Stars

by Sophia Bennett

  Edie looks horrified. She probably doesn’t remember telling Gloria about the stresses of last term, but she was here every day, chatting away. Some of it must have slipped out.

  ‘Well actually,’ she says, ‘it didn’t cost me a place, Gloria, so don’t worry.’

  ‘Yes it did,’ Gloria insists. ‘I know you think you were just overworking, but if you hadn’t been here every morning, you’d have had more time . . .’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Edie interrupts. She plonks some mugs on the table and starts pouring coffee into them. ‘I got in. I found out last week.’ Then she slumps into a chair beside me. ‘In fact,’ she admits in a stunned sort of voice, ‘I got a scholarship. Look.’

  She takes an extremely creased piece of paper out of her pocket and spreads it out on the table. It’s obviously been folded and unfolded many times, but Edie hasn’t mentioned it up to now. Sure enough, it’s a letter from Harvard, congratulating her on her scholarship. We all stare at it, Edie hardest of all.

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she says. ‘The head says she gave me a great reference from school. And they took into account all the work I’ve been doing over the last couple of years. And my test results were good. But even so . . .’

  Liam by now is looking at me.

  ‘Nonie!’ he says, sounding concerned. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Just thinking of Edie going off to Boston. Congratulations! Boston! Wow! America! Fantastic! Yaaay!’

  I’m wittering. I know it. I just know how much I’m going to miss her. And Jenny. And Crow . . .

  Oh my God. Crow’s MIMO meeting was yesterday. She hasn’t called or emailed to tell me about it. Does that mean they offered her a job and she doesn’t want to tell me? Or they said no after all, and she doesn’t want to tell me that either?

  Edie coughs and looks embarrassed.

  ‘Well, actually,’ she says, ‘I’m not going. I’ve already called them to say no.’

  ‘WHAT?’

  We all say it together, including Gloria.

  Edie smiles. ‘I haven’t changed my mind since Christmas. Harvard isn’t for me. Nor’s Boston. You knew it all the time, Nonie. I’d hate living so far away from home. And I don’t want to spend my life travelling. I want to work here. In London. I want to be a psychiatrist, I think.’

  Gloria sighs and reaches a bony hand out to Edie, who takes it. Edie always did want to fix Gloria for Jenny. If it takes her a whole career to do it, she’ll keep trying.

  ‘I’m applying to University College London,’ she goes on. ‘I’ll be just down the road from the two of you. If I get in. Crow’ll be pleased. She always said she hated the idea of us all breaking up and going our separate ways. Even though Harvard is amazing, obviously . . .’

  She chats on for a bit more, but suddenly I’m not listening. I’m thinking.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I butt in. ‘I’ve just remembered something. Got to go. Sorry. Great to see you, Gloria.’

  And I’m grabbing my bag and going, with Edie looking astonished and Liam following in my wake.

  ‘What was that about?’ he says as soon as we’re outside.

  ‘You keep telling me I need to talk to people,’ I say. ‘Well, I need to talk to Crow. Right now. I need to know what she’s going to do. Even if it’s bad news – well, good news for her, obviously – I’ve just got to hear it. And there was something that Edie said . . .’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he offers.

  But some things I have to do on my own. I let him kiss me good luck and promise him I’ll let him know what happens. Then he finds me a taxi (he is the perfect boyfriend), and lends me the money so I can get there as quickly as I can.

  At Crow’s flat, Henry answers the door.

  ‘Is she in?’ I ask.

  ‘No. She’s gone out. She said she needed time to think. She’ll be back later.’

  ‘Right. Tell her, so will I,’ I say.

  ‘Any message?’

  ‘No. Just . . . Just tell her I really need to see her, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ he smiles. ‘She’ll be pleased.’

  ‘Really?’

  He nods.

  I think about the wasted taxi ride and try not to feel too disappointed.

  ‘Harry?’

  I’m back in the kitchen at home, killing time. So is Harry. I don’t think he’s moved since Liam and I saw him earlier.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Do you mind? About what I said? About you and Isabelle . . . I mean, did I just make a mess of things?’

