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  Skye is impressed. She instantly gets what I mean about using silk and offers Crow all the offcuts she doesn't need. She explains that she's finalising her degree show at the moment, so she's got loads of spare fabric, and she happens to be working with painted silk, among other things.

  Her face clouds for a moment.

  ‘This silk's incredibly difficult to work with. I've tried it myself. It's super-slippery. Are you sure you can manage?’

  Crow looks relaxed.

  ‘Yvette – she's the woman who's teaching me to sew – she used to work for Dior. She specialised in silk. She's shown me all the techniques.’

  Skye throws me a questioning look and I shrug. Best to humour her, we silently agree. Anyway, somebody must be teaching Crow to sew because the skirts are beautifully made and very cleverly cut. Skye says they wouldn't look out of place in a St Martins show. I'm amazed, but Crow doesn't seem particularly impressed. However, she's excited about getting her hands on new fabrics. It turns out she's got a notebook full of designs she's been dying to try, but she simply can't afford the materials to make them.

  ‘Are you sure that girl is twelve?’ Skye asks on the way out.

  It's weird. Crow looks about ten, and behaves like a ten-year-old in some ways. She can be very stubborn, for a start, and she just ignores you if she doesn't want to answer a question. But as soon as you start to talk about fashion, you'd swear she was at least twenty. And because we talk about fashion most of the time, I tend to forget.

  Mind you, I'm only fourteen and I'd swear I was twenty sometimes. And Edie must be at least fifty in her head.

  In the evening, Harry's phone goes at supper. It's a text from Moaning Zoe. He starts reading it with his normal, gentle expression, but soon his smile fades and he looks, for Harry, pretty grumpy.

  ‘Is she OK?’ I ask.

  ‘She's heard from a friend that Skye was here. She wants to know why.’

  ‘Goodness! News travels fast.’

  ‘I'm not sure I like being spied on,’ Harry says, passing a hand distractedly through his hair.

  ‘But she'll be OK when you explain,’ I suggest.

  ‘Yeah, probably.’

  That's what he says, but he doesn't look too sure.

  Next day, Harry agrees to come with Edie and me to the cinema to see Kid Code, which Jenny would only let us do when she was safely out of the country. We invite Crow, but she's already had her first consignment of silk from Skye and she's too busy inspecting it and working out what to do with it. No sign of Moaning Zoe. Harry says she's busy preparing for her own degree show, but you have to wonder.

  Kid Code is as good as the critics say. With that cast the producers could have got away with a tired old formula blockbuster, but actually it's really funny and so exciting Edie nearly chokes on her popcorn at one point. No wonder the audiences are pouring in. Hollywood's Hottest Couple give the best performances we've seen them do, and Joe Yule is POSITIVELY EDIBLE.

  The only dodgy bits are when he's with his rather wooden sister. Poor Jenny. You can see the sheer terror in her eyes whenever the camera is on her. Even Joe's English accent seems better than hers after a while, and he's from Nevada.

  And, golly, those eyes of his. I have a feeling I may need to see the film again soon, to appreciate the full depth of his performance – obviously.

  Over the last few days, the glossy celebrity magazines have been hitting the shelves with full-page spreads about the London premiere. I buy every one. They all agree that the movie is good, but their real focus is on the red carpet and what everyone is wearing. HHC, in their matching Armani, are sparkling. Every possible opportunity is taken to ogle them from every angle. Joe Yule, playing it cool in his Zac Posen jacket and tie to match his eyes, is perfect in every way.

  Jenny features heavily too. Most magazines have found space for an article about her father, the multiple wives and news of Jenny's struggle with spots and boobs. Each one is illustrated with the cherry tomato. Somehow the pictures and the articles seem to suit each other perfectly, as if she had deliberately chosen the dress to highlight the plight of the chubby, miserable teenager. She makes it into the ‘hit and miss’ pages too, where she is an outright car crash in every one. And this week she's up against a pregnant glamour girl in head-to-toe leopard skin and a pop star in a yellow Lurex micro-mini and Uggs.

