Beads, Boys and Bangles (25 page)

Why does she bother? What can she possibly have left to learn?

I
’m back in my room, in my Hello Kitty pyjamas, writing a list of Scary Things Happening Soon.

Two months until Harry’s degree show. His problem, not mine, but nevertheless, scary.

Forty-two days until geography GCSE. I still don’t know the difference between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. And there won’t be a single question on India. Not one. Sadly, there are no garment factories that I’m aware of in the Arctic Circle. Although with global warming going the way it is, there might be soon.

Eleven days until Sanjay will show up at our old hotel in Mumbai (assuming he does), to collect the letter telling him how we’re going to help. Still no idea what will be in the envelope. Nor has Harry. Nor has Edie, but she’s checking with Phil and her other save-the-world blogging friends.

Eight days until Jenny’s first night at the Biggest, Scariest Theatre in the West End.

Seven days until our next meeting with Andy Elat, when Crow has to magic up a new high-street collection and Edie has to say absolutely and positively that she’s happy with the way Miss Teen clothes are made in India. Which, of course, she isn’t.

One day until I see Granny, to put Project Jenny into operation. I can only hope that Granny’s been busy over the last couple of days, because if she hasn’t managed to do the thing I’ve asked her, I’m sunk.

Henry has just called to say he’s picking Crow up from the workroom downstairs, to take her home. I check the clock on my laptop. It’s 10.35 pm. She should have gone home hours ago, but she’s been too busy to notice the time passing. It makes me think. Sure, we’re kids and we work a lot, sometimes. But the difference between us and Lakshmi and Ganesh is that the grown-ups in our lives interrupt us from work to make us go to school and sleep. Not the other way around.

When I checked on Crow earlier, she was taking all the Parisian feathers and lace and tweed and trimmings off her pinboard and packing them away in a big cardboard box. I asked her what she was going to replace them with. She indicated a pile of stuff on the worktable, but all I could see were cheesy postcards from Agra, some plain A4 paper, a white hanky and a couple of cheap gemstones.

I was expecting to see all the bags of beads and her treasures of coloured silk and gold thread. Possibly
sequinned slippers and jewelled notebooks and keyrings with Indian dolls on – all the things we’ve been collecting on our trip. I thought the pile would be psychedelic by now, but it isn’t. Quite the opposite. Has she lost it entirely?

I’ve no idea what she’s up to, but I do know that she’s not blocked any more. For months, the creative part of her brain has wanted to make complicated couture and the practical part has been trying to design something simple. And neither part really wanted to do anything while we were worrying about slave children.

However, something has happened. Her frustrated look has gone. Her fingers are constantly twitching with sketches again, even when she has no paper. She’s back to her old self. Unfortunately, her old self tends to get on with things without talking about them much, so I’ll have to wait to find out what’s changed. And hey, checking my list, we have a whole week for her to get something ready to show Andy Elat, so no pressure. NOT.

I try not to think about it. Thank goodness I have Jenny and her first night party outfit to worry about instead.

Granny meets me in the lobby of the Ritz the next day and I’m relieved to see that she’s accompanied by a very large box.

‘Guard this with your life, my girl,’ she says. ‘You have absolutely no idea what I had to do to get it.’

Actually, I do have an idea. I imagine Granny had to suck up to one of her old friends for a solid morning, which is something she would find almost unbearable. I give her a huge hug of gratitude, which crumples her Issey Miyake jacket. It’s designed to be crumpled, though, so she doesn’t mind too much.

We park the box with the hotel concierge for a while and Granny takes me to the Royal Academy so we can Do Art and I can tell her all about India. It already feels as if we’ve hardly been away.

Afterwards, I meet up with Jenny and Crow at home for Project Jenny. I feel guilty about this bit. Crow should really be totally concentrating on the Miss Teen collection, but I need her to spare a few hours to help us battle the Queen of Evil. Luckily, when she sees what’s inside the box, she can’t wait to get started.

‘It’s beautiful.’

We have to wait for a few minutes while she runs her hands delicately over the fabric, like it’s a sacred relic or something.

Then she looks hard at Jenny and cocks her head to one side. ‘This will be easier than I thought,’ she says.

I know what she means, and this worries me.

Crow’s thinking about measurements. She’s mentally redesigning seams and adjusting fabric. What she’s pleased about – from a purely practical perspective – is that there’s a lot less of Jenny than there was a couple of weeks ago, when we last saw her. I admit that this will
make Project Jenny simpler to complete, but it also means that my friend has been losing weight at an alarming rate. From a friendship perspective, this is very bad.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask.

‘Fine,’ Jenny says, in a strangled voice that means ‘Not fine’ in friend-speak.

‘What’s happened? How are the previews going? They haven’t cut your part, have they?’

She shrugs and shakes her head.

‘Oh, it’s not Sigrid, is it? Don’t tell me. She wants Joe Yule to play your father.’

Jenny shakes her head and giggles.

‘She wants you to curtsey whenever she comes on stage?’ Crow asks, getting into the spirit.

Jenny smiles. But instead of answering, she asks, ‘Can I show you something?’

I say yes. Crow has loads of work to do, so we leave her to it and Jenny takes me on the tube to Covent Garden. For a moment, I’m worried that we’re heading for the Royal Opera House, home of my ex-not-boyfriend and not somewhere I particularly want to be any time soon. But instead she takes me down a side street and I realise we’re going to the Big, Scary Theatre, where previews started a couple of days ago and huge, electric signs are already spelling out
Her Father’s Daughter
in lights.

