Stars

by Sophia Bennett

  ‘How’s your mum, Nonie? And your granny?’

  I try not to wince and tell her they’re fine.

  ‘And Harry? He had a cold the last time I saw him. That was eleven days ago. Did he manage to get rid of it? He looked so tired and grizzled, poor thing. I gave him every vitamin I could think of, but I’m not sure he took them.’

  ‘He’s fine too,’ I assure her. ‘He sends you lots of love.’

  Actually, I’m making this bit up. It’s just occurred to me that he probably should have sent her lots of love, but he was so busy telling me about his favourite old record stores in the area that he forgot.

  Nevertheless, I’m a good white liar, and Isabelle glows with pleasure.

  ‘Well, I’m seeing him in three days anyway, so I can check up on him then. And make sure he takes those vitamins.’

  I look around her living room. Harry is everywhere, in subtle ways. There are framed album covers by his favourite old bands. A road bike that surely must be his, hung on the wall just inside the door. A photo of Isabelle in the shirt she wore to their engagement party that I’m certain he took. I recognise his style. She’s even wearing one of his old tee-shirts now, I realise.

  As she sits back and chats to us, occasionally running her fingers through her world-famous ringlets, I’m surprised that Harry doesn’t talk about her more often. Perhaps you just get used to it after a while – living with that much beauty. But hard as I try, I really can’t persuade myself that she’s using him just so she can have a big wedding. She seems so genuinely in love. It’s a relief, I suppose. Good to think that Harry will be happy. Except something’s still wrong. But I am far too tired and full of chips and burger to work out what it is.

  Next morning, we’re woken by the phone ringing. At least, Edie and I are. Isabelle is already out of the apartment and preparing for her first show.

  ‘Wow!’ Jenny shouts when I pick up. ‘I can’t believe you’re really here! You’re SO AMAZING to come and see me. And you’ve come at the craziest time. I’ll tell you all about it. But it means I’m a bit manic at the moment. Anyway, I’ll meet you at the Soho Grand in half an hour, OK? It’s down the road from you. I’ve only got an hour this morning, but I can’t wait to see you!’

  And while I’m still breathing in to reply, she rings off.

  We quickly go through one of Edie’s guidebooks, trying to work out what and where the Soho Grand is, but luckily it turns out to be a rather nice-looking hotel, just a few doors down from the apartment. Half an hour later, we’re all dressed and ready, standing in the hotel’s designer lobby and waiting for Jenny to appear.

  She’s late. While we wait, we watch various famous faces go by. As far as I can tell, half the fashion world must stay here during New York Fashion Week. I’m secretly hoping to see Joan Burstein again, but have to make do with several models, two movie stars, three fashion editors and Paris Hilton. Not bad for a fifteen-minute wait, I consider.

  When Jenny arrives, she’s very apologetic.

  ‘Traffic! Ugh!’ she says, hugging us tightly, each in turn. ‘But oh my God! You’re in New York! I still can’t believe it! Now come with me.’

  We go up the designer stairs to another designer area where a bunch of incredibly well-dressed, important people are having coffee with other well-dressed, important people. I can’t see any spare seats, but Jenny has a word with an even better-dressed hotel manager and somehow, three seats around a little table are miraculously found.

  ‘Jackson comes here all the time,’ Jenny explains. ‘So does Charlotte. They know me now. It’s very useful.’

  I still think I’d be more comfortable in a café across the road. My Doc Martens and fake fur bomber jacket are clashing badly with the designer atmosphere. Jenny looks pretty scruffy in jeans and a multi-coloured, hand-knitted sweater. Her hair, however, is still Vogue perfect, which helps. So does Edie’s new dress, as made for her last week by Crow, which is covered in exposed seams and chalk marks but shows off her legs and looks really cool. Even under the multi-pocketed parka she insists on wearing to hold all the guidebooks. At least I have a new school bag that Crow gave me, using her girls-holding-hands print. It’s the chicest thing about me.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jenny says, talking fast and waving her hands with enthusiasm. ‘I told you it was a crazy time. There’s so much going on with the show. There’s a whole new ball scene that’s just incredible. It’ll take me till the summer to learn the dances, but the costumes will be A-MA-ZING. I bet even the Queen didn’t get to wear such good ones. And they’re changing my part.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I gasp, before I can help myself.

