Two days later, we invite Crow and Florence round for tea. Mum takes to Crow straight away 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 modelling and has lived in our spare room ever since. The bed has been turned into a sort of sofa, with lots of colourful cushions. And there are three hatstands 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 and do for her. She's not big on emotional outbursts. But within hours she's returned from her tiny flat and filled the space with her treasures. Her little black sewing machine is set up on the work-table. Her finished clothes are already filling up the rail and the hatstands. Her favourite designs and inspirations are in a tall pile of paper, ready to be stuck on the large pinboards 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.
On the last day of term, 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 sixth-formers 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.
Afterwards, an old pupil 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 blue dungarees 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.
Jenny's brought back a few cute outfits for Crow to look at. She gets them out of her bag with a flourish. Crow looks vaguely grateful, but it's hard to tell. So Jenny goes back to admiring the room. When she gets to the drawings of dancing girls, she pauses to look at them for a long, long time. You can tell she's thinking something.
‘Can I watch you work?’ she asks eventually.
Crow looks surprised and shrugs. Jenny takes it as a yes and curls herself up in the purple armchair where, within minutes, her jet-lagged body goes limp and we hear her gently snoring.
For a while, I watch Crow by myself. I'd offer to help, but I've tried before and everything she does is a lot more difficult than it looks. Especially cutting. She does it in long, confident strokes, but I've seen what she has to do with the fabric afterwards and if you make one tiny mistake you've ruined the whole thing. I made one tiny mistake once and she was very kind about it, but I haven't offered since.
I sometimes wonder whether it's fair to let a girl of her age work so constantly. I asked Mum one day, when she came down to the workroom with me to see how she was getting on.
‘We're not exactly forcing her,’ she said. ‘I'd say, if anything, it was a question of not stopping her.’
It's true. I look at her expression as she cuts. It's totally focused, but also sort of happy. She catches me watching her and gives me a quick smile.
She holds up a complicated shape that looks like a leaf that's been mauled by a caterpillar.
‘What's it going to be?’ I ask.
‘An asymmetric bodice,’ she says casually. ‘With a Möbius twist on the shoulder.’
‘Oh.’
What she means is a one-shouldered top where the fabric is half-twisted and joined back to front at the seam. (I SO sound like Edie.) For a girl who can hardly spell ‘chair’, Crow's not bad at speaking couture.
Once Jenny's had a chance to recover from her jetlag, it's time to get her to spill the beans about the Green-Eyed Sex God Mystery. I've been waiting for weeks for this moment, and I'm not going to let her escape. Since she got back I've heard every story about every A-lister she's encountered, except for one. There's a very obvious, drool-making absence from the list. I'm determined to find out why.
I'm about to invite her to the V&A café on Saturday for a chat, but instead she invites me. When she phones me up to make the date, I can hear a new tone of excitement in her voice. I want to know what it is, but she won't tell me until we're face to face. She insists we meet in the afternoon. I'm supposed to be going on a fun-run with Edie to raise money for cancer or mental illness or something, but cheap celebrity wins every time. I cancel the fun-run and I'm at my usual table at the café ten minutes before the meeting time, smoothie at the ready.
Jenny shows up in what she likes to think of as her ‘don't recognise me’ outfit. Since Kid Code went global, she gets strange looks and requests for autographs and pictures wherever she goes. However, her idea of incognito includes Tom Ford sunglasses, an enormous Louis Vuitton scarf up to her nose and one of Crow's knitted berets, complete with coloured beads. She might as well put up a neon sign saying ‘I'm a celebrity, accost me.’
Sure enough, before she can sit down she has to smile for two camera-phones and autograph a paper napkin and a map of the V&A.
‘At least I can still go out,’ she says, joining me. ‘The others can't even get past their front doors without security and an evacuation plan.’
I try and pity Hollywood's Hottest Couple and the New Teenage Sex God, but it's not working.
‘So. Tell,’ I command.
‘OK.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘We've been nominated for the National Movie Awards.’ She sits back expectantly, waiting for my awestruck reaction.
‘What are the National Movie Awards?’
She droops slightly. ‘You know. They're voted for by the public. They ask pe
ople in cinemas to vote for their favourites. They were on TV last year. Didn't you see them?’
I rack my brains, but I can't remember. She looks distinctly disappointed. Then it hits me.
‘Does this mean you're going to be on TV?’
She nods. ‘In September.’
