Free The Photographer's Wife by Nick Alexander

she struggles as if suffering from actual vertigo to remain standing.
    As they leave, only half an hour later, (Brett has an article to pen before midnight) they cross paths with a posh, frumpy female journalist and her twenty-something bearded photographer. Brett air-kisses them both.
    “Any good, Brett, darling?” the woman asks and Brett just shrugs and says, “Enjoy!”
     
    Outside in the crisp, January evening, Sophie asks, “Who were those two?”
    “ Telegraph ,” Brett says, buttoning his overcoat.
    "So, the enemy?”
    “Kind of.”
    “Why did you shrug when they asked what you thought? You did like it, didn’t you?”
    Brett shrugs again. “I haven’t got an angle yet. And if I did have one, I wouldn’t tell those assholes.”
    “I think it’s beautiful,” Sophie says. “One of the most beautiful exhibitions I have ever seen.”
    “Sure. But beautiful,” Brett says, in a soppy, mocking voice, “isn’t an angle.”
    “It was too big for me,” Sophie says, shaking her head. “I couldn’t take it all in. At least not in half an hour.”
    “Now that,” Brett says, “is an angle.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Too Big A Picture ,” he says, with a wiggle of an eyebrow. “Geddit?”
    Sophie rolls her eyes. “Yeah. I geddit. And I’m freezing out here.”
    “Food?” Brett asks, glancing at his watch.
    “Sure, I’m hungry.”
    “Dolada?” he asks, nodding across the street. “I don’t have too much time.”
    “Sure,” Sophie says, starting to walk. “I could have spent all day in there. You will give it a good write-up, won’t you?”
    “Maybe. Probably. It’s all about working out what people want to read.”
    “Is it?”
    “Of course. Hockney’s amazingly lucky as well,” Brett says. “That’s the first time the Royal Academy has ever given the entire place to a single artist.”
    “And while he’s alive too.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Well, retrospectives are usually reserved for dead artists, aren’t they? It’s pretty rare for it to happen when they’re still alive.”
    “It’s not technically a retrospective,” Brett says, as they cross the pavement towards the cosy glow of the restaurant. “A lot of that stuff’s brand new. But yeah, I guess. Did anyone ever organise one for your father?”
    “A retrospective?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “No,” Sophie says thoughtfully. “Maybe we should.”
    “Yes, maybe you should,” Brett repeats, with meaning.
    When they enter the restaurant, Brett’s glasses steam up so completely that he is rendered momentarily blind, so Sophie grinningly leads him to the table the Maitre d’ is indicating.
    “It’s weird no one ever put together a Marsden retrospective, really,” Brett says, once he has polished his glasses and the menus have been handed to them.
    Sophie shrugs. “No one even suggested it. And it’s hardly Mum or Jon who are going to organise something like that.”
    “Because?”
    “Well, Mum’s pretty old now. And she was always a bit of a heathen to be honest.”
    “A heathen?”
    “That’s probably not the right word. I just mean that she’s not very arty.”
    “Oh, OK. And your brother?”
    “He’s a quantity surveyor. So he has no interest in art either.”
    “Which is weird. Coming from your background.”
    Sophie nods thoughtfully. “Dad was pretty low-key about it. And they kept Jonathan well away from the art business. Mum wanted him to have a proper reliable career. And so he did. Very sensible, my brother.”
    “But not you?”
    Sophie shrugs. “I was pretty determined,” she says. “And I wouldn’t say that I am in the art business really.”
    “Not yet.”
    “Not yet,” she agrees.
    “Fiorentina,” Brett says.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Pizza Fiorentina,” he explains, folding the menu shut. “Spinach and egg. Can’t beat it. Then home to write Too Big A Picture.”
     
    During the meal, Brett chatters about his own family: his father the banker, his mother who runs a whole-food