Page 14 of Role Model

I’m only allowed to go to Westfield with the girls because Mum is in Brussels and forgets to remind Dad that I’m being punished.

I find Sable, Jaya and Ana in Blush, a shop that only sells dresses that come in pastel colours.

They all acknowledge my arrival with cries of delight, which is such a foreign feeling to me.

I smile and ask Ilya to hang as far back as possible.

“You were in the papers again,” Sable says in a sing-song voice.

“Yeah,” I say. “Mum was furious.”

“Do you think any paps will follow you today?” Ana asks and she sounds hopeful. If she knew what it actually felt like, to be photographed without your consent, she wouldn’t relish the idea of them trailing us.

“Don’t think so,” I say.

113 “Huh,” she says, with a puff of dismay. “Shame.”

“We’re going with a fixed colour palette,” Jaya tells me, completely business-like. She’s the most interested in fashion out of the three of them. “I’m pale pink, Sable is light lemon, Ana is baby blue.”

“What will I be?” I ask, slightly deflated to hear that baby blue has been claimed.

“You’ll be soft lavender.”

I thought lavender was a smell. Jaya is holding out a frilly, over-complicated dress that I would have called light purple in the past. Now I suppose it’s lavender.

We’re in the changing rooms, getting dressed one at a time because Jaya says we need the approval of the whole group. Sable comes out, brandishing her yellow dress at Ana.

“Go and get me one a size up,” she barks.

Ana frowns but obeys without comment. Sable and Jaya watch her go, and I watch them.

“Okay, don’t tell her I said this,” Sable says in an almost inaudible voice, “but she’s been really annoying lately.”

Jaya sighs and I wonder, for the briefest of moments, if she’s going to tell Sable to be quiet. But something seems to be at war in her. She eventually sniffs and nods.

“Yeah, she’s being weird. But don’t tell her I said that, either.”

114 I’m staggered at not being the ‘weird’ one for once and, when they both turn to look at me, I realise that I’m being invited into this little ritual.

I can’t bring myself to say something mean, not after Ana braided my hair and was nice to me at her house.

“Her mum is a lot,” I say, as it’s not untrue. “She’s maybe just stressed because of that.”

“Yeah,” Jaya says swiftly but Sable looks less than impressed.

“Are you still coming to mine on Friday?” she asks me bluntly.

I blink. “I didn’t think I was invited.”

Sable rolls her eyes. “Of course you are.”

“Will there be lots of people?” I hate when I have to ask, because I’m worried it might trigger a meltdown, but I need to know.

“No,” Sable says. “It’s a small get-together. Really classy. Nibbles and chat. No gatecrashers allowed.”

I feel an internal sigh of relief. “Well, cool. Then yeah. I can come.”

Ana returns with the dress Sable asked for and eyes the three of us with anxious suspicion.

“What are we talking about?” she says and I suddenly see the same anxiety I’ve been feeling about the group now reflected in her face.

She’s terrified of 115 being left out or whispered about.

I wonder if this is just a natural part of friendship.

Perhaps we all have to take turns in being the one everyone else shuns for a while.

Sable looks her up and down and then quietly says, “Nothing.”

*

I have to tell some white lies to Mum and Dad in order to go to the party.

If lying to them before Mum was elected Prime Minister was hard, afterwards is a whole other matter.

I tell them that we’re on a group project together and it’s about elephants.

Mostly because elephants are my biggest special interest, so I can answer any and all questions about them at a moment’s notice, should they desire to test me on my academic knowledge.

I tell them that ever since the library has become a meeting place for lots of school clubs and societies, it is too overstimulating for me.

Which is why we have to study together at Sable’s house.

Conversations are had about safety and Dad calls Sable’s mother to clarify some things, which is so embarrassing that I almost end up having a meltdown 116 so I lock myself in the bathroom to calm down. Upon emerging, Dad tells me I can go.

It feels like a miracle, but I’m also acutely aware that most of the other students in my school don’t have to go through all of this rigmarole just to go to their friend’s house.

I bought the lavender dress for the dance.

It’s hanging in my wardrobe. It’s full-length and made of tulle.

The neckline is a little high for my taste, and the sleeves are too long and too tight.

It also has a lot of layering around the skirt.

But Sable bought the yellow, Jaya the pink and Ana the blue so I have to match them when the dance arrives or their colour scheme won’t work.

I’m excited. It feels incredible to be within the group at last.

