Model Misfit (25 page)

Predominantly because he can’t work out where the phone call is coming from. I’ve rung the home computer from my mobile, and this complicated trick of modern technology creates total havoc. By the time Dad has run round the house, finally worked out what’s going on and pressed the right button, all I can hear is him shouting upstairs: “Annabel, there’s a video phone in our computer! Was that your idea?”

The webcam finally clears, but all I see is Dad’s dressing gown. “Look,” he adds as I hear Annabel lumbering heavily down the stairs. “Harriet hasn’t died. We’ve still got a teenage daughter. Cancel the application for a replacement or we’ll end up with two.”

I scowl. “Nice to see you too, Father.”

The dressing gown moves slightly. “Can she see me?” Dad’s stomach asks curiously.

“You need to sit down, sweetheart,” Annabel says.

There’s a swift, stripy movement of dressing gown. “Is that better?”

Now all I can see is Dad’s left ear. Annabel wheels him across so he’s in full screen. Then she pokes her head into the corner of the screen.

“So, what delights of the fashion world have prevented you from ringing us until now?”

I shrug awkwardly. I didn’t realise I’d be so happy to see them, but now I feel so homesick I just want to climb through the screen, curl up in the armchair and never ever leave again.

But I can’t, can I?

It’s just better if she’s not here
.

“Somebody wants to say hello,” Dad says, handing Annabel what looks like an olive covered in peanut butter. “You’re so disgusting, Bels,” he tells her proudly, scruffing up her hair. The screen suddenly fills with white fluff. “Grrrr-d morning, Harriet. How are woof?”

I smile. “Hey, Hugo.”

“I miss you terrier-bly, Harriet,” Hugo/Dad says, licking his nose/wiggling his eyebrows. Then the camera points at Annabel’s stomach. “Hello, Harriet,” a squeaky voice says. “I can’t wait to meet you.”

“That’s ridiculously creepy, Richard,” I hear Annabel say. “Our child is not going to sound like a chipmunk.”

“It’s not my fault if it does,” Dad replies. “That’ll be your half. It’s only fifty per cent Total Legend.” He leans towards her belly, pretends to listen and then adds, “What’s that? You want to be called Ralph?”

“After the world’s biggest rabbit, I presume,” Annabel says calmly. Then she looks back at me. “Are you actually OK, Harriet? Are you having fun?”

I swallow, hard. There’s no point telling them. They only want to talk about the baby. As per usual.

“I’m great,” I lie. My face is starting to hurt with all the pretend emotions. “The campaign’s going great, I’m getting on great with my flatmates and Yuka’s really, really … great about my incredible modelling skills.”

When people lie, they look to the left because that’s the part of the brain associated with the imagination. When they’re telling the truth, they look to the right because that’s the part of the brain linked to memory.

I look to the right as hard as I can.

Annabel frowns. “What’s happening to your face, Harriet? Where’s your grandmother? Let me speak to her.”

Sugar cookies
. I keep forgetting that Annabel is possibly related to Gandalf, Merlin and Zeus, all at the same time. “Bunty is …” I have literally no idea. “Umm …”

There’s a small knock on the cupboard door next to my head.

“Harriet? Are you in here?”

“If not Harry-chan, we have big problem,” I hear Rin giggle. “We have talking cupboard.”

“I’m here,” I call out, and then turn back to Annabel and Dad. “Oh,” I say in my least wooden voice. “That’s my flatmates. I should go.”

“There’s a strange lady at the door, Harriet. She says she wants to see you.”

“Cute pink hair and sparkles,” Rin adds merrily. “Like Hello Kitty.”

I drop my phone.

“What?” I hear Annabel snap into the floor. “What did they just say?”

“Darling?” a familiar voice calls. “Can I stay here tonight? My friend has been hosting a party and it seems to be going on indefinitely. I haven’t seen a mattress in days.”

“What’s going on?” Annabel shouts. “Why don’t your flatmates know your grandmother? Where has she been? MOTHER, YOU PROMISED!”

Oh my God.
Do something, Harriet
. Anything.

“Oh dear,” I say, picking my phone off the floor and shaking it furiously up and down. “Earthquake.” Then I hang up and switch off my phone as quickly as possible.

Slowly, I open the cupboard door.

Bunty’s standing there in a blue, floor-length floral dress, with white lace trailing all the way around the bottom and a blue mirrored blouse tied up in a knot at her waist. There are six or seven beaded necklaces of different colours around her neck, bells around her ankles and her pale pink hair has been piled on top of her head and appears to have been secured by a chopstick.

Not a pretty, decorative chopstick.

The kind of chopstick you get in white paper packs at convenience stores that give you mouth splinters.

“What a lovely place to hide!” Bunty says gaily, wrapping me in a hug and patting my head. One of her enormous rings bashes my forehead. “How’s your adventure going, darling?”

