Suddenly, I'm so angry I don't know what to say. Being patronised is my least favourite thing in the history of the universe. The only thing worse is being patronised by my own brother. How does he know what Crow's thinking? How does he possibly know what Edie's thinking? How can he even suggest that she's doing this for the CV points?
How did he guess the tee-shirts would be pink? Is he telepathic?
I storm out of his room and up to mine, where I instantly start messaging Edie. I leave out the bits about the tee-shirts and the CV points. Just say how angry I am that here we are trying to help this little person and SHE WON'T LET US.
To start with, Edie agrees with me, but next day at school she's not so sure.
‘I've been thinking,’ she says.
‘Yes?’
‘Have you ever really wondered why she doesn't want to talk about home?’
‘Cos it was horrible?’
‘What if Harry's right? What if it was worse than we thought?’
‘Worse how?’
‘What if the rebels actually came to her village. What if somebody died?’
‘Who?’
‘Look, I don't know. A friend? An auntie? Could you try asking?’
‘When? I never see her any more.’
‘Nor do I. She's stopped coming for reading practice.’
I promise I'll try and think of something.
When I get home, the house is empty. Harry's at college and Mum's doing whatever it is she does, wherever it is she does it when she's not in her cupboard upstairs.
It's dark and cold. Even with the lights and central heating on, it feels dark and cold. I wander into the kitchen. Mum's left a note. I wonder if it's for me and start to read it, but it's just instructions for the cleaning lady.
Which gives me an idea.
I put my coat back on and grab my keys, purse, phone and bus pass from my backpack and put them into my handbag, which is a little forties vintage thing I found in a charity shop. I wouldn't be seen dead with a new handbag. Even one of Jenny's freebie hand-me-downs.
On the Tube, I wonder if I'm doing the right thing, but I decide I don't have any choice. If this doesn't work, there isn't a Plan B. There's just hope.
The Tube takes me to Notting Hill Gate and I retrace my steps from the summer to Crow's school. It's almost empty by now. The only people there are staff catching up on marking and the cleaners. I tread nervously down a couple of corridors, following the sound of a Hoover, and get to a lady in overalls and baggy black trousers, busy finishing off a classroom.
‘Do you know Florence Lamogi?’ I ask.
‘Lamogi?’
Then I remember that Florence got married when she came to England. I don't know what her new surname is. I'm not even certain if she still works here. To my relief, the lady suddenly clicks.
‘Oh, Flo! Flo's probably upstairs right now. Science rooms. Two floors up.’
I thank her and head up the stairs as fast as I can.
Florence nearly knocks me over, heading down with a bucket full of cleaning equipment.
‘Nonie! You startled me! Why are you here?’
‘Hi, Florence. Sorry. It's just . . . I've got something to ask you.’
She looks at me quizzically, but doesn't answer. We both head rapidly back down the stairs, Florence in the lead and me chasing.
‘I'm leaving now,’ she says at last, depositing the bucket in a cupboard. ‘I've got to get to my next job.’
She starts taking her overalls off and retrieving a jacket from the back of the cupboard door. I offer to go with her, and she agrees. Soon we're back out in the cold evening air.
‘Er, it's about Crow,’ I giggle nervously. Of course it's about Crow. Who else would it be about?
So far, so bad. I'm not sure how to put this. I've practised, but I still haven't come up with anything convincing. How do you ask someone to tell you the thing they don't want to tell you? If there is a thing they don't want to tell you, which I'm not sure about . . .
‘This way,’ Florence says.
We start walking rapidly back down the road towards the Tube.
‘I don't want to be nosy. It's just that – I think we don't really understand. What happened before Crow came here. Exactly. I wondered . . . Actually, Edie wondered . . . When Crow was night walking . . . Well, I said it was lucky everyone was safe and she gave me a funny look. So we were wondering . . . ?’
‘What?’ Florence snaps, whipping her head round to look at me, but still moving quickly down the pavement, barging past anyone coming the other way. She's not her usual self at all.
