Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings (8 page)

We’ve promised Crow a lift home. When it’s time to go, Harry pauses to vandalize one of the walls. That is, I catch him in the act of taking down a poster.

“What are you DOING?” I ask, sounding like Mum.

“Oh, it’s OK, they’ve got loads,” he says. “I have to have it. Look.”

I look. It’s a poster for a design competition in honor of Yves Saint Laurent. He died not too long ago and Mum dressed in black for days afterward. I marked the moment with a series of orange and pink tribute outfits. Very YSL. Needless to say, Mum’s black outfits included bits of actual Saint Laurent, which I thought was showing off, frankly.

“What’s that got to do with Svetlana?” I ask.

“If you look at the small print, you’ll see that she’s the prize. At least, the winner gets the chance to design a dress for her.”

“Wow.”

I read the small print. The design has to be for a cocktail dress that embodies “the spirit of Saint Laurent.” The winner then gets to create something original for Svetlana to wear on a catwalk during London Fashion Week.

“Cool,” I say. “I must enter.”

“You and every design student in the country,” Harry points out. “Everyone at Saint Martins will be doing it. You can try, though, kiddo. You never know.”

I decide to go ahead anyway—despite my slight handicap of not being able to draw. The story of Yves Saint Laurent’s discovery is one of my top three favorite fashion moments. He entered a competition to design a cocktail dress when he was eighteen and won. Christian Dior heard about him and hired him on the spot. Three years later he was running the label. Fashion fairy tales really can happen.

True, he then had to join the army and had a nervous breakdown, but hey—no one said fashion was easy.

Chapter 12

M
um?”

“Mmmm?”

Mum looks up, distracted from her cappuccino and her BlackBerry. It’s very hard to pry her away from either when she’s at home, but I’ve been working on this. It’s time to try out my idea for helping Crow.

“You know that Cézanne exhibition?”

“Mmmm?” Her eyes are drifting back down to the BlackBerry, which is vibrating madly on the table, but I still have about three seconds before she hits a button.

“The one at the Courtauld Institute? I’d really like to go.”

Wham.

Mum looks up, BlackBerry abandoned, eyes fixing me with a Joe Yule–like laser gaze.

“Really?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Cézanne’s one of the most important Postimpressionists, isn’t he? And this is such a kind
of one-of-a-kind exhibition. I really admire what he does with color.”

I wonder if I’ve pushed it too far. The whole color thing probably sounds a bit rehearsed, which it is. But luckily, Mum doesn’t notice. The fact is, her daughter is talking about Art. With interest. And Mum has the chance to educate me and share her passion.

“I’m free tomorrow, actually,” she says. I knew this—I’ve learned how to check her BlackBerry when she’s not looking. “Would you like to go after school?”

“Totally! Great idea!”

Mum tries to look modest, as if she doesn’t want too much praise for having thought up this incredible scheme. Which is perfect. It will work better if she thinks it’s her idea.

The thing about Mum is she’s in great demand. Although her “office” is a closet on the top floor at home, most of the time she’s somewhere else, mentally at least, being busy. She represents some really important young artists, whom she’s nurtured since they were students, and they’re always calling up with problems or questions; or buyers are trying to find the right piece to add to their collections; or she’s arranging an exhibition or some art-related event, and it’s really,
really
hard to get her undivided attention. The only times she turns the
BlackBerry off are in churches and art galleries. Same thing, really, as far as she’s concerned. And it’s hard to have a proper conversation in a church, so if I really need to talk to her, I have to take her to a gallery.

It took me years to figure this out, but ever since I did, it’s made my life much easier. And I don’t actually mind looking at Cézanne and stuff. He’s a pretty good painter, as far as I can tell. Of course, I’ll have to let Mum lecture me about him for twenty minutes or so, but once that’s over I can move on to Phase Two of Project Crow.

Mum starts with a picture of the Mont Sainte-Victoire. At first glance it’s just a picture of a fairly ugly mountain, but by the time Mum’s finished explaining about Cézanne’s groundbreaking use of color to suggest perspective, it’s become a fascinating picture of a fairly ugly mountain.

Mum pauses for breath.

“By the way,” I say, “I’ve got this friend.”

“Ye—es?”

I see Mum pat her pocket for her BlackBerry, in case more important messages are arriving, but then she remembers she’s switched it off.

I carry on. “She’s very talented. She needs our help.”

Mum looks at me skeptically. “What does she do?”

“She made this.” I’m wearing a painted silk flower skirt Crow finished a few days ago. Mum’s already given it a semi-approving look.

She puts her head to one side, noncommittally.

“And she can draw.” I take a piece of paper out of my bag and unfold it. It’s covered with Crow’s sketches of dancing girls. Suddenly, Mum looks quite excited. She knows big talent when she sees it.

“And she’s been asked to make clothes to sell at the Portobello Road Market and she needs some space to make them because she lives in a tiny flat with her aunt and she’s from Africa and there’s hardly any money and all the stuff is piled up everywhere and she’s hardly got room to sew and I think she could be a great designer,” I finish in a rush. “If we helped her.”

