2cool2btrue by Simon Brooke

playing at full blast because Lauren is out at a meeting with Peter, the people upstairs are on holiday, and the people downstairs don’t count because they have a “Nuclear Power? No Thanks!” poster on their living room windows and leave their rubbish lying around the bins.
    “Keith?” says my mum again. She isn’t actually bonkers. I was christened Keith by my parents but Penny changed it to Charlie because she thought it sounded smarter, classier, and that it completed the whole package. (Lauren is actually Lorraine but she made the decision to change her name as part of her “personal marketing proposition,” as she put it at our first lunch.)
    “Hi, that’s better. How are you, Mum?”
    The important thing to know about my mum is that she is one of those women who keeps a tissue up her sleeve.
    “Oh, okay, I just thought I’d ring and check you’re all right.” This is motherspeak for (a) it’s been three geological eras since you’ve rung me and (b) I worry about you, you know that, don’t you?
    “I’m fine. I’ve got a new job,” I add triumphantly, hoping that this will lift the conversation a bit.
    “Oh? What a modelling job? The lady across the road saw you in that advert for…what was it? Chocolates?”
    “No, it’s nothing to do with modelling. I’m the marketing director for a new Internet company,” I tell her, as suddenly it hits me. God, I am, and all! I’d better ask about getting some cards printed.
    “Oh.” There is a pause. Please, please don’t drag it down, Mum. Please sound happy about it. Please don’t irritate me and make me say something unkind and then feel guilty. Finally she mutters with a glimmer of enthusiasm, “How exciting.” I’m grateful for the effort, at least.
    “Yeah, I just started this week. I’ll see how it goes. If it folds I can still go back to modelling or find something else,” I explain as a concession to her disapproval of my usual work.
    “They haven’t asked you to put up any money, then?”
    “No. You’re joking, I wouldn’t do that,” I tell her confidently.
    “Good. Very sensible. What does it do, then? Haven’t all the Internet companies gone bankrupt?” she asks.
    “It’s a second-generation dotcom,” I inform her, getting up and looking out of the window as I talk. “These guys have learned from the mistakes of the first lot. We’re building stable business models with identifiable revenue streams.” I know it’s going over her head, but that doesn’t really matter. Besides, isn’t it every child’s innate need to impress their parents? And to confuse them—to make it clear that the world has moved on from them and their experiences of it.
    “Oh, I don’t know about these things. Just make sure they don’t ask you for any money.”
    I laugh. “’Course I won’t. Even I’m not that daft.”
    “Mmm.” Thanks, Mum. “Lauren okay?”
    “She’s fine, I’ll send her your love. She’s out tonight. She’s at a meeting. She’s going to become a TV presenter.”
    “Gosh, really? Will we see her on the telly?”
    “Hope so.”
    “Tell me when and I’ll set the video.”
    I laugh again. “You’ll be invited to the party.”
    There is a pause. I know what’s coming next but we’ve got to go through it.
    “Have you heard from…?”
    “Not recently,” I say briskly. “But I’ll give him a call and tell him about my new job.”
    “Oh, right. I’m sure he’d like to hear.”
    “I’m sure…bye then.”
    “Bye.” We both hang on the line for a moment.
    “I love you Mum…oh, don’t cry…I’ll come and see you very soon, I promise. Bye.”
     
    I do feel guilty about my mum, stuck on her own in that little house now that they’ve sold the family home. My sister tells me not to worry about her, that she is getting better and after all it’s been nearly seven years since her life was turned upside down. I remember the doctor, though, when Mum and I went to see him.
    “It’s not clinical