Beads, Boys and Bangles

by Sophia Bennett

  Jenny and I explain to Edie that they were not ‘shoes’, they were Louboutins. And that it’s rude to suggest that one actress’s earrings may be worth more than another actress’s shoes, even if the second actress is your friend and not very famous. And we don’t point out Edie’s other fatal error, because we still haven’t spotted it.

  It’s Friday evening. Jenny’s rehearsals have just started. They’re in a studio south of the river and she happily heads off most days after school, singing show tunes at the top of her voice and frightening passers-by with the high notes.

  Crow’s due back from an art show opening with Henry and some design student friends so she can finish a dress, but meanwhile I’m borrowing the workroom because I’m making a dress of my own and the good part is, it’s homework! After much begging, pleading and tearful sulking (in French, which is the best language for sulking in by a million miles, just so’s you know, and also makes me sound vaguely sophisticated), I got Mum to let me do textiles GCSE. Yes!

  You’d think if your child was good at something – and sorry to brag, but in the normal world where everyone isn’t a fashion designer, my stuff is ‘surprisingly impressive, Nonie’. Anyway, you’d think if you were good at something your parents would want you to do an exam in it, so you’d get a decent grade at least once in your life, but no. Mum said it was too easy! Repeat after me, TOO EASY! Much better to cram my schedule with geography and history and science and things that make my head hurt. But she came round in the end. I think Dad helped persuade her to give me a break. Plus, a part of her actually does want me to get a decent grade for once.

  So I’m doing textiles. And I have to do this project linking clothes with art. Which is just total heaven to me. I can’t draw for toffee, but I can cut out pictures and stick them in scrapbooks like a pro. Yves Saint Laurent was influenced by painters like Picasso and Mondrian (see, on my specialist subject I sound really cultured and informed!). I’m doing a dress based on Cézanne, who I discovered when I first started helping Crow. And it’s fabulous. Trust me, it is.

  There’s only one problem. When you’re sitting at a worktable pinning and basting, listening to your friend’s jazz collection, you have lots of time to think about stuff. Great if you want to get your head round Shakespeare’s tragedies (I don’t, particularly), but rubbish if you keep wondering when your I-thought-he-was-my-boyfriend is going to call. And wondering. And wondering.

  It’s been nearly a week since the club in Shoreditch. I know that wasn’t exactly my best experience ever, but still. Things are supposed to happen after a first proper date, and they’re not.

  When is Alexander going to text me? At first, I was cool and laid back about the whole thing, like a Woman Who Has Regular Boyfriends. But now I’m back to my old self, and a bit of a wreck. What happens on the second proper date? Will there ever be one? Is he busy or is he just deliberately making me wait, for some bloke-reason that I don’t understand? Was the first proper kiss, in fact, as bad for him as it was for me? Am I a Seriously Bad Kisser? Have I put him off for life?

  I’ve asked Crow’s opinion and she just said Alexander was probably too busy dancing to call. As if.

  I really want to ask Harry. As an older brother, Harry’s job is to explain to me about men so it’s all slightly less confusing. But he was so mean to me after my first nearly-date that I can’t talk to him. I’ve even considered asking Svetlana, but as Alexander was supposed to be going out with a friend of hers, I can’t really talk to her either.

  In desperation, I put the Cézanne dress down and go and ask Mum.

  I catch her in the kitchen, grabbing a quick glass of wine between phone calls.

  ‘Er, Mum. How long are you supposed to wait to hear from someone? After . . . you’ve seen them. About something.’

  I hope I’ve been vague enough.

  ‘Has Alexander not called?’ she asks. Then she says a word in French that isn’t particularly complimentary to my possibly-already-ex-boyfriend. I assume this means he should have contacted me by now.

  ‘You’ve been a bit quiet, darling,’ she goes on. ‘How was the date? I never really asked.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I say.

  Lovely is my new word, I’ve decided. Lovely means ‘back off and leave me alone, I’m confused’.

  Mum gives me a pitying look, which is worse than anything she might have said.

  Then she adds, ‘Well, he brought you back on time, so that’s good. But listen, if he does anything to break your heart, you’ll tell me, won’t you? And I’ll get Harry to bop him on the nose.’