  He looks up at me, astonished. Then he gets up slowly and wraps his arms around me in a bear hug.

  ‘No, little sis. I made a mess of things. You stopped me making it worse. Why?’

  I stay there for a minute, with his arms wrapped around me.

  ‘Well, I worry sometimes. You know, that I’m not very . . . useful. There’s you with your DJing, and Jenny’s going to be a megastar on Broadway, and Edie being a psychiatrist. And Crow’s such an incredible designer.’

  ‘A psychiatrist?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said Edie was going to be a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Oh yes. And she got a scholarship to Harvard, by the way, but she’s not going. She wants to study here. And there’s something she said about Crow that made me think . . .’

  ‘Bloody hell! A psychiatrist, hey? Your friends never cease to amaze me.’

  Harry looks animated for the first time in days. For about two seconds. Then he sits down again and lets his hair flop back over his eyes.

  ‘So?’ I ask, sitting opposite him. ‘What about me?’

  He gives me a smile. Weak, but real. ‘Hmm. What about you?’ He pauses, pondering, for ages. It’s not looking good. ‘Well, you’re constantly obsessed by your boyfriend, your exams, your latest argument with whoever and what you’re going to wear.’ He sees my face fall. My chin is practically on the floor. ‘But hold up, sis! You notice things about people. You’re there for them when they need you – like helping Crow when you first met her, or going to New York for Jenny. You care, and it shows. It makes you interesting. That, and the fact that only you can wear those leggings with that particular shade of mohair. One of the reasons I come home so much is because you’re here. Hey! Where are you going?’

  I’ve just realised something. Where Crow might be. I blow him a kiss and head out of the door.

  It’s a beautiful, sunny day. Groups of visitors are taking pictures of themselves on the museum steps. Inside, little children are leaning back to admire the massive glass chandelier in the lobby. So are their parents. I rush past them.

  I’ve nearly walked through the costume section when I spot her. She’s hard to miss, in a gold lurex dress with matching cloak and Mickey Mouse ears. She’s sketching an elaborate pair of Manolo Blahnik evening shoes.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ she says, looking surprised. ‘This is a coincidence.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ I tell her. ‘I come to the V&A all the time. So do you. Listen, I need to know what happened yesterday with the MIMOs. Let’s go to the café. You can tell me all about it.’

  Crow puts her sketchbook away in her school bag and follows me through the sculpture hall and down the corridor to the café, where we sit at a table under one of the huge, space-hopper lights. I wait for her to say something. She waits for me.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did they say?’ I ask. ‘Do they want you to design for them? Do they want you to go to New York?’

  Crow cocks her head to one side, considering. I could shake her.

  ‘Yes, I suppose they do,’ she says eventually. ‘That’s what the Senior Vice-President of Talent and Thingy emailed me afterwards, anyway.’

  ‘Right. Great,’ I say. ‘Well, you can’t say I wasn’t useful!’

  I give a light laugh. It sounds like water gurgling down a drain.

  ‘Useful?’ she asks.

  ‘By finding you the job. Sending in the ske
tches. You know. All that stuff.’

  Crow’s looking at me like I’m slightly crazy. She seems puzzled. Grumpy, possibly. Certainly not grateful.

  ‘But they didn’t want me to do my ideas.’

  ‘Mmmmm? Which ideas?’

  ‘The Fair Trade cotton. The prints. They liked my sketches, but they just wanted me to use fabrics from their normal suppliers. They told me not to worry where they came from.’

  ‘You could do that, couldn’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘But I don’t want to,’ Crow says. ‘Working with the people from home was the whole point. And the prints were what gave me my inspiration.’

  I imagine Crow sitting, arms folded, facing the MIMOs and them trying to get her to change her mind. I bet it was difficult. I can’t help smiling a bit at the thought.

  ‘You can always compromise though, can’t you?’

  Crow shakes her head. ‘Why should I? We never compromised.’

  ‘So what did you say?’ I whisper.

