‘I guess if I said I was staying with a friend . . . But Isabelle’s so – you know – glamorous. Would she let me?’ Jenny asks. She’s not looking quite so devastated now. More thoughtful and almost eager. She blinks the last of her tears away and stares at me hopefully.
‘Of course she would. She’s practically my sister-in-law, after all.’
At this, Jenny looks astonished.
‘WHAT?’
Oh yeah. I haven’t mentioned that bit yet. So I tell her about the whole engagement thing, and her eyes grow brighter with every sentence.
‘How romantic! And you really think she’d be OK about the flat?’
This is a flicker of the old Jenny. Two words for Harry and Isabelle, and she’s off making plans for herself again. But right now, that’s exactly what I need. People who have better things to think about than my brother’s wedding arrangements.
‘I’ll call her now, if you like. At least, I’ll call Harry, and Isabelle’s practically glued to him these days.’
I call, and Isabelle is indeed standing next to Harry when he gets the call (or sitting in his lap or whatever) and she’s delighted to help. She says she’ll be in New York herself for some of the time, so she’ll make sure Jenny is hooked up with ‘some really cool people’.
Jenny’s totally thrilled, and then suddenly horrified.
‘Those assignments! I haven’t even thought about them!’
We huddle round her computer and do the best we can for an hour, using Google and Wikipedia, Edie’s tips, what we can remember from class, and our imaginations. We’re probably not going to be A-grade students this time, but our English teacher is pretty used to that.
On the way out, I casually ask if Gloria’s washing machine has broken down. Jenny looks at me dead-eyed.
‘Not exactly. I’ll get around to it. Just been busy worrying about New York. Until you came.’
At the door, she gives me a bear hug. I hear a door being closed in the corridor behind us.
‘Give Gloria my love.’
She nods. ‘Sure.’
For a second, her face flickers. Despite the workshop and Isabelle’s flat, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her look so sad.
When I get back from Jenny’s, Granny is waiting for me in the kitchen with Mum. Isabelle and Harry have gone off to some party to be congratulated by yet more friends.
Granny is wearing a coral pink suit she had made in India over Christmas and two strings of pearls. She’s trying out a new hairstyle that makes her look like a 99 vanilla ice cream, without the flake. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are bright and her gin and tonic is at serious risk of spilling over as she rattles her glass to emphasise her Total Joy at the current situation.
‘Isn’t it FABULOUS? Nonie, you’re a very lucky girl. They are the most wonderful family. Isabelle’s father, Lucius, is the Earl of Arden. Absolutely charming. And her mother’s brother made a fortune in plastic packaging in the 1980s and is simply rolling in the stuff. Lots of holidays in the Hamptons and I believe he has a rather nice yacht.’
‘Mummy!’
Even my mother is shocked at this. Granny is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.
‘Well, darling, these things are important. If Nonie wants to attract the right sort of person one day, she needs to show herself off. And there’s nothing like diving from a relative’s yacht to demonstrate good legs.’
I look down. My legs are currently encased in tartan tights and lace-up Doc Martens. I think they’re too short to be good anyway. But I can’t see myself diving off a relative’s yacht any time in the near future to attract some nerdy trust-fund kid, so I’m not too worried.
‘And of course there’s always the wedding itself,’ Granny goes on. ‘I know it’s a bit early for Nonie, but it will be full of prospects. You’ll be a bridesmaid, I assume?’
I shrug. But by now Mum and Granny are back onto their favourite subject. Locations, guest lists, favoured relatives, banned relatives, hats . . .
A shudder of horror suddenly flickers over Granny’s face.
‘She is religious, isn’t she? As far as weddings are concerned, I mean? I couldn’t bear a two-minute ceremony in some register office. Buffy Peaswood’s daughter did it in a concrete building in Swindon or something and held the reception on a bus. Buffy nearly died.’
Mum smiles. ‘I don’t know. We can ask her. Oh, sorry.’ Mum’s BlackBerry has started buzzing. She grabs it off the kitchen counter and pops outside to take the call. Granny immediately turns to me.
