Threads Read online

  Edie has arranged for Crow to do an interview on a World Service radio programme. She's supposed to talk about the show and the Invisible Children campaign. The programme is broadcast in Africa too. It should let people know that we're thinking of them and doing what little we can to help. Hopefully it will make other people want to help too.

  I can tell Crow's worried that she's going to have to talk about Henry. This is different from just talking to me. For a girl who goes around in fairy wings and jewelled hats, she's very private really, but she's being brave. It's a late-night show that goes out live, and we've been here for ages, waiting for our turn. Well, Crow's turn, really. I'm here to hold Crow's hand, which I can't do at the moment because it's gripped tightly around the seat of her chair.

  At last, a young man about Harry's age puts his head round the door and says it's time. He has the gentlest of expressions, but I see a look of absolute panic in Crow's eyes. As she stands up, she sways. I realise that it's not just the thought of speaking live on the radio. I think she might be having a flashback.

  This is too mean. We can't do it to her. I shake my head at the man and put my hands on her shoulders.

  ‘It's OK,’ I say. ‘You don't have to go. You're fine.’

  I sit her back down. She looks up at me, worried and confused.

  The young man hovers, frowning and pointing at his watch.

  ‘I'll do it.’ As I say the words, I realise it's the only answer. ‘Don't worry, Crow. Just go home. OK? Promise me?’

  I fiddle about in my bag and find the emergency taxi money that Mum always makes me carry. I give it to her and tell the young man to ensure she's put safely in a cab as soon as possible. I promise him I'll find my own way to the studio and he anxiously leaves me to it. He can tell it's either that, or I accompany Crow and he's left with no guest for his boss to interview in a few minutes.

  I feel fine until I sit in opposite the kind-looking woman with the gravelly voice who does the show. She gives me a bit of a double take. I realise this is probably not only because I'm not a black Ugandan refugee, but also because I've been experimenting with velvet hot pants, a smoking jacket and a bowler hat. I nervously remove the bowler and make myself as comfortable as I can. Which isn't very.

  Things get gradually easier, though. We do various sound checks and, once I've explained what's happened to her minion, the presenter talks me through the show. It's a combination of chat and music. She's been doing it for years and quickly adapts to talking to ‘friend of designer-refugee’ as opposed to ‘designer-refugee in person’.

  She asks easy questions, like what is it about Crow's designs that makes them so special, or what it was like when she was shortlisted for the Yves Saint Laurent competition. I'm on home territory here. We talk a bit about the Invisible Children campaign. I'm not brilliant on facts and figures, but luckily she seems to know more about it than me. Then we get to talking about Henry. I do what I can. I describe the gentle boy in the old photograph. The poetry. Spinning Crow round and making her dizzy. I talk about the family, split up because they have no safe home to go to. I get in a mention for Edie's website. The presenter gives me the thumbs-up and plays some more music and it's over.

  When I get home, I find Crow cuddled up on the sofa with Mum and a hot chocolate, looking shell-shocked. I realise we can't do that to her again. Mum asks how it went and I tell her I did my best. She holds out her free arm for me to snuggle in beside her.

  ‘Well done, darling,’ she whispers.

  I'm amazed. The words come out as if she says it all the time, but they ring in my ears for ages.

  When I tell Jenny about the experience, for once her jaw doesn't hit the floor. In fact, she looks pretty unimpressed. Turns out, she did two newspaper interviews yesterday about Kid Code and she's got a TV one for some satellite channel tomorrow. At the moment, interviews for Jenny are no big deal.

  It's the end of the year and that means the big award nominations season. The Kid Code PR people have gone into overdrive, finding opportunities for all the stars to remind everyone about the movie. So she's as busy as the rest of us, telling people the monkey story and gushing about how talented everybody was. She's particularly gushy when she talks about her green-eyed co-star, but as the rest of the world is just as gushy whenever his name is mentioned, this doesn't strike anyone as odd, luckily.

