There’s an announcement, to say they have 15 minutes to go. Through a speaker in the corridor, I can hear the sound of the audience filling the auditorium. Jenny’s busy perfecting her eye makeup in a mirror that’s surrounded by light bulbs, just like you’d expect. I decide I might as well take my seat. I give her a good luck hug and leave her to it.
In the lobby, there’s less shouting and banging, but still just as much of a buzz. Chicago audiences love to check out new musicals during the previews. They arrive in their heavy coats and thick jackets, talking and laughing. I could swear I just saw Oprah Winfrey handing her coat to someone. This is SO EXCITING! Then I feel a tap on my shoulder, turn round, and there, in front of me, is Isabelle Carruthers, grinning at me. Behind her, about ten men and a couple of women are pretending not to stare in awe.
‘Nonie!’ she says. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here. But I should have guessed. Where are you sitting?’
‘In the third row,’ I say. ‘But how come you’re here?’
‘Oh, I had to see Jenny. I promised I’d come. And you must sit with me. I’m sure I can persuade someone to move.’
‘Where are you?’ I ask.
‘In the front row.’
Yeah, right. Like someone who has tickets for the FRONT ROW of a new show is going to move, just so two girls can sit together. But it’s typical of Isabelle to try, at least. When you’re with her, it’s impossible to dislike her. She seems to have inherited the niceness gene as well as the beauty one.
I head for the stalls behind my future sister-in-law. Heads turn at every step. Isabelle has her ringlets tucked into an oversize beret and is wearing a sequinned slip dress over a polo-neck jumper, skinny jeans and boots. She has no makeup on at all and looks heartbreakingly gorgeous. She completely ignores the stares. When we get to the front row she bends down and says something to a couple of men sitting near the middle. There’s a brief conversation, and next thing I know, one of the men is offering me his seat and the other is shifting along so Isabelle and I can sit next to each other.
This is a woman who can make any man in the world do whatever she wants, and she’s marrying my brother. Why?
‘Crow’s been doing a beautiful job with your dress,’ I say, thinking back to the beaded shift.
Isabelle smiles, but her lips quickly wobble into a nervous pout.
‘I hope Harry likes it. I was describing it to him, but he said he just hoped it didn’t make me look like a human waterfall.’
‘Oh! That’s mean.’
‘He’s always teasing me. It’s one of the things that’s so sweet about him. Most of the men I know don’t dare tease me. It makes a refreshing change. But even so . . .’
She bites her lip. I sense that ‘human waterfall’ is not the image she wants in her head as she walks up the aisle. However, I don’t have any time to reassure her, because at this moment the orchestra strikes up and the audience falls silent, waiting to see if Jackson Ward has another hit on his hands or not.
For the next two and a half hours, we sit back and enjoy ourselves. The sets are as grand as Jenny promised, the costumes are stunning and the songs are great. Princess Margaret has the best ones, and also the best dances. Which is lucky, because Jenny is not a natural dancer and she’s explained that she practically has to be carried around the stage by Prince Philip when they have their waltz scene. He’s still recovering from the bruises she accidentally gave him during rehearsals. She’s still recovering from the ones she gave herself.
By the time Jenny has been crowned Queen, with her husband by her side, and they’ve announced that Sir Edmund Hillary has conquered Everest (note my new grasp of history! Yay!), and the stage is filled with singing, dancing Londoners doing the hokey-cokey, it’s perfectly clear that Jackson Ward doesn’t need to worry. This is another hit, definitely.
Isabelle and I stand up, along with the rest of the audience, for several curtain calls. There’s lots of cheering and demands for an encore. A few extra-keen people are even attempting a hokey-cokey in the aisles. It’s a thrilling moment. I only wish Edie could have been here to share it and, for Jenny’s sake, Gloria too.
