Читать книгу Picture Perfect - Holly Smale, Холли Смейл - Страница 19

e each blink approximately 15,000 times a day. In the following silence I use up a week’s worth, minimum.

I’m desperately trying to piece that sentence into an order that makes sense, but it’s not working. AMERICA TO MOVING ARE WE. TO AMERICA WE ARE MOVING. WE TO AMERICA MOVING ARE.

With the best grammar skills in the world, they all kind of mean the same thing.

“B-but you can’t just leave me here,” I stammer. “I don’t know how to work the oven properly. I don’t know the code for the burglar alarm.”

“31415,” Dad says promptly.

“The first five numbers of pi?” At least that should be easy to remember.

“You’re coming with us, Harriet,” Annabel says calmly. “How ridiculous do you think we are?”

Dad has a piece of burnt pizza stuck to his knee.

I’m not going to answer that.

“But there isn’t time,” I state stupidly. “School starts next week.”

“It’s not for a holiday, sweetheart. It’ll be for six months, at least.”

“I got a job!” Dad shouts, jumping into the air again. “I’m going to be head copywriter at a top American advertising agency! I am no longer a draining sap on the life-source of this family!”

I thought Dad quite enjoyed sitting around in his dressing gown, losing his temper at people on the television and eating red jelly out of a big bowl.

“But when?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Annabel says, face getting blotchier by the second. “Sweetheart, we didn’t have a choice. It was that or they’d give it to another candidate. We’re leaving a lot of stuff here and Bunty’s going to take care of the house.”

I don’t think ‘Bunty’, ‘house’ and ‘care’ have ever been put together in a sentence before. She’s going to sell it, or burn it down, or cover it with glitter paint and glue feathers to the windows.

I’m definitely going to have to hide the cat.

“Your father’s new company is getting you a tutor,” Annabel continues gently. “That way you won’t miss anything and you can slip straight into sixth form when you get back.”

I blink at her a few more thousand times.

“Your father has to take it, Harriet,” Annabel adds when I still don’t say anything. “He’s been out of work for nine months, and New York will give him the break he needs. Plus –” she clears her throat – “we’ve, umm, run out of savings. We can’t afford for both of us to be out of work any longer.”

“New York? The job is in New York?”

What am I supposed to say?

That I’ve spent the entire summer making carefully laminated plans and timetables for the next academic year?

That I have a pencil case full of brand-new stationery I haven’t used yet?

That their timing couldn’t be worse and I hate them I hate them I hate them?

I’m just opening my mouth to say precisely all of that when I see a familiar expression on their faces. The Harriet’s-About-to-Throw-a-Tantrum look. The Hide-the-Breakables look. The We’ll-Need-to-Buy-New-Door-Hinges look.

And then I see what’s underneath it.

Under the nerves, they both look sad. Worried. Tired.

Dad’s excitement suddenly doesn’t look so real any more. It looks like he’s faking it, to try and make us all believe in it. Including him.

They don’t want to leave.

They have to.

“I think,” I say, taking a deep breath. “That I may need a few minutes to think about this.”

And – trying to ignore my parents’ astonishment – I turn my back, grab Hugo out of his basket and quietly walk upstairs to my bedroom.