Untouchable (4 page)

I relent. ‘A chianti then. A small one.’

She’s gone for a couple of minutes, reappearing with my wine in one hand, a bottle of beer in the other.

‘Thanks for coming at such short notice,’ I say, grabbing my drink.

‘Pleasure.’ She sits down and flicks open the top on her Grolsch. ‘You seen that new agency, Eastern Alliance? Packed full of Russians and Lithuanians. None of them a day over fifteen by the look of them.’ Her expression turns morose. ‘I think I may have to drop my rates again. The whole mature English rose thing doesn’t seem to hit the spot these days.’

‘It’s the tail end of the recession,’ I reassure her. ‘It’ll pick up.’

Anna doesn’t appear convinced. ‘Maybe.’ She drains an inch off her beer then spreads her hands out on the table. A cluster of silver rings on each of her long fingers. ‘Anyway, what’s up? You seemed a bit subdued when you rang.’

‘Just having a bad day,’ I shrug, suddenly reluctant to talk.

‘A punter?’

I shake my head. Sigh and pull the envelope out of my pocket and push it across the table. She removes the single sheet of paper and flattens it on the table.

‘Decree absolute?’

I nod.

She stares back down at the letter. ‘No wonder you’re feeling low.’

‘Yep.’ I shift in my seat. It’s also my dad’s birthday, but that’s something I’m determined to forget.

Anna leans forward and rests her hand on my arm. ‘Oh Grace, honey, I didn’t even know you were married.’

‘Not any more.’

‘You OK?’ Her hand tightens to a squeeze.

I nod again. In truth I’m not sure how I feel about the divorce. Sad. Guilty. Relieved. Of course I knew it was imminent, but somehow finding the letter on the mat this morning, scanning those sparse sentences that spell the end of my marriage, left me breathless and hollow and in need of good company.

‘I know what you’re going through.’ Anna retracts her hand and runs it through her hair, revealing dark roots behind her ears. ‘I cried when mine arrived. Even though I hated the bastard.’

‘I don’t hate him …’ I let the words trail off. More like the other way round. I’ve given him plenty of reason to hate me. And I wonder, not for the first time this morning, how he feels about this. The letter spelling the end of his marriage.

Bloody jubilant, I imagine.

‘It’s a kind of death, I guess,’ says Anna. ‘Of what you’d once hoped for and believed in.’

I manage a sorry excuse for a smile. ‘Thanks.’

‘For what?’

‘For understanding.’

She sniffs and tips her head back. Downs another inch. ‘God knows, you need plenty of that in this business.’

Too true. I’ve known Anna since I went on the game. We met at my first duo session, and she took me under her wing, happy to embrace the role of mentor as well as friend. In a world as hard-nosed as the sex industry, I got lucky the day I bumped up against Anna.

‘You’ll be all right tomorrow,’ she advises. ‘It’s like turning thirty – horrendous in the run-up, but a relief once it’s over.’

‘Thanks,’ I repeat, grateful she doesn’t ask me any more about my marriage. It’s an unspoken rule between us that we don’t pick over the wasteland of our previous lives. I know only the barest bones of her past: the job in IT, the husband, a couple of children – now living in Norfolk with her ex and his girlfriend – that Anna hardly ever gets to see.

At the bar I see two men glance over, then lean in to confer. The taller one stares back at Anna.

I give a discreet nod towards them. ‘I think you’ve pulled.’

Anna turns and smirks openly. He looks away, embarrassed. ‘Come on,’ she says, grabbing her coat. ‘Let’s sit outside. I need a fag.’

I leave our food order at the bar and follow her out to the small beer garden, deserted except for a couple huddling in the corner under an outdoor gas heater. Anna sits at the nearest bench, fishes in her bag for her cigarettes.

‘Here, treat yourself. You deserve one, today of all days.’ She holds up a neat honeycomb of filter tips. I shake my head.

Anna removes one and lights it. ‘Good girl,’ she exhales, twisting her head to avoid blowing smoke in my face. ‘Hang on in there.’

We sit in silence for a minute, stunned by the fierce sunlight and frosty air. I stare up at the contrails high above our heads, the latticework of white lines against the blue winter sky. It makes me think of that man Alex, his urgent flight to Paris, and I wonder again about that encounter in the lobby. How did he know who I was? I’m certain I haven’t met him before, not in any walk of life. I may not be great with names, but faces generally stick. And his was definitely not one I’d forget.