  It's a strange effect of our busyness, but as we all cram the last few weeks of school in between more important stuff, we seem to get better at it. Florence hasn't had a despairing note from Crow's teacher for ages. Edie's end-of-term report says her work is ‘more thoughtful and mature’ than before, when it was merely perfect. My essay on Jane Eyre (written between a choreography plan and several begging letters for props and fabric) comes second only to Jenny's. Her insight into the growing relationship between Jane and Mr Rochester is said to be ‘particularly perceptive’. Can't imagine why. Our Eng. Lit. teacher's very impressed with our diligent approach.

  Soon after, though, Jenny's diligent approach goes out of the window.

  It's the end of term and the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations. As soon as she gets the call from her agent, we cluster round to hear the news. Kid Code is near the top of the list, with five. If there was an award for Best Performance By A Pair Of Laser Green Eyes, it would be six.

  That evening, there's a birthday party to go to. Jenny corners me the second I arrive, while I'm busy taking my jacket off, and half whispers, half shouts.

  ‘He's invited me to the Globes!’

  ‘Who? Joe?’

  She grins like the Cheshire Cat.

  ‘But you're going anyway.’ I'm confused.

  ‘No, dummy, AS HIS DATE. He says Lila can't make it. His mum's been a million times. He wanted to know if I'd mind standing beside him for photos and stuff.’

  I dump my jacket on top of the pile. I usually wear my pink fake polar bear one to these things. It's the only way to find it afterwards.

  ‘Date? Was it code?’ I'm still confused.

  ‘You tell me.’

  Her grin says she knows the answer.

  ‘So let me get this right. You're going to be standing on the red carpet. Next to THE NEW TEENAGE SEX GOD. As his DATE?’

  ‘Shhhh. Don't tell anyone.’ Giggle. ‘And there's something else.’

  ‘What? George Clooney wants to adopt you?’

  ‘Not quite. Chanel. Are. Offering. Me. A. Dress. I'm going along to choose one next week.’

  I sit on the coat pile, hard. It collapses on to the floor. As do I.

  Several Tipp-Ex words from the Converses suggest themselves, in multiple languages.

  After a deep breath, I try it again.

  ‘OK. You're going with Joe Yule. As his date. IN CHANEL.’

  Even saying it out loud, it still doesn't sound right.

  Two new arrivals come into the room, see me on the coats on the floor, give me a filthy look and chuck their outerwear at me. Jenny, fashion plate and date to the stars, is kind enough to help me sort it all out.

  ‘We have to tell Edie,’ I say eventually. ‘I can't keep this to myself.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Jenny grins. ‘I mean, Joe will be telling his fans and . . . people.’

  She looks as if she's about to levitate with happiness.

  Edie arrives late at the party. Orchestra performance. I spot her in the crowd and tell her. Like me, she takes a while to process the news. Even then, she looks totally unconvinced.

  ‘I'm sorry. I love Jenny as much as you do, but, you know, she's Jenny and Joe's a movie star. He's got the pick of practically anyone in the world. And he's got a girlfriend.’

  As soon as I get home, I look up the last Chanel autumn/winter collection on YouTube. It's very beautiful, of course. All greys and silvers and black. Fabulous proportions. Totally elegant. Very My Fair Lady.

  I can't imagine Jenny in any of it, but my brain is probably still clouded by the cherry tomato and the yellow trouser suit.


  While I'm on my laptop, I google Joe again for clues. The internet is suddenly full of stories about the breakup of Joe and Lila Riley.

  ‘Lila in tears as friends call to comfort her’

  ‘Joe Drool announces: it's over’

  ‘Lila says, It was me who called it off’

  ‘Who's the stunning co-star they say has caught the attention of Hollywood's hottest heart-throb? Rumour has it that the teenage love-god has fallen hook, line and sinker for a secret sex-pot he met on-set’

  ‘There was no-one else,’ announces a spokesman for Joe and Lila. ‘Due to our work commitments, we have decided to give each other space. That is all we have to say.’

  In my dream that night, Jenny is a cherry tomato, and Karl Lagerfeld is walking up the red carpet with her. He waves his fan around and accidentally squashes her. Edie's posing for photographers with her arm around Joe Yule, who's dressed as a knight on a chessboard. I'm frantically telling everyone that they're not supposed to be there. I'm so glad when I wake up.

