Holly Smale - Picture Perfect

Tabby blinks at her with wide eyes, hissy-fit over.

“Don’t give me that look, missy,” Annabel sighs. “I’ve had eleven years of practice with your father.”

Dad leans over Tabitha. “She’s nailing it,” he says approvingly, tickling her tummy. “That’s my girl. Work that twinkle.”

My sister squeaks and kicks her little legs like a frog attempting the high jump. An air steward stops by us in the aisle.

“Oh ma Gahd ,” she says, putting a hand on her chest. “Your baby is the cutest . Isn’t she just adorable ? I could eat her up. ”

We look at Tabitha with narrow, exhausted eyes.

Dad put her in a Union Jack onesie especially for the journey. Her red hair is all curly and fluffy, her cheeks are all pink, the toy rabbit I bought her is propped on her shoulder and she’s blowing enthusiastic bubbles like a tiny goldfish.

Tabby does, indeed, look adorable.

They were obviously working in a different part of the plane twenty minutes ago. There was an entirely different word for her then.

“Please go for it,” Annabel says drily. “She goes well with ketchup and a bit of oregano.”

The air steward’s eyes get very round. “Ha,” she says awkwardly. “Hahaha. You Brits are hilarious .”

And then she hurries away as fast as possible.

This is it , I realise as we push ourselves through the enormous, shiny JFK airport.

It’s like we’ve just hit the restart button.

It feels like London, except bigger. Glossier. Cleaner. The floors are sparkly and everything is ordered and in neat lines. There’s a twang in the air, and the biggest American flag I have seen in my life is hanging from the ceiling.

We all stand and stare at it in silence.

“Well,” Annabel says finally, “at least we don’t need to check that we’re in the right country.”

“Unless it’s a trick,” Dad shrugs. “That would be pretty funny, right? Welcome to Australia! Hahaha GOTCHA! ”

“You have a nice day, now!” a lady in an airport outfit says chirpily as she walks past.

“You too!” Dad shouts after her. “Thank you so much! How extremely thoughtful of you! Do you have anything fun planned?”

She looks in alarm at the airport security.

Well: safe-ish, anyway.

Dad signs a few bits of paper and then leads us in excitement outside into an enormous car park and towards a large silver car. It’s so enormous it makes our car at home look like something a toy drives.

“A Dodge Durango ?” Dad says. “They sent me a Dodge Durango ?” He starts running his hands along it. “Front engine, rear-wheel drive. Harriet, this is built on the same platform as a Jeep Grand Cherokee!”

This is possibly the only fact in the world I’ve ever heard that I’m not even vaguely interested in.

“Are we prepared for an adventure?” Annabel says, popping Tabitha into the car seat and winking at me.

“Of course,” I say with a deep breath.

And we start the drive into the bright lights of the Big Apple.

ccording to the internet, New York City has:

I don’t want to be rude, but frankly you’d think they’d be a bit more noticeable.

Fifty minutes into the journey I still can’t see any of them. I’ve got my nose pressed against the window and three guidebooks on my lap, but the roads are getting wider and the buildings are getting smaller and the people fewer, rather than the other way round.

There’s a dodgy-looking restaurant on the side of the road, and an enormous superstore with flashing lights on the other. There are some of the biggest trucks I have ever seen in my life, blowing their horns at each other.

So far, skyscrapers spotted: 0.

Parks: 0.

Little ladies with push-along shopping trolleys: 6.

The Empire State Building is 381 metres high. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to see.

Another twenty minutes pass, and then another thirty, and I’m finally starting to lose my brand-new shiny patience. I know I’m supposed to be acting like an adult now, but clearly my parents don’t know how to navigate America.

“Are we lost?” I say helpfully, leaning forward and sticking my head in between the seats. “Because if you need help reading a map, I have a Brownie badge that will confirm I’m quite good at it.”

Silence.

I look back at the guidebook. “I think we should have gone over the Hudson River by now. Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”

Then I see my parents glance at each other.

“What’s going on?” I say as the car starts pulling into a tiny little road surrounded by small, solitary houses made out of white, blue or grey slats and shutters around the windows and pointy roofs. There’s a dog sitting on the porch, casually licking itself, and a ginger cat perched on the fence opposite, staring at it in total disgust.

One of the curtains twitches, and a small boy on a bike rides slowly past. Another silver SUV drives by with a family inside it.

At random intervals on this road there is a tiny hairdresser’s called CURL UP AND DYE, a small mechanical shop called JONNO’S AUTOPARTS and somewhere that sells chicken called MANDYS.

On the corner is a tiny church the shape of a box, with an enormous blue sign that says GREENWAY CHURCH OF CHRIST.

And then, in small letters underneath:

TRY JESUS! IF YOU DON’T LIKE HIM, THE DEVIL WILL HAVE YOU BACK.

Dad pulls into a driveway and with a quick flick of his wrist turns the engine off.

“Are we visiting someone?” I say curiously, rolling down the window. “Or maybe picking up the keys to our super-cool Manhattan loft-with-a-view?”

There’s another silence.

And then I can feel it: sticky alarm rising from my feet upwards until my whole body feels full of something explosively panicky.

“This isn’t New York,” I say slowly as Annabel and Dad open their car doors. We’re parked outside a small grey house with neat little hedges and a pointed window in the roof. “This isn’t New York. We’re nowhere near it.”

“Umm.” Annabel clears her throat. “Yes. About that …”

I can feel the panic starting to surge into my head until all I can hear is an incoherent, wordless roar.

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