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I look up again quickly. “That was your mum! Oh, shit, why didn’t you say?”

“What could I say?” she laughs. “‘Gotta go Mum, Charlie’s slowly bringing me to orgasm?’”

I smile, then stand up and pull her against me roughly. “She’d know what a good prospective son-in-law she’s got.”

“Easy tiger,” says Lauren. “You’re still just the boyfriend. Don’t go getting ideas above your station.” Then she smiles and begins to kiss me. Our lips still touching, I lift her up and carry her to the bedroom.

“Do think you got it then?” she says, curled up, nestling her back into me in bed after we’ve made love.

“What?” I say sleepily to the back of her head.

“The Sunseeker thing.”

“No, I mean, I don’t know. They didn’t say anything, obviously. Actually I think I probably buggered it up. The agency didn’t tell me they wanted to do body shots so I was wearing some horrible old undies.”

“Oh, Charlie, you must check these things, I told you,” says Lauren, turning round. “Always ask if there are any special clothing requirements and always wear good underwear in any case. You’ve got tons of pants.”

“But you haven’t washed them,” I explain sweetly.

She gives me an admonishing tap on the nose. “It was pretty obvious that they wanted to see bodies if it was for a holiday brochure.”

“I suppose so, I just wasn’t thinking. Anyway, why do you ask whether I’ve got it or not? Can’t a man come home and make love to his woman, just because he feels like it, whether he’s had a successful day or a crap one?”

“I’m not your
woman.
I just wondered if that’s why you’re in such a good mood, that’s all.”

“I just am, I suppose. I shouldn’t be—the casting was pretty bloody embarrassing.”

She looks at me and then says, “Why do you always go into these things with a such a negative frame of mind?”

“I don’t.”

“You do. It’s always ‘Why have they put me up for this one? It’s not me,’ or ‘God, I made such a fool of myself.’ You should walk into every casting thinking to yourself, ‘I’m the one they’re looking for,’ ‘I’m the perfect person for this job.’ Then you’ll get it. It’s all about positive thinking.”

“Is that what you do?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“Why don’t you always get it then?”

“Because…oh, shut up.” She squeezes my cheek hard and kisses me, then gets up to have a shower.

I look at my watch. Nearly five o’clock. Time for a drink? Or a cup of tea? Big decisions. Drink? Tea? Drink? Tea? I find a cool place for my feet across Lauren’s side of the bed and lie back with my hands behind my head. I can still smell her on me. Drink? Tea? Tea? Drink?

“Lauren?”

“What?” she calls from the shower.

“Shall I have a drink or a cuppa tea?”

“Whaaaat?” The water stops for a moment.

“I said shall I have a drink or a cup of tea?”

“Have a cup of tea—it’s too early to start drinking. And make me one too, will you?” The water starts again.

Well, that’s that decided. Now all I have to do is get up and do it. I turn over and see myself in the mirrors on the wardrobe. Do I look too old to call myself a model? ’Course not. One of the few advantages of being a bloke in this business is that you can go on for years. More character. The downside is that people think you’re either gay or stupid, or both, but at least you can go on working and getting decent-paying jobs for longer than women can.

Except that they’re probably adverts for incontinence pants.

The mirrors along our built-in wardrobe doors were there when we first moved in, and we immediately decided to remove them because they’re so tacky, but somehow we never got round to it. My mates had a good laugh when they first saw them.

“Bit more subtle than putting them on the ceiling, I suppose,” said Mike, giving me a leering smile.

“You can tell he’s a bloody model,” said Becky. “Vain or what, Charles?”

Laughing, I explained that we really
were
going to get rid of them.

What would Mike and Becky and others say if they saw we still had them? They haven’t been round here for ages.

When we first moved in, sometimes as we were making love, I would catch Lauren looking across at these mirrors, at the images of the two of us entwined. Her long legs around me, or her perfect breasts cupped in my hands as she straddled me. At first I wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed or annoyed. Was she looking at me or at herself? Was it because the sex was so good? Or was it because it was so boring that she needed some sort of extra stimulation? Was she enjoying it or being subtly critical—making a note to work her thighs a bit more at the gym or advise me to keep off the beer and chips for a while.

Now, sometimes I glance across too. There I am with my girlfriend, almost like a stranger, kissing her stomach, moving down her long, honey-tanned body, holding myself above her on my elbows as I push my way into her, slowly, conscientiously kissing her breasts. My own, private version of those articles you find in men’s health and fitness magazines called things like “How to achieve the ultimate climax” or “How to give your woman the best time ever in bed.” Or just a homemade porn movie with me starring and directing. Sometimes I look over at the same time Lauren does and our eyes meet. We exchange a glance of love, lust, intimacy through the glass.

