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talk to and grinning madly at anyone with a camera, including the crowd. For a while, Jenny wafts around vaguely in his wake. Finally, she spots our frantic waving and gives us a bit of a smile. It's hard to tell from this distance, but I would swear she looks almost tearful. Then suddenly the men with walkie-talkies are closing in and she's ushered through the doors and into the cinema. It's all over.
    ‘How d'you think she looked?’ Edie asks. This is, after all, my area of expertise.
    I try for a few seconds, screwing up my face with the effort, but nothing will come.
    When your best friend has just been standing outside the biggest cinema in Leicester Square, near one of the sexiest women in the world who happens to be dressed in form-fitting Armani Privé, sky-high Manolos and matching husband, and your friend looks like a trafficlight, standing next to a fat, baggy guy with fake hair, there is no fashion vocabulary that can adequately capture the moment.

T  he next day, I'm trying to catch up on some French grammar in the garden when I get a text: ‘In Drchster 1/2 hr off, pls cm nw. HELP!!!!!!’
    Jenny's doing her promotional tour. She's installed in the poshest hotel on Park Lane, faced with a stream of journalists who've seen the film and want to talk to her about it. She gave me her list of instructions for managing their questions:
    Don't talk about Hollywood's Hottest Couple, except as actors.
    Don't talk about Joe Yule's girlfriend (rumours they are splitting up).
    Don't talk about that incident with the peanut butter, the honey and the fire extinguisher in Egypt.
    Make sure the film poster can be seen behind you at all times.
    Tell the funny story about the monkey when you were on location in Morocco.

    Don't say what Hollywood's Hottest Female said to the monkey.
    And so on for pages and pages. She's already told the monkey story about fifty thousand times. And she didn't find it funny the first time. And every journalist's first question is always about Joe Yule's girlfriend, so she has to start every interview saying she can't comment, which she hates. I can imagine that she needs a quick shoulder to cry on, so I shove one of Crow's skirts over my romper suit (I'm not sure if the Dorchester allows romper suits) and tell Mum where I'm going. Ten minutes later, I'm there.
    Edie's obviously had a text too. We meet at reception. Edie's in a grey printed summer dress that covers her knees and matching ballet slippers. I doubt she needed to change. She was probably wearing it to do her homework.
    ‘She's on her way down,’ says a tall bloke behind the desk. ‘You might like to go outside.’ He's looking at my legs. It turns out the petal skirt is transparent in daylight and I might as well not have bothered.
    But outside is fine. As soon as Jenny sees us she flings her arms around us and takes us across the road to Hyde Park, where the sun is shining, the grass is endless and the romper suit seems totally appropriate.
    Then she promptly bursts into floods of tears.
    She's clutching some folded sheets of paper. Edie takes them from her and spreads them out. They're from oneof the Sunday papers. On the front page are two pictures: one of Hollywood's Hottest Couple looking gorgeous in Armani from last night, and another of Jenny half-hiding behind her dad, looking traffic-light-ish. The headline says ‘Exclusive! Theatre Knight's Happy Ending’. Inside is the article. As Jenny sobs on, Edie reads out the opening paragraph.
    ‘Last night, Sir Lionel Merritt was proudly accompanying his daughter Jenny on the red carpet at the premiere of the new blockbuster , Kid Code. As the cameras flashed and the stars posed, few people could imagine the great man's recent heartache, and the happiness he has finally found with the woman who rekindled the flame in theatre's enfant terrible.’
    It turns out that Sir Lionel has decided that now's the time to leave his third wife for his latest mistress, and Jenny's premiere