Beads, Boys and Bangles (18 page)

Then she goes. That’s it.

First Paolo, and now whatever-her-name-is in Vuitton. What is it with me and Italians? Have I done something?

Oh, no. I look down. I’m wearing the leggings with the swearwords on that my pen pal Marco taught me. Great. So I’ve probably managed to deeply insult her without even saying a word to her.

Fabulous.

I
don’t tell anyone about the leggings moment. Luckily. Because I don’t think it was my fault this time. I really don’t. Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Probably. It’s just that Sigrid is the Queen of Evil and THE DISASTER was destined to happen. Our only mistake was not to see it coming.

Harry and Crow join me to watch every news channel we can find for hours and hours, looking for coverage of the Elysée Palace event. We’re all so excited. It’s like the Oscars all over again, but better, because this time we’re not nervous. Eventually, an entertainment show on Sky has a clip of all the famous people arriving.

French famous people. Italian famous people. English famous people. American famous people. Other famous people I don’t recognise. All the women are beautiful and all the men are Johnny Depp-gorgeous. It’s as if they had to pass some sort of beauty test before they were invited.

Every designer has gone to town. The women
shimmer and flutter and glitter and glow, depending on what version of ‘incredibly stunning’ their chosen designer has gone for. We’re just congratulating ourselves that Crow designed something so difficult and dazzling and EXPENSIVE when I spot Sigrid. She’s with a man who looks vaguely familiar. Jenny squeals. It’s her director, again. He looks as if he’s died and gone to celebrity heaven.

Sigrid, as always, looks magnificent. She is one of the most beautiful people there, which is saying something. She has an extra-special glow to her, as if she’s spent the whole day in a spa, being covered in gold leaf, which I wouldn’t put past her. But her dress isn’t blue, it’s pink. Dolce & Gabbana pink satin, with a black cummerbund as wide as my geography exercise book, and a single black cuff for jewellery. I’d like to say she looks like a liquorice allsort, but she doesn’t. She looks incredible. Possibly because I still can’t believe what she’s wearing.

The sea-goddess dress is nowhere to be seen. Presumably still in its bag in some chic hotel, like a Cinderella who never got to go to the ball.

We should have guessed. Of course we should. But what with the dress being SPECIALLY ORDERED FOR THE EVENT and everything, we stupidly didn’t. Even with Sigrid involved. We just never learn.

Harry makes a snorting noise and turns off the TV in disgust. Crow looks shell-shocked and her fingers are trembling. My ears are suddenly full of that ringing noise
again. Harry goes straight back to his room and puts on the Russian folk music at full volume. Mum takes Crow and me into the kitchen for smoothies and popcorn and hugs.

The phone goes. Mum hands it to me. It’s Andy Elat.

‘What happened?’

‘She had a stylist,’ I say. ‘I guess the stylist knows Dolce & Gabbana.’

‘
Stylist
? You should have
told
us!’

‘But the stylist came to pick up Crow’s dress!’

There’s a pause while Andy decides whether to shout at me any more and obviously decides not to.

‘Well, enjoy India,’ he mutters and ends the call. I’m not sure he said it in his most cheerful voice. I get the impression he wouldn’t be too devastated if we all
did
get a bug of some sort.

Why did I go into the fashion business?
Why?
I know there have been times when it seemed like a pretty good idea, but I must have been mad.

Next morning, I’m supposed to be packing for our trip, but I’m too depressed. Mum suggests revision, which is just pure sadism. Harry’s still listening to Russian folk songs, which make it worse.

I realise that there are only two places that can make me vaguely happy. The first is the V&A, but that’s where I’ll find the last dress Sigrid used to make my life a misery. The second place is Oxford Street. You can’t pack
until you’ve bought a few things to go in your suitcase. This is what I tell myself. And it might be a bit mad, buying clothes to take to India when the place is FULL OF GORGEOUS, CHEAP STUFF, but you never know. It pays to be safe.

Edie would be horrified. I really should be sticking to charity shops and my sewing machine. But today I can’t face them. I need to do something fun and frivolous. I need fashion.

I take the bus to Oxford Street and my first stop is Miss Teen. I like their latest styles, but I find I can’t concentrate because I keep remembering Crow’s launch, and how terrifying it was, and picturing the wooden boardroom upstairs, and how terrifying
that
was, and it doesn’t put me in the mood to choose tee-shirts.

Then there’s a whole range of shops all the way down to Oxford Circus. I can’t help looking at the designer collections and realising how extremely difficult they are to do. In fact, the more I look, the less I feel like buying anything. Fashion is a scary business. I’m not sure I’m made for it after all.

Finally, I get to Topshop. It’s impossible to do an Oxford Street fashion adventure without including Topshop, so I go down the escalators and hope that the sheer quantity of amazing clothes will cheer me up.

They don’t. They simply prove that there are hundreds of designers out there who can do high-street collections – really good ones – and we can’t. We just got lucky with
the first one. Out of sheer habit, I load myself up with things to try on and join the queue for the changing rooms. Which is where I am when I suddenly hear my name being called out.

I look up. An eight-foot goddess is approaching me, all smiles. Actually, it’s Svetlana in a jumpsuit and strappy heels.

She gives me a big kiss. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages! How are you?’ she asks.

‘Fine,’ I lie.

Then she turns back. ‘Lulu,’ she shouts, ‘come over! See who it is.’

My first thought is how sweet Svetlana is. I’m pretty certain, thanks to all the Russian folk music, that things are wobbly between her and Harry at the very least, but that doesn’t mean she feels the need to avoid me in shops. I think that’s really brave and amazing and I like her even more than I did before, which was a lot.

