Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings
Read Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings Online
Authors: Sophia Bennett
Sequins,
Secrets
,
AND
Silver
Linings
SOPHIA BENNETT
To Emily, Sophie,
Freddie and Tom, and Alex,
for making it all possible,
and Noney, for her joy
in beautiful things
Contents
W
e’re standing in a fashion designer’s studio in Hoxton, admiring ourselves in the mirror. At least, Jenny’s supposed to be admiring herself in her red-carpet dress. Or she would if it didn’t make her look like a cherry tomato. Edie and I are just tagging along, but the mirror takes up the whole wall and it’s hard not to take a bit of a peek.
Apart from the mirror, the studio’s big and bare. Lots of brick walls and tall windows and rolling clothes racks. My mother would call it “industrial chic.” I would say it was in need of some love and upholstery.
I’m looking at my Converses, which got their first outing today after a bit of customization with some Wite-Out. They’re only mild French swearwords (and one in Italian that I got from my pen pal, Marco). I know much worse ones. I thought they were funny and Jenny laughed. Edie is above such things. But Mum this morning when I came downstairs in them … well, you wouldn’t think
she’d been a model and walked HALF NAKED down a catwalk in her time. She wants me to be preppy and brainy like Edie and have the youth she never had. I quite like the sound of the youth she did have.
I’m not so sure about my silver leggings, although they’re gorgeous. They seemed slinky and alluring in my bedroom, but under the studio lights I look as if I’m about to blast off. The velvet top is cute, though. It used to be a dress, but works so much better without the sleeves and skirt. And the black lace fingerless gloves were a definite find. I’m quite pleased with the overall effect.
Edie’s trying to pretend she’s not looking at herself. She has a model’s body (I don’t; I take after my father, who’s French and smokes Gitanes and is practically a midget), but she dresses it in knee-length skirts and Kate Middleton jackets. Yawn yawn. She could probably do catalogues after we finish school, but no: She wants to join the United Nations. Mum is SO impressed.
Edie’s surreptitiously looking at her face. She’s pretty in a blonde, center-parting sort of way. You can’t see her brains behind those steel-gray eyes. She’s trying to decide whether she should get bangs. She’s been thinking about this for the last five years and no decision yet. She catches me watching her and acts like she’s admiring Jenny, which is a total giveaway.
Jenny is
un
-admirable right now. A lovely person and my best friend, but THAT DRESS. It does nothing for her. And to think she has to wear it to a premiere in a week.
Jenny’s done a lot of things over the last year and a half. She’s turned from a bouncy, freckly, funny twelve-year-old into a totally new edition. For a start, she’s grown boobs and developed an interesting line in facial acne. She’s acted in an action movie with Hollywood’s Sexiest Couple Alive and the latest Teenage God of Hotness—not something you want to be doing with the whole boob/zit thing going on. And she’s developed a complex about her weight.
If we lived fifty years ago, she’d be hot. She’s probably the same size and shape as Marilyn Monroe. But in today’s Size Zero Age, she thinks she’s fat. She’s embarrassed about the boobs. Mine are way behind and Edie will forever have fried eggs. But Jenny’s even embarrassed about her skin, which blushes easily. She hates her freckles and her copper hair. She really just wants to disappear.
But she’s not going to do it in that cherry-tomato number. The designer’s called Pablo Dodo. Don’t try and remember his name, because if he’s always this rubbish, he’s likely to become extinct. He’s the cousin of one of
the movie’s producers, which is how he got the job. He wanted to turn Jenny into “a vision in red.” Which shows the limits of his imagination. Between her hair and her blushes, she can do that all by herself.
Last time she came, Jenny told Pablo about her boob phobia and he promised to hide them. This he has done. They’re buried somewhere under the crimson, floaty, chiffon number that starts at her collarbone and continues outward down to her mid-thigh, before stopping suddenly, as if it’s remembered something, leaving her pinky-white legs somewhat stranded.
