Chapter 6

Less than six hours later that Wednesday evening he was confessing the whole mess to an unlikely person. Maggie was on her own in the flat, Tony was downstairs in the studio finishing up teaching a beginner’s photography course. Tony’s business acumen was all self-taught, but he was sharp. He worked hard and looked for ways to make money from his hobby and business. But as a result it was just Andrew and Maggie for the first 40 minutes.

“As you can imagine Tony and I were shocked on Saturday night. You told us you made some money, but bloody hell Andrew, you made £40m quid. While you were a teenager. At school.”

Andrew waited.

“Andrew, you don’t make any sense. None at all. People that rich don’t hang out with people like Tony and me. No, no, let me finish. You gave all that money away. Told practically no one. And yet you are still a millionaire. And 10 days ago you spent the weekend photographing me while I was naked. So you have me, you have us, hopelessly confused. I don’t mean this unkindly but if you had told us this 10 days ago I wouldn’t have believed you. Not because I think you are a liar, there would just be no way that it could be true, that it made any sense.”

As Maggie talked Andrew knew that he would be making no mention of the money or his misspent youth when he got to Cambridge. Eventually Maggie ran out of things to be confused about and looked at him.

“Do you want to wait for Tony or do you want me to explain some of it?”

“I suppose we should wait for Tony but it.”

She stopped and shrugged her shoulders.

“Okay, while we wait for him to finish let me ask you this. You don’t have to answer but why were your parents not there on Saturday night. I spoke to all seven of your family that were there but it was pretty obvious something was up.”

Andrew hadn’t expected that, or Maggie’s tone of concern. And once he started on the explanation he couldn’t stop. It was as if he was sitting in Helen Graham’s counselling office, it just all flowed out. Andrew affected a hardened exterior and nonchalant attitude but as he talked he realised it was good to explain a lot of this, get someone else’s opinion. Figuring that Maggie was unlikely to ever meet his parents he aired some family dirty laundry, both his grandparent’s and his own parent’s.

“So you are telling me that your grandparents were like something out of Upstairs Downstairs?”

“Yes. My grandfather was the 48 year old butler and my grandmother was a 17 year old chambermaid.”

“The dirty old man!”

Maggie wasn’t wrong; however you tried to slice and dice it, it always came back to the difference in their ages, and their positions.

“And you heard your parents fighting and your father shouting that you were not his.”

Andrew nodded again.

“About six months later my grandmother found a really old photo when my grandfather was about my age now, sometime in the first half of the 1890s I guess. And it is like looking in a mirror. The similarities between me and my grandfather are blatant and obvious. Things got better between my Dad and I for a while, but then my cancer flared up and the next six months were just a mess. And after it went into remission, 9 months and one week after we were told, my little brother Scott was born.”

It was this that Andrew clung to as proof that his parents loved him. They were so happy he had gone into remission that they went crazy and lo, nine months later, Andrew had a brother. But he was the first to admit it was tenuous. Maggie listened to the tale.

“I am sorry for you, that it has come to this.”

The atmosphere changed as they heard Tony come up the stairs. It lightened from Andrew’s tale of woe about his family but seemed to become awkward again. Tony made everyone fresh tea and they sat round the kitchen table.

“How do you think I should have acted?”

Andrew’s question made them stop and think. Both of them started to speak and then stopped. Finally it was Maggie that gave an answer.

“I think that is part of our confusion. We have no idea how someone should act because it never occurred to us that we would know someone like you. For me, I would assume that you would hang out with other people with money. Like all those lawyers and businessmen at your party, not us.”

“Do you not want to hang out with me anymore? Do you think our friendship is going to wither away?”

That they both stopped and thought about his question did not fill Andrew with joy.

“That is the thing, you have had all this money for nearly a year and you have spent as much time with us this summer as with anyone else. I think it is my expectation that you will stop hanging out with us, that you will move on. Especially when you run into people at Cambridge.”

