Beads, Boys and Bangles

by Sophia Bennett

  I grunt a reply while trying not to jiggle my face too much. We spent ages meandering back here and now Edie and I are in a bit of a rush. Edie’s getting changed and I’m focusing on major eyeliner issues in the shower room mirror. In the end, Granny put her foot down about Crow coming out with us this evening. Underneath all the excitement she’s obviously exhausted. But she doesn’t seem to care. She’s too busy gushing about the mains.

  ‘I met the lady who makes the trimmings for Chanel suits. And two people who do embroidery for jewelled shoes. Just . . .’ She flutters her hands again, but this time in a good way. ‘Did you know, they have these rooms full of pearls and beads from all over the world? And one full of feathers. Just feathers – in drawers. Some of them are seventy years old. The birds they came from are extinct.’

  I decide not to point out that the feather collection and the bird extinction might be connected. Edie does, though, of course. Crow sounds a bit crestfallen for a minute, but soon she’s off again, talking about the difficulties of working in silver thread.

  Even when we’re all dressed and made up and Alexander arrives (and my tummy does a mini-rollercoaster ride), Crow keeps on going. She’s rethinking trimmings and embellishments. She wants to work with lace and tweed. She’s realised she hasn’t scratched the surface of jewelled embroidery.

  Alexander sits down in Dad’s only chair in the sitting room that isn’t piled with canvases, stretches himself out and enjoys the excitement in Crow’s voice as she talks. Which gives me a good opportunity to watch him from my perch on a rolled-up sleeping bag on the floor. He really is extremely beautiful. Long legs. Long fingers, which I really like. Cheekbones, which my mother (ex-model) would approve of. And he’s fit. To look at, obviously, but also he must work out a lot. Lots of muscles. But not bulgy ones. Just nicely . . .

  Oh no. He’s turned round and caught me looking at him. He gives me that smile again.

  ‘How are you, Boots?’

  ‘Fine,’ I squeak. ‘So, what do you do, er, Alexander?’

  He laughs out loud.

  ‘You sound like the Queen. But much cuter. I dance, Boots. I dance.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Pole dancing? Is he a Chippendale? The only thing this tells me for sure is that he is definitely, definitely gay. I’m even more relieved.

  ‘At the Royal Opera House. I joined last year.’

  ‘OH!’

  Edie, Crow and I all say it together. A ballet dancer. Wow. Totally wow. And based in London. Interesting.

  ‘I’m going to design for the Royal Ballet one day,’ says Crow, as if she’s already got a contract. She hasn’t spoken to them yet, but it’s just a question of time.

  ‘Well, they could do with a bit of help in the tights department,’ he says with a serious expression and a sly glance at me.

  I’ve gone poncho colour, I know it. And I’m so hot I want to fan myself. Which is SO not the effect I’m going for.

  After that, the evening goes surprisingly well, though. Granny arrives and we head off together, leaving Crow and Dad poring over his collection of art books and comparing notes on favourite painters. Meanwhile, Alexander is totally sweet and polite and doesn’t try anything on with anybody. He takes us to a jazz club in a cellar somewhere cool and is a fabulous dancer, naturellement. He dances equally with Edie, me and Granny. After we’ve boogied away for a couple of hours, he politely escorts us home, via a lovely walk along the river.

  Granny is charmed.

  ‘Such a shame about him,’ she says, as he disappears off towards the Left Bank, where the taxis are.

  ‘You mean the whole “ballet dancer” thing?’ I ask, with a look.

  She gives me the look back.

  ‘Yes. Exactly, darling.’

  ‘What thing?’ asks Edie.

  I promise I’ll explain it to her one day, when she’s old enough.

  After some pretty ineffectual eyeliner removal in Dad’s mirror, I slip silently into my sleeping bag next to Crow on the sitting room floor.

  Not silently enough, as it turns out. Crow opens half an eye and asks how it went. I tell her it was fine and she gives me a sleepy smile.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I whisper back. After all, it’s not every day you launch a collection, go to a funeral and leave behind the one member of your close family who’s on the same continent as you, because there’s no floor-space for him.