  Throughout my childhood, Mum has threatened to get Harry to bop people on the nose for me. As I’m five years younger than him, normally the people in question are also younger, smaller and slightly scared of him. They are not tall, fit dancers with very developed muscles and sweaty upper lips. I think, in a bopping contest, Alexander would win hands down. He could probably do it with one leg wrapped around his head.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I say. She tries.

  Back in the workroom, I try and concentrate on getting the overlapping panels of my bodice to line up properly. I also try not to look at my phone every thirty seconds, waiting for a text.

  Then one comes and in my excitement I drop the phone and the cover comes off and it makes a worrying, sad beeping noise. SO not good. When I’ve finally put it back together and discovered that it still works after all, the text turns out to be from Jenny. It’s a smiley face and a question mark.

  Aaaauuugghhh!

  I text her back anyway. A series of question marks, rather than the ‘Leave-me-alone-you-are-not-who-I-need-to-talk-to-right-now’ that I wanted to send. She calls me and I can hear her breathy, actressy voice, which means she’s just been talking to lots of her theatre friends and life is suddenly a big DRAMA, darling. I hope there isn’t a fashion equivalent of this, and that I don’t do it if there is.

  ‘Caroline’s gone!’ Jenny breathes.

  This would be incredible news, if I had the faintest idea who Caroline was. I tell Jenny as much.

  ‘The stepmother! Well, the actress who plays her. You know Caroline. She was in The Smiling Detective last year. And she was Keira Knightley’s mother in that thing.’

  I dimly remember Caroline from ‘that thing’. It was a costume drama thing and we spent most of the time wanting to be Keira Knightley’s younger sister, who had the most stunning silk dresses you can imagine, but unfortunately died of some horrible, old-fashioned disease about halfway through.

  ‘Why’s she gone?’

  ‘We don’t know!’

  Jenny says this as if it’s an answer to my question, rather than just a really annoying comment.

  ‘So why are you telling me this?’

  ‘It’s a big mystery! The producer says she’s got family problems, but she was telling me this morning how much she was looking forward to the run. We’re supposed to start in just over two weeks.’

  Oh. This sounds bad. ‘They’re not cancelling the play, are they?’ I ask, suddenly concerned.

  ‘That’s the strangest bit. The producer said they’re looking at putting it on at a bigger theatre. He says we might get a transfer after we finish at the Boat House.’

  I’m not sure what to say now. To most people, the idea of a bigger theatre would be great news, but the whole reason Jenny wanted to do this play was because the Boat House was small and out of the way.

  ‘Er, congratulations?’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, in a wobbly sort of way. I can picture her biting her lip.

  I think she called me because she wants to believe it’s good news, but she needs to hear someone else say it. Now that I know what I’m supposed to do, I spend ages telling her how perfect she’ll be after a few weeks performing at the Boat House, and how she’ll be ready for anything they throw at her. She gets less and less wobbly and by the end she sounds like she’s almost looking forward to it. Thank goodness for Mum, and her ‘How To Talk To Creative People’ lessons.
You never know when they’re going to come in handy.

  * * *

  Strangely, I have to do it all over again two minutes later.

  Edie calls to say that her mum and dad, who are teachers, both have to attend a parents’ evening tonight. This is mildly interesting, but not worth a phone call, in my opinion. Then she says her little brother Jake’s on a sleep-over and am I busy?

  I am, of course – after the dress, I’ve got geography to do and I’ve recorded an episode of Britain’s Next Top Model – but this is clearly code for ‘Please can I come over?’ so I invite her over.

  She arrives fifteen minutes later in the strangest of moods and I take her to the kitchen for a hot chocolate. If I didn’t know Edie better, I’d say she was on a caffeine high. She’s all jittery and can’t sit down and keeps wandering round the room, touching delicate stuff from Mum’s art collection and making the pictures wonky.

  ‘Everything all right?’ I ask.

  ‘Fine,’ she says, looking goofy.

  The answer to my next three questions is ‘Fine’, or ‘OK, I suppose’. This is going to be tough.

  Meanwhile, Harry’s in his bedroom, trying out the playlist for his next set. He can only really get into the mood if he plays it EXTREMELY LOUD, so the whole house is shaking. The next-door neighbours hate us. Edie tries a few dance steps. Something very strange is happening.