  ‘Oh, Nonie. Will you stop worrying?’ she says crossly. ‘They’re making it better, not cutting it. The producers have been arguing with the director for weeks, but they’ve finally agreed that the problem with the show was that Elizabeth wasn’t interesting enough, compared to Margaret. And they needed a better ten o’clock number.’

  ‘A what?’ we ask.

  ‘A ten o’clock number,’ she sighs, as if we’re supposed to know what that means. ‘The song that really gets the audience involved in the second half. Before you build up to the finale. You know.’

  Well, we don’t, really, but we nod anyway.

  ‘And they’re giving it to me,’ Jenny continues, eyes shining. ‘It’s the bit where Princess Elizabeth hears that her father has died. She’s on tour in Africa, away from home and her young children. She realises that by the time she sees them again, she won’t just be their mummy, she’ll be Queen.’

  ‘Wow!’ I say. It’s not so much the story, but the gleam in Jenny’s eyes as she tells it. You can tell she’s excited by this bit.

  She looks thrilled at my reaction. ‘Anyway, she has this moment she’s missing her dad and she’s scared. She never really wanted to be Queen – not in our story, anyway – but she has to abandon her private feelings and throw herself into her new life ruling the country, and never let anyone know how hard it was, ever. That’s the ten o’clock number.’

  ‘That’s a song?’ Edie asks. ‘They’re putting all of that into a song?’

  Jenny looks affronted. ‘A Broadway song. They can put a whole lot more in, I can tell you. But this one’s great. The lyrics are amazing. And Jackson’s written such a sad melody for it. Makes me cry every time. Which is lucky, because I have to. Cry, I mean. We started rehearsing it last week and I have another session with Jackson and Marty, the musical director, tomorrow. You can come, if you’ve got time. And if the TV people will let you.’

  ‘The TV people?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes. Jackson’s doing this reality TV show. About the making of a musical. Bringing it to Broadway. It’s mostly him at home, working on the songs and talking to Marty and the producers and people, but they like to show him out and about with the cast. They’re filming my bit at the theatre. Oh, God. Got to go. Jackson wants to know if you can come round for supper tonight. See you then? I’ll text you his address.’

  And that’s it. She’s gone. We both feel as if we’ve been hit by a tornado. I had put Edie under strict instructions not to bring up Gloria until we’ve had a bit more time with Jenny, but that wasn’t a problem after all. She hardly had a chance to get a word in edgeways.

  She looks at me, stunned.

  ‘Was that real?’ she asks.

  I nod.

  ‘She didn’t even ask us how the flight was. Or how we are. Or how Isabelle is. Or anything. It’s all about Jenny.’

  ‘To be fair,’ I point out, ‘she didn’t have much time.’

  Edie snorts. ‘She had enough for the ten o’clock number.’

  It’s true. She had a lot of time for that.

  The next eight hours are some of the busiest of my life. Edie is like a woman possessed. She has studied her guidebook until she could walk around New York blindfold, and she whisks me from one ‘Oh my God’ moment to the next. One minute we’re peering at the Statue of Liberty through the rain-spattered window of a s
ightseeing boat, and the next we’re standing at the Ground Zero building site, watching the rain fall on the hole where the Twin Towers used to be. Then we’re in the subway, getting only slightly lost, before finally arriving in Fifth Avenue, where all the shops are – or, as I like to call it, home.

  Edie doesn’t enjoy this bit as much as me. Edie complains, in fact, that it is not necessary to see Saks and Bergdorf Goodman, Tiffany and Abercrombie & Fitch. Edie seems to think that we are wasting valuable museum-visiting time. I disagree. I am picturing the best locations for Crow’s future collections for the MIMOs. I am deciding that Bergdorf Goodman is probably my favourite, but I might have to go to Barney’s on Madison Avenue to make sure. It’s not until Edie sits down on the floor of Abercrombie, and refuses to move, that I realise that now I am the woman possessed. Besides, we’re due at Jackson Ward’s for dinner soon, and we need to change out of our sightseeing clothes.

