by Holly Smale
Right?
“You know,” Joe the cameraman says, helping me up. “After careful consideration, I think I might need a couple of extra shots of the dunes. A long, long way over there.”
He points far away in the distance.
“I’ll come with you,” Kevin says, reappearing as if by magic. “I know exactly the shot you’re thinking of and you can’t do it without me because I’m the director.” He holds his fingers up in a square. “Oh yes, I see it already. I see it all.”
Joe winks at me as Kevin begins sliding through the sand in the direction Joe indicated and – as if by some strange, wonderful enchantment – the air gets quieter and quieter until it’s completely silent.
I can almost hear the desert heaving a sigh of relief.
Then I quickly whip my shoes off while mouthing a grateful thank you.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes,” Joe says with a small grin as I start heading towards the biggest dune I can find. “Get as far away as you possibly can.”
And it looks like the desert is finally mine.
cientists estimate that there are 70,000 million million million stars in the known universe and at least 170 billion galaxies stretching 13.8 billion light years away from us in all directions.
Our galaxy alone contains 400 billion stars.
With all the energy I have left, I scramble on all fours up the dune. It takes a surprisingly long time: for every two scrabbles forward I slide back one, as if I’m trying to climb a mound of warm, soft sugar.
Finally, I reach the top and lie down. I spread my arms out wide with my fingers buried in the sand.
And I look upwards, at a sky now coated in glitter.
Hertfordshire/Sydney – February (9 months ago)
“I know you miss me but try and be cool, Manners. There’s no need to lick the computer.”
I laughed and pulled Hugo off the webcam.
He got a bit overexcited every time he saw my boyfriend, but I couldn’t exactly blame him.
In fairness, so did I.
“Saliva is antibacterial,” I told Nick airily. “We just like keeping things clean.” Then I poked my face round my dog’s little white fluffy head. Hugo immediately started licking my ear instead. “Is it nice being home?”
Nick was making the most of shooting a huge campaign in Australia by spending the weekend with his parents.
“It’s great, but I keep getting this niggling feeling I’ve left something behind.”
“You did,” I said, holding up a blue sock. “I found this under my bed yesterday. It doesn’t smell great. In fact, I have considerable doubts about your laundry skills.”
Nick threw his head back and laughed, and every one of my two billion heart-muscle cells stood up silently and did a little invisible dance of triumph. “I gave that to you when you jumped in the snow puddle, plonker. So technically you were the last one to wear it.”
“Oh.” I flushed with happiness. “Of course. In that case, it smells of sunshine and roses and I’ve never inhaled anything so delightful in my life and shall sleep with it forever under my pillow.”
We both laughed, and then the screen flickered.
“Hello?” I clicked a few buttons. “Are you still there? Nick?”
It flickered a few more times: his face appearing and disappearing again. “Harri—”
“Nick?”
“Shoot,” a disembodied voice said. “Why is this connection so bad?”
“It’s OK, we’ll just …”
Then the sound cut out too.
Over the two and a half months we’d been dating, I had grown to hate video calls with a passion. They gave me a pixelated picture of Nick – like he had been drawn or painted – but I couldn’t curl up with my head on his shoulder or smell his lime-green smell or kiss him.
And there were these little unexpected awkward bits: the moments where we talked over each other, or the sound lagged, or the screen froze and we were suddenly disjointed and pulled apart.
The screen went bright again and I could see his beautiful face: fuzzy and frozen in the middle of expressing a U shape.
“Are you …” we both said at the same time.
“… Here.”
“… There. What?”
“Huh?”
There was an awkward silence again while I flushed. My face was now frozen in the corner of the screen, like a constipated goblin. I felt strangely shy, as if we were back at the beginning.
My boyfriend was 10,552 miles away, and I could suddenly feel every single one of them.
“What were you—”
“I was just—”
“You go—”
“No, I was just saying—”
Another long silence while we both fiddled with our laptops and I tried my hardest not to throw it on the floor and stamp on it.
“Take me to the window,” Nick said finally.
“Oh God, it’s not that bad, is it? I mean, you’re not going to virtually jump, are you?”
“Maybe,” he laughed. “Let’s see how I feel when I get there.”
I clambered off my bed and took my laptop to the windowsill. Our neighbour was trimming his lawn with a dark blue fleece on. Not even vaguely romantically: I could hear him swearing and kicking the machine through the glass.
“Now turn me round so I can see the sky.”
“But you can’t see anything, Nick. It’s just grey.”
“Obviously. You’re in England so that goes without saying. Now I’ll do it.” Nick held his computer up and I peered forward. “What can you see?”
“Black.”
“Because I’m currently in the southern hemisphere, and you’re in the northern hemisphere. We have two almost totally different skies, so it’s dark here while it’s light there.”
I turned the camera round so I could blink at him incredulously. Maybe this was what happened when you became a model: people tried to explain the notion of a spinning earth to you.
“Thanks for that, Nick. That is fascinating geological knowledge that I didn’t learn when I was six years old at all. Please, tell me more about the basic concept of night and day.”
