Beads, Boys and Bangles (12 page)

I am, of course – after the dress, I’ve got geography to do and I’ve recorded an episode of
Britain’s Next Top Model
– but this is clearly code for ‘Please can I come over?’ so I invite her over.

She arrives fifteen minutes later in the strangest of moods and I take her to the kitchen for a hot chocolate. If I didn’t know Edie better, I’d say she was on a caffeine high. She’s all jittery and can’t sit down and keeps wandering round the room, touching delicate stuff from Mum’s art collection and making the pictures wonky.

‘Everything all right?’ I ask.

‘Fine,’ she says, looking goofy.

The answer to my next three questions is ‘Fine’, or ‘OK, I suppose’. This is going to be tough.

Meanwhile, Harry’s in his bedroom, trying out the playlist for his next set. He can only really get into the mood if he plays it EXTREMELY LOUD, so the whole house is shaking. The next-door neighbours hate us. Edie tries a few dance steps. Something
very
strange is happening.

Then suddenly I remember. The ethical blogging
awards. They must be happening around now. Are they tonight? Does she need me to hold her hand while we watch radioactive kid win a prize?

‘Er, is your website going OK?’ I ask. I sense she’s in too strange a mood for direct questions.

‘Fine,’ Edie says. But in a ‘please ask me more’ sort of way.

‘The awards must be soon,’ I prompt.

‘Oh, they’ve happened,’ she sighs. She runs her fingers over a pile of unframed photos that must ON NO ACCOUNT BE TOUCHED.

‘Why don’t we go to my room?’ I suggest. ‘And what happened? Did radioactive kid win?’

We start to head upstairs.

‘No,’ she shouts, over the sound of some Icelandic pop group that Harry’s recently discovered.

She’s not making it easy for me. Then I realise the obvious. We’re at the door of my room. I turn to look at her.

‘Did
you
win?’

‘Yes!’ she squeaks. ‘Yes, I did!’

And we both do a jig round the landing. Or as much of a jig as you can do to Icelandic pop. More of a pogo.

I turn on my laptop and make her show me the ethical blogging website, where it says ‘Winner’ in flashing letters next to Edie’s name, and there’s a whole page about
her
website, and how much the ethical blogging people admire it for being ‘informative and committed, but also
fun and in tune with teen culture’. You can tell they haven’t actually
met
Edie.

‘And there’s this,’ she says. Now that she’s finally admitted winning, she’s desperate to show me more.

She does some rapid typing on my keyboard and up comes the most boring webpage I’ve seen in my life. It’s a series of graphs. It’s like homework. Ew. But apparently it’s her ‘web stats’ – how many people actually look at her site – and on the biggest chart is a line that’s just taken off, showing that she’s suddenly got hundreds of new readers. And the number’s growing by the minute.

‘The ethical blogging people warned me this might happen if I won,’ she said. ‘But I was so sure I wouldn’t.’

‘
Warned
you? Isn’t this a good thing?’

‘I suppose so. But my site wasn’t designed to cope with this many readers at once. It’s in danger of crashing. I need to talk to my hosting service in the morning.’

There she goes, the internet whizz kid again. You wouldn’t normally think that the idea of your site crashing would make you grin from ear to ear like a crazy person, but that’s what Edie’s doing right now. She’s really proud of this award. And what’s so sweet is, I really don’t think she would ever have told me if I hadn’t asked. Or rather, if she hadn’t made me ask.

Edie just stands there, next to my desk, jiggling about and looking happy in a shocked sort of way.

‘Come on,’ I say, grabbing her hand. ‘Party.’

Mum’s back on the phone upstairs, but we hear the
front door opening and go down to find Crow in the hall. She instantly puts her satchel down and starts boogieing around the room in an ‘Edie victory’ dance.

‘What about Harry?’ she asks breathlessly, midboogie. ‘Does he know?’

She’s right, of course I may still be cross with him for sniggering at me, but it’s time for a brief ceasefire. We all pile into his room and he grins at us as if nothing’s wrong anyway. He’s in the middle of some Memphis Soul by now and once he hears the news he turns his speakers up as loud as they’ll go, which is very.