“I would like to think I am not like that. Things will change just because I am away for more than half the year. You have known me for six years and I trust you, I would have stopped Brian on Saturday night if I didn’t trust you. I am not going to tell people at Cambridge about any of this. The people I am going to be friends with at Cambridge are going to be my friends because they like me, not because I am rich. You don’t seem to know how to act around me because you have found out I am rich. I am the same from the other side. My parents are a teacher and a part-time social worker. All four of my grandparents were solidly working class. I was 17 and a brand new millionaire, it wasn’t like there was a manual for me.

“Look at you Maggie, Monica is your secret. You don’t want to be known or judged as a nude model. This is my secret, I don’t want to be known as being rich. But we are the same people. We sat on the beach less than two weeks ago after a fun weekend where you got to indulge in your naughty secret. I am the same guy as I was then.”

The main issue was in their head, too much programing to overcome.

“You are right, but it is difficult. I dislike rich people, I have always thought that they bend the rules, don’t pay their fair share. It is difficult to maintain that attitude with someone I have known for six years and worked for me.”

Andrew had a sudden thought and laughed.

“The only time I haven’t paid tax on the money I earned was that first 15 months working for you and Archie.”

Maggie laughed and even Tony had a rueful smile.

“As for paying my fair share, do you want to know the numbers?”

Politeness met curiosity and curiosity won.

“Roughly, Julian and I made about £2m, paid half in tax and split the rest. Later when we licensed the software, the big transaction, we made £37m, or something close to that. £25m went to the Trust and the other £12m was split three ways. The three of us split £6m after tax. And the money in the Trust is for cancer research, and that will be mostly scientist and researcher’s salaries. So the money will be taxed at that point. I figured that I have paid roughly £2m in tax in the last four years.”

Tax rates were still high and the three of them had paid 50% of the money they earned in tax. When confronted with the actual numbers, there final doubts faded. Maybe not about the rich in general but Andrew was an exception.

“Shit, that is a lot of money. And you did this from your bedrooms?”

“Four years, a lot of programming and a huge dose of luck, but yes we did this from our home computers.”

That part of the conversation was put to bed, they knew the facts, the truth, and it was up to the three of them to make their friendship continue. More tea was made and the conversation changed.

“Can we talk about the modelling? Now that I can stop worrying about you spending so much money.” Obligatory chuckles all round. “I wanted to revisit some of the conversations from 10 days ago. Tony and I realised that we were pretty passive about ideas, that we were leaving it all up to you to come up with creative ideas for shoots.”

Maggie’s statement wasn’t a question but she appeared to want to Andrew to answer it anyway.

“Yes you were, and we should talk about it. You like doing shoots outdoors, where there is a degree of risk to the shoots. Not a lot, there are not many people around at sun-up, but it is different than the studio. You have to think about that. You have talked about how you like the idea of people knowing you are posing naked, without them knowing that it is you. Think of the beach on Sunday. If you knew that everyone would stay down at the other end of the beach, would you have needed the windbreak?”

It was rhetorical, they all knew the answer.

“The other things are much more personal; do you mind if I talk about them?”

“Er, no. If it gets uncomfortable I will ask you to stop.”

“Tony. You love flirting with him during the shoots, teasing him. Since you can, and have posed for him yourself, and yet you still want me to photograph you, you get a kick out of posing for someone else. I know it is all very tame yet at the same time it we all know that it revs your engine. I have no idea what Tony did on Sunday, and I don’t want to know, but we know the outcome. We have seen the pictures. The shoots have changed in the last two years, particularly in the last year. Do you think they are going to change more?”

Maggie had to confront her secret life, and where it was going. Tony sat quietly waiting for her to speak. It was probably only 15 seconds but it seemed longer.

“It is all a confused mess in my head. I was going to say that nothing has changed but that is not true. I could also claim that nothing is going to change going forward but that is also not true.”