  ‘Of course!’ she says. ‘Did you know it’s bad luck to sew in a label until the very last moment? The mains are really superstitious about it. I never heard that before . . .’

  Her voice trails off and I realise she’s asleep again.

  ‘What did she say?’ Edie asks in a hoarse whisper through the door of Dad’s studio, where she’s curled up in her own sleeping bag.

  ‘She’s muttering about labels,’ I tell her.

  ‘She would be!’

  There’s the sound of distant rumbling from somewhere. I assume it must be a Métro train until I realise it’s Dad snoring. He’s a totally impressive snorer. It must have driven Mum bananas the short time they were together. Edie starts giggling and sets me off too. Then she asks me again what Granny meant about the ballet dancer thing, which leads to a bit of a chat, and next thing we know it’s four in the morning and we’re still awake.

  There’s only one thing for it. Hot chocolate in Dad’s kitchen, made with real melted chocolate and the remainder of his milk. It would be so much easier if the recipe required champagne.

  ‘I’ve decided something,’ Edie says thoughtfully, balancing on her rickety stool with her chocolate and looking out at the lights rippling on the river, and the dark blue of the sky before dawn.

  ‘What?’ I ask nervously. She’s going to win the Nobel Peace Prize? She’s doing Further Maths A-level next year?

  ‘Paris is totally the most romantic city in the world. I have to come and live here one day.’

  I’m amazed. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Edie use the word ‘romantic’ before, unless she’s discussing Jane Austen in an essay. She’s right though, of course.

  In the morning, Dad finds us both asleep with our heads on the kitchen counter, and won’t let us move until he’s done a quick sketch of us, and laughed his head off.

  Now I get what Mum meant about living with artists being a nightmare.

  Back in London, Crow gets straight to work on her new couture designs. She has loads of clients with parties and awards ceremonies coming up and she’s fizzing with ideas.

  Other nearly-fourteen-year-olds might spend time messaging their friends and checking out YouTube and watching TV. I’ll admit I did a tiny bit of that when I was fourteen. OK, I did mostly that. But Crow isn’t normal that way. She doesn’t own a computer. Never uses her phone, except for taking photos. Hates reading. Hates typing. Isn’t interested in TV.

  She loves movies and galleries and arty parties and anything that fires her imagination. Mostly, though, she just sits in her workroom after school, or wanders around the streets of London, designing things in her head, or working out new techniques for making them real on tailor’s dummies.

  Lots of girls have written to Edie’s website saying how jealous they are of Crow since she got famous, but I’m not sure if they’d love her life. She adores it, but like I say, she’s not totally normal. In a good way. Edie writes back and tells those girls they can have Crow’s life when they’ve done ten thousand fashion sketches for practice and can recreate a Dior dress from scratch, like Crow can. Edie’s tough that way.

  Right now, Edie’s in talks with her internet people about website security (at last), and I’m supposed to be finishing my Shakespeare essay. But instead, I really need to catch up with Jenny.

  It’s Saturday morning and time for our usual rendezvous at the Victoria and Albert Museum café. I’ve just been to Paris and been sort-of romanced by a ballet dancer. I can’t wait for her to ask me how it went.

  ‘It was amazing,’ she says.

  ‘What was?’ />
  ‘The meeting with Bill. I have to tell you EVERYTHING.’

  ‘Can I just—?’

  ‘Well, first, I didn’t think he was going to talk about acting at all, and I didn’t really want him to, because, you know, it wasn’t so great last time, but it turns out I may have to think again.’

  She looks at me expectantly. Like I’m supposed to have guessed something. I just want to tell her about Ballet Boy. I breathe in to say something and she takes that as a desperate need to know more.

  ‘It turns out, Bill’s written a play. Sort of about me. Sort of for me. One of the characters is this girl whose father has let her down and she has to rebuild the relationship with him and this stepmother character. She’s quiet at first, but she gradually becomes the soul of the piece. And he said he wrote it with me in mind. What my dad did, you know, selling that story about me, and imagining if I had to go and live with him afterwards. There was a girl who was going to play me. My role, I mean. But she’s just backed out. And they start rehearsals in January. And Bill thought of me. I might not get the part, obviously. Probably not, in fact, but . . . are you listening, Nonie?’

