Geek Girl (Geek Girl, #1)(13)

As I open the front door, I’m already clearing my throat. I’ve decided to lead with the modelling because hopefully my parents will be so paralysed with confusion and shock that I can slip the vast quantity of money they now owe various stallholders in there without them noticing: like doing a root canal after local anaesthetic.

“Dad?” I say nervously, shutting the door behind me. “Annabel?”

Hugo immediately barrels into my legs and starts pawing at my stomach. He has obviously just been to the hairdresser’s because I can now see where his eyes are instead of just guessing by their proximity to his nose.

“Hey, Hugo,” I add, bending down. “You’re looking very elegant.” He licks my face, which I think means, “Thanks very much,” or possibly, “You smell of hotdog.” Then I look back up. “Dad? Annabel?”

Silence.

You know what? The welcoming atmosphere in this house needs to be worked on. I’ve been away all day and it’s dark. Why aren’t they standing in the hallway, waiting anxiously for me to arrive home safe and in one unharmed piece? What kind of parents are they?

“Dad?” I repeat again, getting a bit snarly. “Annab—”

“Harriet?” Annabel interrupts from the living room. “Come in here, please.”

I sigh loudly, put my satchel down on the floor and then do as I’ve been told. Annabel is sitting on the sofa in her office suit, inexplicably eating sardines out of a tin, and Dad is in the armchair opposite her.

You know what I was saying about young children, and how non-uniform doesn’t really exist? It’s the same for lawyers. Annabel’s either in her suit, or her dressing gown, or she puts her dressing gown on top of her suit. When she goes out for dinner, she has to buy an outfit especially.

“What are you eating?” I ask immediately, sitting down on a chair and looking at Annabel’s tin.

“Sardines,” Annabel says – as if I didn’t mean why are you eating that? – and she pops another one in her mouth. “Now, Harriet,” Annabel says as soon as she’s swallowed it. “Your dad’s in trouble at work.”

“Annabel!” Dad exclaims. “For the love of… Don’t just throw that at her! Lead up to it, for God’s sake!”

“Fine.” My stepmother rolls her eyes. “Hello, Harriet. How are you? Your dad’s in trouble at work.” Then she looks at Dad. “Better?”

“Not even slightly.” Dad scowls. “It’s nothing, Harriet. Just a small difference in opinion.”

“You told your most important client to go and French Connection UK himself, Richard. In the middle of reception.”

Dad picks a bit of fluff off the sofa. “Well, he wasn’t supposed to hear it, was he?” he says in his most defensive voice. “It just came out loudly because of the acoustics. That place is all stone walls.”

“And we’re keen that you have a sterling example of adult behaviour to follow, Harriet.”

“It was the walls,” Dad shouts in exasperation.

I look at Annabel. Under a cosy layer of flippancy she looks really worried. “How bad is it?”

Annabel puts another sardine in her mouth. “Bad. They’ve called him into a disciplinary tomorrow.”

“It’s just a formality,” Dad mutters. “I’m creative: I’m supposed to be unpredictable. I’m the sort of guy who wears brown suede shoes when it’s raining; they just don’t know what to do with me. I’ll probably get a pay rise for being such a maverick.”

Annabel lifts one eyebrow and then rubs her eyes. “Let’s hope so because we really can’t afford to just live on one salary at the moment. Anyway. What about you, Harriet? Did you have a nice day? I hope you had a fragrant day at least because when I went into the bathroom, it was knee-deep in your grandmother’s vanilla talcum powder.”

“Oh.” I look at the floor. “Sorry. I meant to clean that up.”

“Of course you did. If only your actual cleaning was as good as your intended cleaning, we would have a very tidy house indeed. Did you manage to get out of whatever it is you were trying to avoid this time?”

“Actually,” I say, ignoring this extremely slanderous insinuation, and then I take a deep breath and stand up. “I have something to tell you both.”

On second thoughts, maybe I won’t tell them about the money right now. Honesty is very important within families. But so is timing. Especially when it comes to amounts like ￡3,000 while your father is in the process of throwing his job out of the window.

“Well?” Annabel prompts after a pause. “Spit it out, sweetheart.”

“I, uh,” I start. “Well, it’s…” I take a deep breath and prepare myself for the…well, whatever reaction you get from parents to news like this. “I’ve been spotted,” I finally manage to blurt out. There’s a silence. “Today,” I clarify. “I’ve been spotted today.”

There’s another silence and then Annabel frowns. “What?” she snaps. “Let me see.” She puts the sardine can down and drags me up from the chair and pulls me under the light. She looks carefully at my face, and then she looks at my hand and turns it over. She stares at my wrist and the inside of my upper arm. Then she gets Dad to stand up and look at my wrist and the inside of my upper arm. What the hell are they doing?