Free 2cool2btrue by Simon Brooke Page A

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 drycleaning 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 thirty-pound-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 practise for this next audition,” she says, getting up and putting her bra back on.
    “Oh, okay.” I look at her, looking at herself in the one reflective spot of the antique 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, 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 irritably at the resultant thin film of dust. 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.” Okay, 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 practise, I decide to make a duty call and go and see my dad. 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