I Was Born for This(35)

‘I haven’t even got any fucking make-up on,’ she whispers.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say, but I would be extremely worried if professional photographers were going to run at me with cameras when I had zero eyeliner on. Reassuring her that she looks perfectly fine probably isn’t the most helpful thing to say, either. ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like.’

She laughs. It’s more of a panicked cackle. ‘You’re right. I could look like a gecko and they’d still run the same story.’

I snort. ‘A gecko?’

‘A small lizard.’

‘Well, you don’t look like a small lizard.’

‘That’s because I’m wearing my human skin right now.’

We both laugh.

‘What’s our plan?’ I ask. ‘Shall we just leg it?’

She takes a deep breath and then nods.

‘Have you got any sunglasses?’ she asks.

‘Oh, yeah!’ I give her my aviators. She puts them on. She looks a bit like a baby wearing their parent’s sunglasses. ‘Sorry, they’re much too big for your head. I have a massive head.’

‘The more of my head they conceal, the better.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Tube? Just down the road?’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

She takes another deep breath. ‘I’m just gonna run. Can you, like, I don’t know …’

‘I will try to remain in between you and the group of scary men at all times. Most of them are shorter than me. And I’m wearing heavy boots. If they get near us, I’ll just kick. Like a giraffe.’

She claps her hands together in faux prayer. ‘You are a saint.’

‘Don’t you mean … an angel.’

We both say, ‘Aaaaaay,’ at the same time, and I think that means we’re friends.

We approach the front of the shop. Bliss remains hidden, since she’s short enough to hide behind the aisles of DVDs and CDs, and the paps don’t seem to be paying attention to me or anything else anyway.

Bliss looks me directly in the eye, the corner of her mouth twitching into a nervous smile.

‘On the count of three,’ she says.

I nod. My stomach churns. I can’t remember the last time I full-on sprinted. Might have been Year 11 PE.

‘One,’ she says.

I bounce up and down on the balls of my feet. Really hope I don’t trip over. Could do without that being photographed by professional paparazzi.

‘Two.’

What are they going to do? Are they actually going to chase after us? Are they going to not notice us at all? How do real-life celebrities deal with this?

‘Three.’

Bliss just legs it. She vanishes from in front of me in a flash of purple. And then I’m running too. Running around the aisle out of the shop and down the road, my boots slapping against the pavement, rain stinging against my cheeks, my eyes, praying I put enough pins in my scarf this morning

They’re behind us. I can hear them running. Shouting. Shouting for her. Up ahead, Bliss dares a quick glance back, and there’s panic in her eyes, and so I look back too and nearly fall over in the process, because the paps are only a few metres behind me, running with their cameras, trying to take pictures and shout and run all at the same time. I shriek out a laugh and try to run faster but I’m already getting out of breath and I nearly fall over again after narrowly dodging a lamp-post.

People on the street are staring at us as we run past. I catch eyes with an older woman who reminds me strongly of my Year 9 maths teacher, and I almost think she’s going to shout at us for running, but then she gives me a nod, and after Bliss and I run past, she sticks out her leg, sending at least three of the paps crashing to the ground, and bringing the rest of them to a halt behind the pile of men and cameras.

I scream ‘THANK YOU!’ at the woman, wishing I could stop and talk to her properly, but we can’t, we keep going, laughing, laughing so hard it hurts, and we run the rest of the way down the street until we’re safely inside the tube station, through the ticket barriers, and stopped just before the escalator, panting, my throat feeling like it’s on fire.

‘I am not … fit enough for this,’ I say.

Bliss is leaning her whole body weight against a wall, chest heaving up and down. ‘I really hope … I don’t have to do that every time.’

‘Did you see that woman who tripped them up?’

‘Hell, yeah! What a fucking legend!’

We both start to laugh, and then I need to sit down, because my thighs are shaking.

Bliss smooths her hair, tucking it behind her ears and sorting out her parting. She glances down at me, then sits, joining me on the tube-station floor.

I’m busy checking my scarf in my phone front camera. If I’d known extreme athletics was on today’s agenda, I most definitely would have chosen a more practical hijab style this morning.

‘You’re losing a pin,’ says Bliss, reaching up and adjusting one of my pins.

I can see myself in her sunglasses. ‘Oh, thanks!’

I put my phone away, and then we sit still for a moment.

‘Now what?’ says Bliss.

Now what.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Me neither.’