breaks and, one by one, every other flower on the ribbon follows it.
Oh, sugar cookies.
“That’s a very interesting design concept,” I say after clearing my throat awkwardly a couple of times and starting to back away. “Self-detaching flowers? It’s very modern.”
“They’re not self-detaching,” Hat Lady says in a low, angry voice, staring at the pile on the floor. “You detached them.” And then she points at a felt-tip sign that says You Break It You Buy It, followed by the most inappropriately placed smiley face I have ever seen in my entire life. “And now you’re going to have to pay for it.”
God. She sounds a little bit like someone from the Italian Mafia. Maybe the Italian Mafia has a hat section.
“You know,” I say, backing away a little bit faster. “You are very lucky that hat didn’t kill me. I could have choked on one of those flowers and died. The playwright Tennessee Williams died from choking on a bottle cap. Then how would you have felt?”
“I’ll take a cheque or debit card details.”
I take a few more steps backwards and she follows. “Tell you what,” I say in the most lawyer-y, Annabel-like voice I can find. “How about I forget that you tried to kill me if you forget that I broke your hat? How does that sound?”
“Pay for the hat,” she says, taking another step towards me.
“No.”
“Pay for the hat.”
“I can’t.”
“Pay for the h—”
At which point fate or karma or the universe or a God who doesn’t like me very much steps in. And sends me flying bottom-first into the rest of her stall.
Apparently I haven’t just knocked over the hat table. Her stall has dominoed into the stall next to it, which has dominoed into the stall next to that, and before I know what’s happening there are six stalls, strewn creatively over the floor, with me lying in a heap in the middle. It’s the fault of those silly fake partitions, in my opinion. They just aren’t stable enough.
Clearly, neither am I.
“This is why I didn’t want you to touch the hats,” Hat Lady is screaming at me as I struggle to get up. Every time I put my hand down, something crunches. And not in a good-crunch kind of way. In a hand-through-hat kind of way. “You’ve ruined everything!”
From my position on the floor I can see that the tables have crushed at least seven hats, and another three have been hit by the jug of water on one of the now tipped-over chairs. Along with the sign. Another four hats have shoe-shaped dents in them and footprints on the brim. I’m sitting on at least three.
OK, she has a point.
“I’m sorry,” I’m saying over and over again (crunch, crunch, crunch). Everywhere I look are the faces of people who don’t seem to like me very much. “I’m really sorry. I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay for all of it.”
I have no idea how, but I suspect it’s going to involve a lot of car washing and about six hundred years’ worth of groundings.
“It’s not enough,” the woman yells. “This is my biggest sale day of the year! I need to attract a client base!”
I look around briefly. From the size of the crowd, she’s definitely attracted something.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, with my face flaming – because I really, truly, honestly am – and I’m just about to burst into guilty tears when a man wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket and a jaunty black hat leans forward and grabs hold of my hand.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with me,” he says firmly. Then he looks at Hat Lady. “Don’t worry, Sugar,” he adds. “She’s going to pay for the hats. I’ll make sure of it personally.” And he starts leading me away from the carnage.
I gape at him, totally speechless.
So far today, I have nearly died of my