“A-are you back for good?”

“Absolutely. I thought we could do a bit of girly catch-up. Paint our fingers, pull our eyebrows out and put bits of papaya on our eyes …”

“Nails?” Rin says. “Cucumbers?”

“I think they might be quite dangerous next to the eyes, darling. Let’s go for something nice and soft.”

Bunty kicks her flip-flops into the corner of the hallway, wanders into the kitchen and pulls the fridge open. “Choccy biccies?” she adds. “For the tummy,” she says to Rin. “Not for the eyes. Don’t worry, I’m not
insane
. Now, I’ve got this strange hair that grows out of my cheek and if it gets too long I feel a bit like a cat. What shall we do with it?”

She leans towards Poppy. “Darling, I don’t want to be rude but I think you might have one coming too.”

“I am a
top model
,” Poppy says indignantly. “We don’t have
whiskers.
”

“How sad,” my grandmother says, nodding at Rin and wandering back into the hallway. “They’re awfully handy for working out whether you can fit through a small space.”

And, just like that, my grandmother is back.

ere are a few of the things Bunty makes us do over the rest of the day:

• Mash up various foodstuffs from the fridge and put them on our faces (including soy sauce and rice, salsa and leftover tofu).
  
• Turn on all the hot taps and have a fully clothed ‘DIY sauna’.
  
• Rub kitchen salt on our legs.
  
• Brush each other’s hair at the same time.
  
• Moisturise with olive oil and a dash of sesame
  .
  

Clearly, my grandmother knows even less about being a girl than I do.

With great aplomb and not a little bit of scariness she powers through: dragging Rin and Poppy back into the bedroom every time they try to escape like the Year Two Class Hamster every time we left the cage door open.

As we crawl into bed, exhausted and marinated like expensive tuna steaks, I realise I haven’t had time to think about everything that’s gone wrong. And that maybe I’m kind of glad to have her here, after all.

For the first time since I arrived in Japan, the next morning goes totally smoothly. My grandmother wakes me up with a cup of tea and a bowl of ready-porridge and some kind of de-stressing feather to ‘stroke my cares away’ (we’ll forget that last bit) and I calmly get ready in my neatest, cleanest, most modelly clothes (black trousers, a white vest and some silver ballet flats).

Our taxi takes us into the centre of Tokyo. The buildings get bigger and bigger, the lights get brighter and the crowds get thicker until they look like shiny, dark-suited fish. It’s the noisiest part of Tokyo I’ve been in yet: beeps and chirrups and music are coming from every direction, every building is flashing in different neon colours like lit-up Lego.

The majority of the people on the streets appear to be men. Apart from a pink bunny in a dress, frilly apron and high heels.

That one’s probably not.

“Akihabara,” Bunty says as she climbs out of the car. “This is the technology centre of Tokyo, darling. If you want to see something crazy in Japan, you come here.”

It’s like being in a film set in the future, where there are barely any females and all of them look like they just fell out of an adults-only version of
Alice in Wonderland
.

“The game arcade is a popular Japanese stereotype,” a voice says behind me. “Today I shall subvert it.”

I spin round to face Yuka. Apparently we’re not even doing greetings any more. “Brilliant,” I say politely. “Umm … Yuka, this is Bunty, my step-grandmother.”

“Nice to see you,” Bunty says, taking Yuka’s hand and pumping it unceremoniously up and down.

Yuka watches her hand in silence and then manages to extract it. “Yes,” she says, and then turns back to me. “I would like to celebrate Japanese culture while also challenging Western perceptions. Every young person can relate to video games.”

I’m nodding like a plastic dog in the back of a car, but my stomach is already starting to sink. Contrary to popular belief, not all geeks love
Star Trek
and gaming and fixing other people’s printers. Some of us prefer dinosaur documentaries and reciting poetry at strangers while they’re waiting for a bus, even after they’ve been asked not to.

“Fantastic,” I lie enthusiastically. “I love arcade games.”

“Good,” Yuka says as she starts clicking towards a neon orange entrance. “Because you’re going to be in one.”

love a good metaphor.

What Yuka actually means is that I’m going to be immersed allegorically inside the culture of modern Japanese technology. Or I’m going to be given a gun so I can fight aliens and vampires. Or I’ll be scanned into a green screen so that in post-production I come out looking like a computer character. Or…

Or…

Nope. Yet again, I have literally no idea what Yuka’s talking about.

Yuka, my grandmother and I walk through the immense building. The arcade is huge and heaving with people, and every square metre of it is beeping and flashing. The first floor is filled with hundreds of computer games:
boinging
and
clicking
and
peeping
. The second floor has things you can shoot and smash and bash and smack. The third floor is lit up by tiles being manically danced on and more photo booths crammed with squealing girls. The fourth is buried in soft toys. And the fifth appears to be a bowling alley.