Free Model Guy by Simon Brooke Page A

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