And the gun. I can’t fathom how I feel about that either. Freaked? Not really. It’s hardly as if I’ve never come across one before – or rather the aftermath.

Maybe it was legal. But who, these days, is allowed to carry firearms outside the forces? Spies? Somebody in the security services? Undercover police?

Anna’s voice cuts through my thoughts. ‘You seen that guy again recently, the scriptwriter?’ she asks, face raised as she exhales another pale cloud of smoke.

I shake my head again. ‘Last time we met he asked what I thought of his show. So I told him. It didn’t go down too well.’

‘He can’t have taken it that badly,’ she grins. ‘He was quite complimentary on PunterWeb. Gave you 8.5.’

I hold up my hand to stop her. ‘Don’t tell me any more. You know I don’t look at those things.’

It’s true. I never read anything clients write on the net. Escort reviews are one of the least pleasant sides of the business – piss someone off and there’s half a dozen places where he can dress you down. Literally and figuratively.

And if that’s not bad enough, some sites even have a ranking system, marking each escort on looks and performance. A great deal of cheating goes on – fake reviews from girls, fake reviews from pet clients, paid off with service in kind. A constant jostling for position that leads to a lot of bitchiness, bruised egos and lost business.

‘Don’t take it so seriously,’ says Anna. ‘You know it’s all just so much wank-fodder.’

She’s right, at least on one level. Reviews invariably include a blow-by-blow account of the ‘date’. Less an accurate appraisal of the encounter than a piece of erotic fiction, the client casting himself in a starring role in his own little fantasy.

She downs the rest of her beer and snorts. ‘I did have one guy last week … you won’t believe this.’

‘What happened?’

She colours slightly, hesitating.

I look at her. ‘Jesus, Anna, how bad was it?’

She finishes her cigarette. Stubs it out on the underside of the table and tosses the butt into a nearby bin. ‘He got me one of those burqa things to dress up in – you know, the big black tent with a slit for the eyes. Wanted me to wear it out with him – just the burqa, I mean. Took me to Greenwich Park. We walked round for half an hour till it was dusk, then he screwed me up against a tree.’

‘Jesus, Anna.’ I’m not sure whether to laugh or commiserate.

She sighs. ‘I keep worrying I’ll burn in hell for all eternity. Or someone will issue a fatwah.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘He wants to do it again next week. Offered me twice my usual rate. Says he’ll take me shopping on Bond Street.’

I picture Anna wandering round Fenwicks, naked under a yashmak. ‘You going to do it?’

Anna wrinkles up her nose. ‘Depends on the weather. I nearly froze my tits off in Greenwich. I couldn’t stop shivering.’ She grimaces, a look that’s one part humour and two parts fatigue. ‘Let’s just say I didn’t have to bother counting the money.’

I smile. This was the best advice Anna ever gave me. If you start feeling anything for a client – and it
does
happen – you count the money. That always brings you back down to earth.

Despite the lightness in my friend’s voice, I experience a niggle of discomfort. As if she’s taken a step closer to an abyss we’re both pretending isn’t anywhere near. I try to imagine Anna working in an office, picking up her kids from school. Having comfy married sex with her husband.

I just can’t picture it.

‘I’m getting too old for all this,’ she sighs, catching my mood.

‘You’re only thirty-seven.’

‘Nearly thirty-eight,’ she corrects. ‘Christ, Grace, I don’t even fancy myself any more. I made myself masturbate the other day because I haven’t come in months.’

‘Ah,’ I say, smiling again. ‘A pity wank.’

‘Honestly, I’m so sick of it all. Men and their dicks. Pretending to be impressed by them.’

‘You mean the men? Or their dicks?’

‘Is there a difference?’

We snigger, enjoying the gallows humour, then fall quiet again, as if both avoiding something deeper, leaving silence the safest option. I listen to the overhead whine of jet engines banking around Heathrow. The background chatter from the pub, one man’s voice carrying over the others, a sonic boom punctuated by the odd staccato laugh.

Inhaling, I look at Anna straight on. ‘Do you ever think about getting out?’

She lifts her shoulders then lights another cigarette. I play with the packet as I wait for her answer, flipping it over and over, wondering why I even asked.

I guess the truth is I’m worried. Anna’s been in the business for seven years now, which is at least five years too long to be functioning normally. Escorting is like radiation: fine in small doses, but prolonged exposure is highly toxic.

