Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings (16 page)

“Oh, nothing,” I say. “Long story.” I hesitate. “She hasn’t said anything about Harry, has she?”

“Should she have?” Skye asks, sounding surprised. That answers my question. We’re interrupted while I take delivery of yet another bouquet.

“How are you coping?” Skye asks when I come back, arms laden.

“Me? I’m fine,” I say.

She gives me a searching look, then shrugs and smiles.

“You’ve done a great job,” she tells me. “You should be proud of yourself. Call me if you need me.”

I’m not sure what she means, nor why, when she goes, I suddenly want to cry. I’m thrilled for Crow, of course, and proud of what we’ve all done to help her. I really am. Maybe I’m just tired.

Chapter 22

S
he shouldn’t be called Crow,” Jenny says. “She should be Cuckoo.”

We’re in my bedroom. I’m customizing a nightie to make it into a party dress. Jenny’s flicking through my magazines.

“She’s not crazy.”

“No, dummy. Cuckoo in the nest. Getting all the attention. When was the last time your mother took
you
out or did the whole quality-time thing?”

“There was my birthday, over break.”

My birthday was great. Mum took me to Paris, through the Chunnel from London on the Eurostar train, to meet up with Dad, and she spent the whole day being nice, which for her is a major effort. Dad tends to bring out the snarky in Mum.

“Birthdays don’t count,” Jenny says dismissively. “Apart from that.”

I try and think. Actually, I can’t picture a time. But
it’s not as if Mum is one of those bake-a-cake types, anyway.

“And how many times has she been out with Crow?”

Jenny has a point here. Loads of times. Every time there’s a new exhibition or an artist Mum wants Crow to meet. They often take Granny along with them. But I point out that I couldn’t go every time. I have homework. I do after all have VERY STRESSFUL EXAMS to prepare for, and even if I want to make the tea for a big designer some day, I’m going to need the odd qualification to prove I’m not totally useless. Those designer tea-making jobs are brutally competitive. Besides, I have to keep up. I have one friend who’s suddenly developing a career in movies and another one who’s a certified genius.

Jenny still isn’t convinced, though. She’s so blissfully content herself—with her little e-mail thing going with Joe Drool—that she wants everyone else to be blissfully content, too. So she spends loads of time pointing out why we’re actually miserable and trying to make us do something about it.

The only way out is to change the subject. Recently, she’s gone from not wanting to talk about Joe at all, to not really wanting to talk about anyone else. With me, anyway.

“What’s he said?”

She’s easily diverted. She lowers her voice conspiratorially.

“He thinks Lila might be going out with someone in Canada. He says it’s hard because if he even borrows a Diet Coke off a girl everyone assumes he’s about to marry her. It’s the same for Lila. She swears she’s being good, but he doesn’t seem sure.”

“And Joe? Is he being good?”

She giggles.

“Well, if he’s being bad, he can’t be doing much of it. He spends an awful lot of time on e-mail.”

“I thought you said it was dangerous.”

“It is. But he trusts me.”

Fruits of the forest again.

“Look,” I point out. I hate to burst her bubble, but it’s been bothering me for ages. “He’s mostly in Los Angeles, right? And you’re mostly in London. Even if he … you know. How would it work? You couldn’t do the whole thing by e-mail.”

“No. You’re right.” Jenny tries to look serious. “But my agent’s been in touch. He’s had four scripts recently that might be good for me. Including one for another action movie that would be shooting in California and Hawaii.” Her eyes are alight. “For four months next spring.”

Now a huge grin has spread across her face. She seems to have forgotten how utterly miserable she was the last time.

“And there’s something else. The producers are pretty certain we’re going to get nominated for the Golden Globes. They’re in LA in January. And everyone’s so confident about us winning stuff that they want me to go.”

“And do what?”

“Go to parties. Be nice to people. Maybe even go to the ceremony dinner thing and show off on the red carpet. I’m a bit of a style queen now, you know.”