Twenty-four hours later, I’m back in London. So’s Isabelle. Thanks to her and a bit of eyelash batting, I got a seat in First Class and frankly, I could have moved in. My seat turned into a bed and I really should have slept all the way home (as Isabelle did – she has a shoot today and needs to look dewy-eyed), but that would have been a total waste. I ate yummy meals. I tried on the special pyjamas. I popped into the loo and used all the gorgeous little creams in my special First Class washbag. I watched the latest movies on my own, special, tiltable screen. I checked out all the celebrities in the seats around me. I read all the latest magazines.
It was fabulous, but as a result I’m now completely shattered and not entirely ready for school. Mum is ‘disappointed, Nonie. I thought you were more mature.’ Worth it, though.
A few days later the previews are over, and it’s the official opening night in Chicago. The next morning, I Google the show to see what the critics have to say.
The first one I read is a bit hesitant: ‘Lots of royal heart, but needs more soul’. However, all the others call it: ‘A right royal entertainment’, ‘A royal night out’, ‘A royal success for the King of Broadway, Jackson Ward’. Et cetera. They love Carmen Candy as Margaret. They love Gary Lee as Prince Philip. And they love ‘the new British singing sensation, Jenny Merritt’ as Elizabeth.
Various theatre blogs show pictures of the opening night party. Jenny, in her burnt-orange crop, looks fabulous in the dress Crow made for her – a shorter version of the Met Ball dress, in green and peacock blue, beautifully fitted to show off her new dancer’s body. She’s standing between Jackson Ward and Elton John. Looking perfectly relaxed, as if she does this every evening.
As soon as I can, I Skype her.
‘ELTON JOHN?’
‘I know! He said he loved it.’
‘Yes, but . . . ELTON JOHN?’
‘He’s an old friend of Jackson’s. He’s invited me to his house in the south of France in the summer. D’you want to come? You didn’t get much of a holiday this year.’
I’m still struggling. ‘ELTON JOHN?’
‘Yes, Nonie,’ she says patiently. ‘Elton John. He’s really nice. He’s a fantastic piano player, by the way. He played at the party. So did Alicia Keys.’
‘ALICIA KEYS?’
‘Yes.’
‘She was there?’
‘Uh huh. She was in town.’
‘And she played piano?’
‘Yup. I sang with her. It was great.’
Oh. My. God.
It’s not that Jenny’s met these people. It’s not even that they’ve invited her on holiday and PLAYED THE PIANO FOR HER. It’s that she thinks this is perfectly normal. She’s not boasting. She’s not freaked out. She’s just . . . comfortable. This is Jenny’s world now, and I’m finally starting to convince myself that she’ll be OK.
I have to tell someone about this. I call Edie.
‘It’s going to be a total smash,’ I tell her. ‘And Elton John was there! And Alicia Keys!’
‘Greeaaat,’ she says. She makes it sound like one of my yaaays. Now that I think about it, I could swear she’s been crying.
‘Are you all right?’ I check.
‘Uh huh,’ she says.
There’s a pause. ‘You’re not, are you?’ I say.
There’s another pause. Then a sniffle.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s my parents,’ she says. ‘They’ve stopped everything. They say I’ve overstretched myself and that’s why I’m so tired and miserable the whole time. They’ve stopped orchestra. They’ve stopped volunteering. They’ve banned me from even doing the website.’
‘Oh, Edie! All your favourite stuff!’
She blows her nose. ‘It’s OK. They’re right, I suppose. I need to concentrate on my interviews. Mum even offered to visit Gloria for me, bu
t that’s something I have to do myself. It’s just . . . you know . . . It’s . . .’
She tails off. She’s so tired she can’t even think of the words any more. Her parents may have a point.
‘Oh no. This is my fault!’ I say. ‘I was supposed to look after you. But I’ve hardly seen you.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she sighs. ‘It’s not anyone’s fault.’
I’m shocked. Edie’s one of my best friends and I should have seen this coming. She’s been super-stressed for more than a year now and I can’t remember the last time she didn’t look tired or pale. But we just got used to it. Plus we’ve all had other things on our minds, I suppose.