  It's different when it's someone you know on those pages. I feel so guilty buying the magazines, but sadly it doesn't stop me. The images seem to be everywhere. Even Mum, who normally sticks to Vogue and Art Monthly, notices. She doesn't usually pay much attention to my friends, but she likes Jenny. She saw her in Annie at school and thought she was incredible.

  ‘What that girl needs,’ Mum says, ‘is corsetry.’

  What that girl needs, I think, is therapy.

  The New York premiere of Kid Code is shown live on an entertainment channel on cable. I have to stay up late to catch it, accompanied by Harry (still no Zoe), Phish Food ice cream and Maryland cookies. (It drives Jenny potty that I can eat anything and always remain extremely skinny, but my metabolism is the one useful thing I've inherited from Mum.)

  The presenters are already raving about the movie, which promises to be as popular in New York as in London. Hollywood's Hottest Couple are looking chic in yet more Armani. They must have some kind of deal going. Joe Yule is achingly gorgeous, as ever. He's got Sexy Girlfriend with him this time and she's clinging to him like a limpet, wearing the smallest micro-dress I've ever seen to show off her perfect legs.

  Jenny's legs, on the other hand, are nowhere to be seen. Pablo Dodo has decided that this time she is best served by a bubblegum pink maxi-dress that skims her ankles after bulging around her boobs and hips. This is accessorised with flat sandals and a floaty boa thing that she's hugging to herself like a life jacket.

  Joe Yule is ignoring her again. Jenny's father, not surprisingly, is banned. HHC are so busy being mobbed by journalists and photographers they don't have time for her. She stands there alone, clutching her boa thing in the flashing lights, panicking.

  I glance across at Harry, who's watching her through his fingers, as if he can hardly bear to look.

  No need to ask him what he thinks. And I decide not to share my thoughts, either. Because she reminds me of nothing so much as a giant, pink, miserable condom. In a boa.

  ‘Don't ever tell her I told you that,’ I say menacingly. ‘I won't, promise!’ Edie splutters. Her voice is muffled by a bunch of purple and green things in cellophane.

  I'm deeply regretting sharing the condom image with Edie. We were messaging each other and I was trying to give the full impact of the sheer awfulness of the maxi-dress disaster. For an instant, I forgot that Edie's cleverness and her reliability with embarrassing information are at opposite ends of the scale.

  But it's too late now, and anyway, we're busy. We're in a grubby building just off Gloucester Road, standing on the staircase that leads up to Crow's flat. Her Auntie Florence wants to meet us.

  The smell is the thing I notice most of all. I think something must have died in the flat downstairs. Possibly a mouse. Or maybe a family of them.

  ‘Perhaps on cold days it's not so bad,’ says Edie hopefully. She's lucky. She's holding the bunch of flowers we've bought with us and she can shove her face in them, like an Elizabethan lady with a nosegay.

  Crow says the invitation is to say thank you for the reading stuff and helping her out with the new fabrics. Edie suspects it's to make sure we're not a couple of slave-traders or child-molesters and I think she's probably right. So I've borrowed one of Edie's skirts and a top-thing to look respectable. The skirt is hanging off me and the top-thing is straining over even my modest boobage, so they're not having quite the effect I was after. I look more like a wild gypsy princess than a budding royal. Edie, as usual, looks as though she's dressed for tea at the British Embassy.

  The door opens and a tall, elegant but exhausted-looking woman lets us in. Edie offers her the flow
ers and she thanks us with a smile. I'm guessing she doesn't get them on a regular basis.

  ‘I'm Florence,’ she says. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ We shake her hand.

  Inside there is a main room with a couple of doors leading off it. The kitchen is in one corner. Another corner has a low table and a couple of chairs and a stool, where we are motioned to sit.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ the woman calls loudly, as if the sound might have to carry down a couple of corridors. A door opens about half a metre away and Crow appears. Apparently, Crow is Elizabeth. Confusing. Behind her, I can see a tiny room, hardly bigger than the bed, hung from floor to ceiling with knitwear and dresses in various stages of design. How Crow can even breathe among that lot, I can't imagine.