“But you hate the red carpet!”

Jenny twirls a red curl around her finger thoughtfully.

“I used to. But, you know, in the right dress …”

And with the right boy …

This is a definite change. I can’t help imagining the cherry tomato, but I realize Jenny’s now thinking of the Marilyn dress, and snuggling up to Mr. Drool for the photographers, and the free handbags.

After she’s gone, I google Joe and Lila again. Same story. Usual rumors about both of them with other people. Jenny’s name is never mentioned. For a change, I also google myself. There are more results than I’d expected, all of them related to Edie’s blog, which is becoming increasingly popular.

Jenny, not surprisingly, isn’t mentioning any of the Joe Yule stuff to Edie. It’s not that she doesn’t trust her, exactly. But if you’re trying to have a relationship with a movie star it’s advisable not to share it with people who write about you on the Internet. As far as Edie’s concerned, Jenny’s current passions are Jane Eyre, volleyball, and her new kitten named Miu Miu. (My idea. Very funny for the first couple of days, but it wears off after a while. We’re thinking of rechristening her Stella.)

Chapter 23

I
n the days after the phone call from Amanda Elat, Mum’s scrapbook fills up with pictures of gorgeous party girls in Crow’s dresses and, now that it’s colder, an increasing number of her cobweb knits. As she gets more confident, and as the money starts pouring in from Rebecca’s stand, she can add more sparkle and experiment with more beautiful fabrics.

The workroom is full of pieces in every stage of production. Crow also hangs out at Saint Martins with the design students who are still talking to her. Many are too furious about her sudden launch into the big time to acknowledge her existence. The way they see it, some teacher’s pet is getting all the attention they’ve worked years for. They’ve no idea how long Crow’s been doing this. Or how hard she works. Or how good she is.

I don’t see much of her, in fact, but it’s hard to forget what’s happening. Mum has started reminiscing about her days on the catwalk, and Amanda calls or e-mails
several times a week with ideas about sourcing fabric, or shoes, or things Crow will need to think about for the show.

Strangely, it’s Edie who spots the problem. The rest of us are too caught up in the general excitement to notice.

It’s lunchtime and I’m trying to get caught up on some homework. Edie, naturally, has done all of hers and is in a mood to chat.

“Explain it to me,” she says. “This whole collection thing. I got this comment on my blog from someone in Uzbekistan asking me to describe it. And I suddenly realized. I mean, Crow makes stuff every day. Why is it so complicated?”

I put my pen down and sigh. Simultaneous equations will have to wait. This is important. How to describe it in Edie-speak?

“Know all your great ideas about Shakespeare?”

“Yes.”

Edie is PASSIONATE about Shakespeare this term. She’s INSPIRED. In fact, it’s quite IMPOSSIBLE that any teenager has ever realized quite how great he is before her. She’s read most of his stuff, too. Thanks to her, I know more about
Hamlet
than I ever want or need to.

“Well, if you had to write an essay about Shakespeare,
would you just write down all the stuff you’ve been trying to tell me recently?”

Edie considers. “What? Just like that?”

“Uh-huh.”

She laughs. “Well, I’d have to organize it all first, of course. And there are things I’d want to emphasize, obviously. And you have to develop it so you kind of take the reader through it, and …”

She screeches to a stop. She’s not stupid.

“You mean it’s like a Shakespeare essay?”

“To you. I mean, it’s your chance to tell the world about something that’s really important to you. And you have half an hour, max. Crow will have much less, because her collection’s really small. You have to explain your vision. You have to craft it. It’s a story. And the story’s about your idea of beauty. It’s about the things that have inspired you, and how you’ve put them together in a new way. You can’t just take whatever happens to be lying around in your workroom and throw it out onto a runway.”

Edie’s looking at me hard. I wonder if I’m developing a pimple, or if I’ve got something stuck in my teeth.

