Beads, Boys and Bangles (8 page)

I fold my arms and face away from him for the rest of the journey. And try to pretend I can’t hear him sniggering to himself on the other side of the cab.

J
enny, of course, thinks Harry saved me from a fate worse than death. She thinks the whole thing sounded hilarious. I assure her it absolutely wasn’t. Anyway, she’d think anything sounded funny at the moment. She’s in such a good mood.

We’re all in Crow’s workroom, in my basement, watching her drape fabric on tailor’s dummies. She’s working on a couple of dresses for her stall in the Portobello Road market, where stars and It-girls do their shopping. Jenny has loads of ideas for new styles, which Crow politely ignores, but luckily she’s soon too busy talking about acting to pay much attention.

It turns out Jenny’s ‘thing’
was
an audition, and she passed it. They told her there and then. They were pretty sure they wanted her already for Bill’s new play and they were just making sure. She’s practically playing herself, so it’s not going to be too much of a stretch.

She starts rehearsals at the end of January. She’s very,
very excited and if I wasn’t a humiliated little puddle of shame, I’d feel pleased for her too. As it is, I just fake enthusiasm as well as I can. Fortunately, she’s thrilled enough for both of us and doesn’t notice.

Edie is still trying to understand Alexander, like he’s some sort of maths problem.

‘I don’t get why he didn’t offer you a chip,’ she says. ‘Or order for you. Or ask you what you wanted. I mean, he obviously
likes
you, so . . .’

I point out two things: one, he’s a boy, and two, he’s a few years older than me, so obviously he’s going to do loads of things I don’t understand. It’s part of the deal. The excitement. The thrill.

‘Yes, I see . . .’ she says, the way she says she trusts Andy Elat when she doesn’t.

‘He’s a really good jumper,’ Crow adds. ‘He can leap for miles.’

This is true, of course, but not totally relevant. We all nod anyway.

At this point, my phone goes. It’s a text from an unknown number.

Hi Boots
, it says.
Touring Cuba for a bit. See you Jan 23rd? Your brother’s DJing. He can keep an eye. Look after those legs. A xxxxx
.

We spend the next hour and a half analysing it. Our Eng. Lit. teacher would be proud of us.

What do five kisses mean?

What legs?

Does he
want
Harry to keep an eye? Or is he being ironic? Or sarcastic, Edie wonders. We spend ten minutes arguing about what the difference is. Edie knows, but can’t explain it very well.

What does ‘touring Cuba’ mean? Is it code for ‘Your brother is such an idiot I can’t bear to see you again for the foreseeable future’?

In the end, we Google him.

Turns out, ‘touring Cuba’ is code for ‘touring Cuba’. With a bunch of other dancers, in a bid to build relations with their amazingly good ballet schools.

That bit, at least, I can understand.

C
hristmas last year was a bit rushed. Crow was busy preparing her first couture collection for London Fashion Week. This year, because she’s been working for Miss Teen, she’s not doing one. But she’s still doing her normal party dresses,
and
she’s been asked by a couple of actresses to do their dresses for the BAFTA awards,
and
she’s got her new high-street collection to think about. The first one was pretty small, but this time they want about forty pieces: tops, trousers, skirts, dresses, jackets, you name it. If I was Crow, my brain would probably burst.

Jenny is so excited about her new play she’s just longing for the holidays to be over. I have January 23rd to look forward to. Harry’s admitted he’s doing a set at a club in Shoreditch that night, near where lots of the designers have their studios. He seems very relaxed about it, as normal. Whereas I’m terrified that I have less than six weeks to work out what to wear. Only Edie seems to
want to get into the Christmas spirit.

Edie’s the one who makes sure we get presents for all the right people, and do our holiday homework, and book tickets to see a pantomime. She even makes sure we go skating on the temporary rink outside Somerset House. We look like something out of a Victorian Christmas card. Except I’m in neon legwarmers and my old pink fake polar bear jacket, which isn’t totally traditional.

Jenny and I must be the only girls in our school who fast-forward through the holidays so we can get on with interesting stuff. January comes at last and I can start counting down the days on Mum’s calendar in the kitchen. Harry has threatened to draw a big pink heart round the 23rd, but if he does, he knows I’ll kill him.

Crow, in the middle of everything, has offered to make me a dress for the Big Date. Harry has promised not to leave his decks or even glance in our direction, so hopefully things will go more smoothly this time. Crow and I spend ages choosing fabric and end up going for some silver lace made by our favourite fabric designer, Skye, who’s always inventing new materials and doing clever things with old ones. I will look gorgeous and incredible. More so than ever before. Alexander will forget I even
have
a brother.

I’m in a fitting when Edie calls. Crow is perfectly used to adjusting things on clients while they have a mobile
phone clamped to their ear, so she just sighs quietly and lets me take the call.

‘They’ve sent them,’ Edie says.

I
sigh.

‘Who’s sent what, Edie?’

Then
she
sighs, exasperatedly.