  She comes through obediently and helps her aunt bring a couple of paper plates from the kitchen area. We're treated to crisps and biscuits and cups of super-strong tea. I notice the lack of anything on the walls. Coming from a home that is practically an art gallery, I find this physically painful. There are just two photographs in little wooden frames. One is of a tall, elegant man who looks like the male version of Florence, with a woman and a little girl – Crow's family, I assume. The other is a school picture of Crow, looking sullen and watchful and under-accessorised.

  Florence explains how grateful she is to us for providing some company for her niece. She doesn't seem to be worried about the slave trade thing at all.

  ‘I have two jobs. I work every day, unless I'm sick. I'm hardly ever here to talk to Elizabeth. She's a hard worker too. Every day she's always making something. She has Yvette’ – the woman ‘from Dior’ – ‘but she's an old, old lady. Crow needs people her own age. She needs children.’

  We smile respectfully. Fourteen-year-olds love being categorised as children. Yes indeedy. Totally with the programme.

  Edie picks up the photograph of the man, the woman and the little girl.

  ‘Your brother?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. James. He's a teacher. A very responsible man. He's passionate about England and anything English, isn't he, Elizabeth?’

  Crow nods. I'm struggling with the Elizabeth–Crow thing. It's a strange nickname and not linked to her real name at all. Edie says she's asked and Crow won't talk about it. Clams up like Harrison Ford in an interview (Edie didn't say that of course, but that's the impression I get). Odd.

  ‘His little girl is Victoria,’ Florence continues. ‘English queens, you see? He's so proud that Elizabeth is here, getting a proper, English education.’

  I spot Edie flinch. She's talked to Crow about this and she knows the education is not exactly perfect when there are thirty of you in the class and you can't read ninety per cent of what the teacher writes or anything in your textbook. Crow mostly just sits at her desk and doodles on her notebooks, praying she won't be asked a question. She likes art, though.

  ‘Will James come to England too?’ Edie asks.

  ‘Oh, no. He teaches in a camp for displaced people. He can't leave them. And Grace can't leave him, and little Victoria can't leave Grace.’

  ‘Why . . . ?’ I don't know how to put it exactly, without being rude. I struggle. I just don't understand how it could possibly be better for Crow to be in this tiny flat, with an aunt who's never there, instead of at home, with her family. It seems such an important question it's almost too obvious to ask. And yet I can't find the words to phrase it.

  Edie notices me struggling and puts a hand on my arm. For once, she gives me the look I've so often had to give her: the ‘don't go there’ look. I'm still desperate to find out more, but when I give the look to Edie, I seriously mean ‘shut up,’ so I take a dose of my own medicine and ask instead about how Crow's getting on with all her new materials.

  This is obviously the right decision. Crow leaps up delightedly and takes me into her room to show me. We leave Edie and Florence to talk.

  I don't know what to take in first. There's the size of the room – tiny; the furniture – a few bits of old office stuff, including a filing cabinet; the walls – covered in fabulous illustrations of dancing girls, pictures by Victoria and torn-out pages from magazines; and the sculpture-skirts and dresses – everywhere.

  Crow must be obsessed. They're piled several layers deep. Paper patterns. Practice versions in cheap cotton. Violent-coloured nylon examples and now delicate silk versions that look like melted works of art. They're hanging from the curtain rail. Hanging from the handles of the filing cabinet. Draped on the bed. Folded on and under the tiny desk, where the only object I can recognise between the piles is an old, black, hand-operated Singer sewing machine.

  ‘How long have you been making these?’ I ask.

  ‘Two years,’ Crow says. ‘Before, I just knitted. It was so cold when I came to London. But then I went to the V&A with Yvette. I saw Balenciaga. Vionnet. Now I practise.’

  Good grief. I usually think that removing a collar or slapping on a few sequins (or Tipp-Ex) is pretty creative. Next to this kid I'm obviously hopeless and destined not even to be allowed to make the tea for a designer. I find a small spot on the floor to sit down, lost in wonder and sad contemplation of my future career at McDonalds.

