The Curious Rise of Alex Lazarus Read online

  My father was now turning tomato-red in frustration with what he saw as his father’s immigrant attitude to wealth accumulation. “You are wrong. I will bet you this house that he ends up not just studying but using his learning for the improvement of others.”

  It seemed an excessive gesture and it clearly riled his father. “You are betting the house I paid for?” My grandfather was very generous, but also liked to remind everyone of his philanthropy.

  “Is that relevant?”

  “Well, look at you, Professor Moneybags. Your book-writing pays nothing, and your teaching hardly makes much of a contribution.” It was a hurtful and unnecessary comment. My father slammed his fist on the table and a couple of roast potatoes leapt a few inches off his plate in unison. It was at this point that I felt I had to try to engender a spirit of family reconciliation.

  “Please can you not debate me like I’m not here? Why does it matter what my ambitions are? I’m seventeen and haven’t even passed my driving test. I’ll sort my own life out, don’t you worry.”

  This seemed to do the job and a begrudging silence descended over the sounds of scraping plates. My father, muttering to himself, left the room to get some more wine. A mischievous grin spread across my grandfather’s face.

  “Now that Trotsky is out the room, tell me the truth, Alex. Which is it: make a million by the time you are thirty or write a book about some verkakte prime minister from two hundred years ago?”

  “Zayde, it’s a no-brainer. I’ll take the cash.” He may have been over eighty, but he understood me, it seems, better than my father.

  My mother and sister were far more thoughtful about the sermon when we adjourned for some tea and cake. I have perhaps created a picture of a traditional patriarchy in our family, but that is most definitely not the case. My mother, Ruth, is a very highly regarded psychotherapist, with a particular interest in the relationship between self-esteem and anxiety, and she too is a published author. What differentiates her from my father and his love of arcane political theory is that her outlook is grounded in everyday common sense and wisdom. To make something of yourself, you have to believe in your positive attributes. To understand what those are, you have to be prepared to be truthful about what you can and can’t do. In response, therefore, to my father and grandfather bickering over my future, she quietly offered her view a little later.

  “You know, boys, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Unlikely,” Zayde said, dunking some honey cake into his tea.

  “How so?” my father added.

  “Well, you’re making it a binary choice for Alex. His ambition will be either to write a book or be the next Richard Branson.”

  I tried to intercede, worried that another battle was imminent. “Hello. I am sitting here. I thought we’d dropped this subject?”

  “Alex will be the sum of many parts,” my mother continued. “His ambition will be fluid. He’ll have conflict and he’ll make big changes along the way. He’s a mixture of all of us and he’ll be torn between the desire to do right and the need to do well. He’ll fail as much as he succeeds.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Mum, but I do wish you’d all stop telling me what I’m going to do. Right now, a farm in Australia is looking an attractive choice if it means getting away from you lot.”

  The men looked a little contrite, but were also clearly dissatisfied that the argument had fizzled out into a draw without an outright victor.

  By this point, my sister, then fifteen, was a little bit put out. She was far cleverer than me, better at sport, and a much nicer person, not that I would have admitted it to anyone.

  “If you are telling everyone’s fortune, what’s my future?”

  My mother gave her an affectionate squeeze and, in an act of female solidarity, simply said, “You, my darling girl, you are going to do something worthwhile and make a proper success of your life.”

  As ever, my mother was right about everything.

  2. The Meeting

  My wife, Sarah, was heavily pregnant with our second child when it all began. I was sitting on a park bench, enjoying momentary respite from slides, swings and monkey bars. My two-year-old was blithely eating the contents of a sandpit, oblivious to my watchful presence. This was parenting at its best. Coffee in hand, no physical exertion required, and a gated sandpit creating a temporary desert prison. The occasional words of encouragement lobbed in his vague direction were the extent of my care.

  It was particularly hot, that summer of 2012. Sarah was not happy being pregnant in the airless nights and, with selfless magnanimity, I would rise as the first light of dawn awoke our energetic Theo. Surrounding ourselves with toys and games, I would start with the best intentions of assiduous mental stimulation for my inquisitive toddler, until the lure of Sky Sports proved too great and we would embark on a more meaningful education on the Premier League, based on the goals compilation of the 1996–97 season. It’s amazing how his request for ‘more igsaw’ could sound like ‘Can I watch Shearer’s hat-trick against Bolton?’ to the untrained ear.

  I was continually tired, my energy sapped by the cloying heat of those long muggy days. With another child only weeks away, I was very excited and secretly desperate for a little girl to complete the symmetry of my perfect young family. This was going to be a transitional moment in my life, the point at which things got serious. Fourteen years of unchecked ascent in various advertising agencies meant a certain amount of superficial kudos, a steady income, but also a feeling of restless dissatisfaction that I was answerable to someone else. I was desperate for some change.

  I was engulfed in aimless daydreaming as Theo patted a large sandcastle with an increasingly Norman-Bates-like frenzy. Sadly, it was not his, thereby causing much wailing from an innocent fellow sandpit prisoner.

