Next morning is triple Business Studies at school. The perfect antidote to Dior. I sit at the back of the class on my own, mentally designing the outfit I should have worn to the show if I’d wanted to look cool. It’s not till break that I finally get the chance to talk to Edie, one of my best friends, who is – I assume – dying to hear all about our trip.
Edie is a pretty, blonde super-genius who I always thought had a bit of a thing for Harry until she started going out with her new boyfriend, Hot Phil. He lives in California, and by ‘going out with’ I mean messaging, emailing and moping over. I wonder what her reaction will be.
I tell her the news.
‘That’s great!’ she says, without missing a beat.
‘Mmm. It is, isn’t it?’
‘Isabelle’s lovely. And I s’pose that means you get to be bridesmaid.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ she adds, finally sensing the lack of enthusiasm in my ‘yaaay’. ‘You must be exhausted. How was Paris?’
And so I tell her about Paris, but after five minutes of ‘mm hmms’ I remember that Edie isn’t really interested in fashion and never will be, so I stop.
‘And how are Crow and Henry?’ she prompts, politely.
This reminds me to mention the men in matching overcoats, but very quickly I start getting ‘mm hmms’ again. Edie’s mind is clearly somewhere else.
‘Is something the matter?’ I ask. ‘Have I missed anything?’
She pauses for a while to consider.
‘Have you noticed something odd about Jenny recently?’
Jenny is our other best friend. Redhead, actress, with slightly diva-ish tendencies and an allergy to men since a rather unfortunate incident with a Hollywood Teenage Sex God while filming a movie. Nothing about Jenny is completely normal, but I must admit, I haven’t noticed anything unusually unusual.
I shake my head.
‘You know she’s missing school for a week next month?’ Edie clearly finds this astonishing.
I nod, trying to keep a straight face. Edie simply cannot imagine how anyone could POSSIBLY miss school for a week in their second term of A levels. Even if they have four more terms to catch up. Even if it’s to go to New York and perform in a workshop for a new musical.
‘And?’
‘Well, she’s been asking me to help her out with a couple of English assignments, so she can get them out of the way. I said I’d go round to her flat and she practically shouted at me not to. She looked almost tearful. And since then I’ve been watching her. She’s got these grey shadows under her eyes. She looks exhausted. Of course I’ve asked and asked what the problem is’ – Edie would – ‘but she won’t say.’
‘Perhaps she’s been busy practising.’
This workshop in New York is to try out a musical written by a playwright friend of Jenny’s called Bill. She performed in a play of his last summer, which is how he knows how good she is. The musical is called Elizabeth and Margaret. Not the world’s snappiest title. And it’s about the Queen and her sister when they were growing up. Not the world’s most gripping news item. But you never know with musicals. ‘Guy gets disfigured at the opera’, ‘Abba songs’, ‘miner’s son does ballet’, ‘chess’. None of them sound too amazing to start with. So we’re giving Bill the benefit of the doubt.
Jenny’s got four weeks to prepare for this workshop, learning every note of a dozen new numbers. She’s a brilliant singer, but even so, it’s a lot to ask. I’m not at all surprised about the shadows under her eyes. I am surprised about the shouting and tearfulness, though. To be honest, if anyone was going to be shouty and tearful right now, I’d expect it to be Edie.
It’s Edie’s year for being mega-stressed. Her plan is to join the United Nations as soon as possible, and become some sort of ambassador – like Angelina Jolie, but without the acting career and multiple children (or Brad Pitt) and with an uber-degree from Harvard instead. So with that in mind, she’s doing six AS levels this summer, grade seven clarinet, American SATs (don’t ask), her Harvard essays in the autumn and Oxford interviews ‘as backup’. And meanwhile, she’s still running her save-the-world website, where she talks all about the projects she’s interested in and raises money to save children who need basic stuff like water and computers. AND if Hot Phil doesn’t message her at least eight times a day she assumes he’s gone off her and gets spotty with distress.
‘Look, if you want me to talk to Jenny, I will,’ I say. Edie really doesn’t need any more stress right now. ‘She’s got today off to go over some songs with the casting director—’
Edie cuts me off with a shocked look that says it all. Another day off? How will Jenny ever recover?
I ignore her. ‘—but I’ll go round to her place tonight. Promise. OK? And by the way, which assignments?’
It’s worrying me slightly that I now remember something about essay preparation that should have happened before the Dior show, but hasn’t quite.
‘King Lear,’ Edie says with a patient sigh. ‘And The Canterbury Tales. But that’s not due until half-term.’
I mentally dismiss The Canterbury Tales. Any assignment due in more than a week is a bridge I don’t have to cross yet. But Lear is due in by Friday, I’ve just realised. Hopefully Edie will be able to give me a few tips, and my English teacher won’t mind if I give them to her in bullet points and say I’m practising my presentation technique. It worked last time. Sort of. Anyway, I have shouty, tearful friends to worry about, apparently. Bullet points will have to do.