‘No Kidding. They’ve sent the photos.’

‘What? Just now? It’s taken them long enough.’

‘I know. All through the holidays, I was starting to think they’d forgotten or even that they’d made this whole thing up about child labour. That’s why I was having such a nice time. But they were just being inefficient. They sent them this afternoon.’

‘And?’

Long pause at Edie’s end.

‘Are they bad?’

Sniffle at Edie’s end.

‘Yes,’ very quietly. ‘Yes, they are.’

Oh.

‘Are they real?’

‘I DON’T KNOW!’

I hold the phone away from my ear. Edie can be very loud when she’s upset.

‘What do they look like?’

‘They look like CHILDREN! Tiny, exhausted children. In a room with no windows, no proper light. Sitting behind these things that look like drums, with fabric stretched over them. Sewing crystals on pieces I recognise
from Crow’s collection. On pieces I’ve actually WORN!’

I sigh again. So does Crow. Without a word, she helps me out of the silver lace dress.

‘I’m coming over,’ I say.

‘Thanks, Nonie.’ Another sniffle. Edie ends the call.

‘It’ll be all right,’ I promise Crow.

‘I know,’ she says simply, looking at me with her totally trusting brown eyes like I’m Super-Nonie or something, which makes it worse. I’ll just have to tell her when we’ve fixed everything.

In Edie’s bedroom, we look at the photos on her computer screen. Some of the children are tiny. Others could be our age. It’s impossible to tell. They’re only wearing scraps of clothing because it’s obviously hot in that room. They’re sitting in a circle, with huge piles of crystals in the middle, all concentrating hard on what they’re sewing. It’s like something out of
Oliver
, except without the music, or the costumes, or the happy ending.

If the pictures have been faked, they’ve been faked very well. And why would anyone
want
to fake them? Nobody hates Crow, as far as I know. Or Edie. Or even Andy Elat. I can’t see why they’d deliberately want to hurt us by making this up.

On the other hand, the reports by Andy’s minions look very believable too. He sends people out three or four times a year to tour the factories he uses, and they don’t just pop in for a quick visit. They spend several days
there and talk to all the workers, and everyone seems to be reasonably happy and well-paid. And grown-up.

Somebody’s lying, but who? And meanwhile, over Christmas the news has leaked out that Crow’s been asked to do her second high-street collection. Even though Edie didn’t mention it herself because it isn’t official yet, her website is full of comments from all over the world asking if it’s true, and what happened about the child labour claims that were mentioned in
The Sunday Times
, and what is Edie doing about it now?

‘I don’t know what to say,’ she says. ‘What do I tell them?’

Super-Nonie considers this for a while. Super-Nonie gets every little grey cell in her brain working on the problem. Super-Nonie gives up and plays with a stray thread in her jumper.

‘You don’t know either, do you?’ Edie asks.

I shake my head.

Super-Nonie could do with a few more little grey cells.

P
ointless asking Jenny for advice. She’s busy learning her part and being happy. It’s like four years ago, when we were twelve and she was Annie in the school musical. She’s not being prima donna-ish exactly. But unless we want to talk about vocal exercises, or projection issues, or the inner struggle of her character, she’s not really interested.

She’s been to visit the Boat House Theatre and she says it’s perfect. It’s close enough for her to get to quite easily for rehearsals after school, but far enough away that lots of people won’t even notice that the play’s on, and she won’t have to worry about scary reviews like last time.

It wasn’t her fault, but last time one critic said, ‘In a movie of true stars, Jenny Merritt’s performance was so wooden I was tempted to make a dining table out of it.’ Which was pretty accurate, unfortunately. Then her father sold that ‘troubled, talented teen’ story. Then Joe Yule, the boy she thought she loved, abandoned her for
the Queen of Evil, as we call her. You’d know her as Sigrid Santorini, super-starlet and fashion cutie, who wore one of Crow’s dresses to last year’s Oscars. Apart from that, ‘last time’ went very well.

Because of all of that, even though I have other things on my mind, I’m determined to be nice to Jenny. So I go over to her house and pretend to be the crazed egomaniac father in the play so she can practise her lines. And I don’t say anything when she begs me to tell Alexander I’m busy on the 23rd and never see him again.

I don’t even try to find out her thoughts on child labour. I don’t think she has any, unless it’s to do with the trials of young actresses trying to combine GCSE homework with rehearsal schedules.

‘Honestly, Nonie, you wouldn’t
believe
the nightmare. I’ll have to have special deadlines and permissions from
all
the teachers.’

OK. She can be a bit prima donna-ish sometimes.

On the morning of the 23rd, Crow and I have a meeting to talk about the new Miss Teen collection with Amanda Elat.

‘What’s your plan?’ Edie asked me, when I told her about the meeting.

I don’t know why she bothered. There is no plan. I’m going to wing it like I usually do. I was about to lie and tell her something impressive-sounding when she saw the look on my face and just said, ‘Oh. Good luck, then.’