Beads, Boys and Bangles

by Sophia Bennett

  Andy Elat’s on the news that evening, talking about it. First of all, he explains, there’s going to be a Fashion Holds Hands team, who will work full time checking how clothes are made in every factory they use. There will be funky new labels on every garment saying ‘Check me out’ and giving details on where it came from. Then there is the Miss Teen Fashion Fund, which will help thousands of children who’ve been made to work in the garment industry. Finally, Andy wants to set up a special committee of all the major high-street brands, with himself as chairman, to help everyone come up to the new standards.

  In the conversation that follows, Andy hints at other ideas to come, and suddenly everyone is talking about Miss Teen, waiting to see what happens.

  Edie gets a bouquet of roses from the No Kidding team that’s seriously worthy of Joe Yule.

  After our geography papers, life doesn’t seem too bad. I almost start to enjoy the summer for about a week, but then I bump into Lulu Frost in the West End, and life goes back to being excruciating for a while.

  Crow and I are back in the Big Scary Theatre, to see Jenny doing her thing in His Father’s Daughter (‘Beg, borrow or steal a ticket . . .’). It’s my seventh visit and Crow’s third. They give us cheap tickets and squeeze us in somehow and I’ve discovered they use the same ice cream supplier as the Royal Opera House, so the interval is yum.

  We’re queuing up for our usual supplies, when someone taps me on the shoulder and it’s Lulu. What is it about this girl and queuing?

  ‘Hi,’ she says smiling nervously at us both. ‘Oh, Nonie, you look exhausted.’

  Gee thanks. So would you if you were in the middle of revising for science and English. Thank goodness Crow’s persuaded Henry to help me with Eng. Lit. He’s an amazing tutor. I think I might even get a B.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I lie. ‘You look great.’ Also a lie. She looks rubbish. But YOU DON’T SAY THAT.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Lulu smiles nervously again and fiddles with a tassel on her handbag. Oh no. She wants me to ask her something. Why do people do this? Why does it always have to be me who thinks up the conversation?

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about Alexander,’ I say.

  Crow pats me on the elbow at this point and disappears back to her seat. She may not seem to be paying attention half the time, but she certainly knows her stuff when it comes to relationships. And she knows how much I want to discuss this one with Lulu. NOT.

  ‘Right,’ Lulu says. ‘Thanks. Well, he’s history. There was that kid at the club. And, well, there were rumours about someone else. Someone he was really smitten with. He denied it, of course.’

  She looks at me long and hard. I concentrate on looking exhausted. Merely exhausted.

  ‘Poor you,’ I say. I suppose I should say ‘I’m-sorry-I-snogged-your-boyfriend-I-didn’t-know-you-were-still-going-out-isn’t-he-rubbish?’ But I’m just not that brave. I find the whole ‘gosh-I’m-exhausted-I-don’t-know-what-you-mean’ approach much simpler.

  But smitten, huh? Smitten.

  I cheer up slightly. ‘Lulu,’ I say, ‘d’you mind if I ask you a question?’

  She looks even more nervous. But she says yes anyway.

  ‘It’s about Harry. My brother. And Svetlana. You’re a friend of hers. Do you know why they split up? Because he won’t say and it’s been bothering me for ages.’

  Her look changes from nervous to relieved.

  ‘Oh. Harry. Well, Svetlana said it was all about her apartment.’

  Her apartment? I don’t remember that bit in Romeo and Juliet. Or the Taj Mahal story.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Just that Harry assumed he’d move in with her when he graduated. She’s got this cool little place in TriBeCa for when she’s working in New York. And she thinks he’s great and everything, but she thought they should keep their own places. And it just sort of spiralled.’

  And that was it? They split up because they couldn’t agree whether to SHARE A FLAT? All this time I’ve been worrying about broken hearts and Shakespeare scenarios and it was about living arrangements? I completely give up with relationships. Thank goodness I only have GCSEs to worry about.

  At this moment, a voice comes over the speakers, telling us all to go back to our seats for Act Two.

  Lulu says a hasty goodbye and I head back to my seat, where Crow’s waiting for me. I tell her about the flat conversation and she doesn’t seem surprised.