  As I struggle into an old silver-knit mini-dress of Crow’s, hoping it’s suitable for meeting a musical legend, I’m wondering how I can ever repay Harry for my ticket. New York is even taller, louder and more inspiring than I imagined. It has so much energy – it even makes London look laid-back, which takes some doing. Only one thing scares me slightly. You would have to be totally and utterly amazing to stand out here. Just being ‘great’ isn’t good enough. Jackson Ward has managed it somehow, with his Tonys and Oscars. So has Isabelle. But I wonder if Jenny has realised how much she’s taking on by performing in this city. And I wonder what I’ve let Crow in for by trying to get her that job here, too.

  With Edie map-reading, we get the subway to Jackson Ward’s apartment on East 73rd Street, not far from Central Park. However, the first surprise is that his apartment isn’t an apartment at all. It’s a house. An actual old house, with a front door and stairs and, by the look of it, a lot of history. I’d been hoping for a skyscraper. Possibly even the Trump Tower, but this is cool anyway.

  ‘I told you it was a house,’ Jenny says in the hall.

  She probably did. I probably wasn’t listening. She gushes so much about Jackson Ward and his fabulous life that I tend to tune out.

  Jenny leads us through to a grand reception room. Mum would love the place. It’s full of sculpture. Stone ones, bronze ones, wood ones, even weird, twisted ones that are made out of no material I recognise. Edie sighs appreciatively. We are in a world of culture. She is happy.

  ‘Come and meet everyone,’ Jenny says.

  At the far end of the room, a short, balding man in a silk shirt is sipping cocktails and chatting with a remarkably tall, white-haired woman and a short, pretty girl with a pale face, geek-chic glasses and almost waist-length dark hair. They all come over to shake our hands.

  ‘How do you do? Awfully nice to meet you. This is my wife, Jane, and my lovely daughter, Charlotte.’

  He does the whole speech in the fakest English accent I’ve ever heard. I can sense Edie wincing beside me, so I smile extra politely to make up for her.

  ‘Ignore him,’ Charlotte says with a friendly smile. ‘He’s always like this with strangers. Shut UP, Dad. He’ll get better, though. Now, come over and make yourselves comfortable.’

  I can’t help noticing, as we pass various side tables crammed with expensive knick-knacks, that there are at least two photos of Charlotte and her mother posing on a yacht. If only Granny were here. She’d be SO impressed.

  ‘So, girls,’ Jackson asks, ‘how was your first day in New York? What did you do with yourselves?’

  Edie is less distracted by the Oscars and Tonys. She answers first.

  ‘Ground Zero was so poignant,’ she says sombrely.

  There’s a brief pause for reflection.

  ‘And what about you, Nonie?’

  For a moment, I wish we’d gone to the Met and the Guggenheim, like Edie wanted. That would be the perfect conversation to have right now. Instead, I have to admit to practically every store on Fifth Avenue. Some of them twice.

  Jackson Ward grins. ‘Aha! Jenny’s told me all about you. A fashionista to your fingertips. I salute you!’

  He takes a sip of cocktail in my honour. From then, I relax a bit and get used to being in museum-standard surroundings. Supper, which is served by a maid, manages to be super-healthy and super-yummy, which is just what we need after too many fries and emergency Starbucks milkshakes. And then Jackson sits down at the piano while coffee is served in teeny porcelain cups, and sings several of the songs from The Princesses for us.

  He’s very good. He sings and plays as if he’s starring in the show himself, and it’s strange to think that he hardly ever performs in public. He could probably do a stint in Las Vegas if he wanted to. As long as he never attempts anything in an English accent.

  I’m so gripped that for a long time, I don’t notice that I’m sitting alone on my gold silk sofa. But when I do, I’m suddenly concerned. Edie and Jenny have disappeared. They must have gone up to Jenny’s room. Which can only mean that Edie is telling Jenny about Gloria. Not just about the pills, which Jenny already knows about, but about what the nurses said. About how fragile Gloria is.

  My concern is how fragile Jenny is when it comes to her mum. Oh my God. I came all this way to stop this and it’s happening under my nose. As soon as I decently can, I make my excuses to Jackson and head for Jenny’s room upstairs.

