Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings (19 page)

“I’m sorry,” I butt in. “For Edie and me. Making you try to do a show. It was so selfish. It was all about me. I used to just want to ‘make the tea.’ But not anymore. Now I want to choose the models and get the venue right
and design the invitations and meet the people and feel the buzz. I couldn’t do it by myself. I needed you.”

I see it clearly now. It was always me who needed Crow.

She doesn’t answer me directly.

“I’ve been thinking about my dad,” she says. “Since that letter he wrote. That maybe I shouldn’t work anymore. Except for schoolwork. Dad is a good person.”

I don’t disagree. James Lamogi is impressive. Possibly not my ideal dinner companion, but good, definitely.

I try to be supportive.

“Designing must seem a bit … irrelevant compared with … important stuff.”

I’m not sure what I mean by “important stuff.” I guess I mean “Edie stuff,” compared with “my stuff.”

“But Henry wouldn’t say so.” She starts to giggle. “Henry wasn’t like my dad. He would say that Dad can be a bit of a cold fish at times. ‘Cold fish’ was one of his favorite expressions. He would say life isn’t all about work. It’s about poetry and the blue of the sky. He would lift me up and spin me around until I was dizzy and we would fall over. He was always good in school. I was never going to be good in school. Henry didn’t mind.”

As she talks, she’s absentmindedly sketching a dress with a draped bodice and a waterfall skirt. Over and over
again, but slightly different each time. Suddenly, she breaks off from her drawing and shakes her head, angry with herself.

“I’ve been so mean to you. Edie, too. I knew you were just trying to help. But Edie keeps going on about child soldiers. You know what they make them do. That’s why we couldn’t talk about Henry.”

I say it for her. It has to be said. I’ve been thinking about it, too.

“Henry probably had to kill people. I know.”

Her voice is a tiny whisper.

“Yes.”

“But you still love him, don’t you.”

I don’t really say it as a question. More as a fact. She nods.

“Very much.”

“That’s all that matters. It’s not as if he
wanted
to do any of that stuff.”

“Henry? No! He’s a dreamer.”

“He was just a boy. He still is.”

There’s a pause. The words “if he’s alive” hover in the empty air.

“You know,” she says after a long time of silence, “it’s really nice to talk to you about Henry. He was the one who called me Crow. He got it from a poem
by that man. The one Auntie Florence said.”

“I promise, whenever I call you Crow, I’ll think of Henry.”

She smiles a secret smile. She’s thinking about something.

“Henry would want me to do the show,” she says after a while.

This is a shock.

“I didn’t mean … I haven’t been just trying to make you change your mind,” I say, slightly appalled. “I mean, I really understand why you don’t want to.”

“That’s the trouble,” she says. “I do want to. I always did want to. Very much. Besides. You need me. You said so.”

She grins. The room lights up, as it always does when she’s smiling. She really has the best smile of anyone I know.

Chapter 28

A
manda Elat is due to come to our house at ten on Saturday morning.

Her red Mini Cooper pulls up with a screech at five past. Crow and I are in the sitting room, watching through the window. Crow’s been busy in the workroom since nine, arranging the designs she’s been working on at home since she stopped coming over.

Two hours later, Amanda’s sitting in our kitchen, on the chair where Svetlana sat. She’s drinking homemade cappuccino and ignoring her furiously vibrating BlackBerry.

“You had me worried there,” she says with a big smile.

I try to look as though I had it under control the whole time.

“Crow’s a bit of a last-minute sort of a person, you know.”

Amanda grins. “She’s not the only one. Believe me,
in this industry, that’s normal. Thank God she’s got you.”

I feel my skin glow and sense I’ve gone one of Jenny’s berry colors.

Then Amanda gets the dreamy look she’s had for the past couple of hours. “The ripped-up petal skirts. Those bodices. They’re so intricate. But it’s the colors I adore. So intense. Like precious stones. She must have been working on this for weeks.”

“In her head, I think she has been,” I agree. “Months, really.”

It turns out that Crow has been inspired by Harry’s photos from India and some new lacy fabric that Skye has shown her. It’s complicated to make and massively expensive to buy. Without Andy Elat’s sponsorship, she wouldn’t be able to afford it.

“Have you thought about modeling for her?” Amanda asks.

At this, I practically fall off my chair.

“But I’m tiny! And no cheekbones. Look.”

I show her my head in profile to prove it to her. She just laughs.

“And besides, I’m going to be too busy behind the scenes. Organizing everyone. You know how much there is to do.”

She gives me a funny look. I’m not sure she’s convinced about the idea of a teenager running a catwalk show. But if Yves Saint Laurent could run Dior at twenty-one, I don’t see why I can’t manage twelve measly outfits on a catwalk. How hard can it be?

Chapter 29

H
ard, is the answer. Harder than you’d think.

It would be less hard if we hadn’t lost nearly a month of preparation time. And the days keep ticking by. Crow tries to help. She’s decided to keep the collection simple and just do the kind of party dresses she’s famous for. But “simple” in Crow’s world means everything will be boned and draped and often multilayered and exquisitely finished. Luckily, she’s got Yvette and some of her besties from Saint Martins to help her cut and sew. But I still have to think about all the other parts you need to make a show work. Somewhere to do it. Some models to wear the clothes. Some way of making that place look totally magical. Some way of telling people about it …

Edie, meanwhile, has become superbusy on her website. I thought she was pretty active before, but she’s become a crazed, excited thing. She still looks like minor royalty on Prozac, but inside she’s a firecracker of ideas
and determination. She even blows off chess club to make more time for Invisible Children.

I go over after school to see her at home when she could be at an extra-credit club or practicing something. It’s a new experience.