I’m trying to think of something to say, which is normally not difficult for me, but right now I’m challenged. Edie is biting her lip.
Pablo’s assistant is organizing the final fitting. She comes over, mouth full of pins, and starts adjusting, muttering darkly about Spanx underpants.
“What do you think, Nonie?” Jenny asks me, slipping her feet into a pair of gold stilettos. She looks anxious and unsure (although she’d go well with an arugula salad).
I smile encouragingly, but stay silent. I’m picturing that red-carpet moment, and it hurts.
Edie can’t hold it in anymore.
“You look like a cherry tomato,” she gasps at last. “In heels.”
And she’s the one who wants to be a diplomat.
Ten minutes later, after some pinning and shifting about behind a tatty old curtain, Jenny reemerges in her jeans and T-shirt uniform, looking squashed. I have tried to explain that cutoffs and a shirt tied at the midriff à la Marilyn would look fantastic on her, but she’s too depressed to listen.
I’ve given Edie “the look,” but she just shrugged at me. She believes in honesty between friends. And she’s too busy being superintelligent to notice the consequences.
Thanks to Edie, we have to rush for the Tube to get back across London. She volunteers with special needs children on Saturday afternoons. Edie’s entire life is organized around getting bonus points for her application to Harvard in three years’ time. You’re supposed to go there before you join the UN, apparently. It’s where Reese Witherspoon went in
Legally Blonde
. I seem to remember that in the movie Reese made a video of herself by the pool, and the Harvard professors let her in. Edie makes it look
much
more complicated. And not only because pools are hard to come by in London.
Meanwhile, I’ve promised to treat Jenny to a smoothie at the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A to its friends), which is around the corner from my house. It’s the coolest venue in London, with the chicest café—full of vintage tiles and crazy lights the size of ginormous dandelion puffs—and the best smoothies I’ve tasted, after years of market research.
It’s Jenny’s last chance to do something normal before the promotional tour for her new movie goes hyper. The London premiere’s next Saturday. Before that there are press interviews, TV interviews, and photo shoots. Then afterward, more interviews. Then trips to New York, LA, and Japan to do it all over again.
Pablo Dodo says he sees her as a vision in pink for the New York premiere. God help us all.
O
n the way to the Tube, a couple of men in dirty denim jackets and jeans shout across to us from the other side of the street.
“Weirdo!”
“Get a life, silver legs!”
Edie puts a protective arm around me and Jenny holds my hand, but I’m used to it. I don’t really mind anymore. When some drop-dead fashion god rubbishes the way I look, I might be mildly upset, but guys in head-to-toe denim aren’t really in a position to criticize.
Edie tries to change the subject. Sort of.
“You should see the girl I’m working with this afternoon,” she announces. “She’s
seriously
weird. She goes through different phases, but at the moment she’s into ballet tutus and fairy wings. I mean, fine if you’re five, but she’s twelve. I never know what to expect next with her. If she shows up at all, that is. She’s missed the last
two sessions and she’s in mega-trouble if she misses this one.”
“What are you doing with her?” Jenny asks.
“Reading. She’s dyslexic. Seriously dyslexic. Her brain just isn’t wired up for spelling. Last time we were working on ‘chair.’ I have to give her reading strategies.”
Jenny and I have no idea what reading strategies are, but decide not to ask. Edie’s quite capable of spending the whole journey telling us.
On the train, she gets some books out of her bag and shows us what she’s brought to tempt the girl with this week. They’re all stories about small children and animals, with big letters and no word more than two syllables long. Then she pulls out the Jane Austen she’s in the middle of and settles down with it. Knowing her, she’ll have finished it by this evening.
Jenny and I get to South Kensington station and bid Edie good-bye. The V&A is a short walk away in the early summer sunshine. I love it. The buildings are large and chunky and colorful and rambling. You could get lost in them for days. As always, we go through the costume section to get to the café, so I can get my fix of inspirational outfits.