There’s a silence while we look at each other. Then Mum does something entirely unexpected. She bends down and takes my cheeks (with their hopeless cheekbones) in her hands and kisses the top of my head. I am SO small.

This is nice, but I’m not sure what it means. I gabble on.

“I mean, you help your artists all the time, so I’m sort of copying you, really, and we’ve got that room
downstairs that Granny uses sometimes to stay in but it’s usually empty and I know your artists need it sometimes if they’re staying in London but it probably wouldn’t be for very long and it would really help Crow and she’s so nice and Harry’s met her,” I finish, rather lamely. I’m not sure why meeting Harry should make any difference, but it might.

Mum takes the drawings from me and admires them for a long time.

“They’re good. How old is she?”

“Twelve.”

Mum sucks in her breath as if she’s just tried a scalding cappuccino. Then she swears in French. One of the words I Wited-Out on my Converses, in fact. French swearwords are a leftover from her modeling days. Her eyes keep scanning the drawings.

“So?” I ask at last.

“Certainly,” she says, smiling. “She can have Granny’s room.”

I wait for the “but.” This has all been far too easy. But there isn’t one. Maybe I’m better at managing my mother than I thought. Maybe Crow just really is that talented.

Two days later, we invite Crow and Florence over for tea. Mum takes to Crow straightaway and can’t help going
on about how fabulous her drawings are. Then we take her downstairs to our basement room, which Mum converted years ago for visitors.

We’ve had great fun creating space for a big worktable and finding pieces that Crow might like to be surrounded by when she’s working: the squashy purple velvet armchair from my room, a quirky antique lamp from the sitting room, even a tailor’s dummy that Mum found in an antique shop in Paris when she was modeling that has lived in our spare room ever since. The bed has been turned into a sort of sofa, with lots of colorful cushions. And there are three hat stands and a rail for hanging finished clothes.

When Florence sees the room, both her long-fingered hands fly to her face and then they flutter like butterflies as she stands transfixed in the doorway and tries to think of something to say. Crow marches straight up to the tailor’s dummy and strokes her hands over it. Then she goes to the French doors that lead to steps up to the back garden and peers up at the sky. Finally, she sits on the sofa-bed thing and puts her hands out beside her, while she admires the worktable. She nods calmly. It will do.

She doesn’t say thank you for the room. Or for anything else we try to do for her. She’s not big on emotional
outbursts. But within hours she’s returned from her tiny apartment and filled the space with her treasures. Her little black sewing machine is set up on the worktable. Her finished clothes are already filling up the rail and the hat stands. Her favorite designs and inspirations are in a tall pile of paper, ready to be stuck on the large corkboards on the walls. A half-finished dress is draped on the dummy. Paper patterns cover the bed and the floor. When I pop in to check how she’s getting on, she can’t help smiling.

Phase Two complete.

Chapter 13

O
n the last day of classes, Edie arranges for a video about Invisible Children in the camps in Uganda to be shown to the whole school. We watch them singing. And dancing. And making bracelets to sell. And talking about people they know who’ve died of AIDS. Or been killed or kidnapped. We watch some of them going to school. Most can’t, because there are no schools to go to.

Our headmistress looks extremely grim and several graduating seniors can be heard sniffling into their sleeves. It’s not the most fun-filled atmosphere to end the school year with, but the idea is to make us appreciate our good luck and fill the world with our noble deeds.

Afterward, an older student stands up and tells us how we’re connected to everyone on the planet. She tells us not to be obsessed with cheap celebrity and to make sure we do something useful with our lives.

Then Edie wins so many prizes that I have to hold most of them for her while she goes up for more. Situation normal.

The trouble is, next morning I have to go to the airport at the crack of dawn to meet Jenny, who’s fresh back from the Tokyo premiere of
Kid Code
and full of stories about cheap celebrity that she’s picked up from her Hollywood friends. And however hard I try to stay noble and unobsessed, they are, frankly, FASCINATING. I’d share them, but I’m sworn to secrecy. That CIA thing you have to do when you know people who know stars.

Suffice it to say, most of the stories are about people you know from all the magazines we’re not supposed to buy, and some of them would make your HAIR CURL. They in no way make the world a better place, but they certainly make it entertaining.

Jenny’s dying to meet Crow. She had to head off just as things were getting interesting and since then I’ve been keeping her up to speed with Crow’s new designs, and her incredible drawings, and her new workroom in our house. Edie’s been giving her updates on the reading progress and the Invisible Children video. Sadly, I think Edie is trying to compete with me on Project Crow, but I’m so winning. Not that it
is
a competition, obviously.

We meet in the workroom. Crow’s in her new designer uniform of overalls and slippers. When she’s working, she doesn’t bother with the fairy wings and tutus. Jenny is ecstatic about everything. You can tell she’s been surrounded by acting types for a while. Everything is GORGEOUS or INCREDIBLE or ADORABLE. Crow just gets on with cutting a new pattern and leaves her to it.