Our whole home is beautiful, I must say. It’s Lauren’s work, of course. A ground-floor flat in a large nineteenth-century house off Chiswick High Road, it has scrubbed pine floors, whitewashed walls, big Roy Lichtenstein-style prints, plus little things she has picked up from antique shops and from a visit a few years ago to Morocco. She did all the research about freighting the things home. Spoke to couriers, checked up on the paperwork, got a good deal. Bullied, begged, bribed her way through it. People love our flat as soon as they walk in. I tell them “It’s all down to Lauren,” and they say “Yeah, I can believe that.”

The sound of my mobile ringing shakes me out of my reverie.

“Ye-e-e-llow,” I say.

“Charlie?”

“Speaking. Karyn. How are you?”

“Good, darling. How did the Sunseekers casting go?”

“Oh, pretty crap, actually.”

“Really? Why?”

“I was wearing these really disgusting old undies…”

“How lovely—I’m just visualising them. Anyway, you knew it was for a body shot, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Oh, Charlie, you did.”

“Penny gave me the details.”

“Oh, I see.”

Penny might be Karyn’s boss at the agency and a frighteningly tough businesswoman who can screw every penny out of a client for a model—and every penny out of a model for her agency—but her ability to pass on the simplest bits of information for any casting or job is negligible.

“I think she was probably too shitfaced again,” I explain.

Karyn giggles. “Very possibly. Anyway, this is
me
giving you a casting so you know it will be totally correct in every detail.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. Now, got a pen?”

“Hang on, let me get out of bed.”

“Tough job being a model, isn’t it?” snaps Karyn. “Come on, I’ve got other people to talk to before six.”

“Ooh, ’scuse me. Right. Here we go. Shoot.”

“It’s to go to 11a Kenworth Mews, W11, to see a guy called Dave Howland. It’s advertising for a new dotcom company—”

“I thought they’d all gone under.”

“Fortunately for you, matey, they haven’t. This one is just launching and they need some advertising and some images for their home page, which is where we come in.”

“Jolly good.”

“So it’s any time between ten and twelve tomorrow. Go smart casual, you know, like a young entrepreneur.”

“I’m going to get this job,” I tell her, remembering Lauren’s sensible words.

“’Course you are dear,” says Karyn with exaggerated condescension. “Just make sure you’re wearing clean underwear.”

I
am the face of Lord James cigarettes.

In Uruguay, that is. Laughing, talking to my friends, getting the girl, sipping a cocktail, elegantly smoking a cigarette—my picture appears in magazines and billboards from Montevideo to Punta del Este. I’m on the side of the buses as they snort and push their way through the swirling exhaust fumes and jostling traffic on stiflingly hot days in the palm-filled squares, past crumbling former colonial mansions and along newly built expressways. Peasant women from the outlying regions and girls from Spanish Catholic schools in stripy uniforms get on these buses, and they must sometimes look up at my face smiling down at them.

Do those women really believe that I am some British aristo who likes nothing more than to enjoy a relaxing ciggie with his smart friends? Do those schoolgirls giggle and wonder who I am, what I’m like in real life and where I live? Or do they think I’m just another jerk in a stupid ad? (Obviously I hope not—although in strictly moral terms, it is probably more acceptable than their being so overwhelmed with my handsome face and the mood of effortless elegance that I embody that they actually start smoking the disgusting things I’m advertising.)

And when those buses go back to their corrugated-iron sheds at night in the outskirts of the city I’m still smiling, smoking, talking to my friends, my face inches away from my face on another bus or pressed up against the image of a dark-haired woman advertising a Brazilian soap opera.

So, although I’ve never been to Uruguay and I don’t particularly want to go, I suppose that if I walked down the street in Montevideo, somebody would stop, stare, nudge someone else and say, “Hey, that’s the guy from the Lord James ads.” That’s fame, you see: someone knows you even if you don’t know them.

People have done it to me in Britain. I was once standing on a tube station platform when two women with shopping bags looked across at me and began to giggle. I smiled back, slightly bemused. Then I checked my fly and rubbed my mouth just to make sure that it didn’t still have toothpaste on it or something. What’s their problem? I thought, irritably. It was only when I turned round that I noticed a huge poster behind me on the tube station wall: my face looking up at a stewardess in an advertisement for a business class airline seat.

With my swept-back blond hair, linen suit and smooth, tanned skin I’m also the face of Lord James cigarettes in Paraguay, Ecuador, New Guinea and various specified southern states of Brazil and associated territories for poster, print and point-of-sale advertising, with no specific conditions attached until June 2005 when the licence will have to be renewed. And, if it is (oh, please, oh, please), I’ll get another big, fat cheque—for doing absolutely nothing.