‘Just think,’ I say, desperate to cheer her up, ‘this time next year you’ll be at Harvard, exploring Boston, making new friends.’ I SO picture her as Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde that in my mind she has a pink laptop and a chihuahua, although I know that in real life she wouldn’t be seen dead with either.
She mumbles something about how greeaat that will be, but right now, I think all she wants to be is asleep.
That was totally not the conversation I needed to have about Jenny. I go down to the workroom, hoping and praying that Crow will be there, so I can tell her how cool Jenny looked in the dress, and namedrop like crazy.
But my hopes and prayers don’t work. The work-room’s empty. It’s been empty a lot, recently. The lights are off. The mannequin is bare. In fact, it’s so depressing that I turn the lights on, just to cheer myself up a bit. Then, as usual, I can’t help wandering around the room, picking up bits of fabric and flicking through Crow’s old sketches to admire them.
It turns out that not all of the sketches are old, though. Some of them are things I haven’t seen before. Lots, in fact. Crow has covered pages and pages of notebooks and loose paper with ideas for a new collection. Not just pictures, but notes in her scrawly handwriting and even little scraps of fabric attached to the pages. She’s been working on an idea Edie gave her ages ago: dresses made out of Fair Trade cotton from Uganda. Crow’s taken it a stage further and designed lots of new prints. The dresses themselves have lots of clever draping, so they come in all sorts of curvy and boxy shapes. There are several designs I want to wear right this minute. And the fabrics look amazing.
So much work has gone into them. I had no idea Crow had even been thinking about them since she got back. She told me she was too busy for designing. She must be keeping me in the dark for some reason.
It doesn’t take me long to work out what that reason might be. She needs someone to help her get her designs off the ground. She always did. And it’s obvious that person can’t be me. Perhaps she’s waiting until she finds a new ‘me’ to help her out. Perhaps she’s got someone in mind, but she hasn’t asked them yet. Or worse. I suddenly remember her new talent for email. Maybe she’s already asked someone and she’s waiting for a reply.
Well, I refuse to be counted out quite so early. I may not be able to run a label, but I’m sure there’s something I can do. I flick through a few more sketches. They’re so lovely and they show her creative direction really clearly. Aha! Which gives me an idea – my one last chance of doing something useful.
Looking around like some sort of comedy burglar, I grab a selection of the best sketches and sneak them up to the top of the house, where Mum has a colour scanner-printer thing. I carefully scan in each one and use Mum’s email account (which I set up for her and regularly have to update for her) to send myself the files. Then I replace the sketches in the workroom, as messily as I can, so they’ll look the way Crow left them.
I feel a bit guilty going behind her back, but then, she’s sort of been going behind mine by not telling me about her new ideas. And I’ve helped her out secretly before, when I signed her up to do her first catwalk show. That worked out OK. This will work out OK too. She will see that I was doing this for her own good and forgive me. Everything will be fine.
Then she can move on without me, if that’s what she really wants to do.
I go to my room and look up the email address for the MIMOs’ headquarters in New York. I include the scans of the pictures, and also an explanation of what Crow had in mind for the fabrics. She tends to use three words (badly spelled) where most people need twenty to get the gist of what she means. I can just feel what she was after. She wants to mix sexy, modern, urban shapes with tribal fabrics with an African vibe. She wants to be on the pulse with her designs, and to use ethically-sourced, Fair Trade cotton, which is on the pulse too. My fingers are shaking as I type, but it’s exciting. It flows out of me. It makes me feel sure I’m doing the right thing.
In the days that follow, I wait for a reply from the MIMOs, but nothing comes. I see Crow in the work-room a couple of times and carefully don’t mention the new sketches. Neither does she. She hardly talks. When she does, it’s about how much she enjoyed browsing the markets ‘at home’. Or how much Henry’s looking forward to his new teaching job there next year. Or how impressed she was by little Victoria’s sewing techniques. If she talks about London at all, it’s mostly about homework and looming mocks next term, and how stressful A levels must be. In fact, talking to Crow right now is a bit like talking to Edie, which is something I could never have imagined.
