Beads, Boys and Bangles
Read Beads, Boys and Bangles Online
Authors: Sophia Bennett
From The Chicken House
The girls are back! I can’t wait to hear what happens next! If
Threads
made you laugh and cry, helped fashion make sense, and inspired your wardrobe and your conscience, then prepare for a bumpy ride. Our friends are in action again, but the future seems to be coming unstitched. Sophia Bennett just gets better . . . and better.
Barry Cunningham
Publisher
SOPHIA BENNETT
2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS
To E, whose kisses are SO not ew
Contents
Sequins, Stars & Spotlights sample
I
’ve never seen Crow look so scared. And this time, she’s got a point.
We’re standing in Miss Teen’s flagship store in Oxford Street. The shop floor is huge and shiny and practically empty. For now. The perfect shopping opportunity, you might think, but oh no. We’re not shopping, we’re waiting. And we’re not the only ones. There’s just one very large pane of glass between us and the biggest, loudest mob I’ve ever seen. It’s been building up for hours. It can see us. It’s shouting our names and it’s counting down until it can reach us.
One pane of glass, that is, and a SUPERMODEL.
Svetlana Russinova is posing in the window. She’s wearing one of Crow’s little gold embroidered corset dresses with a flirty skirt that shows off her legs. I remember Crow designing that dress last spring.
Every now and again Svetlana looks back over her shoulder at us three girls, huddled together in the shop,
and says something helpful like, ‘There’s thousands of them. Really. Oxford Street is full. Are you sure they’ll fit inside?’
No, frankly, we are not. We’re not at all sure we’ll fit even half of them inside. Or that we’ll survive the process. Or, more to the point, that we’ll have enough of Crow’s new high-street collection to sell to them when they get here.
Andy Elat is the only person who seems even vaguely relaxed. He’s the man who owns Miss Teen. He said, ‘We’ll do a big launch for the new collection before Christmas. Everyone’s talking about it. It’ll be huge. You’ll love it.’
If he’d said, ‘It’ll be like being in the middle of a natural disaster, with sequins,’ we’d have got the picture. But he didn’t. So here we are.
Crow looks the most terrified, but she’s got her brother Henry for comfort. She’s clinging on to him for dear life. I’ve got my friend Jenny and I’m sort of clinging on to her, but to be honest, she’s more clinging on to me.
‘They look angry,’ she whispers. ‘Are you sure we should let them in, Mr Elat?’
‘They’re just excited,’ Andy says calmly. ‘OK, Svetlana. You’d better come down now. Thanks, love. Two minutes, lads.’
The security guards nod. They are big and scarylooking and they’ll probably be OK. We are small, teenage and unarmed. I’m trying to remember why I ever got
involved with Crow. Or why I thought launching a high-street collection would be a cool idea. Or why I didn’t decide to do it from A MILLION MILES AWAY.
‘Three. Two. One. Open the doors, lads.’
Scream scream scream scream. And the next thing we know, they’re coming straight for us.
This is it. My friend Crow is now officially a high-street designer. Stella McCartney’s done it. Christopher Kane has done it. Now it’s our turn.
I watch as the crowd run over us and through us and past us, anxious to get their hands on their favourite pieces before they go. Thank goodness Andy overruled me about Jenny. As Crow’s official business manager (yes, really!) I had originally wanted Jenny to be the face in the window, posing in Crow’s stuff and looking amazing. Jenny’s red-headed and curvy and funny, and she’d be a great advert for the fact that Crow’s dresses can look good on anybody. Plus Jenny was the first sort-of famous person to wear Crow’s stuff in public, before there even was a label.
But Andy thought it would be better to have an internationally famous supermodel for today, rather than a slightly chubby sixteen-year-old who’s been in one movie. And looking at Jenny now, in her ‘vintage’ (last year’s) Crow prom dress, positively shaking with fright, I have to admit he had a point.
Svetlana comes back to join us. She’s changed into poured-on skinny jeans and a hoodie with the hood up,
so she looks like any other tall, blonde, thin, gorgeous person and doesn’t get spotted by too many people in the crowd.
‘It’s going well,’ she says. ‘They’re loving it. Look!’
If by ‘loving it’, she means throwing pieces in the air, grabbing them in large piles, fighting over them and crying, she’s right.
The petal skirts are going quickest. They’re made out of soft, jewel-coloured silk that catches your eye straight away. And when you’re wearing them, they wave and flutter as you walk. It’s like wearing a little piece of silk sculpture that moves. The jumpers will take a bit longer to be successful because you have to try them on before you realise how incredible they are. They just look a bit lumpy on a hanger, but on a body they turn even a short, rectangular teenager like me into a sex kitten.
The tee-shirts are a surprising success. They’re just tee-shirts, after all. Although admittedly, Crow spent weeks and weeks getting the shape exactly right so they’d make anyone look curvy and lovely. That’s the thing when your best friends are a beanpole, an hourglass and a midget. You learn to cut cleverly so the pattern will flatter everybody. Crow makes it look easy, but it isn’t.
They’ve got crystal embroidery that glitters under the shop lights. Crow’s best known for making couture dresses for famous actresses to wear – as you do when you’re nearly fourteen – and the red-carpet stuff is usually scattered with Swarovski crystals, so the tee-shirts
are, too. It’s December and I think there are going to be a lot of crystal tee-shirts and petal skirts at Christmas parties this year.
The factories have been busy making this stuff for weeks. I was horrified when I saw it all arrive. Boxes and boxes and boxes of it, from India and the Philippines. I couldn’t imagine how we could possibly sell it all and now I’m wondering if they’ve made enough.
I look around for Crow to see how she’s getting on, but she’s disappeared. Uh oh. I nod to Jenny and we form a search party. Eventually we find her taking refuge in the shoe section at the top of the sweeping stairs, which is totally empty apart from her and her brother.
Henry is, as usual, reading a book. He seems to have got THE HOTTEST SHOP IN LONDON mixed up with a public library, but Crow looks happy to tuck herself under one of his arms and sit quietly. Strange to think that a couple of years ago, he’d have been in Uganda, holding a machine gun, instead of sitting here, holding his sister and a poetry anthology. Not that he wanted to do the whole machine gun thing. He’s much more comfortable with his book.
He smiles at Crow and her wide eyes flicker uncertainly back. It seems mean to make her go back into the maelstrom downstairs. After all, there’s not much she can do right now. It’s not as if she can work a cash till or anything.
Recently she’s grown a lot. She’s as tall as me now (which I suppose isn’t saying much, even if it feels a lot to me), but she’s all arms and legs, and she reminds me of pictures of baby colts struggling to stay upright on their long limbs, which is maybe why I feel this need to look after her. That and her dreamy brown eyes and slender fingers, which suggest that she’s a fragile, delicate creature. Although I suspect that really she’s tough as Doc Marten boots.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ I say, pointing at my watch and then pointing towards the lifts to the offices above us. Henry sees me and nods. He knows the schedule.
Jenny and I take a deep breath and prepare to dive back down into the human tsunami.
‘By the way, what’s happened to Edie?’ she asks.
Good question. Edie is our other best friend and a total super-genius, who was supposed to be here an hour ago. I’m about to reply, when my phone goes. This is a surprise. I forgot to charge it last night and I thought the battery was dead. Edie’s name is on the screen.
‘Nonie? I’m on my way. But they’ve hacked my website. They’re saying I’m a liar and it’s all about Crow. They’re saying . . .’