  Then suddenly I remember. The ethical blogging awards. They must be happening around now. Are they tonight? Does she need me to hold her hand while we watch radioactive kid win a prize?

  ‘Er, is your website going OK?’ I ask. I sense she’s in too strange a mood for direct questions.

  ‘Fine,’ Edie says. But in a ‘please ask me more’ sort of way.

  ‘The awards must be soon,’ I prompt.

  ‘Oh, they’ve happened,’ she sighs. She runs her fingers over a pile of unframed photos that must ON NO ACCOUNT BE TOUCHED.

  ‘Why don’t we go to my room?’ I suggest. ‘And what happened? Did radioactive kid win?’

  We start to head upstairs.

  ‘No,’ she shouts, over the sound of some Icelandic pop group that Harry’s recently discovered.

  She’s not making it easy for me. Then I realise the obvious. We’re at the door of my room. I turn to look at her.

  ‘Did you win?’

  ‘Yes!’ she squeaks. ‘Yes, I did!’

  And we both do a jig round the landing. Or as much of a jig as you can do to Icelandic pop. More of a pogo.

  I turn on my laptop and make her show me the ethical blogging website, where it says ‘Winner’ in flashing letters next to Edie’s name, and there’s a whole page about her website, and how much the ethical blogging people admire it for being ‘informative and committed, but also fun and in tune with teen culture’. You can tell they haven’t actually met Edie.

  ‘And there’s this,’ she says. Now that she’s finally admitted winning, she’s desperate to show me more.

  She does some rapid typing on my keyboard and up comes the most boring webpage I’ve seen in my life. It’s a series of graphs. It’s like homework. Ew. But apparently it’s her ‘web stats’ – how many people actually look at her site – and on the biggest chart is a line that’s just taken off, showing that she’s suddenly got hundreds of new readers. And the number’s growing by the minute.

  ‘The ethical blogging people warned me this might happen if I won,’ she said. ‘But I was so sure I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Warned you? Isn’t this a good thing?’

  ‘I suppose so. But my site wasn’t designed to cope with this many readers at once. It’s in danger of crashing. I need to talk to my hosting service in the morning.’

  There she goes, the internet whizz kid again. You wouldn’t normally think that the idea of your site crashing would make you grin from ear to ear like a crazy person, but that’s what Edie’s doing right now. She’s really proud of this award. And what’s so sweet is, I really don’t think she would ever have told me if I hadn’t asked. Or rather, if she hadn’t made me ask.

  Edie just stands there, next to my desk, jiggling about and looking happy in a shocked sort of way.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, grabbing her hand. ‘Party.’

  Mum’s back on the phone upstairs, but we hear the front door opening and go down to find Crow in the hall. She instantly puts her satchel down and starts boogieing around the room in an ‘Edie victory’ dance.

  ‘What about Harry?’ she asks breathlessly, midboogie. ‘Does he know?’

  She’s right, of course I may still be cross with him for sniggering at me, but it’s time for a brief ceasefire. We all pile into his room and he grins at us as if nothing’s wrong anyway. He’s in the middle of some Memphis Soul by now and once he hears the news he turns his speakers up as loud as they’ll go, which is very.

  Memphis Soul, it turns out, is perfect for dancing around the room with your brother and two of your best friends, to celebrate their total amazingness.

  ‘You’re famous now!’ I shout to Edie over King Curtis and his band.

  ‘Only to ethical bloggers,’ she laughs.

  ‘Well, I’m going to check out your website,’ Harry adds, ‘so that’s one new reader, anyway.’

  ‘I always knew you were the best,’ says Crow, in the same way she says she’s going to design for the Royal Ballet one day – like it’s a simple fact.

  We carry on dancing, despite loud knocks from next door, and I lead a conga around the room. You wouldn’t think you could conga to Memphis Soul, but if you try hard enough, you can. Then my phone goes in my pocket. Without thinking, I grab it and press the ‘Answer’ button.

  ‘Yes?’ I shout.

  ‘Er, hi. Nonie?’

  ‘Yes. What?’

  ‘It’s Alexander. Er, are you OK?’

  I explain to Alexander that yes, I am indeed OK. I am also busy celebrating and I’ll call him back later. Then I put the phone away and get back down to dancing. I mean, of all the stupid times to call.