Memphis Soul, it turns out, is perfect for dancing around the room with your brother and two of your best friends, to celebrate their total amazingness.

‘You’re famous now!’ I shout to Edie over King Curtis and his band.

‘Only to ethical bloggers,’ she laughs.

‘Well, I’m going to check out your website,’ Harry adds, ‘so that’s one new reader, anyway.’

‘I always knew you were the best,’ says Crow, in the same way she says she’s going to design for the Royal Ballet one day – like it’s a simple fact.

We carry on dancing, despite loud knocks from next door, and I lead a conga around the room. You wouldn’t think you could conga to Memphis Soul, but if you try hard enough, you can. Then my phone goes in my pocket. Without thinking, I grab it and press the ‘Answer’ button.

‘Yes?’ I shout.

‘Er, hi. Nonie?’

‘Yes. What?’

‘It’s Alexander. Er, are you OK?’

I explain to Alexander that yes, I am indeed OK. I am also busy celebrating and I’ll call him back later. Then I put the phone away and get back down to dancing. I mean, of all the stupid times to call.

It’s only as I’m going to bed and it’s suddenly all quiet that I realise what I’ve done, and what an idiot I am.

Except I’m not. He texts first thing in the morning, begging for another date as soon as possible.

S
ure enough, Edie’s site crashes on Saturday morning. She gets it fixed and five minutes later, it crashes again. Apparently she’s going to need another machine to run it on or something. Anyway, it’s complicated and technical and expensive but she doesn’t really mind because other people start blogging about the fact that it crashed and that gives her even
more
traffic and she’s becoming really quite famous on the web.

I try not to think about the number of people who now get a daily update on what I’m wearing. If you do, you go mad. Especially if you’re going through a bit of a 1930s phase and you spend a lot of your time in vintage bias-cut satin dresses that your mother thinks look more like moth-eaten nighties. Worn with your trusty old pink polar bear jacket – now a bit short and more of a shrug – and winkle-pickers.

Crow and I have our follow-up meeting at Miss Teen this morning. Before I started working in the fashion
business, Saturday mornings were strictly for shopping and smoothies. Now they’re also for meetings. Not our favourite thing, but no meetings, no collection. So we dress up nicely and smile bravely and go.

I don’t wear bias-cut satin for this. Miss Teen people don’t do ‘moth-eaten’. I wear a lime-green gingham pleated mini-skirt, braces and one of Harry’s shirts. And a new pair of Converse All-Stars that I’ve covered with bottle tops in an effort to recycle. I look perfectly respectable and business-like. Well, next to Edie I might look a bit relaxed, but I’m going for ‘normal teenager’, not ‘aspiring member of the Royal Family’.

Crow’s wearing her standard working outfit of tee-shirt and dungarees, with a floor-length tartan cloak. And a huge tartan scarf wrapped around her hair. Took her five seconds to do. Looks incredible. Sigh.

On the way to the Miss Teen HQ, I buy a celebrity magazine in a newsagent and flip through it. Two girls in Crow dresses – one couture, one high-street. Good. Interestingly, the girl in the couture dress has teamed it with pixie boots. PIXIE BOOTS? Is she crazy? But the more I think about it, the more I like it. Oh, and there’s a picture of Sigrid Santorini falling out of a club with a man whose name I recognise. It takes the whole bus journey to remember why.

Then I realise. It’s Jenny’s director. Sigrid is stalking us.

When we get to the HQ we’re shown into the boardroom, not the design/chatting/everything room that we
normally go to. This room is large and grand and full of wood. The walls are lined with wood. The table is made out of an enormous chunk of it. The chairs are wood-colour. Even one of the artworks on the wall is made of wood blocks. If Edie saw it, she would think of the rainforests and weep. It would probably remind Jenny of her performance in
Kid Code
.

Hot chocolates are handed round, as per usual, with cappuccinos for the grown-ups. Amanda comes in, looking even more tired than usual (bad sign). Then the design team troop in behind her and sit in their chairs, staring at their cappuccinos and not looking at us (very bad sign). Then Andy Elat himself comes in, chatting to another man I haven’t seen before and sounding very jolly. But he doesn’t say hello. Extremely bad sign.

