pros and cons.”
He has really sharp canine teeth, and when he says Fs, they catch on his bottom lip. There’s a mole under his left eye and he smells sort of green, like… grass. Or vegetables. Or maybe lime sweets.
One of his curls is sticking up at the back, like a little duck tail. And I’ve just realised that I’m still staring at him, and he’s still looking at me, and he’s still waiting for me to answer him. I quickly trawl my mind for an appropriate response.
“Chewing gum is banned in Singapore,” I whisper. “Completely banned.” And then I blink twice. It’s probably not the best introductory statement I’ve ever opened with.
His eyes shoot wide open. “Are we in Singapore? How long have I been asleep? How fast does this table move?”
Nice one, Harriet.
“No,” I whisper back, my cheeks already hot,“we’re still in Birmingham. I’m just making the point that if we were in Singapore, we could be arrested for even having chewing gum in our possession.”
Stop talking, Harriet.
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” I gulp. “Luckily we’re not in Singapore, so you’re safe.”
“Well, thank God for UK legislation,” he says, leaning his head against the wall again. His mouth twitches. And then there’s a long silence while he closes his eyes and I go red all over and try to work out whether it’s possible to make a worse first impression.
It’s not.
“I’m Harriet Manners,”I admit finally and then I put my hand out to shake his, realise it’s sweaty with nerves, swoop it back in and pretend I’m scratching my knee instead.
“Hello, Harriet Manners,” Lion Boy says and all I can think is: I know there’s something outside the table that I’m supposed to be running away from, but I can’t quite remember what it is.
“Erm…”Think, Harriet. Think of something normal to say. “Have you been here long?”
“About half an hour.”
“Why?”
“I’m hiding from Wilbur. He’s using me as bait. He keeps chucking me into the crowd to see how many pretty girls I can come back with.”
“Like a maggot?”
He laughs. “Yes. Pretty much exactly like a maggot.”
“And have you… caught anything?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he says, opening one eye and looking straight at me. “It’s too early to say.”
“Oh.” I glance briefly at my watch. “It’s not that early,” I inform him. “Actually, it’s nearly lunchtime.”
The boy looks at my watch – which has a knife, fork and spoon instead of hands – raises an eyebrow and stares at me hard for a few seconds. His nose wiggles a little bit. And then – clearly fascinated by the mesmerising first impression I’ve made – he closes his eyes again.
With Lion Boy apparently unconscious, I suddenly feel a great need to ask him all sorts of questions. I want to know everything. For instance, what is his accent and where is he from? If I get a world map out of my bag, can he point to it for me? Does it have strange animals and really big insects? Is he an only child too? Were the holes in his jeans there when he bought them, like Dad’s, and if not, how did he get them?
But nothing is coming out. Which is lucky, because people don’t tend to like it very much when I interrogate them relentlessly while they’re trying to sleep.
“Do you often hide under furniture?” I manage eventually. He grins at me and his smile is so wide that it breaks his face into little pieces and my stomach immediately feels like a washing machine on spin-dry mode.
“I don’t make a habit of it. You?”
“All of the time,” I admit reluctantly. “All of the time.”
Whenever I panic, actually. Which means, because I panic a lot, that I’ve been under many types of things. Dining tables, desks, side tables, kitchen counters… Any kind of furniture that allows me to disappear. Which is, actually, how I met Nat.
And I’ve just remembered what I’m doing here.
It was the second day of school and I’d had enough. Alexa had already taken a shine to me – or whatever the opposite of that is – and I had become the butt of all of her most intricate five-year-old jokes. Who smells the most? Harriet. Who has hair like a carrot? Harriet. Who spilt their milk on their lap, but actually, it’s pee? Harriet.
So I’d waited until everyone else had gone outside and then I’d crawled under the piano. Where I’d found a heartbroken Nat, crying because her dad had just run off with the check-out girl at Waitrose. We bonded straight away, probably because we both only had half of a parenting team left: a bit like discovering the missing bit of a friendship necklace. I’d offered her a part-time share in my dad, she’d offered me a bit of her mum and – just like that –we’d become Best Friends. And we have been ever since.
At least, from that moment until… this one.
*
“Harriet,” a voice says from somewhere outside the table cloth. Two red shoes can be seen underneath it. “I don’t know whether you’re under some kind of impression that you’ve become invisible in the last thirteen minutes, but you’re not. I can still see you.”
My stomach swoops again and this time it has nothing to do with the boy sitting next to me. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh,” Nat agrees. “So you may as well come out now.”
I look back at the Lion Boy, who still has his eyes shut, whisper, “Thanks for sharing the table,” and struggle back out of my terrible, terrible hiding place.
Nat looks furious. Even more so than when I accidentally knocked her new bottle of Gucci perfume out of the window as a result of an impromptu dance routine that she didn’t want to see in the first place.
“What,” she whispers to me, glancing in confusion at Wilbur, “are you doing, Harriet?”
“I…” I start, already panicking. “It’s not what it—”
“I can’t believe this,” Nat interrupts. Her cheeks are getting redder and redder and her eyes keep flicking to Wilbur. “I know you don’t like shopping, Harriet, and I know you didn’t want to come today, but hiding under this table… I mean, of all the tables…” She looks at Wilbur again in total embarrassment.
I frown. What is she talking about? Then I realise, in a horrible rush. Nat doesn’t know I’ve just been spotted. She didn’t see me having my photo taken. She just saw me here and assumed I’d followed her and then crawled under a table because being a total plonker is the only thing I really excel at. And – at exactly the same moment – I glance at Wilbur and a jolt of shock hits my stomach. His expression is totally blank. He’s not interested in Nat. She hasn’t been spotted. Which means – and my stomach suddenly feels like it’s been electrocuted – that I haven’t just accidentally hitched a ride on the back of Nat’s lifelong dream.
I’ve stolen it.
I look at Nat in alarm. “Well?” she says and her voice starts to wobble. “What’s going on, Harriet?”
I can save this, I think in a rush, it’s