  I have an idea, though. There may be one other thing I can do to help.

  ‘Can I borrow a couple of things?’ I ask. ‘I promise I'll bring them back.’

  Crow gives a shrug that I interpret as a yes. I take one of the new silk skirts and a couple of Crow's sketches that are lying in an untidy pile near the sewing machine. Needless to say, they're brilliant. Bright, spiky dancing girls cavorting round the pages in light-as-air dresses and vertiginous heels. The kind of thing I've been trying to draw since I was six. Crow doesn't ask what they're for, but although she thinks I'm slightly barmy, she does seem to trust me, which is encouraging.

  As we leave the room, Edie and Florence hurriedly wind up their conversation. Both of them are mopping their eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ Florence says, wrapping me in a bear hug with her strong frame. She does the same for Edie.

  ‘That girl's a genius,’ I tell her. ‘Seriously.’

  Florence smiles thinly. ‘Her school says she needs extra help. She's special needs.’

  ‘She's special all right.’

  Now it's Florence's turn to shrug. We leave them in the tiny flat and make our way back past the smell of dead mouse. Three streets away, all the houses are owned by millionaires. London is crazy.

  ‘So?’

  Edie looks innocent. ‘So?’

  ‘So what did Florence say?’

  We're back in Edie's room and it's late. Her little brother Jake went to bed hours ago. I'm sleeping over and her mum has just informed us that ‘sleep means sleep,’ but we have far too much to talk about. We weren't really in the mood on the way back from our visit, but now I feel ready to catch up and Edie is busy on Google and Wikipedia, looking up the missing facts in the story she got from Florence.

  ‘She said what I suspected,’ Edie says, with more than a hint of smugness.

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Well, I tried to talk to you about it before, last week, but you said it was dull and distasteful.’

  ‘I think I was trying to watch Gossip Girl at the time,’ I point out.

  ‘Obviously you had better things to do.’

  ‘It was a major episode. Anyway. Tell me now.’

  Edie hesitates. I can tell part of her doesn't want to, because I wasn't listening the first time. But another part simply loves explaining things to people who don't know stuff, and this is the part that wins.

  ‘Well,’ she begins, ‘lots of Uganda is perfectly safe and normal. The Queen's been there. But Crow comes from the north, near Sudan, and things are different there. The Government's been fighting a rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army for years and years. The rebels hide out in the bush and use children to fight. When things were really bad, they used to kidnap boys from their homes at night and make them maim and kill people. Even their own families. The g
irls were made to have the soldiers’ babies. So children who lived in remote villages used to walk miles and miles every afternoon to somewhere safe in a town, where there were people to protect them. They did it night after night, sleeping where they could. They were called night walkers.’

  ‘And Crow was one?’

  ‘Yes. That's why her parents sent her here as soon as they could. Florence doesn't like to talk about it in front of Crow. The memories, you know . . . ’

  ‘But now? You said things were really bad. Are they better?’

  Edie frowns. ‘Not completely. They're having peace talks, but the rebels still haven't given in. I've been checking. Look.’ She turns her head back to her screen. ‘Thousands of people are still too scared to return to their villages. Or they don't have villages to return to. They're living in camps in tiny huts all packed together, in fear of bandits. And James and Grace, Crow's parents, are trying to help them. James is one of the few qualified teachers. He's trying to help the children learn something, even without books and desks and blackboards. But he's in danger too. So Crow can't go back. You see? Or she could, but from where he's sitting how could a life in Kensington possibly be worse than a life in a camp? As far as he's concerned, she's one of the lucky ones. If things don't get better, he'll send Victoria when she's old enough.’

  It's hard to imagine. I mean, I know this sort of thing is always happening somewhere in the world, but it's hard to imagine it affecting people I know. It's hard to picture that tall, elegant man in the photograph deciding to send his daughters to a country where he can't see them grow up. It's hard to think of Crow packing up her things every afternoon and walking for miles, with only other children for company. In London, you'd probably be arrested. And it's impossible to imagine what would have happened if the rebels had got her. It is for me, anyway. Edie seems to have imagined it all.