‘This is so important for your mother, darling. You will help her out with it, won’t you, when I’m not here? It’s her first proper wedding. We haven’t had one in the family since I married your grandpa. What with your Uncle Jack and . . . everything.’
My heart plummets. I nod. I’m suddenly feeling queasy. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask for a while. Now seems as good a time as any.
‘Er, Granny. About Vicente. Mum was really in love with him, wasn’t she? Before she . . . had me.’
Granny gives me a sideways look. She pauses for a minute. Then she nods and looks nostalgic. ‘They were a wonderful couple. He’s so classically handsome. And my darling, the acres in Brazil. And he was so generous to your mother. Always. Even after . . . the complications. When I think that he just gave her this place for all of you to live in. But—’ she takes a sharp breath, tangy with regret, ‘—life goes on. It wasn’t to be.’
I nod again.
‘Tell Mum I’m . . . in my room. I’ve got an assignment I need to finish. She knows all about it.’
‘But darling, I’ve just got here!’
Granny looks appalled. She’s not used to being abandoned in the kitchen while we get on with our lives. But I’m not up to entertaining her right now. I’m not up to anything right now.
I race to my room and close the door behind me. Then I slide down it and try to think about King Lear. As opposed to other tragedies, closer to home.
It’s a simple story. Not very Shakespearean. Granny had two children and a practically religious desire to marry them off – ideally to people with yachts. However, Mum’s brother, Uncle Jack, found drugs when he should have been finding a fiancée. It all went horribly wrong and he ended up in a caravan in East Anglia, where he works as an occasional mechanic and tries to cope with the fact that various bits of his body stopped working in the 1990s after he’d injected and sniffed too much gunk into them. Mum sends money and Granny donates food parcels from Harrods on a regular basis, but we don’t really talk about him.
Mum, on the other hand, became a successful model in her teens and travelled the world. She met Vicente and had Harry after a whirlwind romance. They planned to get married and live on Vicente’s estate in Brazil, but something went wrong between them and while she was modelling in Paris, she met my dad and accidentally had me. She obviously couldn’t get back together again with Vicente after that. She couldn’t marry my dad either. Mum and my dad have always made it clear that they would have been hopeless if they’d got married. The only things they really have in common are a love of art, and Paris. They manage to argue spectacularly whenever they meet. But, as Granny says, life goes on.
In Mum’s case, life went on as a single mother with two children. She couldn’t keep modelling with both of us in tow, so she set up as an art dealer. She was too busy with the new business for serious dating. She has been ever since.
As I say, it’s a simple story and it shouldn’t make me sit here shaking like this. But when I think about Mum and how beautiful she was (and still is – although a saggier, wrinklier version now, of course), it seems such a waste that she never got that wedding and that happy ever after.
Granny’s right. I must be really supportive and excited about all the preparations. And I mustn’t mind at all that Harry will be leaving home and it will just be Mum and me, rattling around this big house that Vicente gave us. And maybe one day I can leap off a relative’s yacht and
show off my ‘good legs’ to some appropriate fiancé-type and keep everyone happy. Then I can settle down with the appropriate fiancé-type in his overstuffed apartment somewhere suitable and read novels. Yaaay.
To take my mind off things, I check my emails and Edie’s website.
Edie’s blog is full of news about her latest fundraising campaign to buy computers for the schools we support in Mumbai and Crow’s village in Uganda. I say ‘we’. Edie does most of the work, between orchestra practice, total school brilliance, debating and occasional five-minute breaks when her mother forces her to eat something.
There’s an email from little Lakshmi, the girl I try and look after in India. Lakshmi is working hard to become a fashion designer, like Crow. The fact that she’s a street child from Mumbai and has to sell books at the roadside to afford a roof over her head (she’s nine) isn’t holding her back for a second. She’s online whenever she can persuade anyone to let her near a computer and type for her, and she already has her own opinions about the latest couture collections.