  It takes me a few moments to find it. There are a lot of doors in this house. Then I finally open the right one and two faces whip round to look at me. Both have bright pink spots on their cheeks. The rest of Edie’s face is white and drawn, while Jenny’s is tear-stained and blotchy.

  ‘You think it’s my fault, don’t you?’ Jenny shouts. ‘You think it’s because of me that she’s so bad. Because I don’t look after her enough.’

  ‘I think you don’t look after her at all!’ Edie shouts back.

  Jenny’s voice goes quiet, but she’s shaking with anger. ‘Get out! Get out! Go away! Leave me alone!’

  There’s not much else we can do, under the circumstances. Furiously, I grab Edie’s arm and pull her towards me.

  ‘We’re going,’ I say to Jenny. ‘But look – please call me? I came all this way, Jen. Promise me you’ll talk to me?’

  She doesn’t answer.

  Edie and I go back to the sitting room. Three elegant, confused and embarrassed Wards see us politely to the door. We catch the subway home and reach the apartment in silence. I have just wasted Harry’s birthday-present plane ticket after all, by spending the most important five minutes in New York listening to an old guy play the piano and it wasn’t even Elton John. I could kick myself. I could kick Edie too, right now, but I don’t.

  The next morning, over breakfast, Edie looks sheepish. She’s pretending to be studious, poring over her guidebook and her super-list of things to do, but it’s not working. We both keep looking at the phones: mine, the apartment phone and Edie’s. Eventually, a text arrives on mine.

  ‘Sorry for before. Not your fault. See you by the polar bears in Central Park in 1 hour? Jxxx’

  This is good. This is great. Jenny’s still talking to me. It’s wonderful, in fact. And apparently they have polar bears in Central Park. Interesting. I thought it was just trees and swings and stuff.

  ‘Want me to come?’ Edie asks.

  ‘No, I’ll be OK,’ I say. Which is code for, After everything you said to her last night? ARE YOU CRAZY?

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she agrees. I think she understood the code. ‘Tell her I send my love,’ she says, ‘and . . . I hope . . . she’s feeling better.’

  I assume this is code for a big apology and promise to pass it on.

  Central Park is beautiful, even in winter with hardly any leaves on the trees and every New Yorker wrapped up in as many coats and scarves as they can find. After the towering buildings and roads roaring with yellow taxis suddenly there’s peace, calm, orderliness and inviting walks along shady paths. Bizarre to think that Bergdorf Goodman is a ten-minute walk away, max. I can und
erstand why Granny would want to come here with her mini-Isabelles and Harrys. It doesn’t look like polar bear country, though.

  I get to the zoo, which was on Edie’s list of cultural go-sees, but pretty low down, and follow signs to the Polar Circle. Eventually, I spot a big, stone enclosure with a massive pond and there they are: two polar bears sitting on a rock, idly grooming themselves. Nearby, there’s a girl with cropped, burnt-orange hair and sunglasses, clutching a hot chocolate and looking completely miserable.

  Jenny gives me a slight smile when I get close.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, pushing her sunglasses up.

  ‘Hi, how are you?’

  She doesn’t really answer. Instead, she watches a bear slide into the freezing water of the pond.

  ‘I always come here when I’m thinking,’ Jenny says. ‘It seems so weird. Two polar bears in the centre of New York City. Gus and Ida. They’re sort of like friends now.’

  ‘We’re still your friends,’ I say. ‘And I’m sorry about Edie, but you know what she’s like . . . She sort of said sorry as well, by the way.’

  Jenny leans against a railing and takes a sip from her cup.

  ‘Did she?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know why. She was right, as usual.’

  This is exactly what I was worried about.

  ‘Jenny, I know this is really obvious,’ I say, ‘but – that stuff with Edie. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Your mum. Everything.’

  ‘Well, that’s sweet of you, Nonie, but it doesn’t feel that way. Besides – suppose it happened to me one day.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, I get like Mum.’

  ‘Jenny! No!’

  ‘Why not? What if it runs in the family?’

  ‘I’m sure it doesn’t. You’re such an upbeat person. Trust me, Jenny, it won’t happen to you.’