Read Beads, Boys and Bangles for Free Online

shower room, behind the towels.
    ‘What do you think, trésor ?’ he asks, pulling one out from under the basin.
    ‘ Chouette ,’ I say.
    Chouette is sort-of French for cool. It’s also a word you can say very quickly and hopefully Dad won’t notice that I’m not being entirely truthful when I say it. Sometimes his experiments are brilliant works of genius and sometimes they’re not. But you never tell an artist that or they go all moody and can’t work for weeks. Art appreciation is ten per cent honesty and ninety per cent ego-massaging. It can get quite tiring if you’re not used to it, but luckily Mum does it for a living, so I am.
    ‘ Merci ,’ Dad says, putting an arm around my waist and looking at us both in the mirror. We’re weirdly alike, in a vertically challenged, no-cheekbones, curly-hair sort of way. ‘Champagne?’
    He has a bottle open in the kitchen. Not that I’ve seen him open it. It’s just that he always has a bottle open in the kitchen. Like milk. It’s so tempting to say yes to aglass, but I can feel Mum’s presence looming over me. She saw me once after a couple of sneaky glasses at a fashion party and she SO wasn’t impressed. And I really don’t want to be tipsy tonight, what with my sort-of-date and everything. So I decline and wish I was about five years older.
    Luckily Crow takes my mind off my very boring Orangina, by talking at me through the open shower room door. Crow hasn’t stopped talking since the funeral ended. This is unheard of for her. She’s normally too busy dreaming up designs to actually say much. But not today.
    ‘I spoke to so many ladies from the workrooms. They all said Yvette was a legend. But they’re all cool. Can you imagine? There’s this lady called Gina who specialises in making lace rosettes. That’s it. Just lace. All day. But she said it’s great. And she had this high-necked lace shirt on and a contrasting lace jacket she made and it should have been . . .’ Crow struggles for the word. Not a good one, obviously, and flutters her hands to relay the potential fashion disaster. ‘But she was gorgeous .’ Crow sighs and stifles a yawn. It’s been a busy couple of days.
    I grunt a reply while trying not to jiggle my face too much. We spent ages meandering back here and now Edie and I are in a bit of a rush. Edie’s getting changed and I’m focusing on major eyeliner issues in the shower room mirror. In the end, Granny put her foot down about Crow coming out with us this evening. Underneath all the excitement she’s obviously exhausted. Butshe doesn’t seem to care. She’s too busy gushing about the mains .
    ‘I met the lady who makes the trimmings for Chanel suits. And two people who do embroidery for jewelled shoes. Just . . .’ She flutters her hands again, but this time in a good way. ‘Did you know, they have these rooms full of pearls and beads from all over the world? And one full of feathers. Just feathers – in drawers. Some of them are seventy years old. The birds they came from are extinct.’
    I decide not to point out that the feather collection and the bird extinction might be connected. Edie does, though, of course. Crow sounds a bit crestfallen for a minute, but soon she’s off again, talking about the difficulties of working in silver thread.
    Even when we’re all dressed and made up and Alexander arrives (and my tummy does a mini-rollercoaster ride), Crow keeps on going. She’s rethinking trimmings and embellishments. She wants to work with lace and tweed. She’s realised she hasn’t scratched the surface of jewelled embroidery.
    Alexander sits down in Dad’s only chair in the sitting room that isn’t piled with canvases, stretches himself out and enjoys the excitement in Crow’s voice as she talks. Which gives me a good opportunity to watch him from my perch on a rolled-up sleeping bag on the floor. He really is extremely beautiful. Long legs. Long fingers, which I really like. Cheekbones, which my