Talking to Edie herself is, if anything, worse.
‘I can’t remember a thing,’ she tells me, looking shaky during registration one day near the end of term. ‘I’ve got my Harvard interview tomorrow and I just feel sick at the thought of it. Even with questions like, “Why do you want to go to Harvard?” – I can’t remember what I’m supposed to say.’
‘You’ve wanted to go there all your life, practically,’ I remind her. ‘Just say whatever you think. You don’t need to practise.’
After all, her schooldays have been one long preparation for this moment.
‘Huh,’ she says. ‘That’s what Phil said. He told me to lighten up.’
‘He’s right,’ I point out.
‘That’s what you always say. Maybe he’s right about getting a new girlfriend, too.’
‘WHAT?’
‘Yeah. They hooked up a few weeks ago. He said he was fed up with me never coming over. He said I’ve changed and he can’t wait forever for me to have a life.’
‘And he told you all of this just now? Before your interviews? When you’re super-uptight?’
I’ve always liked Hot Phil, but suddenly I hate him. How could anyone be so cruel? No wonder Edie looks like a shadow of her normal self.
‘He didn’t mean to tell me,’ she says in his defence. She can’t help being kind, even now. ‘It just sort of came out. He was really sorry about it.’
‘I bet he was.’
‘She’s called Ramona, apparently.’
I also hate Ramona. She may only be a name to me, but I hate her anyway.
I wait for Edie to cry, but she doesn’t. She’s too tired even to cry any more. This is hopeless.
‘When’s your interview?’ I ask.
‘Tomorrow afternoon. At this posh old club near Piccadilly where you can’t wear trousers. If you’re a girl, anyway. I think if you’re a boy, you have to.’
‘I’ll come with you. You need someone to hold your hand.’
I’m half expecting her to tell me not to be so silly, but she doesn’t.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘Mum’s working so she can’t make it. It would be nice to have someone there.’
However, it doesn’t help as much as I’d like. She comes out of the interview in tears, convinced that she’s totally messed it up. I offer to go to a movie with her in Leicester Square, or go out for burgers somewhere, but all she wants to do is go to bed. It’s the same after her Oxford visits.
Like her, I find myself counting the days until Jenny comes home. Edie wants her for Gloria’s sake, but I want her for my sake. I need her cheerfulness and energy again. I need less discussion about revision timetables and frankly a lot more conversation about talented artists and potenti
al holidays with international pop stars.
At Heathrow airport, Jenny arrives looking like a curvy, redheaded Victoria Beckham, with a new set of matching luggage and a record-breaking pair of sunglasses that cover most of her face. I wave my glitter sign so she can spot me through the shades.
‘Sorry,’ she says, lifting them up to kiss me hello. ‘They don’t call those flights the red-eye for nothing. See?’
She shows me her eyes. They are indeed red and puffy. She should try flying First Class. It is so much more comfortable and relaxing.
‘Nice glasses, though,’ I say. I notice that they’re by Tom Ford. This is probably as close to Tom Ford as I’m ever going to get. I try them on.
‘Why are you wearing them?’ I ask, peering around at the arrivals lounge, which has suddenly gone dark. ‘Afraid of getting papped by a paparazzo?’
Jenny immediately goes pink. She goes pinker, faster, than anyone I know, including Edie. She’s so pink I can even spot it through the new super-shades. She looks at the floor.
‘Oh my God! You are!’ I say. ‘You really are!’
‘Well,’ she admits, ‘it was sort of happening in Chicago. I even had someone try and sit in the seat next to me so she could interview me on the plane.’
‘Seriously?’
She nods.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no!’ she giggles. ‘My publicist has to approve all my interviews or I get in big trouble.’
‘You have a publicist?’
She goes pink again. ‘Actually two. One in London and one in America. Jackson says I need them. Basically, they work for him, but they help me too.’
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