Another message, stiff and formal, turns out to be from the matching overcoat men, asking for Crow’s email address because ‘they can’t access it through the usual channels’. I don’t know what the usual channels are, but I cheerfully inform them that Crow doesn’t have an email address. Unlike Lakshmi, Crow hates computers and avoids them as much as possible. Same with phones, mostly. She uses me to manage communications, so they will have to talk to me if they want to ask her anything. Hah! I may have had cappuccino foam on my lip or whatever (maybe it was the kimono?), but they’re stuck with me now.
I wish I’d paid more attention when they chatted to us in Paris. I’m sure they were explaining something really important, but the only words I can remember are ‘investment vehicle’, which after ‘pension prospects’ and ‘tax liability’ is the phrase most guaranteed to switch my brain off. Do they want to invest in Crow? Do they want her to design a vehicle? Do they realise that she mostly does mini-dresses? I’ll have to wait for them to email back to find out.
I go downstairs to see if Crow is still working, so I can tell her about it. It’s late by now. She ought to be at home in bed, but you never know. However, when I get to her workroom in the basement, the lights are off. The room is quiet. She must actually be getting some sleep for once.
I flick the switch – I can’t help it – and the room is bathed in pools of light. It’s impossible for me to enter this place and not check what Crow’s been up to. Until last week, she was finishing off a couple of rock-chick outfits for her clients to wear to It girl parties. Now, though, the mannequins are bare. It isn’t until I get to her worktable that I see what she’s been concentrating on since we got back from Paris.
The desktop is covered in drawings of the same girl – with a halo of ringlets and grey-green eyes – wearing different variations of the same dress. The skirt is very full and mid-calf length. It’s several skirts actually, made of lace or net by the look of them, and they’re scattered with rosebuds, as is the bodice. It’s the sort of thing Giselle or some other romantic ballet heroine might wear.
It’s obvious that the girl is supposed to be Isabelle, but it’s not until I focus on the small bouquet of roses she’s holding that I realise what the design is for. It’s a wedding dress. THE wedding dress. The dress that will mark the start of everything being different.
Has Crow really been asked to make it? Whatever Isabelle wears is going to make headlines and designers will be falling over themselves to do it. I’ve already read that Galliano offered on the spot. If Isabelle’s asked Crow instead, why didn’t Crow tell me?
Crow’s design is beautiful, but it’s not quite there yet. Actually, it’s a bit sickly, to be honest. But no doubt Crow will jazz it up somehow when she gets back to it tomorrow. Isabelle will love it, I’m sure, when it’s right. Mum will be over the moon about it. Granny will probably levitate with pleasure.
And here I am. Back to thinking about Granny, and weddings, and Mum.
I turn off the workroom lights and drag myself up to bed.
Oh, not you too?’
Next morning in school, Edie notices the grey shadows under my eyes.
‘Lear,’ I say ominously. ‘And I don’t mean the jets.’
Luckily, she believes me. Shakespeare has been known to make me look tragic.
Jenny, on the other hand, is perky. Jenny is wondering where exactly in SoHo Isabelle’s flat might be, and what the movies will be on the plane to New York. Jenny is humming two of the latest songs she’s been learning for the workshop. Jenny is looking like a girl who slept well last night and slightly ODd on the Coco Pops at breakfast.
She gives me another hug.
‘Mum said yes, no problem with me going if Isabelle will be there. Nonie, you’re a total star.’
I smile modestly. If being almost related to people with multiple mega-homes makes me a star, I’m happy to help.
Edie looks across at us and notices what we’re wearing.
‘Oh God. Keep your head down Friday?’ she asks sympathetically.
We nod. We don’t have a uniform at our school, so normally I’d be in some magic, knitted number of Crow’s, my tartan tights and a pair of silver glitter Doc Martens or customised wellies, like Crow’s. Jenny’s developed a nice line in prom dresses and little cardigans, which I cheer up for her with felt flowers and an ever-expanding brooch collection. But today she’s in jeans and a baggy navy-blue jumper, and I’m in a pleated grey skirt, white shirt, black tights and chequerboard Converse, which is about as conservative as I can physically get.