‘Wow! Are you nominated? For best kid or something?’
Jenny scoffs. ‘Of course not. But Joe is. And our leading lady. And the film itself – for Best Action Adventure.’
She grins. Even though she was miserable making the film, she's still very proud of it for everyone else's sake and thinks of them all a bit like family. Weird, crazy family, but family nevertheless.
‘So are they all coming over?’ I ask.
She shakes her head. ‘No. They're all filming. Except for Joe.’
She stops and goes strawberry. I say nothing, but give her a quizzical stare. She goes more strawberry – actually approaching raspberry by now – and tries to drink her smoothie, forgetting she's already drunk most of it and is reduced to loud gurgling noises through the straw.
I maintain my quizzical stare. Eventually she looks at me defensively.
‘What? You mean Joe? What about Joe?’
‘Exactly. What about him? He seemed to be avoiding you in London. You go a funny colour whenever his name is mentioned. Including by you.’
‘I don't!’ she protests, going totally fruits of the forest. ‘And he wasn't avoiding me. You know those premieres. Everyone's busy.’
‘Then why did you care so much?’
‘I didn't care! I don't care! I was too busy thinking about my stupid legs.’
She's a pretty good actress, when not in front of a film camera. But she's not good enough for me. I maintain my quizzical look. It's getting a bit painful now and I think I'm developing some fairly unattractive frown lines. Plus, it's hard to drink smoothie from a straw while looking quizzical and I get a dribble of it down my chin, which ruins the effect somewhat. However, my persistence pays off.
‘OK,’ she says quietly, putting her glass aside. ‘He kissed me.’
This, I wasn't expecting.
‘He WHAT?’
I wipe smoothie off various bits of me.
‘Don't make it sound so impossible. Anyway, it really was nothing. It was nearly the last day of filming. I was rubbish and I knew it. I was just chatting to him about how rubbish I was and he was saying I was fabulous and what a wonderful talent I had and all that stuff actors say all the time and he could tell I wasn't listening to a word. And then he stopped. He leant over towards me and kissed my face. Just like that.’
‘Kissed it where?’
‘On the set. Behind the cameras.’
‘No, dummy. Where on your face?’
She looks wistful. ‘On my lips, then my cheek, then my eyes, then my lips again.’
‘OH. MY. GOD.’
‘And then he looked at me. And I don't normally notice boys, particularly.’
‘Me neither,’ I agree. ‘I know I'm supposed to be obsessed, but I always find myself criticising their dress sense. And they can only talk about sport. Except Harry. Or make jokes about boobs. Boobs are SO not funny.’
‘Exactly. Joe's different. It doesn't really matter what he talks about. He's got that star thing. It's not just on camera. They're all like that. If they're in a room, you just want to be near them. If they look at you, their eyes bore into you. Joe's eyes are . . . ’
‘Internationally famous. Green lasers. I've seen them three times recently in that film of yours.’
‘Uh-huh. They just melted me. I felt like a hot little puddle of liquid jelly.’
‘Ew!’
‘Yeah. Just so silly and . . . ridiculous. I didn't even have the sense to run away. I just sat there, going the colour I've gone now, even talking about it.’ She touches a hand to her hot face. ‘And then we had to shoot a scene, and the next two days were manic with last-minute filming . . . ’
‘ . . . and you thought that maybe once things calmed down he might start pining for you and that possibly when he saw you at the premiere he would take you in his arms and tell you that the sex-goddess girlfriend was a terrible mistake and you were the cherry tomato he'd always wanted . . . ’
‘There! You're making it sound impossible again. Anyway, he said nothing. Absolutely nothing. He completely ignored me. He was the only person on those carpets even close to my age and he acted as if I didn't exist. And he's a good actor.’
I change my quizzical look to puzzled. ‘But he seems so nice. You must have got to him somehow.’
‘Sheer embarrassment, probably.’
I think about it. I'm SO not an expert on boys. But I feel as if I know Joe after several hours spent staring into those green eyes during three screenings of Kid Code and a couple of catch-ups of his older films on cable TV. The plot of one of these gives me half an idea.
‘You should go up to him next time,’ I suggest. ‘Say, “Thank you for the kiss.” At least you'll take the initiative.’
‘What does it mean, though?’
