Authors: Simon Brooke
"Sophia won't be
here for thirty seconds more than her contract states - our doormen will time her
entry and departure," says Scarlett, rolling her eyes towards her eyebrow ring.
There are other names
on the list: aristo model Henrietta Banbury, £4,000, one hour ten minutes, Blue
Peter presenter, Sarah Jones, two hours subject to other commitments on the evening,
exact timing to be decided with agent by 5pm, £2,000. And, oh fuck, the weather
presenter in the pink jacket, well, the pink, brown, yellow and red jacket. She'll
be pleased to see me. I can't help smiling at her fee: £500.
"Simon Smith, the
PR, is coming in at four to talk us through it and to confirm the other arrangements,"
says Scarlett.
"OK. Simon Smith."
I murmur, really just trying cope with the all names and information being fired
at me.
"Yes" says Scarlett,
picking up her phone. "He's a tosser."
Simon Smith from The Communications Game seems like a nice bloke
although he does engage in what appears to be an amateur arm wrestling match
with Piers. They call each other 'Wanker', 'arse face' and 'donkey bollocks' before
he sits down with me.
"We've invited A-list
celebs and movers and shakers. See people like Richard Branson, Jonathan Ross, Rik
Mayall," he explains, staring me hard in the face.
He fiddles with his silk
cuff links as I whizz down the list and nod approvingly.
"Anyone we should
add?"
"Um, there are a
couple. One is the TV producer Peter Beaumont-Crowther - you've heard of him?”
"Oh, yes, of course,"
says Simon, scribbling on the list.
"And the other is
my girlfriend, Lauren."
Simon and Scarlett exchange
glances and I wonder if I've over stepped the mark. For God's sake, it's one person
in 2,000.
"We don't really
have much more in the budget for models," says Scarlett.
"Oh, she usually
comes to parties free of charge," I say dead pan, realising what a terrible
lost money making opportunity this is for her.
"Splendid,"
says Simon, shuffling the papers together. "I think you've approved the menus,
haven't you?"
"I haven't,"
I say. It comes out slightly petulantly so I add: "I wouldn't mind having a
look."
Silently Scarlett takes
out another file and I read through the menu of Japanese-style black cod, poached
sea urchins, miniature smoked reindeer soufflés. Champagnes: Pol Roger, Laurent
Perrier, Krug. Price per head: £250.
"Bloody hell! £250?
Times 2,000 people. That's...."
"Half a million quid,"
says Scarlett calmly.
"When did you hear?" I ask Lauren.
"I got back from
a casting this afternoon. I was just putting my key in the door when my mobile went
and it was Peter."
"So what's it for
again?" We're lying on the settee. We've just made love. Lauren told me about
her audition within seconds of my getting in through the door and then she pounced
on me. We did it in the living room - something we haven't done for ages. Well,
not since we, I mean Lauren, had the settee dry-cleaned. The mirror here is an antique
faded Venetian job resting on the white limestone mantelpiece so we can hardly actually
see each other in it. It often occurs to me that it must dawn on people who come
for dinner or to our parties (Lauren loves entertaining) as they see our flat that
we actually live the scrubbed pine, neutral coloured, elegantly understated, sun
lit lifestyle we spend so much of our time advertising. Sometimes even I'm not quite
sure where our work ends and our real lives begin.
I push my face into her
breasts, kissing and biting them gently.
"Charlieeeee",
she says pushing me away. "Stop it. Aren't you interested?"
"Of course I am.
I told you, I'm so pleased for you babe, honestly. What's the show again - sort
of a dating thing?"
"Well, each week
we take an ordinary person and the idea is that a group of experts - psychologists,
agony aunts and other people - assess who would be the right boy or girl to go out
with that person and then I have to find one with the help of their friends - on
the street, at a club, at work."
"That's great. How
many are up for it?"
"There are just three
of us - I got through the first two rounds just on the strength of my audition tape
alone."
"You're a star. I
told you."
"How was your day?"
she asks rearranging her hair and sniffing it for some reason. Must be a girlie
thing. I sniff my armpit in reply and tell her: "Pretty busy. I had lunch with
this journo who's going to write something about the site."
"That's good. Did
you fix that up?"
"Well, no, Piers
did. She was bloody weird. Dressed like a tramp - bizarre clothes that sort of didn't
match - wouldn't match anything really." I can see her now, sitting opposite
me at the table. Intense and provocative. Totally unselfconscious. I've never felt
quite so closely observed. Even casting directors don't look at you that deeply
- they just check out your face but she seemed to be going further. Probing, penetrating.
Was she taking the piss throughout the whole meal? Or is that how she is with everyone?
She must be clever. When I asked her about her career she told me she went to Vasser
and Columbia journalism school. Perhaps if you're as bright as her it's tempting
to take the piss out of everyone else - the less bright of this world. Especially
a former male model who's trying to persuade you that he works for the planet's
coolest website.
"And?"
"Erm," I'm shaken
out of my unexpected reverie. "Erm, oh God, and then, when were leaving she
crashed into this waiter," I laugh. "Just smashed into him. Plates flying.
Food everywhere." I tell her about the weather presenter. "It was so funny,
Nora, this journalist, was like 'Hey, ho! These things happen."
Lauren says: "God,
how embarrassing. I'd have died. That woman, what's her name, should have sued for
the dry cleaning or costs, or even the whole jacket. You'd have loads of witnesses."
"It was funny."
I say. I suppose you had to be there. With Nora, still intent on carrying on her
conversation, oblivious to the chaos she had just caused.