It all started in September, and it’s got gradually worse ever since.
Jenny and I picked French for AS level this year. Then our headmistress had the genius idea of combining with a local state school, Wetherby, for French, so they can use our old teacher, Madame Stanley, who’s a bit of an institution, and we can use their new language labs, which are bristling with the latest kit. Even when the genius idea was announced, we thought it sounded OK. A chance to meet some people our age. Now we’d have more people to go to the movies with, share essay crises with and generally hang out with. Including boys our age. Interesting. Fantastic if you go to an all-girls’ school and have done since you were eleven.
But we didn’t reckon on the Belles.
Annabelle Knechtli arrived at our school at the beginning of the year. At first, she was really excited to have a girl in the class – Jenny – who’d been in a movie and a West End play. Annabelle wants to go into TV when she leaves school and she was keen to hang out with Jenny, find out all about ‘the business’, be her BFF and totally monopolise her on Facebook. But Jenny already had two best friends – me and Edie – so things didn’t really work out. Instead, Annabelle made friends with Maybelle, a girl from Wetherby, in French class and they formed the Belles. The Belles have two missions in life. To be really, really popular, especially with the boys. And to keep Jenny and me ‘in our place’.
I’m still not exactly sure where ‘our place’ is, but I know it involves sitting at the back of the class and trying to avoid joining in conversations or plans, because we’ll get frozen out. Lines like, ‘Shouldn’t you be at a premiere right now?’ and ‘I thought it was fashion week in Rio, DAH-LING,’ tend to do it. To our faces, the Belles are always sort-of polite. But things tend to go wrong in class. Stuff gets lost, or knocked over, or scribbled on, or broken. Our bags often disappear. We try and stay out of things as much as possible, so they’ll forget we’re even there.
I could really do without Keep your head down Friday right now, but I don’t have much choice. We join the other girls doing French and lug our books and files down the road to Wetherby’s state-of-the-art Language Pod.
Jenny and I make our way to the back seats as usual. Jenny immediately gets out a map of New York, hides it in her text book and starts working out how to get to her top three sights, which are the Empire State Building, 42nd Street and Times Square. I do my
usual thing, which is staring at the back of the boys’ heads and working out, in order, which ones I’d like to go out with if only I could get close enough to talk to any of them.
At least four of them are delectable. I don’t know what it is about this school, but it breeds gorgeous boys. Gorgeous, unattainable, fascinating boys. All of whom in this class, by definition, speak at least a bit of French. And there’s nothing sexier than listening to a London boy struggle to do a decent French accent. I do find this class distracting. It’s lucky my dad’s French, or this would be yet another subject I’d be scraping through by the skin of my teeth.
I’m just in the process of ranking Ashley (blond hair, dirty jeans and a cheeky way with French vowels) above Liam (black curls, aquamarine eyes, hint of an Irish accent, permanent half-amused smile), when I notice more activity than usual around the Belles. Madame Stanley has, typically, forgotten something and needs to phone someone to bring it over. Meanwhile, the Belles are looking at something on their desk – a magazine, I think – and have got some of the nearest class members to cluster round. There is giggling from the girls and sniggering from the boys. There is also furtive glancing in our direction.
‘Ignore them,’ Jenny mutters under her breath.
I try.
A thought has occurred to me. A truly terrible, horrible thought. I push it to the back of my mind.
Madame Stanley dashes back in, looking stressed.
‘Everyone back to your desks,’ she says briskly. ‘Headphones on.’
As they slowly disperse I catch sight of the magazine. It’s open on a group photo. I recognise the group, even from several desks away. Annabelle catches my eye and grins delightedly.
I only catch one word as they settle back down. It’s almost drowned by sniggering.
‘Kimono.’
‘Ignore them,’ Jenny says more fiercely.
But I can’t. It’s my own fault. I knew it was a mistake at the time. I was just having a floral Japanese moment. Now it’s in a weekly magazine, with commentary by the style queens with the sharpest tongues in the country.
Stars Page 3