Owning Jacob - SA Read Free

his watch. It would soon be time for him to col ect Jacob from school. He didn't want to have Sarah's clothes lying about in piles when he got home.
    He went back upstairs to finish packing them away.

Chapter Two
    He'd met Sarah through Colin. It was part of the folklore of their relationship that they might have been in the same room on several occasions before they final y spoke, but if they had neither of them could remember it. They didn't become aware of each other until they were thrown together, at a party to celebrate the signing of one of Colin's fledgling bands. Colin had negotiated the contract with a major record label and seemed to regard the deal as a personal coup. At times Ben thought he was more like a frustrated manager than a solicitor, and, like a convert to a new religion, he seemed to regard it as his duty to involve Ben in the heady world of the music industry.
    'You've got to come, it'l be great!' he'd enthused. 'The record company's real y pushing the boat out on this one.
    Should be a good night.' Ben wasn't convinced. He'd been to signing parties before and not enjoyed them. Most of the bands he never heard of again, and he found their habitual mixture of naivete and arrogance irritating. The whole idea bored him. But there had been nothing boring that night. Not after he broke his camera on the lead singer's head.
    He'd been in a bad mood to begin with. He had recently split up with a girl he'd been seeing for the past six months, ii a model he had met on an advertising agency shoot. He was stil smarting over the acrimonious end, which was probably why Colin had asked him along. And why, perhaps, he had accepted.
    He had regretted it as soon as he walked into the club and felt the hammering music hit him. He had seen it al before, from the bottles of free champagne, tequila, imported beers and Jack Daniels, to the burning car suspended on chains from the ceiling. He would have turned around and left if Colin hadn't seen him and waved him over.
    In his dark lawyer's suit his friend stood out from the clubbers like a crow among budgerigars. They'd shared a flat at university. The posing first-year fine art undergraduate and the ironed-jeaned third-year law student had regarded each other suspiciously to begin with, both convinced of a mistake by the accommodation department, but a mutual love of footbal and beer had soon overcome the less-important differences. After university they had kept in touch, despite Colin marrying Maggie against Ben's advice when she became pregnant, and the differences between them becoming more apparent. Ben's hair grew longer and Colin's suits more expensive. Maggie had once referred to them as the Odd Couple. Ben thought that was probably the closest to a joke she had ever come.
    He sometimes wondered if Colin's decision to go into entertainment law, dealing with musicians and actors, was a reaction against the confines of his home life. He'd never risked their friendship by asking, though. He made himself smile as he reached Colin's table and was introduced to solicitors and sharkish executives from the record company.
    They acknowledged Ben with polite lack of interest, which mirrored the way he felt about them. He excused himself as soon as he could and wandered off" to get a beer.
    That was his first mistake. With no one to talk to, he drank more quickly than he should have done. The camera dragged around his neck. Against his better judgment he had taken it with him, at Colin's insistence.
    'If you get some good shots of the night, you know, just snapping people, you might be able to get more work from the label,' Colin had said, despite the fact that Ben had repeatedly told him that he had no interest in working with bands. He liked working with either professional models or people who weren't aware they were being photographed, not four or five usual y unphotogenic individuals, one of whom could always be guaranteed to blink as the shutter came down.