My second thought is ‘Oh. My. God.’

Lulu is Lulu Frost. And she’s not just here with her model pal, she’s here with her off-again on-again BOYFRIEND. I see him look up from about three racks away and his face freezes. So does mine.

‘Hi,’ says Lulu, coming over. ‘You must be Nonie. Svetlana’s told me all about you.’

Oh no, I hope not, I think madly to myself. But then I realise I haven’t seen Svetlana since I got that first call from Alexander. She might not know that we ever met up.

He approaches slowly. His face is blank, except for a polite smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but I know what
I’m
thinking. I’m thinking PLEASE GOD FAST FORWARD THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES OF MY LIFE SO I DON’T HAVE TO LIVE THEM.

‘This is my boyfriend,’ Lulu says cheerfully. ‘Alexander Taylor.’

He holds out his hand. ‘Good to meet you,’ he says, giving me a long, steady, dead-eyed gaze.

I grasp his cold, confident fingers. Then drop them. I want to say something witty and cutting that only he will understand and that will make him feel like the two-timing evil
toy-er
he obviously is, but I can’t think of anything, so I just say, ‘Hi, Alexander’. Except it comes out as ‘Hggmmphh, Aaruugghdder,’ because my voice isn’t working properly.

Svetlana says something. I don’t hear it because my brain is fizzing with embarrassment, so she has to repeat it. She blushes delicately. Which of course makes her look even more stunning.

‘Tell your brother hi from me.’

I nod. I get the impression that this is a sad, wistful ‘hope you’re OK’ hi, not a ‘hey, let’s get back together’ hi.

I don’t know why they would have split up. They were so good together. But I bet their break-up was noble and slightly tragic, not totally mortifying, like mine. And it’s not as if mine
was
a break-up. According to frozen-face in
front of me, there was nothing to break up. We hadn’t even met. He was going out with Lulu all the time.

Then, as if by magic, I reach the front of the changing room queue. I say goodbye and practically run into the nearest cubicle and slide my back down one of the walls until I’m crouched on the floor, under a huge pile of clothes I’m never going to wear, wishing I’d followed Mum’s advice and invested in waterproof mascara.

I
have the perfect moment to give Harry Svetlana’s message. It’s on the flight to Mumbai. He’s ended up as our chaperone, as he’s been here before and everyone else is either too busy (like Mum, with her business, and Edie’s parents, who have their teaching jobs and her little brother to look after, and Henry, who has exams) or too worried about sunstroke and ankle-swelling (Granny).

We’re stuck beside each other for nine hours. I’ve been dreading it, because I know it’s physically impossible for me to sit near my brother for so long and not tell him all the gory details about Alexander. It was bad enough watching him snigger when we were going out. Telling him about the non-break-up after the non-relationship is going to be worse.

To start off with, we sort of ignore each other. Harry has his iPod and I have FIVE BOOKS OF REVISION, which I’m supposed to read on the trip. As if. There are
also magazines to read and movies to watch, and I can sit on the arm of Edie’s seat, across the aisle, and chat to her and Crow. But when they serve the first meal, I have to sit back next to Harry with no distractions. I put off the Alexander moment by asking him about Svetlana.

‘Is it really over?’

He nods.

‘Why?’

He looks at me as though I’ve lost it. This is quite normal for Harry. Fifty per cent of the looks he gives me suggest my brain doesn’t work properly.

‘You know,’ he says. ‘Life.’ This is not entirely helpful.

‘Did she do something?’ I ask. ‘Or you?’ I sort of gulp this last bit. The trouble is, I can’t imagine either of them doing something. How do relationships between two nice people end? I mean, I know there’s
Romeo and Juliet
and that was misunderstandings and fake death and suicide, but that’s a bit extreme.

‘No,’ he says at last. ‘She didn’t do anything. Nor did I. Bad timing, I suppose.’

I have no idea what this means. None at all. There is
so
much about relationships I don’t understand.

‘At least you ended things with Fancy Pants before it all got stressful,’ he adds, searching around his tray for something edible.

I’m astounded.

First, Harry has a pet name for my ex-not-boyfriend. Not a good one.

Second, he thinks there was a time when things weren’t stressful. When?
When?

Third, he sounds a bit jealous of how quickly it ended.

‘Things were stressful, believe me,’ I say. I sort of feel as if I need to reassure him of the rubbishness of my love life, to make him feel better. The boy who picked up a SUPERMODEL, just by ASKING HER. He’s right: my brain doesn’t work properly.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘We’ve got a few hours left. Tell me.’

So I do. Once I start, I can’t stop. The awfulness of the sweaty lip. The windy bench. The horror-movie kiss. The Topshop moment. And he doesn’t snigger once. He doesn’t even look tempted.

‘Mum said I ought to get you to bop him on the nose for me.’

He nods to himself, as if it might have worked.

‘There’s a couple of guys at college like that. It’s all about them. They just use pretty girls to make themselves look good.’

Harry’s so sweet. About the ‘pretty girls’ bit. Although I’m surprised he knows what the boys at college get up to because he’s hardly ever there.

Mum has gone beyond sheer terror that he’s not going to get his degree this summer. She’s just sort of numb now. The trouble is, she can’t exactly have the usual ‘How on earth are you going to get a job?’ conversation, because he’s already a very popular DJ and booked up for a lot of the spring/summer catwalk shows in September.
And she can’t accuse him of not working, because he works at his music all the time. So she just takes it out on me and explains once a week that Harry is an ‘exceptional case’ and if I don’t work hard and get a good degree some day I’ll ‘regret it for the rest of my life’.