I remember being in the agency when the call came to say that I had got the job. Since it was the end of the day one of the girls dashed out to the corner shop and bought a bottle of Australian Chardonnay. We toasted my success with our plastic cups.

“Well done, darling,” said Karyn, kissing me on the lips.

“Thanks, babe,” I said, putting my arm round her waist, knowing it looked pretty cool but hoping all the same that it was okay by her.

Penny also kissed me on the lips so that I could taste her bright red lipstick as well as the stale alcohol on her breath from her lunchtime session. “Congrats, darling,” she growled at me. “You’re an absolute bloody star. Isn’t he, everyone?”

There were murmurs of agreement from all around me.

I’d never been in the agency before when one of these big jobs came through. Previously I’d just be told about it on the phone so I wasn’t sure of the etiquette; whether to say “thanks” to them for helping me or just look pleased with myself. I suddenly felt rather embarrassed at being the centre of attention. It’s not like I could explain how I got the role, what special skill or strategy I’d employed. I just turned up at the casting, showed some guy my book, let them take a Polaroid of me as they always do for some unfathomable reason, even though they’ve got my card with half a dozen pictures on it anyway, said “Thanks very much” and went home. But somehow I did it. So there I was. The man of the hour.

“Hey, bud!” Brad, one of the girls’ bookers, gave me the high-five model handshake, a giant pec moving under his skintight “army” T-shirt. “Mr. Uruguay!” It wasn’t very funny really, but we all laughed, glad to have something to laugh about. Then we stood in silence and everyone sipped, eyes looking for someone to speak next.

I took a deep breath. “I could do with a cigarette,” I said. “Shame I don’t smoke.”

Everyone laughed again.

“Sophisticated, confident, European” the brief from the ad people had said. That’s me. Well, if they say so, who am I to argue?

I arrive at the casting early because I know it’ll get busier later, old pro that I am. Unfortunately lots of other old pros are there too, having had the same idea. But perhaps the other reason I’m usually early for these things is simply that I hate hanging around with other models. I nod hallo to a few familiar faces and have a brief chat with a red-headed Glaswegian guy called Brian. I did a job with him a few months ago when we both spent an afternoon in a brand new office in Docklands poring over a laptop computer and then shaking hands—doing what is known in the trade as the “grip and grin.”

On the way here I’ve been doing Lauren’s thing and telling myself I’m the man they’re looking for and that this is the perfect job for me, but I always feel a bit of a jerk doing it—thank goodness no one can hear me. Unless, of course, I’m actually talking out loud. The clients are late, natch. At nearly half past ten, when the room is beginning to fill up and I’ve read most of my paper and am sliding a creased old copy of
Men’s Health
out from under a precarious pile of magazines on the coffee table, two thirty-something guys burst in. One gushes apologies at everyone and tells us that his breakfast meeting ran over, the other stands back and offers a quiet “So sorry” to the girl running the casting.

She offers them both coffee and the talkative guy reacts as if she’s just left him her house in her will. They are shown into another room, Mr. Verbosity still apologising and thanking everyone in sight. Somehow the collective malevolence radiating from us models—especially those of us who have now been here for nearly three quarters of an hour—escapes him, and he just grins wildly at us.

“Sorry guys,” he says lightly. We smile back absolution with varying degrees of sincerity, each thinking, just shut up and get on with it, you incompetent asshole. The other guy seems to pick up this vibe and looks genuinely embarrassed, shuffling nervously.

I’m fourth in. There is a strict order in these matters, even if no one is keeping a list. First come, first served. Anyone who tries to get ahead risks being ripped limb from limb by their fellow models. Got to get off to another casting? Haven’t we all, mate? Got a job in half an hour? Go and do it then. Car on a meter? Should have taken the bus. Need urgent dialysis? Bite on a towel, bud. You can steal my money, take my girlfriend, shoot my dog, but don’t
ever
try and get ahead of me in a casting.

I walk in and say, “Hello, Charlie Barrett. Good to meet you.”

“Charlie. Excellent. Piers,” says the talkative one, extending a hand. “My associate, Guy.”

I shake hands with him too and then pass them my book. It’s the standard format: good, strong head shot at the front, then a mixture of fashion, lifestyle, business—me with suit, looking at watch, staring down into laptop, walking fast with another guy—then a bit of young dad stuff with a girl and a four-year-old plus a couple of my weddings. They flick through and I give them my well-rehearsed anecdotes: “That was actually taken at seven in the morning, even though I’m wearing a DJ,” “That kid was such a brat,” “The girl I’m with there presents something on Sky TV now,” and “That one? Thanks. Actually the photographer got really drunk at lunchtime, I’m just amazed it’s in focus. Ha, ha.”