“I wasn’t finished,” he laughed. “May I continue?”
“Yes. Unless you’re about to tell me that rain comes out of clouds and gravity makes things, like, fall down. In which case, no.”
He growled at me so I stuck my tongue out.
“I said we have almost two totally different skies, smarty-pants. But there’s still a crossover point and it’s always there. Three—”
Nick’s face suddenly went very quiet and stationary.
Oh my God, I thought, you have to be kidding me.
“Nick?” I shook my laptop desperately. “Three what? Three squirrels? Three blind mice?”
But there was nothing: just emptiness and silence.
“Nick?” I said in a smaller voice, shaking it again. “Come back.”
And the screen went black.
Thanks to almost no light pollution, I can now see more stars than I’ve ever been able to before: thousands and thousands of lights slowly scattering themselves across the sky like the blue sparkle Nat used to throw all over everything when she was seven.
But I’m only looking at three of them.
After five minutes of cursing my laptop, I’d finally worked it out: Orion’s Belt, also known as The Three Kings.
Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka.
Three of the brightest stars in the sky, and – because of their position near the equator – visible in both the northern and southern hemisphere: Morocco and Australia.
Last week I read that the heart has its own electrical pulse, which means it can function even when it has been separated from its body.
Which I thought was pretty handy.
Given that mine has been on the other side of the world now for quite some time.
But as I dig myself into the warm sand and look upwards, it suddenly feels a tiny bit closer again: beatin
g and hopeful, as if I’m not quite as empty any more. And as I think about my letter, I feel a little closer to being whole again: more than I have in a long time. Since I walked off Brooklyn Bridge and left the boy I love still standing there without me.
Because tonight, these stars are mine.
But in a few hours, they’ll belong to Nick again.
No matter where we are, no matter how dark it gets, no matter which of us can’t see them, this is one connection that is never going to break.
The part of the sky we share.
uckily, the return journey is a lot easier.
This is mainly because I borrow earplugs, curl up with my head on Annabel’s lap and sleep the entire way back to Marrakech.
By the time the crew staggers off the bus at 7am and figuratively crawls back into the riad, Kevin and I are the only upbeat people in the party. I’d like to pretend it has nothing to do with my fifteen minutes with the stars, but that would be lying.
I honestly feel happier than I have in weeks.
My brighter mood is enhanced yet further when my director calls me a “triumph of casting” and air-kisses my hand – albeit from a considerable distance.
“I am about to have a very happy client,” he chirps, grabbing his enormous suitcase and heading straight back towards the riad door. “Kev, Jacques Levaire is going to say, Kev, Kevin, Kevin Holland. If only they gave Oscars for adverts, you would win them all.”
I beam at him: I think that means it went well.
“Now I’m off to the South of France to restock my fragile, butterfly-like creative juices on a yacht,” he continues. “Catch you on the fame train, Hannah.”
“Kevin?” I say as he pulls on a little black felt hat and pushes the door open. I clear my throat anxiously. “I’m not actually Hannah Manners. My name is Harriet.”
He’s given me two of the most amazing days and an entire desert: the least I owe him is the truth.
“Whatevs,” he says, shrugging.
And he closes the door behind him.
“We have a Berber proverb in Morocco,” Ali says thoughtfully, appearing as if out of thin air with two more steaming glasses of mint tea. “Every dog thinks of its own fleas as gazelles. I think Kevin assumes his are unicorns.”
Annabel opens her eyes from where she’s been propped up with a straight back against the reception desk.
“Unicorns?” she says sleepily, glancing around the room. “Where? I like bees.”
I smile and gently remove the phone still gripped tightly in her hand. My stepmother was sending emails when I fell asleep on the bus and still sending emails when I woke up: there’s a small but real chance she may have been suing people in her sleep.
I kiss her cheek as she puts her sunglasses on over her glasses. “I think it’s time to go home now, Annabel.”
“Sadly, you would be right,” Ali says, forcing a tea into her hand. “But you have one hour left in Morocco before I must take you to the airport. Is there anything special you’d like to do?”
He really is our magic genie.
There’s just one wish I haven’t had granted yet.
“Actually, Ali,” I say, glancing at sleeping-again Annabel. I don’t need to check it with her: I know we’re on the same page. Or we will be when she wakes up, anyway. “We have a little favour we’d like to ask before we go, if you don’t mind?”
“Harriet Manners,” he says, grinning and bowing slightly. “Nothing would delight me more.”
By the time we get home, everything on my list has been ticked off neatly.
Everything that matters, anyway.
“You’re back!” a voice shouts as we at last push through the front door. “Finally! You were gone for years and years.”
Annabel and I stand in the hallway and stare in amazement at the living room. I’m pretty sure we were gone three days, but for a few seconds I’m convinced Dad might actually be right.
There’s fabric everywhere. My spare bedding has been spread over a couple of bits of string, Annabel’s best embroidered white cotton throw is forming a vast canopy in the middle, and inside the world’s worst home-made tent is every pillow in the house.