  ‘Besides,’ she says, as the curtain rises, ‘there’s always Isabelle.’

  Isabelle? Isabelle? Isabelle who?

  ‘Isabelle who?’ I whisper loudly.

  But Crow simply shushes me and points at the stage, where Jenny’s got a big speech coming up. And grins silently when she sees the look on my face.

  Oh, that Isabelle.

  GCSEs are finally over. Harry’s set up a projector in the kitchen and Mum has let him take down about twenty framed photographs so he can show us his finished degree project on a wall. He’s extremely nervous. Partly about what the viewing public at Central St Martins will say, but mostly about what Mum will say. Mum adores Harry, but he drives her nuts. And he and I both know that when it comes to art, she’s the hardest person to please. If she likes something, you’re walking on air for the next week. And if she doesn’t, you just want to dig a little hole and bury yourself in it.

  Harry originally set out to be a great painter. Or possibly a great photographer. But we all know that really he’s a great DJ, and doing an art degree probably wasn’t his best decision. Although if you can even half draw (unlike me) and have Mum for a mother, an art degree is pretty inevitable. Anyway, he’s managed to find a compromise. His degree project is made up of three videos and, guess what, they’ve got a major instrumental soundtrack. We know he spent most of the time perfecting the music and only a small amount on the videos, but luckily he had a friend to help.

  Isabelle.

  The videos turn out to be a series of shots of her walking down a catwalk, wearing wispy, ghostly outfits (designed by Crow, of course, which is how they met), and with her long blonde hair flowing behind her. The clever bit is that one of the videos is run backwards, and in another one she’s walking backwards. They love this sort of thing at art school, apparently. They don’t have to try walking backwards in spindly stilettos.

  Isabelle makes it look easy, though. And mysterious. The background is mostly dark and she seems to be walking out of nowhere (or into it), her feet resting on a gentle mist. Mum nods knowingly at this, as if it’s totally artistic. I nod knowingly at this, because it’s totally cheating. It means no props, no expensive outfits, no backdrops, no complicated lights, like I needed to organise last year. All you need is a smoke machine. And a very pretty girl with a good sense of balance.

  Isabelle is a very pretty girl. Isabelle is Isabelle Carruthers. Lady Isabelle Carruthers, to be precise. She’s nineteen, pale, ethereal and lovely. She’s famous for her almost waist-length, ringletty hair, grey-green eyes, pale, freckly skin and sultry lips. She recently postponed doing her degree in English at Oxford so she can BE AN INTERNATIONAL COVER GIRL. She’s also famous for being the muse of two designers, one in Paris and one in London.

  She could walk down a crowded Kensington High Street in a bin liner and Harry’s videos would still be sensational. As it is, Harry’s videos are totally sensational. Mum has tears pouring down her cheeks by the end.

  ‘You don’t deserve it, darling,’ she says, hugging him. ‘God knows, you don’t, after all the classes you’ve cut. But they’re wonderful. Ridiculously wonderful.’

  He looks slightly relieved at this, but still surprisingly nervous. He turns to me.

  ‘What do you think, Nonie?’

  This is odd. Why should he care so much what I think? I’m only GCSE girl, after all. Then I realise. He’s not asking me about the videos. He’s asking me about Isabelle. He knows I always really liked Svetlana. But from the look in his eye, I know that the new thing with Isabelle must b
e serious.

  How does he DO it? He’s just skipped from one supermodel to another, even more incredible supermodel. How come he got all the sex genes and I just got all the two-timing, rubbish-kisser genes? And he’s tall and I’m short. Life is so unfair.

  ‘I think they’re great,’ I say, which is my code for ‘I forgive you about Svetlana.’

  Now he looks properly relieved.

  * * *

  Summer holidays come at last. With Harry’s permission, Edie puts all three videos on her website. It crashes again, naturally. I’m starting to wonder if Edie is quite as much of a technical genius as I thought. She still gets straight As in her GCSEs, though. And I get two – in French and textiles. Yay! Which kind of makes up for geography. Oops.