“You’re really into this stuff, Nonie, aren’t you?” she says.

I wonder if she’s criticizing my superficiality again. She sees my doubtfulness and smiles.

“I mean—in a good way. You make it sound like poetry.”

“It
is
like poetry.” I’d have thought that was obvious!

“Do you mind if I quote you on my blog? As I say, people are starting to ask.”

“Go ahead.” I quite like the idea of being a fashion expert.

“Anyway,” she says as the bell rings for class, “what’s Crow’s big idea? For her collection?”

And I realize that I don’t know. In the midst of all the excitement and the phone calls and interviews and the flowers, none of us has actually thought to ask her what she’s going to do.

Edie sees the doubt on my face again.

“I mean, she does have one, doesn’t she?”

“Oh yes,” I say airily. “She’s bound to. She’s just … I’ll let you know. I need to talk to her about it.”

The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur, as I realize that there are only twelve weeks to go before the show, and that I very badly need to find out what’s going on.

Chapter 24

W
hen I catch up with Crow, she’s sitting on the floor of the workroom in a pair of old carpenter jeans, fairy wings, and fluffy slippers, but picks up a sweater and starts fiddling with a seam. It’s made of silver thread and designed to be worn over one of her flower-petal skirts. When she’s finished, she bites off the thread and hands me the sweater.

“Try this on,” she instructs me.

I do as I’m told. It drapes and folds around me like a fairy security blanket. Back come the boobs and hips. I have no idea how she builds them into gossamer. I check myself out in the mirror. I look about eighteen, and slightly model-ish, in a vertically challenged sort of way. Crow grabs a needle and starts making adjustments, occasionally catching my skin in the process.

“Ow!”

Crow says nothing, focused on what she’s doing.

“So,” I ask casually, “how’s the collection going?”

She shrugs, catching me again.

“Ow ow ow!”

“Don’t talk,” she says. “You’re distracting me.”

“But I have to. I’m sure it’s under control and everything, but … you know … I haven’t really heard you talk about … you know … the show recently. Is it going OK?”

She shrugs again. The needle misses me this time.

“You
are
designing for it, aren’t you?”

She avoids my eye in the mirror. It’s impossible to have this conversation in a half-finished silver pullover. I take it off, to Crow’s protests, and sit on the floor. I can feel an icy chill down my back. It’s not the lack of a sweater. It’s the sense that something’s wrong. And I can’t help feeling that it’s my fault.

“Crow … You do want to do this?”

It’s the question I can hardly bear to ask. I’m not exactly sure how I get the words out. But here she is, this only-just-thirteen-year-old, surrounded by fashion addicts who are deciding her life for her. I’ve assumed—we all have—that this would be exactly what she yearned for, like every design student around the world. Probably even in Uzbekistan. But maybe we were wrong.

She sits cross-legged near the window with the sweater in her lap, examining the stitches, avoiding me.

“Because”—I swallow—“you don’t have to. Maybe we’ve made a mistake. I’m sorry. I got you into this. Maybe it’s too much …”

“Oh, Nonie!”

She puts the sweater to one side and comes over to me. She doesn’t exactly fling her arms around me, but sits right in front of me, leaning forward, with a damp sparkle in her eyes.

“This is … my life. In my head, all my life, I’ve seen these beautiful things. Now I can make them.”

She doesn’t talk very much. This is a major speech for Crow. I’m very touched. But somehow, the way she says it, it sounds as if she’s saying good-bye.

I can feel my own eyes welling up.

“Then why …?” I’m choked up but I have to go on. “What’s wrong with showing people what you can do? Just think. They’re going to give you loads of money so you can design your dreams. You’ll have proper models to wear them. Music. Lights.”

For an instant, Crow’s face floods with delight as she imagines the moment. Then, just as quickly, her expression fades and her face is blank.

“What is it?”

She traces a shape on the carpet with her finger. Her voice is very quiet.