‘I don't know. Neither will he. D'you remember Teen Blues about three years ago? He was the geeky guy who didn't get the girl. Anyway, the girl said something like that to the hero. He was so confused. He didn't know if she was being grateful or rude. He was hooked. It will make you a woman of mystery. Joe can't ignore you after that.’
‘But it makes me sound so . . . pushy.’
I laugh. ‘I bet he's used to a lot more pushy than that.’
Jenny nods. She's already told me about the fans who introduce themselves to him by lifting their tops. ‘I could try. It can't make it any worse.’
‘So what was it like?’ I have to know. ‘Before you turned to jelly, I mean? When he . . . ’
There's a faraway look in her eyes.
‘Lovely,’ she breathes. She pauses for a long time to find the perfect description of this mega-event. ‘He'd been eating Mentos, so his breath was a bit toothpasty. But other than that, really lovely.’
MENTOS?
I'm not sure I'll be reading any romantic fiction by Jenny Merritt, but I get the general idea.
We sit for a while, not talking. Then, gradually, I start picturing Jenny on that red carpet again and my skin goes goose-bumpy.
‘So what are they making you wear?’
‘Nothing.’ She giggles. ‘Well, they're not making me wear nothing, obviously. They just don't care any more. I think they've given up on me.’
‘Fantastic! We're free! What are you going to do?’
There's a gleam in her eye.
‘What do you think?’
I get the impression I'm supposed to know the answer to this one. But there are so many designers out there, I haven't got a clue.
‘Go to Selfridges?’
‘No, dummy. Isn't it obvious? Crow. Ever since I saw her drawings, I've been planning it. I mean, she can dress me up as a cucumber for all I care. It can't be any worse than what I've been through. But when I saw those designs in her workroom . . . Yummy! I think she can make me something really amazing. It's my contribution to helping her. My proper one.’
I give her a big smile and she sits back looking very pleased with herself. However, I can't help feeling that simply wearing one of Crow's dresses doesn't exactly measure up with teaching her to read or setting her up with workspace and materials.
Which only shows how much I know.
It starts with the shoes.
We're in Portobello Market, admiring the stand that's now selling Crow's skirts and dresses, thanks to Skye. Crow's been sending the stuff here for a few weeks and we've come to gawp at it, but we're out of luck.
‘Sorry, loves,’ says Rebecca, the stand owner, who's in skinny jeans and a peasant tunic that I suspect cost the price of a small car, ‘I sold out this morning. I have a waiting list for her stock. Word's got around. I've got models who want it. Design students. Party girls. You couldn't get her to speed up production, could you?’
Rebecca seems to imagine that Crow has a roomful of people busy making up her designs. As it happens, she's made friends with some of Skye's old crowd from St Martins and they do come and help occasionally, but mostly it's just the twelve-year-old and her little sewing machine. I'm amazed she makes as much as she does.
Edie is itching to get home again, but Jenny and I are in fashion wonderland and won't be moved. Rebecca's stand is not so much a stall as the perfect walk-in wardrobe, crammed full of vintage pieces and little one-offs by new designers. It's obviously aimed at young people with lots of parties to go to and sackfuls of money. It's all very beautiful, but the prices are eye-popping. I had no idea things from a market could ever possibly cost so much. I'm just reeling at the price of a teeny-weeny frilly top when Jenny points at a pair of vintage silver Christian Louboutin heels and gets out her wallet.
‘You are joking?’ I say.
‘They're my size,’ Jenny answers defensively. ‘Not many are.’
‘But they're over FOUR HUNDRED pounds! For old shoes that someone else's bunions have worn!’
‘And they're too high!’ Edie splutters. ‘You'll fall over.’
‘They're lovely,’ she retorts. ‘Honestly, Nonie, spending some of the money from this godawful film is the only thing that's made me halfway happy recently. Count yourself lucky it's not gin. And actually I'm very good in stilettos. They make my legs look longer.’
Edie and I shrug at each other. It's Jenny's money and if her mother lets her spend it, we can't stop her. Plus, it's kind of cool to have a friend who owns a pair of Christian Louboutins. I've never seen the famous red soles close up before. They're very covetable. If he ever makes a flat, cheap, boot version, with laces, I'll be sorely tempted.
I get home dying to tell everyone about the shoes, and Crow's stuff selling out at the stall, but the chance doesn't come. I find Mum in the kitchen looking all dithery and trying to remember where she's stored the bone china teacups. This can only mean one thing – and it's more momentous than Louboutins.
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