  ‘Yes. You said you might not get the part.’

  ‘Which part?’ She’s looking at me suspiciously.

  ‘The part he wrote for you.’

  Phew. I wasn’t actually listening, but luckily the words just sort of stuck in my brain and came out at the right moment.

  ‘Exactly.’

  She takes this as an excuse to go on and carries on chatting about it for another ten minutes. Something about the play being staged in a small theatre in Hammersmith that used to be a boathouse for rowing crews. Perfect for her to practise acting properly in a low-key venue where she wouldn’t be under the pressure she was under in Hollywood, where her performance was – and even her mother would admit this – painful.

  I notice that someone at a table nearby is pretending not to stare at us. Is it Jenny they recognise, because she was in a blockbuster last year and she’s still wearing her Louis Vuitton scarf ‘disguise’? Or me, because I’ve been in a couple of magazines recently, talking about the Miss Teen collection?

  Then I realise it’s a girl who goes on Edie’s charity fun runs, and who’s seen us both looking sweaty, in tee-shirts and sports bras, jogging in Edie’s wake. This is what it’s like to be not-quite-famous.

  ‘And so I’m doing it next Thursday. I can’t believe I am, but I am.’

  What Jenny’s doing next Thursday, I have no idea. Something to do with this play, obviously. An audition?

  ‘Good luck,’ I say, hoping this is roughly appropriate.

  ‘Thanks,’ she smiles. ‘Anyway, how about you? How was Paris?’

  At last! So I tell her about the funeral and the reception afterwards and the fact that there was this guy who happened to notice me . . .

  ‘AHA! I KNEW IT! Tell me EVERY DETAIL!’

  Hooray! This is what I’ve been hoping for all along. So I tell her about Alexander and the beautiful hands and the fact he calls me Boots and the is-he-isn’t-he-gay thing, and she does a much better job of listening to me than I did of listening to her.

  ‘Well, I think he’s toying with you,’ she says eventually.

  ‘Toying?’

  Only Jenny uses expressions like ‘toying’. She not-quite went out with an EXTREMELY FAMOUS MOVIE STAR during the blockbuster thing, so this makes her an expert on men. Expert, and world-weary. Her man abandoned her, so all men are vile. They toy, apparently.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s just using you to get to Crow?’

  ‘Crow? Why?’

  ‘So she can design something for him? I don’t know! He sounds dangerous.’

  This is typical Jenny nowadays. Sad, but true.

  I show her a picture of Alexander from Google Images that I just happen to have in my handbag. It’s a bit dogeared, but it gives the general idea.

  ‘Oh. My. God. He’s gorgeous.’

  I nod.

  ‘Definitely dangerous. Have nothing to do with him, Nonie.’

  ‘Well, I’m not likely to, am I? He hasn’t called me or anything. He doesn’t even have my number. Plus the whole gay thing.’

  When I get home, my brother Harry’s in the kitchen, smooching with Svetlana. He’s been going out with her since Crow’s first show, which is nearly a year ago now. He’s in the final year of his art degree at Central St Martins, but he spends most of his time DJing at parties and fashion events, so he gets to see more of her than many boyfriends would. This doesn’t stop them being disgustingly clingy in public, though.

  ‘Get a room,’ I say, throwing my bag down and making myself a hot chocolate.

  He laughs.

  ‘Oh, by the way. Some guy called while you were out. Alexander? Said you met him in Paris. Says there’s this performance for rising stars on Thursday and did you want to go? He’ll meet up with you afterwards. I’ve written down the details.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I continue whisking in the chocolate. I’m a top hot chocolate maker and my method is elaborate. Plus, it takes my mind off how shocked I am. And gives my cheeks a chance to go back to their normal colour.

  ‘So, come on,’ Harry says. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A dancer,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t worry. He’s gay. He just liked my outfit.’