She took Tony’s hand but looked over at Andrew.

“You being there makes a difference. I couldn’t believe how easily I came last Sunday. It is the product of all these years of friendship, that you are friends with Tony, all that. It turns me on when Tony shoots me downstairs on our own, but it turns me on more when you are there. And although there is no point in denying there is an attraction it is not you that I want during the shoot. It is Tony.”

She shrugged.

“I am lucky, he understands and doesn’t get jealous.”

Maggie smiled.

“In fact, we both like to do the shoots. It turns us both on.”

Maggie didn’t look very embarrassed at this admission. Neither did Tony.

“Okay, then.”

“Andrew, you can’t just say okay then as if that solves everything.”

“We will keep doing this until someone gets uncomfortable, or it just reaches it natural conclusion. We had a busy summer but university breaks are limited, and the weather can be crappy. I will think of something for Christmas and we’ll see what happens.”

“You are okay with what we are doing?”

“Maggie, you taught me ‘what’s the big deal?’. We will have that attitude yet still be discreet. Will most people understand what we are doing, what this looks like? No of course not, but they won’t know. Let’s not borrow trouble forward. Enjoy it, recognise that it is illicit and naughty, that is part of the fun of it.”

As a conversation it was about as far away from Saturday night as it was possible to get. Andrew came back from the toilet and was about to head home he got a final surprise.

“Maggie was telling me about the problems with your parents. How are you getting down to Cambridge?”

“Probably the train. I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Maggie can take a day off and I will get Stacey to run the shop for a couple of days. We will drive you down to Cambridge.”

“Wow, are you sure?”

“Yes. You have done a lot for us this summer but part of it is confronting some of our assumptions, our prejudices. We have heard about Cambridge, this elite university, but you are the only person we have ever met who is going there. I would, we would, like to see the place for ourselves.”

Andrew didn’t even pretend with the ‘are you sure’. He accepted this great gesture from his friends. The days with Suzanne and then this evening with Tony and Maggie were in stark contrast to his strained relationship with his parents. Arriving home at 9.45 having been out all day did lend credence to their contention that he treated the house like a hotel.

“Are you deliberately trying to annoy us? Where have you been.”

“Moving some of my things over to Julian’s flat.”

This stopped the tirade in its tracks.

“I have heard what you are saying. I think it better if I move out while I am at university. We all know this moment has been coming for a while. Hopefully this will reduce the aggravation between us and let us focus on the positives not the negatives.”

Andrew had stunned his parents into silence, a rare occurrence. He could see his mother thinking about how this would look to those ever judgemental neighbours. Andrew was able to escape and head through to his room, already looking like he had one foot out the door.

The meeting with Lord Barnes was pretty much as Leslie had predicted. With Moira away, Andrew thought he was lonely and both he and Freya worked long hours. He enjoyed Andrew’s company and so Andrew accepted his friendship graciously. Parenting a teenage daughter on his own must have been difficult and so, as with Brian, Andrew didn’t probe the psychology of the friendship too deeply but just accepted it. He had several male adult role models and mentors that he could call upon, Lord Barnes was just one more. Andrew promised to join him and Freya for dinner in December upon his return.

Other than that the week was quiet. His Duke of Edinburgh Award certificate arrived in the post. The presentation had been scheduled while he was in Italy and so he had declined. Andrew carefully filed it away but it was another piece of the past. He read vociferously in the evenings and had worked his way through nearly all of the recommended pre-reading for his course. Andrew stopped in and played cards with his Grandma and Auntie Vi a couple of times and started to organise his stuff for the trip south. On his last Saturday, he and Julian spent part of the day setting up his computer in his new flat and getting it all configured correctly. There was a small box room in the flat with a skylight as the only natural light which worked well as a small study room for the computer. This was the older Apple II from home that Andrew installed there. He also packed up the IBM PC from Julian’s flat as he planned to take that with him to Cambridge.