Beads, Boys and Bangles (2 page)

Well, I don’t know what they’re saying because my phone battery chooses this moment to die for good. It cuts Edie off and the screen goes dark, just to make a point.

Across the hordes of over-excited shoppers, Andy Elat
catches a glimpse of my face and obviously doesn’t like what he sees.

‘Everything OK, Nonie?’ he mouths.

‘Fine,’ I mouth back, with a thumbs-up sign for extra reassurance.

I’m used to lying to grown-ups. It’s a habit I’ve got into. It simplifies things.

N
ormally on a Wednesday our schedule would be assembly, double history, break, English Lit. But today it’s launch, interview, party. Then massive homework sesh, then train to Paris.

I’d like to pretend it’s always parties and publicity, but it’s not. We needed special permission to miss our GCSE classes for the Miss Teen events, then more special permission to go to Paris. And that’s for a funeral tomorrow, so it doesn’t really count.

I’ve always known tomorrow was going to be a bit tricky, but I’ve been really looking forward to today. Instead, I’ve got a knot in my stomach that isn’t going to go away. On top of the whole crowd thing, Edie sounded really panicked on the phone. And Edie isn’t the panicking kind. If there was an earthquake, Edie would be the one organising people and finding blankets and shelter. Something really horrible must have happened to her website to make her so upset.

When I say website, I don’t mean Edie’s got a page on MySpace or Facebook. I mean her very own WEBSITE. With its own internet address and logo and everything. She uses it to talk about all her do-gooding projects, her plans to go to Harvard and save the world, what we’re all up to at school (featuring my latest outfits and, for extra laughs, what my mother said on the subject) and also what’s happening with Crow.

Loads of people look at it. Literally thousands every week. There are the ones who want to know about how ex-child soldiers from Uganda, like Henry, are getting on, and the ones who want to know if Crow’s doing her famous petal skirts as part of the new collection for Miss Teen. Guess which types of pages get the most views.

I can’t imagine anyone calling Edie a liar. In fact, NOT lying is her biggest problem. There are times when you really hope she’ll tell a little white one (‘That coat looks great on you, Nonie’; ‘That new haircut really suits you’; ‘I’m surprised you got such low marks in your geography exam last year’), but she doesn’t. She tells it like it is, every time. Whoever’s done whatever it is to her website has got the wrong girl.

In front of me, two Miss Teen customers are fighting each other for an emerald-green petal skirt – the last in its size. It’s only half an hour since the launch started and the cash tills are already besieged. In less than two years,
Crow’s gone from being a little Ugandan refugee with reading difficulties to a cross between Vivienne Westwood and the Olsen twins. The Jewels collection is going to be massive and you can see the pound signs in Andy Elat’s happy, crinkly eyes.

Finally, as the racks are being stripped of clothes, I spot Edie near the doors, looking flustered. She’s wearing her tee-shirt embroidered with pink crystals saying ‘Less Fashion More Compassion’, which is our catch phrase. Two pounds from every tee-shirt goes to help children in Africa who’ve lost their parents to war and AIDS. Guess who had
that
idea. Edie also thought up giving a discount to people who brought reusable bags today.

The tee-shirt makes her look unusually fashion-conscious. Normally, Edie thinks ‘special occasion’ means a nice pleated skirt and a co-ordinated top, with possibly a jumper slung over her shoulders. EW EW EW. Even knowing me for most of her life hasn’t made much of a difference, and if you ever see me with a jumper slung over my shoulders you can just kill me.

I smile and give her my quizzical look. The noise of people shopping around us is pretty deafening (‘Have you got this in a size 14?’ ‘Can I have another bag?’ ‘That was MINE!’ Beep beep beep from the cash tills), so talking is hard.

She comes over and gives me a hug.

‘Oh Nonie!’

Tears start cascading down her cheeks.

‘They said that I’m a fake and a hypocrite. On every page. They said that Crow’s collection was made by sweatshops and people mustn’t buy it and I’m just pretending to support good causes when really I’m just a . . . a . . . a . . .’

She sobs into my shoulder some more.

‘A what?’

‘A
slave-driver
!’

I goggle. Slave-driver? Edie is the type of girl who goes round picking up litter after people AND PUTTING IT IN THE RECYCLING. (If it’s appropriate. She checks.) This is weird.

‘Who
are
they?’

‘This group called “No Kidding”,’ she hiccups. ‘They’re an ethical campaign group, based in California. They’ve put pictures on my site to look like graffiti. They say young children were used in India to sew the collection. And they’ve got this thing against me. They say I just want to be famous and I’m using Crow to get rich.’

Apart from that, they sound really nice. Not. In fact, the only good news is the bit about them being based in California. Otherwise, they’d be outside with placards, shouting.

I give Edie an extra hug. She manages to stop the tears from flowing and attempts a brave smile.

‘Sorry I’m late. I’ve been on the phone to my hosting
service for ages, getting them to take the site down till I can sort it out,’ she says.

Even when she’s hot and flustered and positively tearful, Edie still can’t help sounding like an internet whizz kid.

‘
R
ight, girls. Sam Reed’s waiting for you. Are you ready?’

Andy Elat’s daughter, Amanda, who runs Miss Teen for him, is hovering nearby. She gestures up the stairs. I nod. Edie goes white.

‘The interview?’ she whispers.

‘Yup,’ I nod again.

‘You don’t think she’s . . .? She won’t’ve looked at . . .?’

‘Sam won’t have had time to see your website,’ I reassure her. ‘She won’t even be thinking about it. Don’t worry. It’ll be totally fine.’