  “Theo, that’s not your castle,” I shouted to no one in particular as I took another slurp of coffee, followed by a flurry of increasingly hopeless pleas.

  “Theo. Put down the spade!”

  “Theo, watch that little girl’s eye!”

  “Theo, pull up your pull-up!”

  “Theo, I am not clearing that up!”

  As I sat motionless, too weary to intercede, I became aware that someone had appeared next to me, and I glanced left to see a fellow father, coffee and paper in hand, equally reluctant to participate in ‘sandageddon’.

  “I wouldn’t worry, she’s had worse shoved in her mouth by her older brother,” he ventured cheerfully. Slightly flummoxed with embarrassment, I replied, “Oh, I’m so sorry, is that your daughter? Theo’s normally so docile. I think he may have been deranged by the sun.”

  “You enjoy your coffee. Honestly, I’m not being sarcastic. I have every intention of reading each word of the sports section in this paper, even if your son buries her alive.”

  “Don’t worry. He’s not done that to anyone for weeks.”

  “Why do I think it would be better if their mothers were here?” he asked.

  “You have a point. My wife always says that I’m good at running around and being physical, but I haven’t got the patience to worry about how his mind is actually developing.”

  “My wife is even more specific. She says the only thing the children will learn from me is how to absent themselves from domestic responsibility.”

  I rarely chat to strangers in parks and had certainly never embarked on such an in-depth analysis of parenting skills with someone by choice. I felt the need to introduce myself formally.

  “I am Alex. Theo is two and I have another one due in four weeks.” I sounded like I should be in a playgroup and the sentence should have been sung, accompanied by hand actions.

  As if reading my mind, my new playdate replied in kind: “I am Sam I am, and my child in a mess, well, she’s called Bess.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Actually, I’m Julian and my daughter’s Phoebe, but I wanted to pretend that I had actually been to a playgroup.”

  We chortled, cl
early deciding that the conversation was worth continuing, especially as the children were now calmly ignoring each other, having found new sand tools to use incorrectly. Seemingly more comfortable talking about our professional lives, I told him about my role as managing partner for a leading digital advertising agency, and he in turn explained that he was a senior associate working for a media-specialising West End law firm. We lived near one another and he was a child ahead of me as he awaited the arrival of his third. His wife was a management consultant and mine a GP.

  What was unusual was how quickly we started confiding our respective frustrations with the constraints of not working for ourselves. He told me he had a couple of small businesses on the side, a property company and a stake in a nightclub. I, in turn, admitted that I was always writing business plans for random ideas. I just hadn’t found the right partner to discuss them with.

  By the time we adjourned to the park’s café to buy the children an ice cream, we had somehow elicited from one another the admission that we wanted to do something entrepreneurial with our lives and take a bit of a risk. I was genuinely beguiled by his charm and confidence. He had an effortless poise and the silent arrogance of a gilded boarding school education (Harrow, it transpired). All this as we wiped melted Cornetto stains from our children’s sandy and sweaty clothes.

  When my son proceeded to fill his nappy with a bowel movement that could be heard in France, I knew it was unfortunately time to go.

  “Well, this fabulous parent needs to return home and hose his child down.”

  “Wouldn’t it be good if we actually were fabulous parents?”

  “I sometimes wish I could go online and someone would do it all for me.”

  “That would be a good business, wouldn’t it?”

  “Especially if it did birthday presents.”

  And then there was silence. A silence that was resounding and prophetic. A silence that portended an imminent change in our lives. OK, that is probably a slightly bombastic recollection of a momentary lull in the conversation, but I am pretty certain we paused for thought. All that career chat, all that hard child supervision and, above all, the bravado of describing our self-belief that we could achieve more. I spoke first. It is relevant, because before we get into all the details, I want you to know that it was most definitely my idea.

  “You know what, Julian. There really isn’t a decent parenting website that does anything clever. It’s all nappy rash advice and how to stop tantrums. I bet there’s a huge opportunity out there?”

  The idea was flimsy and vague. But on that sunny day, as I held my foul-smelling and filthy child, I wondered why no one had tried to commercialise the concept of competent parenting. I desperately wanted to carry on the chat but knew that the practicalities of actually being a parent had interceded and I had to go home.

  Julian seemed very engaged and equally disappointed to curtail the conversation. I therefore suggested that we reconvene as soon as possible to explore the potential. Like putative lovers, we swapped numbers and agreed to go on a first date, albeit as platonic would-be entrepreneurs.

  ***

  Julian and I arranged to meet for a drink a week later. After ordering at the bar, we sequestered ourselves at a discreet corner table to have some privacy so I could pitch my idea to him. I had chosen my outfit carefully, shaved and anointed myself with a variety of lotions. It was a strange thing to do before a business meeting, but clearly, deep down, I felt the need to make a good impression.

  Since our encounter in the park, I had stayed up late researching and scribbling notes in an elegant Moleskine notebook that I had rushed out to buy, signifying the beginning of a new chapter. The idea had grown rapidly in my feverish excitement. Initially, I wondered if we should just start an e-commerce business. But the more research I did, the more I wondered if I had alighted on a brilliant idea that had not been delivered before. There was, of course, a plethora of parenting sites, but they were communities of self-supporting advice, often sponsored by nappy brands or retailers. To my mind, they were resolutely prosaic and practical, lacking magic and emotion.

