average teenager cries for two hours and thirteen minutes a week. Thanks to saving it all up, I’m very close to hitting that target in just one session.
I cry until my face hurts and my pillow’s wet.
I cry until my chest aches and there are no tears any more: just an exhausted ng ng ng sound.
Never mind Jupiter: my heart is now on the sun. It’s on a white dwarf. It’s somewhere on a neutron star, weighing millions of tonnes and about to rip a channel to the bottom of my toes.
Because there’s the massive lie I told Nat: one with a gaping, obvious hole in it.
I am not OK at all.
Finally, I stop crying.
I wipe my nose on my duvet and sit up. I grab a piece of paper and a pen from my bedside table.
And I start writing.
uickly, I cram the letter into an envelope.
I scribble an address on the front and stick three rare stamps on it that will carry the letter far, far away: to a strange, foreign place I’ve never been before. Then I shove my trainers on and run down the stairs before pride or shame or hope can stop me.
“Harriet?” Annabel says as I run through the hallway and fling open the front door. “I thought I could hear crying. Is everything OK?”
“Yes,” I say as I close the door softly behind me. “At least, I think it will be now.”
I run all the way to the postbox. Which isn’t saying much: it’s only at the bottom of the road.
But still.
And as I run, Nick runs with me.
Home, Hertfordshire – January (10 months ago)
“Did you know that snow isn’t actually white? It’s translucent. It just reflects light uniformly, which makes it look white.”
“Jump,” he instructed, hopping over a large slushy ice puddle and squeezing my hand with his warm, dry fingers. I’d taken my left glove off, claiming it was because I had one randomly hot hand.
This was a small white lie.
Or possibly a translucent one, reflecting light.
My stomach flipped over, and I jumped too late to avoid a totally wet and icy sock.
“Like polar bears, right?” Nick continued as we kept running towards the train station. “They’re not actually white either, are they?”
I was impressed: I told him that months ago. His ability to retain useless but fascinating information was getting nearly as good as mine.
“Exactly,” I said, slipping slightly so that his arm went temporarily round my waist. “We – I mean they – aren’t what they look like at all.”
Then I cleared my throat in embarrassment.
Oops. It was one thing comparing myself to a misfit polar bear in a rainforest in my head occasionally: quite another to do it out loud to my boyfriend.
“I was twelve the first time I saw snow,” Nick grinned as we started running down the stairs to the train platform. “I was so excited I got out of bed at 3am and tried to make a snow angel in shorts and a T-shirt.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Half of the world’s population has never seen snow, Nicholas. Considerably fewer would be that stupid.”
He shouted with laughter and my heart squeezed shut for a few seconds, just as it had the first time he did it in Moscow.
“Luckily, I’ve now got the world’s biggest smarty-pants to balance me back out again.”
With a quick spin, Nick stopped, wrapped his arms round me and pulled me so close I could feel his breath warming the end of my cold nose. I had just a second to notice that everything was white and still and calm, like a snowglobe just before it gets shaken.
Then he kissed me and it all disappeared: the snow, my wet sock and both my feet with it.
When we finally stopped kissing, we’d missed the train.
“I think I need to balance you faster, in that case,” I laughed, cheeks ridiculously warm. “It’s an hour to the next train and now you’re going to miss your Hilfiger casting.”
“Totally worth it. Tell me something else about snow.”
“Umm.” I rummaged through my brain for a few seconds while Nick opened his big grey coat and pulled me inside it so I wouldn’t get