When everyone’s settled, Andy finally pretends to notice Crow and me. He nods briefly in our direction. If he’s trying to be scary and intimidating, it’s working. Even Crow looks slightly unnerved. I have a feeling she’s wishing Henry was here, to tuck her under his arm.

‘This is Paolo,’ Andy says. ‘My new PR guru. I’m sure you’re all aware of him, so no introductions needed.’

Everyone round the table nods except Crow and me. I’ve never heard of him, and an introduction would be really nice.

Paolo has one of those beards that is only a few millimetres long and reminds you of David Beckham. He’s about the same age as Mum, with dark hair, light brown
skin and very pink lips. I’m guessing he’s Italian and that he probably has brown eyes, but I don’t know because he’s wearing impenetrable black wraparound sunglasses. To go with his black polo-neck jumper, baggy black flannel trousers and shiny black shoes. He looks like how I’d imagine a Russian bodyguard to look. If he had a pistol tucked into his trouser belt, it wouldn’t seem at all out of place.

Paolo looks super-serious. He’s turned his head in our direction, so I suppose he’s checking us out, but I can’t be sure.

‘Great to meet you at last,’ says the girl nearest to him, holding out her hand.

He says nothing, but stands up and leans forward a bit. The girl rightly guesses that this means he wants a kiss, not a handshake. So she gets up and air-kisses him on both cheeks, which is what you do in fashion. I wonder for a split second whether Crow and I are supposed to air-kiss him too, but one look at Andy Elat assures me that kissing is off the agenda for us today. We’ve done something terrible and we’re about to hear all about it.

I realise that since our last meeting with Amanda, we haven’t made quite as much progress as we’d hoped. Crow’s designs are still just as ‘adult’ and ‘undoable’ as ever, and I haven’t exactly managed to get Edie to change her website. But we’ve been busy with dates and Sigrid Santorini and party frocks. And anyway, there are those photos from No Kidding, which we can’t really ignore,
and that reminds me – surely Andy will be impressed when he hears about Edie’s amazing award?

I decide to start things off on a positive note, so I lean across to Andy and say, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard, but our friend Edie’s just won a web award.’

He looks back at me without a hint of a smile in his crinkly eyes and says that yes, funnily enough, he
had
heard about that.

Wow! He already knows. Yay!

‘Isn’t it incredible?’ I say. ‘She’s thrilled. Her site’s got so many hits it’s crashed twice. She’s having to upgrade the server.’ I can’t believe I just said that. Sometimes the right words come to me when I’m least expecting it. I sound so technical!

I’m about to go into lots more detail when Andy does his wiggling fingers thing, so I shut up.

‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘Paolo?’

Paolo strokes his mini-beard. Paulo pauses until he has the room’s full attention. Then Paolo speaks.

‘DISASTER!’ he declares, glaring through the sunglasses. ‘It has to stop.’

‘Stop?’

‘Stop! Cease! Desist! Every day this girl . . . this
schoolgirl
. . . gets more hits on her website. More publicity. And now the award. Thousands of people go to her site. Not just other girls now. Journalists. Bloggers. Fashion commentators.
Serious
people. They read about Crow. They read about Miss Teen. They read about Mr Elat and
his brand. And they read this.’

He presses a button and some wood panels slide aside on a wall at the other end of the room, to reveal a screen that’s already been set up to connect to the internet. Everyone turns to look. It’s showing Edie’s homepage and in huge letters across the top (above a picture of Svetlana in her amazing gold dress) is a banner advertising Edie’s new campaign which says, ‘Cheap Clothes Cost Lives’, with a link to the No Kidding photos of children doing embroidery.

There’s a gasp around the table from the design team. Oh dear. This moment wasn’t great when I’d imagined it and it’s even worse now I’m actually sitting in it.

Everyone looks at Crow and me. Not in a good way. We shrug. What are we supposed to do?

Paolo says, ‘So. Disaster. First, the suggestion that Miss Teen clothes are cheap. They are not
cheap
, they are
reasonably priced
. Second, that Mr Elat and his brand might be in some way involved with bad labour practices. This is preposterous! It is unthinkable! It is an insult to the brand.’