  She shrugs. ‘I said no, of course. I never wanted to work for them anyway. I was only at the meeting ’cause you told me to go. And I hated it. I don’t want to go to New York by myself. I don’t want to work for a big company. They weren’t even interested in my designs. Just all that stuff about me in the papers. And I only got that because of you.’ She looks grumpier than ever.

  I don’t, though. I look happy, I just know I do. I can feel a little cloud of happiness floating up from me and towards the space-hopper light.

  ‘Edie said you didn’t like the idea of us all breaking up,’ I say. ‘I hadn’t realised.’

  ‘Nonie,’ she says, ‘you can be so stupid, sometimes.’

  ‘Yes,’ I grin, ‘I know. Sorry. But I wanted you to follow your dreams. It’s your moment.’

  ‘I am following my dreams,’ she huffs. ‘I want to study art for a bit, while you go to college. That’s why I haven’t been bothering you recently. So you could revise. I did tell you. I want to learn about Picasso. He really liked African art. He’s cool. Then I want to do my own label, like we said. Just a small one, to start with, doing my own stuff. You can help me with the ideas for it. You’re brilliant at it, Nonie. Better than men in matching overcoats. And anyway . . .’ She pauses for a moment while her eyes glisten. ‘I only want to do it if it’s with you.’

  My eyes glisten too. She did tell me, all of it, at one time or another. I just wasn’t listening. Her face lights up and even the Mickey Mouse ears seem to jiggle with the force of her smile. At this point, for the first time in my life, I realise just how much Crow needs me. As much as I need her, in fact. And I can see just how much she’s been missing me while she stayed away so I could study. I make the ears jiggle even more when I go to hug her. She hugs me back, hard. I like that we’re big huggers in my family.

  Liam doesn’t seem particularly surprised when I tell him.

  ‘But I thought she’d completely grown out of me!’ I protest.

  ‘Just shows how rubbish you are at sussing people out,’ he says, with a reassuring kiss for the tip of my nose. ‘You used to think I hated your dress sense, remember? I just thought you were too cool to talk to. Until you completely messed up in Starbucks that day. That was funny.’

  ‘But I used to be so good at it!’

  ‘What? Ordering coffee?’

  ‘No. Sussing people out.’

  ‘You think?’

  He doesn’t sound very convinced. I try and think back. I’m sure there was a time when I could instantly sense what people were thinking. But actually, when I try and remember particular moments, I was usually totally wrong.

  ‘Have you talked to your mum yet?’ he asks, changing the subject.

  ‘Yes. Yesterday. About my revision timetable for the Easter holidays.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I know what Liam means. I may be wrong about almost everything, but there is one thing I’m sure of, and that’s that it would be pointless talking to Mum about why she didn’t marry Vicente all those years ago. Pointless, and painful – like sticking pins in myself. Why put myself through it?

  Anyway, soon it won’t be relevant any more. She’s got the same loved-up glow that I have. She’s constantly on her BlackBerry, writing love notes. Or she’s out on mysterious ‘gallery openings’ that she won’t discuss. I’m pretty convinced Vicente is over in London on a regular basis so he can see her. I’m guessing she’s waiting until my A levels are over before she announces the wedding. She doesn’t want to stress me out completely in my ‘important academic year’. But there’s only an important academic term of it left. In a few weeks, she’ll sit me down in the kitchen for a little discussion. Yaaay.

  ‘I’ll talk to her soon. When there’s a good moment,’ I tell Liam. He sighs with frustration and gives up.

  Besides, I’m too busy to talk to Mum. I have enough A-level revision to last me a year, and it’s all got to be done in the next six weeks. Edie pretends to be stressed too, to keep me company, but basically she’s back to her old self now and we both know she’s going to fly through the exams without really trying. In fact, she’s got so much spare time that her parents have let her start doing her web campaigning again.