  We never listen to the World Service, but obviously a lot of other people do. Millions. The producer calls a few days after my broadcast to say they can't believe how many calls and emails they've had from people who were touched by Crow's story and want to help. Edie's website is so overwhelmed it crashes for a while (which you'd think would be annoying but actually makes her even smugger than when she got 100% in maths last year).

  It's not all about child soldiers, though. As each day goes by, more messages come in wishing Crow luck for London Fashion Week. Including the ones from Uganda. It turns out that there are just as many budding fashion designers in Kampala as there are in Kensington. Who knew?

  As Crow becomes a bit of a celebrity, rumours about Henry Lamogi suddenly start springing up all over the place. People who work in the camps, or people who know people who've been there, all seem to have an opinion. He's still in the army. He's dead. He's wounded. He's mute and he's writing poetry in a camp near the border. He's escaped to Kenya. He's living in New York.

  The news filters back to Edie via her site, but the experts she talks to keep telling her not to believe any of it. Rumours in war zones are dangerous things and totally unreliable. We have to ignore them all. And naturally, we don't tell Crow. Even Edie doesn't.

  We don't tell Jenny, either. And she doesn't ask, because she's got other things on her mind, which is understandable.

  The week before Christmas, I meet up with her at the V&A, on the way home from her visit to Chanel. The café’s full of people resting their feet after some heavy Christmas shopping down the road in Knightsbridge. Harrods bags everywhere and hardly a place to sit. As usual, I'm early and she's late.

  ‘How did it go?’ I ask, as soon as I spot the Louis Vuitton scarf and the sunglasses.

  She pauses to smile at the table of Japanese tourists who are grinning at her and mouthing ‘Kid Code’ enthusiastically.

  ‘It was a bit depressing, actually,’ she says lightly, descarfing herself. ‘I mean, I'm not typical model size. I didn't exactly have the pick of the collection. We chose this one.’

  She shows me a picture on her phone of a pale-grey, knee-length confection with about a million pleats and scattered feathers. ‘But it's going to take some serious adjusting. We could only just get it over my boobs. And they had to unpick a bit to make it fit my hips. But I'm going on a major diet. And I'm getting some new Louboutins. It'll be fabulous.’

  But she doesn't want to talk about the CHANEL DRESSES she's just been trying on. She wants to talk about Joe and the rumours about the secret glamorous co-star.

  ‘See?’ she says.

  I'm starting to believe it. After all, Jenny was all over the papers a couple of months ago, looking gorgeous every time.

  ‘And I've got a screen test tomorrow,’ she continues happily. ‘For that Hawaii movie I told you about.’

  ‘Screen test? Does that mean you're going to California now?’

  ‘No. Soho. They're just going to film me saying some of the lines. Lots of people are doing it. They want to test my screen chemistry with Toby Linehan.’

  Toby Linehan was a house-elf in Harry Potter. He's not exactly Joe Yule, but she's got quite enough chemistry going on there already.

  ‘Who do you play?’

  ‘Well . . .’ She sounds a bit embarrassed. ‘It's a girl who's the cousin of this boy who can decipher Ancient Greek messages. They have to race around the world looking for this lost city.’

  It sounds as though they've taken the script of Kid Code, done a word search for Egypt and swapped it for Greece.

  ‘Great!’ I lie. ‘Sounds fantastic.’

  Later I text Edie and we agree what a really bad idea it is and how she'll probably live to regret it.

  With the holidays underway, Crow's spending a lot of time in her new studio, which is in an old school in Battersea. Basically, it could be Pablo Dodo's warehouse in Hoxton, but transported to the other side of London. Inside, it's just as plain and industrial, but obviously covered in much more attractive designs. And I have insisted on at least one comfortable chair.

  In between dress designs, Edie's persuaded Crow to have a look at the ‘Less Fashion More Compassion’ logo. With a few flicks of her pen she transforms the heart shape, making it up out of mini pictures of her dancing girls, all black and big-haired, like her, and having a seriously good time. We like to think it's how the Invisible Children would be, if they had places to go home to.

  We all love it.

  ‘We can put it on the programmes too,’ I say. ‘And the goodie bags.’