‘I think about it,’ she says eventually. ‘But never seem to get further than that.’ She examines the end of the cigarette scissored between her fingers. ‘How about you, more to the point? What’s your exit strategy?’

‘More to the point?’

Anna squints into sun. ‘I’m a lost cause, Grace, but you’re not. You don’t want to be stuck like me, dressing up in burqas for some pathetic little pervert.’

What’s your exit strategy?

My mind chews over the question. I haven’t really considered it, even though I brought the subject up. That’s another of my rules – never think much beyond the next week or two.

‘Christ, we’re like bloody refugees,’ Anna mutters.

‘From what?’ I look over and see her expression hovering close to sadness.

‘Our former lives.’ She kicks at a bit of gravel and it skitters across the concrete paving. ‘Who said that? About the past being a different country?’

‘The past is a foreign country,’ I say. ‘L. P. Hartley.’

‘That’s the one.’ She takes a final drag, sending a plume of smoke into the London air, where it disperses a little then hangs there as she stubs out the butt and chucks it into the bottom of her beer bottle. ‘Either way, one thing’s for sure. There’s definitely no going back.’

6

Wednesday, 4 February

My six o’clock smiles as he walks into my flat, though he’s chewing the inside corner of his lip and it gives the expression a wry twist. He’s cute. Not in that obviously pretty-boy sort of way; rather he has the kind of face that’s quietly appealing.

Ben stands in my lounge, looking awkward, checking me out while pretending that’s precisely not what he’s doing. His eyes dart around the room, taking in the sofas, the coffee table and the TV, the bookshelves and my little desk area in the nook by the kitchen. But most of all, flitting over me.

‘Can I take your coat?’ I ask. ‘It looks wet.’

He glances down at his black overcoat as if he’s only now realized it’s been raining. Then shrugs it off and hands it to me. I hang it by the door, next to mine.

‘Nice place,’ he says as I reappear.

‘Thanks.’ Though in truth it’s ordinary by anyone’s standards. One bedroom, a kitchen, a living room and a bathroom. Décor, in the main, courtesy of IKEA.

‘Handy for the tube. And the trains.’ He colours, as if embarrassed by his own banality. Runs a hand through dark hair that’s greying a little at the edges.

I offer him a drink. He looks like he needs something to ease things along.

‘Please,’ he says, clearly relieved.

‘Beer or wine?’

‘Red. If you’ve got it.’

I nod. Grab a bottle and a couple of glasses from the kitchen. Open it and pour us both a glass. I seem to be making a habit of drinking on the job.

I size him up as I hand him his wine. Late thirties, early forties at a push. Beige chinos and a green polo shirt, topped by a black jumper. Your standard corporate smart-casual.

Roughly speaking, you can divide my clients into two types. The younger ones – up to, say, fifty – are usually after a no-strings shag. I’m one of life’s little treats, alongside the occasional bottle of grand cru or lunch at Quaglino’s.

Then there’s the other kind, typically older, who want more; more than I could possibly offer. Most have hit that dog-end of marriage where boredom, irritation, or the hormonal ravages of the menopause have worn libidos to a stub – along with all chance of physical affection or intimacy. They land on my doorstep thinking they’re here for the sex, only to discover they’re yearning for a connection far more than skin-deep.

This bloke, however, doesn’t quite fit either category. Too young and easy-on-the-eye to be looking for love in exactly the wrong place. Then again, he’s booked two hours – the quick-fucks only ever book one. Most would plump for half if I offered it, but I leave that to my colleagues over in Soho.

Ben puts his glass down on the coffee table and sits in the armchair. Leans forward, elbows balanced on his knees, examining the books on my shelves. He’s clearly uncomfortable, and I wonder if this is his first time with an escort.

‘What’s your verdict on this?’ He leans over, pulls out a copy of a recent Man Booker nominee.

I shrug. ‘Underwhelming.’

He laughs. ‘I’ve met her, actually. She lives up the road from me.’

‘Really? What’s she like?’

‘Oh, you know. Intense. Neurotic. Like most writers.’

I laugh. ‘Like most whores, come to that.’

He looks openly surprised. Shocked even. Then makes a visible effort to recover.

‘What do you do?’ I ask, trying not to smile at his discomfort.

‘Ad exec.’

‘Ah, nice,’ I say, insincerely.