  ‘I love the school bag idea,’ she tells me over lunch in the cafeteria a few weeks later, after the Shakespeare paper. (I aced King Lear. I totally aced him. Ask me anything about his motivations – anything. First exam I’ve enjoyed in my life.) ‘I’ve been emailing the people in Uganda about it. Crow could license other co-operatives to use her designs, and then they’d make even more money. What?’

  ‘You look different,’ I say. ‘Not that I wasn’t listening or anything, but there’s something about you.’

  She looks down. Then grins.

  ‘Crow got fed up with all my old clothes and she’s been making me some summer dresses. Do you like this one?’

  I check it out. It’s got the clever folds and drapes that Crow was experimenting with in her sketches. It looks simple, but it somehow makes Edie’s figure look even better than it is already. I tell her so and she blushes gently, before launching into a big speech about all the other things she’s going to do to raise money and awareness about the importance of education for girls. Including tee-shirts. There are always tee-shirts where Edie’s campaigns are involved.

  Turns out she doesn’t need the tee-shirts, though.

  I get a call from Amanda Elat at Miss Teen.

  ‘What’s all this about Crow’s bags? I didn’t know Crow was doing bags.’

  ‘She isn’t,’ I say. ‘She’s designed some fabric for this project in Uganda . . .’

  ‘Oh!’ Amanda says. ‘That explains it. Sort of.’

  ‘Explains what?’

  ‘Why I’ve had fifteen calls this morning. And why my inbox is overloaded. People assume this is all to do with Miss Teen. I wish it was.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Queen Fadilah, of course,’ she says. ‘You must have seen the coverage?’

  Well, I haven’t. I know who Queen Fadilah is, because I read fashion magazines and celebrity magazines, and she’s always in both – either for being the most stylish royal in the world, or for being the most brilliant at supporting good causes. Even Edie knows who she is because of her latest campaign for millions more children to be educated. In fact, she reminds me of Edie, except in Dior and Louboutins.

  Last week she made a speech about education at the United Nations in New York, apparently (Queen Fadilah, that is, not Edie – Edie’s chances of going to the UN are still pretty much nil). She also went to the White House to talk to the President. At both events she was photographed by practically every paparazzo in existence, and ever since, the fashion press have been analysing every inch of her gorgeous outfits. Normally I would know this, but I’ve been busy with exams. I never thought I’d be too busy to catch a major fashion moment, but that’s how good I’ve been recently.

  Anyway, Queen Fadilah dress
ed casually for both events, which in her case meant Dior palazzo pants and Louboutin flats. What got everyone really talking, though, was the bag she had over her shoulder. It was surprisingly simple for the Queen – a cotton school bag, in fact – but they LOVED the print. It looks like an animal print from far away, but when you get close you realise it’s . . . girls holding hands. People asked her about it and she said it was to raise money for a girls’ school in Uganda, and wasn’t it cute?

  They want to know more about it. And by ‘they’ I mean half the fashion bloggers on the internet. It’s become a major quest, to find out all the details about the bag, and the print, and the designer, and the school. I want to know how on earth Queen Fadilah got her hands on it.

  ‘Jenny’s in New York,’ Edie points out when I tell her. ‘This can’t be a coincidence.’

  We call Crow to come and join us, and we track Jenny down before her next performance.

  ‘That’s right,’ she says over the phone, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. ‘She came to one of our previews with her daughter, before the UN thing. Princess Alima wanted to meet me backstage. I guess she’s a princess too, so we sort of have a lot in common.’

  Edie sniggers.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I say. Should I remind Jenny she isn’t a real princess? Probably no point.

  ‘Anyway,’ she goes on. ‘We had loads of mementoes of the show to give her. And she saw those bags you sent me lying around and liked them, and we put all the mementoes in one for her to take away. And of course I told her about Crow and Victoria and the school-bag project and everything, and she said her mum might be interested and could she have a spare? So I said yes.’

  I call Amanda Elat back and explain it all to her. She doesn’t sound as thrilled as I’d hoped.

  ‘That’s fine,’ she says, ‘but I wish you could tell the million people who keep asking me about them. I’m still getting called several times a day, you know.’