  I make a note in my book. I now carry a notebook around with me wherever I go, because it is INCREDIBLE how much stuff needs to be organised for Crow's six minutes in the limelight and every time one of us has a good idea it needs to go somewhere. Mum is jokingly talking about getting me a BlackBerry for Christmas, but that would be too sad for words.

  Thinking about it, it would be useful, though.

  This year, Christmas is not the mega-event it usually is. It sort of comes and goes in the middle of all the preparations. However, we do find time for presents. Crow gives me the silver jumper. It turns out she was always going to give it to me, even when she wasn't talking to me.

  ‘My God!’ Mum says. ‘You've got a figure!’

  I know. It's amazing what proper clothes can do.

  I give Crow a book of poems by Ted Hughes. It includes the poems that got her her nickname. I wouldn't say she exactly buries herself in it, but she seems pleased to have it near her, all the same. She puts it in her satchel and keeps it there.

  Jenny and Edie's presents to each other are more like peace offerings. Jenny puts a chunk of her Kid Code money into Edie's campaign. And Edie gives Jenny a pair of silver roses on clips (found by me in Portobello) to cheer up her old Louboutins. Edie is really very thoughtful under all the Edie-ness.

  Throughout the holidays, Amanda Elat is constantly on the phone with ideas and suggestions. She's impressed with the amount of publicity we're getting and has donated a seriously generous amount of money already to Edie's campaign. And she doesn't mind the fact that the ‘Less Fashion More Compassion’ logo will be as big as the Miss Teen one at Crow's show. And this despite the fact that Miss Teen exists to sell fashion to teenagers and would look pretty silly if we all started giving all our money to charity and stopped spending it on cute little tops and cut-offs.

  Thanks to Amanda, people keep on offering us favours, so we can stretch the budget. Which, frankly, needs all the stretching it can get, because while it initially seemed HUGE it's amazing how quickly it can get guzzled up by silk, shoes, printing, studio hire and all the rest, even though we're doing loads of the jobs ourselves. When I eventually get married I am seriously going to elope. Organising a big occasion is just crazy.

  Anyway, usually when she rings Amanda is fairly excited about some idea she's had, but one day I get a call and she sounds like Jenny on helium.

  ‘Big news,’
she announces. ‘DJ Rémi has said he's going to do the music for Crow's show. He's an old friend of mine. You'll love him.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ I tell her, desperate to google DJ Rémi the minute she's off the line. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘He's in town for New Year. He's offered to come to the studio to get an idea of the collection. Be very, very nice to him. He's a bit of a superstar.’

  She gives me a number and I promise faithfully to call. When I google DJ Rémi, I realise I was right to sound impressed. He is THE DJ that everyone wants for all the shows. Lagerfeld loves him. Galliano went to his last birthday party. Donatella Versace has him on speed dial.

  I sort of wish I hadn't googled him, actually. My voice is a squeak when I make the call. I can't really believe it when he casually agrees to pop round to the studio to talk to us.

  What's more, when he comes over to Battersea, he LOVES the collection, which is set out in a series of bold designs all over the walls.

  ‘Ze skirts – ze pouff. So party. So feminine. Ze lace. Ze colours. So STRONG.’

  They are strong. Jewel colours: emerald, sapphire, amethyst and ruby; silver and gold. They glow and shimmer.

  He strolls around in his black leather coat and trousers, looking like an overgrown wallet, touching and enthusing. I follow like a puppy, not sure what to do. Crow stays where she is, at her design table, head cocked. Waiting.

  Then he whips out an iPod, fits it into our speakers and starts running through a list of ideas.

  ‘I am INSPIRED. You need NEW. You need PARTY. You need HOUSE. You need ATMOSPHERE. Listen to ZEES.’

  He rapidly flicks through a dozen tracks, all with a heavy bass beat, all played at full volume. All mixed to within an inch of their lives and overlaid with strange sound effects, like jet engines taking off and raindrops on a tin roof.

  Crow gives me a look.

  I can tell she doesn't like it. I shrug helplessly. Donatella Versace has him on speed dial.

  The look gets stronger.

  ‘Erm, actually, while we've been working on the collection we've been listening to some older stuff,’ I explain. ‘Like David Bowie. And Ella Fitzgerald. And . . . er . . . Chopin.’