  It’s only as I’m going to bed and it’s suddenly all quiet that I realise what I’ve done, and what an idiot I am.

  Except I’m not. He texts first thing in the morning, begging for another date as soon as possible.

  Sure enough, Edie’s site crashes on Saturday morning. She gets it fixed and five minutes later, it crashes again. Apparently she’s going to need another machine to run it on or something. Anyway, it’s complicated and technical and expensive but she doesn’t really mind because other people start blogging about the fact that it crashed and that gives her even more traffic and she’s becoming really quite famous on the web.

  I try not to think about the number of people who now get a daily update on what I’m wearing. If you do, you go mad. Especially if you’re going through a bit of a 1930s phase and you spend a lot of your time in vintage bias-cut satin dresses that your mother thinks look more like moth-eaten nighties. Worn with your trusty old pink polar bear jacket – now a bit short and more of a shrug – and winkle-pickers.

  Crow and I have our follow-up meeting at Miss Teen this morning. Before I started working in the fashion business, Saturday mornings were strictly for shopping and smoothies. Now they’re also for meetings. Not our favourite thing, but no meetings, no collection. So we dress up nicely and smile bravely and go.

  I don’t wear bias-cut satin for this. Miss Teen people don’t do ‘moth-eaten’. I wear a lime-green gingham pleated mini-skirt, braces and one of Harry’s shirts. And a new pair of Converse All-Stars that I’ve covered with bottle tops in an effort to recycle. I look perfectly respectable and business-like. Well, next to Edie I might look a bit relaxed, but I’m going for ‘normal teenager’, not ‘aspiring member of the Royal Family’.

  Crow’s wearing her standard working outfit of tee-shirt and dungarees, with a floor-length tartan cloak. And a huge tartan scarf wrapped around her hair. Took her five seconds to do. Looks incredible. Sigh.

  On the way to the Miss
Teen HQ, I buy a celebrity magazine in a newsagent and flip through it. Two girls in Crow dresses – one couture, one high-street. Good. Interestingly, the girl in the couture dress has teamed it with pixie boots. PIXIE BOOTS? Is she crazy? But the more I think about it, the more I like it. Oh, and there’s a picture of Sigrid Santorini falling out of a club with a man whose name I recognise. It takes the whole bus journey to remember why.

  Then I realise. It’s Jenny’s director. Sigrid is stalking us.

  When we get to the HQ we’re shown into the boardroom, not the design/chatting/everything room that we normally go to. This room is large and grand and full of wood. The walls are lined with wood. The table is made out of an enormous chunk of it. The chairs are wood-colour. Even one of the artworks on the wall is made of wood blocks. If Edie saw it, she would think of the rainforests and weep. It would probably remind Jenny of her performance in Kid Code.

  Hot chocolates are handed round, as per usual, with cappuccinos for the grown-ups. Amanda comes in, looking even more tired than usual (bad sign). Then the design team troop in behind her and sit in their chairs, staring at their cappuccinos and not looking at us (very bad sign). Then Andy Elat himself comes in, chatting to another man I haven’t seen before and sounding very jolly. But he doesn’t say hello. Extremely bad sign.

  When everyone’s settled, Andy finally pretends to notice Crow and me. He nods briefly in our direction. If he’s trying to be scary and intimidating, it’s working. Even Crow looks slightly unnerved. I have a feeling she’s wishing Henry was here, to tuck her under his arm.

  ‘This is Paolo,’ Andy says. ‘My new PR guru. I’m sure you’re all aware of him, so no introductions needed.’

  Everyone round the table nods except Crow and me. I’ve never heard of him, and an introduction would be really nice.

  Paolo has one of those beards that is only a few millimetres long and reminds you of David Beckham. He’s about the same age as Mum, with dark hair, light brown skin and very pink lips. I’m guessing he’s Italian and that he probably has brown eyes, but I don’t know because he’s wearing impenetrable black wraparound sunglasses. To go with his black polo-neck jumper, baggy black flannel trousers and shiny black shoes. He looks like how I’d imagine a Russian bodyguard to look. If he had a pistol tucked into his trouser belt, it wouldn’t seem at all out of place.