Ilya drives me to Sable’s family home in St. John’s Wood. He tells me to call him the minute I want to come home but I won’t. I’m determined to be a normal girl tonight. Not the Prime Minister’s daughter. Not the girl on Primrose Hill in the snow.

Normal.

A small whisper in the back of my mind tells me that normal is so boring, but I swat it away. It can go in the imaginary jar with all of the other wasps.

117 I’m wearing blue jeans with a nice top, one that Fizz lent me. She was so excited by my excitement, even though I was trying to mask mine. She saw through it and gushed about how happy she was to see me having a friend group.

“It’s hard sometimes,” she said. “Having a whole lot of neurotypical friends when you’re neurodivergent. It can take up a lot of our energy, so I’m really glad you have this little study group.”

I just nodded.

Now, as I walk to Sable’s front door, I tell myself to be aloof. To keep my hands still. To move like they do. To talk like they do.

Her older brother, Hayden, answers the door. I’m surprised, I was expecting an adult. Hayden, I know, is seventeen but I’ve never met him. He greets me with a bored expression and stands aside to let me enter. The house is beautiful. It has a more homely feel than Ana’s did.

I blink in surprise once I’m inside. It’s loud.

Too loud. Much louder than I thought a small gathering of friends would be.

There is music blasting from one of the other rooms, and I can hear people shrieking and shouting over it.

I follow Hayden, who looks completely unphased by the noise, into a conservatory.

118 Sable, Jaya and Ana are sitting cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table, giggling with their heads close together, but there are at least thirty other kids in the room.

Some candles that smell way too sickly sweet have been lit and people all smell of a light musk. The room is a complete sensory overload and I feel ridiculous, standing in the doorway like I’m too scared to go inside.

“Aeriel!” Sable shouts, beckoning me over. I stagger over, very aware of people staring.

“That’s her,” one girl whispers to another.

I fall into a seated position next to my friends. “This is a lot more people than I thought you meant.”

Sable frowns and I know I’ve said the wrong thing, but I find it hard to remember the right things to say when plans have changed without warning and everything is too loud and too intense.

Someone throws something that zooms by my head, too near for my taste, and someone else screams. I can’t instantly tell if it’s an exhilarated scream or if it’s one of fright. My heart goes from a jog to a sprint and I feel too closed in.

I know the others are talking but I can’t seem to listen properly. I feel seasick, even though I’m on land. 119 This wasn’t what I had envisioned. It’s so hectic and cramped. Everyone is shouting over the terrible music.

“Do you have a bathroom?” I ask of Sable, and I know my voice sounds too shrill, even in the pulsing room.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Of course we do. Upstairs.”

I get up, rather clumsily. I push myself free of the room, ignoring people as they yell my name. They do it as though I’m a zoo animal. They just want my attention, they don’t want to speak to me.

I climb the stairs and look for the bathroom. All of the doors are shut and when I try the first, I accidentally find a woman in a fluffy bath robe watching television.

“Oh, hello,” she says, beaming at me. Sable’s mother. The chill mum of the group, apparently. Jaya’s mother is a doctor who wants Jaya to go to an Ivy League university in America. Ana’s mother is Naomi, the influencer who wants more followers than she does time with her daughter.

Then there’s mine. Who runs the country.

Sable’s mum is still smiling at me.

“Sorry,” I say, feeling dazed. “I’m looking for the bathroom.”

120 “At the end of the landing,” she says. “I’m banished up here, Sable says. I’m not to come down, or I would have shown you when you arrived. Gosh, you’re the famous one, aren’t you? I’ve seen you in all of the magazines.”

I don’t even know what they write about me in the magazines. So I just say, “Thank you.”

“You know, my friend at work has a daughter with autism.”

Autistic. And I never know what they want me to say when they do this. “Okay.”

“She’s not got a special skill though. What’s your special skill?”

I don’t have the patience or the energy for this. “I don’t have one either.”

Her smile slips, as if the concept of autistic people being just that–people–is incomprehensible to her. “Oh.”

“Bye.”

I stumble on the pink carpet as I make my way to the end of the landing. I fall into the bathroom and lock it after me. I crawl to the sink and splash my face with cold water.

And I start to cry.

Because deep down, deep in the cold of my bones, I know this is what happens when you pretend to 121 be normal. When you put the true, honest parts of yourself into a blender in order to make them some beige, boring but safe, palatable liquid for people. You crawl. You end up on your knees.