  Why was I intent on pitching an idea to someone I met in a park? It was hardly the most considered decision and perhaps he wasn’t who he said he was. Maybe he was a male nanny who, as a pathological liar, had filched the persona of his employer to make his trips to the swings more exciting? Or, more alarmingly, he was who he said, but was an incompetent business brain, a feckless chancer without an ounce of gravitas or substance.

  Strangely, I wasn’t worried. I am instinctive and believe that first impressions are inherently accurate, and I saw in Julian a persuasive charm and sense of entitlement. Plus, like me, he complained about the limitations of his employment. Everyone else I knew seemed to be rooted to a career trajectory that was linear and unbending. I was ready for a grand career statement.

  I had thought a lot about what I was going to say to him and was nervous about his reaction. Fuelled by a sip or two of alcohol, I jumped straight in.

  “So, Julian, how about we jack in our jobs, risk our steady incomes and launch a start-up based on being a better parent?”

  “No ‘how are you’? No foreplay? Blimey, you don’t hold back.”

  “What can I say? An afternoon in a sandpit with you and I am putty in your hands.”

  He sipped his pint and was silent.

  “In all seriousness, are you actually serious?” he eventually asked.

  “I really am. I’ve done a lot of thinking since we met. It struck me that though we joked about our parental incompetence when we were chatting, we are after all the epitome of the modern engaged father. We have busy lives. Our wives have successful careers and we are more anxious about our kids and certainly more involved than our parents were in the minutiae of their lives. True?”

  “Well, certainly true of my father. He spent time in prison for insider dealing.” I let this comment go as I was on a roll and, besides, who can say if dishonesty is hereditary.

  “How much would you pay to be a better parent?”

  “Is there really a price to be put on the love of your children?”

  “What if I told you that for about £3.50 a month, I am going to get you a place in the Parenting Hall of Fame. What would you say?”

  “I’d say there’s no such thing and £3.50 seems a very arbitrary figure.”

  “Fair enough, but let me tell you why we are going to be famous. There is lots of free advice online. You can engage in a conversation about how to deal with chapped nipples and which papoose is best for your back.”

  “I was in a chat room with someone called Keith discussing the very same, only the other day.”

  “But surely what really matters is not opinion but being able to deliver the goods. The best presents, the best products and the best experiences.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s Phoebe’s birthday. She loves princesses and snakes. You want to have a princess snake0-charmer party entertainer and buy her a Cinderella costume that isn’t highly flammable and made by little children on the other side of the globe. You want chocolate snakes for the party bags. Our site will allow you to search against these requests and create a bespoke package for you. One click of your shopping basket and you’ll have everything sorted.”

  Julian was now staring at me with alert intent. Did I say he had lovely eyes?

  “We will be not a community but a subscription site that allows you to search against random and eclectic criteria, like the wishes and whims of our children. We’ll deliver experiences and opportunities that’ll make £3.50 a month seem like the bargain of the century.”

  I paused for a moment for dramatic effect.

  “We will become a marketplace for childhood. You’ll get access to offers for kid-friendly hotels, you’ll be able to go to special screenings of Disney films, you’ll be able to create unique parties, you’ll even be able to get access to regulated childcare, tutors and ballet teachers.”

  �
�Is it easy to build? How will you recruit enough offers and services to make it worthwhile? You make it sound so easy, Alex.”

  “Trust me, the answer is yes to both. We just have to identify what people want to search for and match it to a solution. Plus, we’re going to create some very unique experiences.”

  “You’re very certain, which means either you’re very smart or I’m very stupid believing you. Why on earth do you want a lawyer as partner for this venture?”

  “Fair point. I mean, you could be just some random bloke I met in a park.”

  “I am a random bloke you met in a park. As it happens, though, I’m bloody well-connected.”

  I banged the table with more force than was necessary.

  “That’s why. I want someone who can help me bring the money in and who can deal with the commercial challenges we’re going to face. We’re going to license and produce content. We’re going to have lots of commercial agreements. I’m good at the big picture. I suspect I will skim a long contract a bit too often. You understand the entertainment and the digital landscape from a commercial perspective. I’ve built digital platforms for big businesses and know a lot of long-haired blokes from strange places who can write code. What could go wrong?”

  “You’re serious about this idea, aren’t you?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder with as much sincerity as such a gesture would allow.

  “You bet. I think this can be huge. I think we can monetise our need to be better parents but with the efficiency and speed of the digital age.” The words hung in the air for a moment. I realised I was sounding like a bad business self-help book with too much jargon. He seemed to love the clichés, and we clinked beer glasses with the gusto of feasting Vikings.

  “Here’s to somethingparent.com then. Have you thought of a name? Did inspiration come to you late last night in your study?”

  “The loo, actually.” Julian flinched at this reference.

  “So, I have conducted a very significant branding exercise among a sample that included my GP wife and her mother, who happened to be in the kitchen at the time.”