Piers laughs uproariously and Guy asks more questions. They ask me how long I’ve been modelling and I tell them: since I left university.

“What did you major in?” says Piers, obviously surprised that someone in such a brainless profession could have gone to university. Don’t worry about it, Piers, I’m used to it.

“Marketing. At Leeds,” I tell him.

“Really? Why are you—?”

“In this daft game?” I laugh. Does that sound too cynical? Oops, never mind—plenty more jobs out there. “I thought I’d do it for a while after university and, well, here am I eight years later.”

“It’s a form of marketing, I suppose,” says Guy.

“Yeah, I suppose it is,” I say, hoping to recover the situation.

“All right, Charlie, that’s splendid,” says Piers. “Absolutely fantastic. Great pictures. Thanks very much for coming in to see us.”

“Thanks, Charlie,” says Guy.

I smile, take my book back and then it’s the next bloke’s turn.

First come first served is how I first met Lauren. I’d seen her a couple of times before at castings. Even in a room dotted with stunning women you couldn’t fail to spot Lauren. There was something about her manner and her self-assurance. She certainly knew how to make an entrance too; she breezed in as if she was doing a catwalk show, ignoring looks of interest from the boys and depressed resentment from the girls.

It was a casting for a new type of mobile phone. Europe-wide. Lots of money. Even more models up for it. She gave her name, turned round without looking at anybody else and found a seat. Then she dipped into her bag and took out a book called
Know the Market: Choosing the Best Individual Savings Account for You.
What? I thought. Around her other female models were reading
Marie Claire
or novels about girls with fat thighs, a Chardonnay habit and no boyfriends. This girl even seemed to be enjoying her improving tome. She took a pen out of her bag and made a note in the margin. She ran a hand through her long blonde hair. I remember thinking that this was a face that could sell almost anything. Lauren’s beauty is sort of immediate and easily accessible. There is nothing quirky or unconventional about it, she has the kind of large bluey-grey eyes, long straight nose, clear skin, even white teeth and sensual mouth that any girl would want.

I knew I was staring and I knew she would sense it and look up in a moment, but I didn’t care. In fact her eyes didn’t move away from her book so I went back to my own reading matter—a mindless thriller. A few moments later I realised that there was some discussion going on about whose turn it was next because one girl had arrived late but had been allowed to go in early. I could sense the tension rising. The girl at the desk was checking her list and muttering, “Just hang on a sec…what was your name again?” Another model said something about being before someone else and having to be away by four because she had to pick up her daughter from her boyfriend. Lauren was also looking up from her book now. I wasn’t that bothered. I had all day with nothing else to do and the sight of a model catfight always amuses me. But suddenly Lauren was speaking and the others were quiet.

“It’s you next, then you, because you agreed to let her go ahead,” she said, talking to another girl. “And then you, followed by me. Okay?”

Whether that was the right order or not, there was something about Lauren’s confident tone that prohibited any further discussion. A challenge to “Argue with that, if you dare” seemed to hang in the air as the other models decided slowly that it probably made sense. Lauren went back to her book and everyone else fell silent, either satisfied or terrified.

Fucking hell, I thought. Luckily my turn came before hers and I hung around afterwards, clutching my rucksack and a map, pretending that I was just in the process of leaving and, hey, gosh, you got another casting, too? I’d also thought of mentioning something about Individual Savings Accounts but I couldn’t think of anything intelligent or funny to say about them. Know any ISA jokes, anyone?

In fact she nearly breezed past me so I had to rush after her and catch her up.

“Hi,” I said.

“Oh, hello,” she said, looking slightly surprised.

“You were just in that casting, weren’t you?” I had hoped to do this a bit more subtly but I was in for it now and there was no turning back.

“Yes,” she said, not having to add, “Were you? I didn’t notice you.”

“Erm, how did it go?”

She stopped walking and turned to look at me properly.

“Not bad. I don’t think I got it, though, I think I’m too English-looking for the kind of girl they were after. I asked the casting director which countries it’s being sold to and I got the impression they wanted someone more American, more West Coast, sort of a Laura Dern or a Cameron Diaz.”

“Yes,” I said dumbly.

“How about you?”

Well in my case, the agency told me to go and I’d gone. That was it. “Erm, seemed okay, but I don’t think I got it either.”

She looked at me for a moment. Then she said, “Never mind, you always learn something about your look and the potential market for it at every casting, I think, don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” She smiled (patronisingly?) and then carried on walking. I heard myself calling after her, “I wondered, actually, whether you’d like to go for a drink sometime?”