The Birthday Party Read Online Free PDF Page B

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     his daughter and his granddaughter. And there’s no one to share the experience with him.’
    ‘The moral of the story being … ?’
    Dickie grinned wryly. ‘Always wear a condom.’
    Raf laughed appreciatively as Dickie leaned forward again.
    ‘No – seriously. It’s a tale of our times – about how we give in to our mid-life crises all too easily. And it’s about life
     being a cliché – how we all fall into those traps, even though we swear we never will.’
    Raf leaned back in the depths of the sofa and shut his eyes. His mind was racing. He loved the pitch. He could see the film
     already. It probably wouldn’t be Oscar material – it was a little too lightweight and fluffy – but it would definitely be
     a hit. And he would be re-launched. He would get his pick of roles. He could be a star again – someone to be revered instead
     of a has-been trailing in the wake of his glamorous wife.
    He picked up the script. Dickie looked at him expectantly.
    ‘Who will you get to play Hugo if you don’t get me?’
    Dickie looked him in the eye. Actors, they were all the same. Insecure. Egotistical. He’d already checked out Bill Nighy’s
     availability, but he wasn’t going to tell Raf that.
    ‘I haven’t even thought about it. To my mind, there is only one Hugo and that’s you.’
    Raf looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes. The guy did a great job.
    ‘I’ll read the script and I’ll get back to you.’
    Dickie smiled. ‘It’s a done deal, then. The script’s fantastic.’ He handed Raf his own spiral-bound copy in a heavy-duty envelope.
     ‘Call me when you’re done.’
    The two men shook hands. Each had a feeling in their guts that this meeting was going to change the course of their lives,
     but neither of them voiced it just yet. There was still a long way to go.
    Raf walked out into the streets of Soho. The air smelled of last night’s sesame oil and cigarette smoke. People were jostling
     each other: workers on their way to lunch, media types and strippers, waitresses and voyeurs. Triple-X movie theatres sat
     next to edgy boutiques and fashionable bars. There was an energy mixed with the scent of decadence. Raf loved Soho. It made
     him feel alive. You could be anyone here. Or no one, if that’s what you preferred. Mad, bad Soho, where anything goes. You
     could have a Michelin-starred meal or buy a pair of size-twelve skyscraper stilettos. Or both, if you had the budget and the
     predilection. Nobody judged you here.
    Raf grabbed a table outside his favourite café. It was still a little chilly, the April sunshine was lacking in confidence,
     but he wanted to enjoy the few rays it was throwing out. He ordered a coffee and a smoked-salmon bagel from the waitress,
     pulled the script out of its envelope and began to read.
    No one took a blind bit of notice of him. There was a time when he couldn’t have gone anywhere without being mobbed, or at
     least hassled for his autograph. Now he had a more low-keystatus as an underground icon. If anyone looked at him now, it probably wasn’t because they recognised him but because he
     was still startlingly good-looking.
    In his heyday, he’d had a wild mop of curls which he kept long. At the first hint of grey three years ago he had gone straight
     to the hairdresser’s and had every lock shorn off. He was surprised to find that it suited him better. The curls had been
     so much part of him and his raffish gypsy bad-boy image, but the close crop set off his angular features – the sharp cheek-bones
     and the hypnotic eyes – and made him look, if anything, more beautiful. Those looks, together with his immaculate dress-sense
     – he’d been voted Best Dressed Man of the Year twice – meant he often received admiring glances.
    It wasn’t enough, to be a bit of iconic eye-candy. He was no longer known for what he did best. He was in the shadow of his
     dazzling wife. Nobody knew what a struggle it really was. He was the envy