There’s some sort of last-minute technical session going on. The place is full of people wearing black tee-shirts and headsets, looking busy and making notes and
squinting at bits of equipment. They know Jenny, so they don’t mind us standing quietly at the back.

‘What do you think?’ Jenny whispers.

I look down past the rows and rows and
rows
of seats. This place is vast. It makes the Boat House Theatre look like a ticket office. You could probably get two thousand people in here. If I was standing on that stage, so far away, facing such a massive audience, I’d be scared out of my mind.

‘It looks
great
!’ I say. ‘Totally amazing. You must be so excited.’

Her face crumples like Granny’s Issey Miyake. She nods. I can tell she’s lying, and she must know that I was.

‘It’s like something out of
Star Wars
,’ I admit. ‘I’ve never seen anything so huge.’

‘Oh, Nonie!’ She sits on the nearest seat and I just hold her for a while.

‘It’s not Sigrid any more. To be honest, I think she’s as scared as I am. But something’s gone wrong since we started rehearsing here. And last night was terrible. No-one’s really talking about it, but you can see these people having secret conversations. Anthony looks positively ill most of the time.’

As if on cue, Anthony, the director, appears at the side of the stage and shouts at one of the technicians, who makes more notes. He does indeed look ill. Sunken-cheeked and unshaven. Definitely not the same man as the one who accompanied Sigrid to the Elysée Palace in
her DOLCE & GABBANA. An older, more haggard version.

‘Why?’ I ask.

Jenny’s voice almost disappears. ‘It’s me.’

‘
You?
’

She nods. Tears fall silently. Jenny really must do a part that requires major crying one day.

‘What have you done?’

‘It’s what I
can’t
do. I’ve heard the rumours. They’re trying not to tell me, but you always hear them in the end. I just can’t fill this space. With my voice, I mean. I’m trying my best, but I’m only sixteen. I haven’t got the vocal power. That’s what they’re doing now: desperately trying to fix the acoustics so it doesn’t sound so bad. They tried miking us up, but it didn’t work. They’re being nice about it, but it’s so humiliating.’

I try to comfort her that nobody will notice, nobody will mind. But we both know that in a few days, theatre critics from England
and
America will be sitting in the front rows for the official first night, and they
will
notice and they
will
mind. And they
will
tell everyone.

In the end, Jenny sighs.

‘It’s not as though I haven’t been through it before.’

She even manages half a laugh. If being ‘wooden’ in a major blockbuster has prepared her for anything, it’s prepared her for this. All I can do is remind her about Project Jenny. At least the first night party won’t be a total disaster.

On the way out, we notice two burly men standing at the stage door, their arms full of bowls of orchids.

‘That’ll be for the star’s dressing room,’ Jenny says. She sighs. ‘They got me a nice cactus. It’s very sweet. I’ve painted a smiley face on it.’

When I get back home, a parcel has arrived. Crow shows it to me. In it is the bottom half of the fabric from the sea-goddess dress that Sigrid won’t be needing any more, because she HAD IT CUT OFF.

Crow and I just look at each other. God, we hate that girl.

C
row is madly busy. I’m not sure if she’s sleeping at all now. On the rare occasions I see her, she looks hungry and is busy stuffing down a sandwich before going back to her workroom for another session. She’s finally let me see what she’s doing and I personally think it’s brilliant, but also EXTREMELY RISKY. It’s certainly very different from the undoable designs she was working on before we went to India.

Will the Miss Teen people love it, or think she’s having a laugh? And more to the point, what will Andy Elat think about all the
other
ideas we’ve had since we got back from Mumbai?

While Crow’s been busy working, Edie, Harry and I have been busy thinking. About how to help Sanjay, who made everything seem so easy when just finding enough to eat every day must be a struggle. And Ganesh, who was so desperate to look after his little sister, whatever it took. And most of all, about Lakshmi, with her shy smile and
her fused fingers and her fascination with beautiful sewing, in spite of everything that’s happened to her.

I have one of Harry’s pictures of Lakshmi on my phone, after he sent it to me from his. I can’t help looking at it. I can’t bear that she’s so far away and it should be me, somehow, who’s looking after her. She chose me. I chose her back. And right now only Crow, Harry and Edie understand exactly how I feel.

Edie wants me to go over to her house, so that we can talk through our Miss Teen strategy. Now that she’s involved, we don’t wing things so much any more. We have strategies. We are SO grown-up and organised.

When I get there, her laptop is on as usual, and she’s looking at someone’s Facebook page. I look a bit closer.

‘Wow! He’s gorgeous! Who’s that?’

‘Oh, that?’ she says, as if she hadn’t noticed. ‘That’s Phil.’

‘THAT’S PHIL?
That
is Phil?’

Phil from No Kidding is not at all the nerdy communications guy I’d always assumed he was. In fact, he makes Joe Yule look like a hobbit. He has surfer-blonde hair, gorgeous blue eyes and a jawline that you just want to run your fingers over, to check if it’s real. Phil from No Kidding is SUPER-CUTE.

‘You never said he was hot.’

‘Oh,’ she says again, vaguely. ‘Is he?’

‘Yes,’ I point out slowly but firmly. ‘He is.’

She goes a shade of pink that I’ve never seen before. It would make a good lipstick colour.