My sister is lying in a furry cocoon of fleece jumpers in the entrance, patiently tugging on one of Hugo’s ears.
“I built a fort!” Dad cries, still hidden. “We have everything you could possibly need. Biscuits, and movies, and milk, and a wooden donkey I found in the loft and—”
He pokes his head out of the sheets and then stops in amazement.
We both turn slowly to look at Annabel.
Her face is bright scarlet and peeling, the normally perfect blonde fringe is fuzzy and sticking upwards, there’s orange juice down her front and ink on her face from where she fell asleep on her crossword on the flight home.
Yup.
My stepmother is one of the country’s top barristers.
She has gone through twenty years of education, two postgraduate degrees, one teenage stepdaughter, one baby, nine years of marriage to my father, hundreds of court cases and thirteen hours of labour without ruffling a single eyelash.
Three days of fashion have broken her.
“Harriet Manners,” Dad says sternly, looking at me, “what did you do to my wife?”
Annabel gives me a long, sleepy look and then nods in satisfaction. “It was exactly what we needed,” she yawns, crawling into the tent. “But it’s nice to be home.”
With a happy little sigh, she picks Tabs up, kisses her face and tummy enthusiastically then lays her gently on her own stomach. My sister immediately makes a delighted squeaking sound and attempts to stick a whole hand up Annabel’s nose.
Then Dad gives my stepmother the kind of kiss that makes me look awkwardly at the ceiling for a few seconds.
I crawl in next to them and for a while the four of us lie quietly under the white canopy.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Annabel says eventually.
“Yes,” Dad nods with his eyes shut. “You’re thinking: why isn’t there mouse-flavoured cat food?”
“Nope.”
“You’re thinking why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard when there are no razors in the jungle?”
“Well, I’m thinking that now, yes. But no.”
Dad sighs sadly. “I have to take the awesome fort down, don’t I?”
“Nope,” Annabel says, closing her eyes. “Right now, it’s perfect. I’m thinking Bahamas, Maldives, Hawaii, wherever Harriet goes next, Richard. They’re all yours.”
e have a little family nap for half an hour.
Then Tabitha and Hugo start clamouring simultaneously for something to eat, so I leave them to my disorientated parents and climb out of the fort as fast as I possibly can.
I carefully inspect the post next to the front door for a few minutes to see if anything has arrived for me over the last few days. Then I check under the indoor mat, because something important might have slipped into the wrong place.
And under the outdoor mat.
Tentatively, I wave my hand around inside the letter box a few times, in case a bulky, romantic gift was simply too huge to get all the way through.
But there’s nothing there.
Not today anyway.
Still standing in the open doorway, I send Nat a quick text to check if she wants to hang out this weekend, now I’m back from Marrakech earlier than I thought.
A few seconds later my phone beeps:
Wish I could, but I already have plans. Can’t wait o hear about your trip! Nat xxx
I send a quick reply – OK! Have fun! X – put my phone back in my pocket, tug my suitcase up to my bedroom and sit on the floor with my back against the wall.
Then I pull my crumpled Inner Star list out of my pocket, retrieve a pen from my desk and hover over it in deep concentration for a few minutes.
Over the last three days, I have: been on two aeroplanes, skipped school, bussed through winding mountain roads, break-danced, ridden a camel in the
desert, been vigorously draped in snakes and monkeys and held quite a few conversations with a man called Kevin.
I don’t want to sound smug, but I think the anonymous author on the internet would be incredibly proud of me right now. I’ve never taken so many potentially lethal risks in my entire life.
With a smile, I draw a neat little tick next to the two entries I’ve been primarily concentrating on.
1. Be Confident! You are a creature unlike any other!
2. Take Risks, Be Brave! There is no limit to what you can do!
Then I focus my attention on my next targets.
3. Be Stylish! Shake it up and try something new!
4. Inspire! Lead, never follow!
With a deep breath, I fling my suitcase open wide and energetically start pulling out the contents like some kind of magician.
Bright yellow scarves and white sequin wraps. Turquoise and purple shawls with tassels; embroidered green waistcoats; orange and blue trousers, red leather shoes and enormous silver spangly earrings. Sparkles and sequins and things with beads all over them.
Until it’s all in a rainbow heap around me.
As of Monday morning, things are going to change.
The geek is gone, and in her place is a much better version of Harriet Manners. Somebody strong and brave, cool and confident. A girl who can inspire others; who believes in herself so that everybody else will too.
Or – you know. To.
Because if there’s a star inside everybody, it’s only logical that there must be one inside me as well.
Now I just need to find a way to coax the rest of her out, that’s all.
nfortunately, the Inner Star list’s author hasn’t given any more details on exactly how to do that.
Which is a shame.
Because, as of 8:30am on Monday morning, I could really do with a little more guidance.
By the time I reach the end of my road, there are four first years following me with huge eyes, like barn owls in too-big dark green blazers and little white ankle socks.