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look positively normal.
    ‘Zoe is very talented,’ Harry sniffs. ‘In her own way. But she's got friends who do more conventional things. There's a girl called Skye who's nice. She sings with the band sometimes. Why?’
    I explain my theory about providing Crow with better materials but that I have no idea how to get hold of them for her in large quantities. I'm convinced that a textiles student would know. Presumably they cover that sort of thing in week one.
    And so the following Saturday – the day Jenny's leaving for New York – Skye comes over. Girls tend to do things if Harry asks them. I like her immediately. She has orange hair with shocking pink streaks and is wearing a floor-length dress made out of tie-dyed parachute silk and Doc Marten boots. No makeup and a constant smile. She's a walking ray of sunshine.
    Crow's already ensconced in my room, on page three of the House of Dior book, running her finger carefully along each line. She looks up when we come in and gives a shy smile. Today she's wearing her Wonder Woman cape (rescued from the drain) and a home-made Elizabethan ruff. It's a look. We all cluster round a pile ofmulticoloured nylon and I do a bit of a fashion show, whipping the skirts on and off over my leggings and showing how beautifully they move when I walk.
    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.

N  ext 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