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‘You must miss him so much.’

‘I'd forgotten him,’ she says, her pen flicking over the page. ‘We never talked about him, because . . . It was like he was a strange dream. I'd forgotten his smile. How funny he was. How much he teased me.’ Her voice is calm and steady. ‘All this time I felt a pain, here, in my heart, but I couldn't picture him. Then last night Auntie Florence got out the photos. After you'd gone we talked about his stupid jokes. His head in those books, except when he was playing with me.’

‘I'm sorry,’ I butt in. ‘For Edie and me. Making you try and do a show. It was so selfish. It was all about me. I don't just want to make the tea any more. 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 any more. Except for school work. 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 favourite 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 him 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 absent-mindedly 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, cross with herself.

‘I've been so mean to you. Edie too. I knew you were just trying to help. But Edie keeps on 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.

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

Her red Mini 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 home-made cappuccino and ignoring her furiously vibrating BlackBerry.

‘You had me worried there,’ she says with a big smile.

I try and look as though I had it under control all the time.

‘Crow's a bit of a last-minute sort of 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 colours.

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 colours 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 modelling 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. Organising 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?

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 multi-layered and exquisitely finished. Luckily she's got Yvette and some of her mates from St Martins to help her cut and sew. But I still have to think about all the other bits 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 super-busy 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 gives up chess club to make
more time for Invisible Children.

I go over after school to see her at home when she could be at a club, or practising 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 tee-shirts all he likes, but if they get the message across, I don't care.’

‘He told you about the tee-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 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 striplight 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 programme. She's supposed to talk about the show and the Invisible Children campaign. The programme 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 jewelled hats, she's very private really, but she's being brave. It's a late-night show that goes out 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 round 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 realise 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 realise it's the only answer. ‘Don't worry, Crow. Just go home. OK? Promise me?’

I fiddle about 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 ensure 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 in opposite the kind-looking woman with the gravelly voice who does the show. She
gives me a bit of a double take. I realise 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 smoking 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 presenter talks me through the show. It's a combination of chat and music. She's been doing it for years and quickly adapts to talking to ‘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 it was like when she was shortlisted 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 round and making her dizzy. I talk about the family, split up because they have no safe home to go to. I get in a mention for Edie's website. The presenter 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
realise 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.