I take a deep breath of cold air.
‘You know the rebel soldiers . . . Did they . . . ? Did something happen to someone? A friend of hers? Or another auntie or something?’
Florence ignores me. She keeps her head down and keeps walking until we get to the station. Then she stops. A blast of warm air hits us both, coming up from the ticket hall. People bump into us as they head for home, or wherever it is they're going. An announcer claims proudly that (for once) there aren't any delays on the lines.
Just as he's talking, Florence suddenly mutters something at me, then turns to go.
I grab the back of her jacket.
‘I'm sorry? I didn't hear you.’
She's looking angry and almost scared.
She mutters it one more time and then she disappears down the stairs to the Tube, as fast as she can go.
Crow's brother. I think that's what she was saying.
They took her brother.
Four hours later, Florence is home from her second job.
We're all huddled in the little living room off Gloucester Road. There's just one light on in the kitchen. Its beams hardly reach us. For some reason, we've avoided the chairs. We're all sitting hunched up on the floor. Everyone's in tears, except Crow. I think she must have done most of her crying when she was a little girl. For the first time, I fully notice the shell she's built around herself.
Jenny and Edie agreed to join us here as soon as I called them. They're both looking shocked. Jenny's still in her pyjamas. She was getting ready for an early night and just threw a coat over herself when I called.
‘You should have told us!’ she wails, crying harder than anyone.
‘We can't talk about Henry,’ Florence says quietly. ‘There are no words. He was the eldest child. The son.
What could we say?’
And having told us there are no words, she talks long into the evening about her adored nephew and brings out photographs of a tall, good-looking boy posing confidently for the camera, sometimes alone and sometimes with his arm protectively around his little sister. Always smiling. Always with a satchel full of books over his shoulder.
Crow sits beside her, watching from beneath hooded eyes, listening silently.
‘He was thirteen. Such a good student,’ Florence says. ‘His father was so proud of him. He loved English Literature. He wanted to be a poet. There was an English poet called Ted Hughes and Henry loved his poems. Henry always had his head in a book. Even when there was work to be done. They used to tease him. But he got top marks at school.’
‘What happened?’ I hardly dare ask, but I need to know.
‘Henry always used to go with Elizabeth to the town on the night walks. He looked after her very well. But then Grace had the new baby. James had to go away and Henry stayed behind to help. That's when they came.’
Crow talks for the first time, in a tiny whisper.
‘When I got home the village was burning. The food was gone. The people were gone. There were . . . bodies. The school was burning. At home no-one was there. My mother was hiding with the baby. Then my father came.
We went to find my mother. He told me about Henry.’
She wipes a single tear from her cheek.
‘He had to tell me so many times until I could understand.’
‘Is there no chance of finding him?’ Edie asks gently.
‘There ar
e so many thousands of children,’ Florence says sadly, spreading her expressive hands out in front of her. ‘So many camps. No telephones. James has tried for years. But no word. What can we do? We don't even know if he's alive.’
Edie looks thoughtful, but not convinced.
That night, I lie in bed thinking hard. I realise with a shock that Harry is sort of short for Henry. And that my Harry is about the same age Crow's Henry would have been. No wonder she's spent so much time with him. I wonder if he's the reason she's been coming over. I suddenly feel a bit guilty for having an older brother I love so much, even if he does patronise me. Just because he happens to be right most of the time.
Next morning is Friday. I get up early and go back to Florence's to see how Crow is.
She's in her room, already up, drawing. She doesn't look up and I shift about a bit, wondering what to say. There's an old photo on the wall above her desk that I haven't seen before, attached at an angle with a piece of Sellotape. It's Henry, his face in shadow, satchel over his shoulder, his hand resting on the arm of a little girl looking very much like Victoria does now. Her face is in shadow too, but her head is nestled securely against him. I'm guessing she's smiling.
‘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.
Amanda 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?
Hard, 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.
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