  Edie’s site is becoming essential viewing for anyone wanting to know how to update their wardrobe without destroying the planet or causing children to work sixteen-hour days. It’s packed with ideas about vintage shops, charity shops, swapping parties, knitting circles, dress patterns and ethical clothing companies. As the weeks go by, the ideas develop and people send her new ones. But that doesn’t mean the site is all bobble hats and pinafores. Quite the opposite. In addition to Isabelle, it still features Crow’s party dresses (which we know are made fairly, because we watch her do it) and lots of the latest high-street trends.

  It also has a new section, which is extremely popular. Children from one of the charity-run schools in Mumbai take it in turns to blog about their lives. Edie pays for them to use a local internet café and one of the charity workers is happy to type what they tell him. It’s a mixture of stuff. Sometimes it’s about cricket. Sometimes it’s about trying to find a job. Sometimes it’s about what they learned in school that day. Sometimes it’s a list of questions for the rest of us: What is London like? Is it true that everyone in America is a millionaire? Does Africa have more elephants than India?

  Edie doesn’t have to write the replies. Comments flood in from around the world, eagerly providing the answers. I imagine little Lakshmi on the fringes of a group of kids clustering around the computer to hear them read aloud. I’m sure her face will be bright with excitement.

  Sometimes, she talks to me about them. Every Sunday, she messages me at breakfast time, with the kind help of Mrs Patil and Suraj, who types for her on the family’s home computer. She calls me ‘Special Auntie Nonie’. Mostly, though, she doesn’t ask about millionaires or tigers. Just the collection, and how the samples are going, and what Crow’s currently working on. I ask about school and her job selling books to passing motorists (as you do) and get the usual ‘oh fine’ you’d get from any eight-year-old, which makes me feel very good.

  Lakshmi is learning to read and is surprisingly good at mental maths. I think Suraj gives her extra coaching on Sunday afternoons. She’s not particularly thrilled about school, but she loves the time she gets to play with her doll collection. She has four dolls, like Crow’s sister Victoria in Uganda, and Crow and I – as well as lots of Crow’s designer friends – have great fun making clothes for them all and producing serious fashionista wardrobes. It’s become a bit of an addiction. Edie’s started blogging about that too.

  Over the summer, we’ve been making dolls’ clothes to auction for Miss Teen’s ‘Fashion Holds Hands’ campaign. But the auction’s just the start. Andy Elat is in the news almost every week, announcing some new ethical initiative. Sales are rocketing. Lakshmi calls him ‘Mister Hero’. This is because one of the papers has started calling him the High Street Hero, and it’s stuck. He always looks slightly embarrassed when people say it to his face and says stuff like, ‘Oh, I’m just doing my job for the planet,’ but you can tell he absolutely loves it. Especially when he’s nominated for his first award for ethical retailing.

  Interestingly, he never mentions how he got his ideas. He’s very quiet on the subject. Some people think it’s just his natural genius for fashion. Several people ‘in the know’ say it’s down to his amazing PR guru, Paolo Perugino. A few people think it’s his daughter.

  ‘I think it’s totally outrageous,’ Jenny says, when we’re back at school, starting our AS-levels (and we thought GCSEs were bad). ‘He never even called you about it. He just went ahead and did it and took every scrap of credit. Why don’t you say something, Nonie? Why doesn’t Edie?’

  Well, for a start, Edie’s too nice. Also, Edie has noticed, like me, that Andy has given us everything we asked for and much more. He’s not exactly the sort of man to grovel to a bunch of teenagers. This is his way of making everything right. And it’s a good way. We’re not complaining.

  Also, I’m thinking about small print. It’s another thing you do (eventually), when you work in fashion. I read Crow’s latest contract for the White Light collection very carefully. Without telling us, Andy had put in a line saying that ‘all rights to the name of CROW when used as a fashion label pass solely and without prejudice to the Designer’.

  Which basically means that Crow gets her name back. Without asking. Which means that underneath it all, Andy Elat is our hero too and we really like him.

  I pointed out that line to Crow, and explained it to her. She said nothing, of course. But through one of Granny’s friends she got hold of a very old, very beautiful Edwardian velvet smoking jacket and relined it with patterned silk, which she hand-embroidered with hearts and soaring birds.