This isn’t lying, because I’m making myself believe it as I say it. We collect Jenny, who’s been stuck on the stairs for the last five minutes, squashed in by eager shoppers, and Crow and Henry, who are still in the shoe section, looking like something out of a local reading group. Amanda shepherds us all into the lift and up to the office floors of Miss Teen, where the hard work really happens.

Before the lift doors close, I catch one last glance of a sea of faces with expressions ranging from ecstatic (full shopping bags) to hysterical (empty shopping bags). The racks are empty. Completely bare. Apart from one sad-looking jumper. What’s wrong with it? I wonder. But I can’t find out, because it’s time to go and tell a famous journalist what a lovely, jolly time this has been.

A tall woman with mad red hair, a leather dress and biker boots is waiting for us in a high-up office overlooking Oxford Street. Sam Reed has interviewed rock stars and film producers, writers and actors. She was recently on tour with Britney Spears, which must have been interesting. Right now, she’s writing a piece about Crow for a Sunday magazine. She’s spoken to Crow and me a few times already, but for her final interview she wanted Edie and Jenny too.

‘You’re obviously a team, you four,’ she said to me when she was setting it up. ‘Edie’s got her website. Jenny wears the clothes. And Nonie, you mention the others every few seconds, regardless of what we’re talking about. I want to get you all together. See how you work as a group.’

This made me nervous. We’re friends. We don’t ‘work as a group’. We bicker as a group. Occasionally we have serious arguments. We drive each other nuts as a group. Mind you, I’d be kind of lost without the others around to annoy me. I promised Sam that I’d ask Jenny and Edie
about joining us, assuming they’d say no, but they both went, ‘Ooh,
The Sunday Times
? Yes please!’ Which is why all four of us are perched on black swivel chairs, sipping tap water, while we answer questions about ourselves and our ‘amazing fashion moments’.

This is going to be a challenge. Crow’s life
is
a fashion moment. She’s sitting here in sky-blue satin dungarees, a purple tie-dye tee-shirt, platform flip-flops and a raspberry-pink plastic anorak she picked up from a charity shop in the summer. Her hair is her usual oversize Afro, which means she can fit three mini paper lanterns on it, in a collection near her left ear.

Whereas, apart from her tee-shirt, Edie wouldn’t know a fashion moment if it hit her over the head with a stiletto. This is the girl who wore
beige culottes
to school last summer. Luckily, she’s sitting next to Jenny, who’s been on a fashion rollercoaster. Jenny’s been the one all the fashion editors make fun of in the ‘what not to wear’ pages,
and
the girl who gets to choose a Chanel dress for the red carpet, so maybe she and Sam can chat about all of that.

What Sam will make of me, I can’t imagine. I don’t really care what’s in fashion, although I can’t help knowing every designer’s latest look. I just love finding unusual stuff, and the daily challenge of coming up with something new and original and just this side of ‘go home and change, young lady’. Today, for example, it’s crushed velvet leggings, a vintage ra-ra skirt, an old
school blazer (not my school) and a fedora. My fashion nightmare is walking into a room and finding someone else dressed exactly like me. It’s probably Edie’s dream, come to think of it. She’d be great in a job with a uniform, like a policewoman or something. I’d go insane.

‘Crow,’ Sam says, kicking things off while we fiddle nervously with various bits of our outfits. ‘Tell me how it all began. Take Edie, for example. How did she come into your life?’

Crow looks up and grins her broadest grin. As always when Crow smiles, the room suddenly lights up, as if someone’s opened a curtain.

‘Like an angel,’ she says, quietly. There’s a pause. Sam waits for more, but Crow seems to think she’s covered it.

Jenny decides to fill in the details. ‘Crow needed help with reading practice. Edie volunteered.’

But Sam isn’t looking at Jenny, or Edie. She’s still watching Crow.

‘She saw me,’ Crow says eventually, looking down at her lap, trying to explain. ‘Lots of people didn’t. See me, I mean. Not good people, anyway. Until Edie came. Oh, and she found Henry.’ She sits on her hands at this point and clams up completely. But Sam’s scribbling as if she’s just dictated a novel.

The room’s gone fuzzy and I realise my eyes are welling up. So are Jenny’s. Sometimes you need a
Sunday Times
journalist to remind you how great your friends are. And when it comes to noticing people, and helping
them, Edie can be super-amazing, despite the whole beige culottes thing.

I sneak a look at her. She’s white as a sheet and biting her lip. This is turning into an emotional day for her. We all sort of assumed that Crow just took us for granted really, which was fine. She never said anything. But then, we never asked.

‘And how about Jenny?’

Crow thinks for a minute. ‘Jenny’s my favourite girl to dress,’ she says with another grin. Again, this is news to the rest of us. We thought Crow just made dresses for Jenny out of friendship. But she makes it sound like it’s a real treat.

‘She has a beautiful shape,’ Crow continues. ‘Perfect for couture. And I love her skin. It always glows against the right fabric. And her hair. Look! Ten different colours.’

So are Jenny’s cheeks, right now. Her hair may be copper/auburn/whatever, but her cheeks are red, red, red. She’s grinning fit to bust, though. She can’t help herself.

‘I didn’t know dresses even existed to fit me before Crow came along,’ she bubbles happily. ‘I spent most of my life in changing rooms not being able to do the zips up. Putting one of Crow’s red-carpet dresses on sort of changes you. It makes you look the way you
think
you look. You know, in your head. Before you see yourself in a mirror.’

Sam Reed nods and scribbles. ‘Not a fan of mirrors, then?’ she asks lightly.

Jenny flushes again and goes quiet. It all comes back to
me. Her misery at her boobs and spots, her red-carpet disasters. Sam can tap into these moments without seeming to try. I dread to think what she got out of Britney Spears.