"Sounds more dangerous
than funny."
"You know me, I've
just got a strange sense of humour." I begin to kiss her breasts, tasting the
slight salty sweat on them, feeling myself get hard again.
"Oh, well,"
says Lauren looking down at me and squeezing my ear which she knows I like. "Makes
a change from you throwing food all over the woman you're having lunch with."
I smile sarcastically.
"You still think
that was an accident."
She makes a face and pushes
me away.
"I think we should
celebrate our successful weeks - do something fun on Saturday," I say. "Let's
hire one of those £30-a-day cars and drive into the country, it's going to be lovely
this weekend. We could go to -"
"I can't hon, I've
got to practice for this next audition," she says, getting up and putting her
bra back on.
"Oh, OK." I
look at her, looking at herself in the one reflective spot of mirror. Is this how
it's going to be with the new career? Weekends spent practising for auditions? What
shall I do? I used to spend Saturday afternoons playing football with some old mates
from University, a couple of other models and a guy called James who everyone thought
was a friend of everyone else but who, it turned out, was pretty good in goal.
Then we'd go to a pub
in Barnes, the game contracting and the drinking expanding, depending on the weather,
how many of us turned up and how energetic those that did felt. I wonder if they
still play? When Lauren and I bought this place my Saturdays were suddenly spent
at Ikea, Habitat and The Pier, or painting and sanding under her direction, or just
holding the end of things while Lauren made comments like "Oh, watch what you're
doing, will you?"
"It'll take all Saturday,
will it?" I ask in rather a small voice.
"Sorry?" Lauren
is running her fingers over the mantelpiece and looking at the resultant thin film
of dust irritably. Was it my week for dusting? Well, if there's still dust around,
it probably was.
"It's not going to
take all day, is it? Why don't we go out on Saturday evening and celebrate. I'll
book La Trompette, shall I?"
"Charlie," she
says, turning round. Oh fuck, now what? It's just a bit of dust, for God's sake.
"What's happening
on Saturday night?" Phew, acquitted on dust charges anyway.
"This is something
I should know about, isn't it?" I surmise. Accurately, as it happens.
"Yes, Saturday night,
I told you."
"You didn't."
"Oh Charlie,"
she says shaking her head, trying not to smile. "I told you weeks ago: dinner.
Tim and Sally, Mark and Sarah and I've invited Peter too."
"You didn't tell
me." OK, perhaps she did but I'm a bloke and I'm no good with these things.
"I bloody well did,
sieve brain. I assume you can make it."
"Yes, of course I
can. Sorry babe."
"It's not your fault,
you're just a boy."
"Guilty, m'lud. I
mean, m'lady."
She takes my face in her
hands and kisses me deeply.
"I love you."
"Love you too."
"Even if your memory
is crap - and your dusting's abysmal."
While Lauren is doing her audition practice, I decide to make
a duty call and go and see my Dad. My Dad lives in Docklands now and he is very
happy for me to come round to his flat, I mean 'place'. As long as it's not too
early that is.
He works in advertising.
Ten years ago he set up an agency with two colleagues half his age. Dad is actually
an accountant and was working with them in a big agency balancing the books and
looking for tax breaks, but when these two guys - Cambridge educated, off the wall
twenty somethings who exist in a world of street fashion labels, pop culture and
wall to wall irony - decided to go solo, they realised that his dull, safe financial
know-how forms an essential bedrock to the company and so they invited him to join
them.
Needless to say my Mum
wasn't keen. She pointed out the risks of starting a new business with reference
to her auntie who had opened a wool shop in Lewes in the seventies and failed, reminded
him that he was comfortably on his way to retirement and just sighed a lot when
these two arguments failed to convince him. I think it was her retirement point
that actually clinched it for him and made him go out and do it.
He pointed out that he
had paid off the mortgage, the children had left home and, after all, nothing ventured,
nothing gained. He didn't mention the real reason: mid-life crisis, but then perhaps
he wasn't aware of it.
The new company, Matthewman
Kendall Barrett (the order of names should tell you something) won a clutch of big
accounts with their cheeky, irreverent approach, grabbed some headlines in Campaign
magazine, provoked a couple of outcries from the Daily Mail over risqué copy lines
and then quickly floated. Suddenly my Dad was 50 and a millionaire. He decided to
get a new wardrobe and a new car. He got rid of his old suits, his Volvo estate
and his wife and set up home in a Docklands' penthouse flat that has its own lift,
speakers in the ceiling and panoramic views of the Thames - just beyond some corrugated
irons sheds and a double glazing storage depot that is.
Getting there is near
impossible: you have to go to a perpetually windswept DLR station and then ring
for a taxi which takes you along the dual carriageways, through the post-industrial
wasteland to a shimmering white residential Fort Knox, which has a surly security
guard and a 'Marketing Suite' which is permanently open.
Dad has had a number of
girlfriends since he left my Mum but to be honest I tend to get them confused: they're
all thirty years younger than him, all blonde, all leggy and have names that end
in 'i' like Linzi, Leoni, Nikki and Toni. I'm sure most of them put a smiley face
in the dot of the 'i' when they sign their names although none of them have ever
written to me.
Amongst other things my
Dad bought was a coffee table supported with the kneeling fibre glass figure of
a naked woman in a leather Basque which he proudly showed to me when I went over
there once. Holding our shots of frozen flavoured vodka, we circled it, studying
it intensely.
"Sexy, eh?"
said my old man, eyeing up the cellulite free, rock hard curves of her behind in
a way that still makes me shudder slightly.