  Andy’s ‘thank you’ was very gruff when she gave it to him. He wore it to collect his ethical retailing award. He looked great.

  It’s nearly Christmas. Jenny is wearing a white cotton dress with exaggerated, billowing sleeves, and high-heeled sandals that have been designed especially for her by one of India’s top shoe designers. The dress is slit at one side, to reveal a damask tunic underneath and white leggings, beautifully cut to make the most of her calves and ankles. The people at the factory double-checked when we said we wanted size 14 samples, instead of the normal peanut-sized ones they make for professional models. But luckily Jenny is back to her normal shape now that the Queen of Evil has returned to Hollywood. She looks healthy and her face is glowing, the way it does when she’s really happy.

  I think Andy is slightly scared of me now, because when I suggested that this time Jenny really should be the face of Crow’s White Light collection, he looked at me thoughtfully and said, ‘You might have something there, kid.’ Instead of ‘You are joking?’ which is what he said last time.

  Jenny’s standing in front of the Taj Mahal, posing for the camera, and surrounded by laughing street children, whose tiny frames make her look about eight feet tall. The sleeves aren’t the only things billowing; the photographer has to keep stopping because the Taj Mahal is billowing too. Sanjay is running around frantically, trying to find someone who can attach the canvas it’s painted on more successfully to its scaffolding frame.

  Last week, this set was being used as the background for a major Bollywood musical number, and the canvas was painted to look like the Gateway to India. Which is a bit mad, as the real thing is only a few miles down the road in Mumbai. (I am SO good at Indian geography now. When people hear I failed GCSE they will be shocked.)

  I’m not sure who had the idea of us coming to Bollywood to create the publicity shots for the White Light collection. There was a brainstorming meeting (in the Miss Teen boardroom – getting used to it) and we all agreed that India would be great, but some people were saying Mumbai, and others were saying the Taj Mahal itself, and then we all gradually realised that we could sort of do both. Andy asked his team if they had any contacts in Bollywood, and they were all shaking their heads and looking gloomy, and then suddenly I realised. I did: Sanjay.

  Andy gave me the strangest look. ‘Is there anything you can’t do, Nonie Chatham?’ He said it quite severely, but Amanda was grinning, so I assumed he was being nice. Even Paolo looked quite impressed.

  Ever since, Sanjay has been having the time of his life, telling us who all the important people are, and how Bollywood works, and how he, Sanjay
, needs to be involved in everything, and preferably in charge. I suspect he’s younger than me, but in his head he practically is Walt Disney by now. Anyway, he’s been offered a job as a runner on a movie here in the new year, instead of just emptying bins like he used to, so maybe he will be the Indian Walt Disney by the time he’s finished.

  We’ve been here a week. The crew on the shoot will be going back tomorrow, but we’re staying on for a mega-holiday. Mum’s coming. Granny’s already here. Andy Elat persuaded her to brave her fear of swollen ankles and booked her into a presidential suite in the best hotel in Mumbai, so she’s coping. Harry’s coming out with Isabelle and a cricket bat signed by the England team for Sanjay. Edie’s coming over with her family. And her BOYFRIEND.

  Hot Phil came to visit her in London last half term. I went along to meet him at the airport, and personally, I was disappointed. He looked a bit thinner and weedier in real life than on his Facebook page. He was wearing glasses with thick navy frames that definitely need replacing, and he seemed to be struggling under the biggest laptop bag I’ve ever seen.

  However, Edie didn’t seem too worried. She went lipstick pink the moment she saw him, and the hug she gave him did not say, ‘How lovely to meet you after all this time, Philip. Welcome to London.’ It said, ‘Oh. My. God. Wow! Hold me!’

  It took them two days of blushing and fingertip touching before I caught them with their faces glued to each other, like he was trying to retrieve something from the back of her mouth with his tongue. She had her eyes closed and so did he, which gave me a couple of seconds to check her expression for signs of horror. There were none. In fact, she looked quite pleased. Next day, she needed loads of Chapstick. I have a feeling she’ll be needing a lot more this holiday.