“I’ve promised Crow,” she says, “that we won’t just waste that money of Andy Elat’s. If she uses it to make beautiful things, I’ll use the show to help her family and the campaign. I’ll keep going with that petition I was doing, but I can’t just wait for the Prime Minister.”

Edie gives a frustrated wave of her hand. The Prime Minister is SO unreliable. Despite the fact that obviously he has nothing else to worry his pretty little head about.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to raise enough money to build a school. For James, and for Victoria. Using all the publicity about Crow to get people excited. Harry can tease me about T-shirts all he likes, but if they get the message across, I don’t care.”

“He told you about the T-shirt thing?”

“The second he saw me. He said he’d never seen you so cross with him. He asked if he could have one, actually. He said he’d wear it at his DJ-ing gigs.”

“But they’re pink!”

“He’s cool with pink.”

We pause for a minute, reflecting on how cool my brother is. Then we give each other a hug. I know Edie is secretly thanking God for her little brother, Jake, who’s seven. And we’re both thinking about Crow getting home to her village that morning and not finding Henry there. Or the next day. Or the next.

It’s cold and dark and I’m sitting on a hard chair in a badly lit room in a big, badly decorated building called Bush House, not far from Trafalgar Square. Crow’s sitting next to me. For once, she’s not drawing. She’s kicking her feet against the legs of her chair and they’re creating a regular
thump thump thump
that coincides nicely with the thump in my head.

I’ve had a headache for the last half hour. I’m not sure if it’s because of the Coke I’ve been drinking since we got here, or the flickering fluorescent light in the corner, or Crow’s obvious nerves, which occasionally get so bad they make her shiver.

Edie has arranged for Crow to do an interview on a World Service radio program. She’s supposed to talk about the fashion show and the Invisible Children campaign. The program is broadcast in Africa, too. It should let people know that we’re thinking of them and doing
what little we can to help. Hopefully, it will make other people want to help, too.

I can tell Crow’s worried that she’s going to have to talk about Henry. This is different from just talking to me. For a girl who goes around in fairy wings and jeweled berets, she’s very private, really, but she’s being brave. It’s a late night show that’s broadcast live, and we’ve been here for ages, waiting for our turn. Well, Crow’s turn, really. I’m here to hold Crow’s hand, which I can’t do at the moment because it’s gripped tightly around the seat of her chair.

At last, a young man about Harry’s age puts his head around the door and says it’s time. He has the gentlest of expressions, but I see a look of absolute panic in Crow’s eyes. As she stands up, she sways. I realize that it’s not just the thought of speaking live on the radio. I think she might be having a flashback.

This is too mean. We can’t do it to her. I shake my head at the man and put my hands on her shoulders.

“It’s OK,” I say. “You don’t have to go. You’re fine.”

I sit her back down. She looks up at me, worried and confused.

The young man hovers, frowning and pointing at his watch.

“I’ll do it.” As I say the words, I realize it’s the
only answer. “Don’t worry, Crow. Just go home. OK? Promise me?”

I fiddle around in my bag and find the emergency taxi money that Mum always makes me carry. I give it to her and tell the young man to make sure she’s put safely in a cab as soon as possible. I promise him I’ll find my own way to the studio and he anxiously leaves me to it. He can tell it’s either that or I accompany Crow and he’s left with no guest for his boss to interview in a few minutes.

I feel fine until I sit down opposite the kind-looking woman with the gravelly voice who does the show. She gives me a bit of a double take. I realize this is probably not only because I’m not a black Ugandan refugee, but also because I’ve been experimenting with velvet hot pants, a tuxedo jacket, and a bowler hat. I nervously remove the bowler and make myself as comfortable as I can. Which isn’t very.

Things get gradually easier, though. We do various sound checks and, once I’ve explained what’s happened to her minion, the host walks me through the show. It’s a combination of talk and music. She’s been doing it for years and quickly adapts to interviewing “friend of designer-refugee” as opposed to “designer-refugee in person.”

She asks easy questions, like what is it about Crow’s designs that makes them so special, or what is was like when she was short-listed for the Yves Saint Laurent competition. I’m on home territory here. We talk a bit about the Invisible Children campaign. I’m not brilliant on facts and figures, but luckily she seems to know more about it than me. Then we get to talking about Henry. I do what I can. I describe the gentle boy in the old photograph. The poetry. Spinning Crow around and making her dizzy. I talk about the family, split up because they have no safe home to go to. I get in a shout-out for Edie’s website. The host gives me the thumbs-up and plays some more music and it’s over.

When I get home, I find Crow cuddled up on the sofa with Mum and a hot chocolate, looking shell-shocked. I realize we can’t do that to her again. Mum asks how it went and I tell her I did my best. She holds out her free arm for me to snuggle in beside her.

“Well done, darling,” she whispers.

I’m amazed. The words come out as if she says it all the time, but they ring in my ears for ages.

Chapter 30

W
hen I tell Jenny about the experience, for once her jaw doesn’t hit the floor. In fact, she looks pretty unimpressed. Turns out she did two newspaper interviews yesterday about
Kid Code
and she’s got a TV one for some satellite channel tomorrow. At the moment, interviews for Jenny are no big deal.

It’s the end of the year and that means the big award nominations season. The
Kid Code
PR people have gone into overdrive, finding opportunities for all the stars to remind everyone about the movie. So she’s as busy as the rest of us, telling people the monkey story and gushing about how talented everybody was. She’s particularly gushy when she talks about her green-eyed costar, but since the rest of the world is just as gushy whenever his name is mentioned, this doesn’t strike anyone as odd, luckily.