  ‘Alexander Taylor?’ Svetlana asks. ‘The new guy from the Royal Ballet School?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  For a moment, I’m surprised Svetlana’s heard of him, but then she goes to about ten parties a day and she probably knows everybody interesting in London, New York, Paris and Milan.

  I sit down opposite them. They’re not smooching quite so badly now. Svetlana has unwound most of herself and is perched delicately on Harry’s knee.

  ‘I thought he was dating Lulu Frost,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘I worked with her in New York a couple of months ago. She’s doing Gucci at the moment. He’s younger than her, but so persistent. And confident. He’s SO not gay, darling.’

  She gives me a wicked grin.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  And drink a LOT of hot chocolate. Which I hope will explain why my cheeks have gone poncho colour again.

  ‘She looks like a horse,’ Jenny says loyally.

  We’re in my room. Supposedly doing French homework. Jenny’s going on and on and on about this meeting she’s got on Thursday with the director of Bill’s new play. I’ve briefly mentioned Lulu Frost. Jenny insisted on seeing pictures.

  Lulu happens to be advertising a coat in my copy of The Sunday Times magazine, featuring the piece on Crow. (Petal power: fashion’s new girl starts to blossom. Only a tiny bit at the end about slave labour. Big relief.)

  Lulu has glossy black hair, sapphire-blue eyes and long, long lashes. Despite the lashes, she definitely doesn’t look like a horse.

  ‘She looks great,’ I point out.

  ‘Her nose is too big.’

  ‘She’s a SUPERMODEL.’

  ‘No, she’s not. Not like Svetlana. She’s just in a lot of ads at the moment. She’s a model. That’s all.’

  ‘THAT’S ALL?’

  ‘Look, if he’s gone off her, that’s not your fault, is it?’

  ‘I thought you said he was dangerous and I wasn’t supposed to see him again.’

  ‘He is, and you shouldn’t. I’m just saying you’re more beautiful than her. I can quite see why he fancies you more. I just think you should ignore him.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Jen.’

  I give her an enormous bear hug. She really is the nicest possible friend. I know for a fact that I am a flat-faced midget with wonky hair, but Jenny says all the right things.

  ‘So? What are you going to do?’

  She’s looking quite severe now. I know I ought to say that she’s right and I’m not even going to return Alexander’s call. But he’s gorgeous. And fit, in every sense. And he looks a bit like Robert Pattinson. And his voice is pure honey. And he definitely fancies me. A
nd he was really nice to Granny and perfectly charming all evening that night in Paris. And he makes my insides do really impressive arabesques when he catches me looking at him.

  How can I possibly NOT go on one teeny, weeny date with a hot young ballet dancer who appreciates decent footwear? I’d be crazy, right? And to think our children would be athletic AND beautiful AND they’d probably have that floppy hair . . .

  ‘I’ll be very good. I promise. I won’t let him even kiss me.’

  ‘Noooooo.’

  Jenny tries a bit more, but I think she’s realised she’s not going to persuade me. She makes one last, desperate effort.

  ‘What does your mum say?’

  ‘She’d had a string of boyfriends by the time she was my age. She says to respect myself, not drink anything with an open top and be back by eleven. She knows I won’t do anything naughty.’

  And she’s right. I have SUCH a clear idea of how my first night of naughtiness should be, and a quick meal with a guy I’ve just met who used to go out with a model isn’t even close. I may watch Gossip Girl, but I don’t intend to live it.

  I feel totally virtuous and confident. In fact, the more Jenny tries to talk me out of it, the more virtuous and confident I get.

  On the way in to school on Thursday morning, I’m feeling pretty good. It’s the last day of term. My hair has been de-wonked by Granny’s hairdresser, who is a miracle worker. I’ve just received an invitation to an intimate Christmas soirée by Stella McCartney. A hot ballet dancer fancies me instead of a model. And, to top it all, I spot two sixth-formers in pieces from Crow’s collection for Miss Teen, and looking great in them.

  I walk into the classroom radiating goodwill, despite the fact that it’s geography in two minutes. I smile happily at all my friends. I sit down next to Edie and give her my broadest grin.