Lost Girls (31 page)

But she kept
her day job going, it was easier to maintain the pretence with her
parents and friends back home that way, though of course there was
no way she could afford her nice flat and nice clothes on an
ordinary admin assistant’s wages.

Then she moved
on to London, it was a bigger pool for the daytime jobs and also
for the other work, lots of rich Arabs who fancied a milk skinned
girl from the north with a touch of Scottish brogue. She had a
knack of keeping her daytime bosses happy. She was good at
organising other people to do work, using the boss’s authority to
persuade and cajole, sometime threaten and occasionally putting her
own personal charms to work as well.

Over five years
she had a succession of day jobs, always a step up from the job
before. By now she could easily support herself on these grandly
titled Executive Manager roles. The night work was the cream and,
more importantly, it filled an empty hole inside her, that part
which had broken when her sister had died.

She knew deep
down that all men were bastards, all determined to get one thing no
matter what it cost the woman. So she would give them that thing
but on her own terms and at her own price.

Apart from the
men who paid her day job wages she had no friends, neither the
other night girls or the men she serviced knew anything about her
except a first name. No work colleagues or clients had her real
address or private contact details. For those who needed to locate
she gave a mobile phone number, one for day work, one for nights
and, except for required business social functions, she never went
out with her work colleagues. For her night work she met clients in
other discreet places where security came as part of the
package.

So she had a
life at her family home where she was a dutiful and loving daughter
who contacted and visited her parents regularly and said hello to
the others in the village when she came home as if they were long
lost friends.

Then she had
another life in the city, different clothes, nice apartment, well
paid both day and night and a healthy bank balance. Her life
drifted by like that for seven years until she was twenty
three.

One day she
woke up faintly bored. It was OK, her life was broadly
satisfactory. But there was nothing in it she cared about other
than her parents and she could never let them see inside her. She
did not want a boyfriend or a long term lover; she had met no one
she trusted enough that way to let them see inside her. It was
better to let those who wanted or desired her pay to rent her body
for a short time and then be gone. But she wanted something more
important in her life than that.

Sometimes she
thought that maybe she should get a pet, a fluffy dog or a cat that
gave her company when she was on her own. But she knew that that
would involve a new form of dependency, some creature whose life
depended on her coming home each night and providing food water,
and exercise, perhaps a walk in the park. She did not want that
level of commitment. She could always pay someone else to do those
parts but she did not want that either as it would involve letting
someone else into her private life, apartment keys or whatever.

When she did
not work she read, a few novels, but mainly true stories about
other places, some books of explorers, some travel books which told
of other places and their peoples of yesterday and today. Slowly an
image formed in her mind of going to live somewhere else, a place
where no one knew her. She had more than a hundred thousand pounds
from her night work in a Swiss bank account, and her day job had
its own bank account with a several thousand pounds of spare
cash.

One day she
came home from another ordinary day. She worked for the boss of a
big city finance firm. Today he was feeling frisky and decided he
wanted to play with her more, but she had managed to avoid
that.

Cathy had met
his wife at the office last week. Unlike some of the other wives
who were vacuous airheads, only out to build their own image, she
had genuinely liked this lady. Of course her boss told Cathy how
his wife did not appreciate him, how he was thinking of leaving
her, how he really wanted something more than a casual romp with
Cathy.

But Cathy had
heard these lines too many times before. She knew they were another
form of the eternal excuses these men used to justify their weak
morals. Normally she did not care. Provided the pay and benefits
were right she would let these platitudes flow over her.

But somehow
this man’s clear lies irritated her. Tonight he wanted to take her
out for dinner. She had begged off claiming a prior engagement. She
did not want to spend an evening in bed with him, days were
enough.

Tonight was a
rare night when she had no other engagements booked and she did not
want one. She had been thinking about quitting her day job
completely for a while now, she did not need the money. She had
kept it going to maintain a veneer of respectability for the sake
of her parents, still the dutiful daughter not the high class
hooker. Her day job also gave her something to do. She otherwise
found her days to be empty and purposeless. Over the years she had
come to hate weekends when she was mostly alone with her own
company during the day.

But she was
sick of the inevitable bartering she did with her bosses around her
availability for sexual favours. She had decided she would rather
just get paid for what she did at night, it was much simpler, no
one lied, the men did not try and con her with promises of a future
she did not want, they just paid for and got sex. She could not say
she really enjoyed it but at least it was a simple, straightforward
transaction with no strings attached and no lies.

But it meant
living an ongoing lie, a lie which started when she was eleven
years old and her uncle had raped her. That was bad, but when she
discovered her had done it to her older sister too and, as a result
her sister had committed suicide, something broke inside her.

She hated her
uncle; she never let him come near her again when she was alone.
She would be polite to him in company, but only because she could
not bear for her parents to know about his double betrayal.

So she had
walled it all off, she had let it happen with other boys after that
at school, hoping to find something in the act that was better than
what had happened that first time. Even though pleasurable it did
not fill the emptiness inside her.

So she left
school as soon as she was able. Soon after that she began to use
her body to make money, to buy independence from everyone and
everything. Yet now she seemed eternally trapped in living a double
life and could not see any future she wanted.

She was not
suicidal, she had seen and lived through the way this action had
torn a hole in her and her parents’ lives. So she could not bear to
be that selfish and wasteful of her life. But she could not think
of any different thing she wanted to do, that is until
recently.

It was not as
if a new life idea had opened before her. But she knew she did not
want to live here and like this anymore. So the idea of escape,
travelling off to another place or places in an anonymous way and
having a new unknown identity had become appealing. Now she made
plans for this new life where nobody knew anything about her.
Perhaps it would allow some real friends or relationships, perhaps
even, after a few years, a new and better relationship with her
parents, and adult to adult one, not one where trapped as the
younger sister of a lost child who lived for both.

So tonight she
was at her apartment and restless for something new. She decided
there was no better time to make the move than now. She would do it
in a respectable manner, she would give her current boss a month of
notice so that he could organise a replacement; she would do the
same for her night time work. She would go on the internet now and
look up flights and travel options to different places.

She wanted to
go to the opposite side of the world, as far away from this place
and this life as possible, maybe Australia or New Zealand where
they spoke English. She had enough money in her regular bank
account to cover her flights and her living costs for at least a
few months, without having to touch the other, much larger, bank
account. She would go as a backpacker, on the cheap. It fitted
better with the image she wanted for her future; not a high class
hooker travelling the world and staying at posh hotels, but rather
a simple girl from the back of Scotland who had worked in various
jobs across the UK and had now decided to see the world and make a
new life for herself somewhere else.

After a week of
researching various countries she settled on Australia.

Just over a
month later Cathy found herself in Melbourne.

Despite all the
income from her former work, the furthest she had ever travelled
before was to Paris, to where twice she had made day trips on the
Eurostar from London. Her apartment in London had been her refuge
from the world outside. She had chosen to stay there at all times
except when she was visiting her family in Scotland. The only
exception had been two trips to collect items of jewellery.

This arose
because she was given an item from a master goldsmith in Paris by
an appreciative lover. The maker’s name was inscribed on the box.
She had liked the style so much that she rang this man and ordered
further pieces on each of her next two birthdays. Each time she had
gone and collected them in person.

These trips
also allowed her to have discreet meetings with the Swiss based
financial advisor who was pleased to meet her there as part of the
service of managing the funds she regularly deposited.

Despite
numerous requests to accompany her clients on trips to the
continent and beyond, she consistently said no to their
invitations, they could visit her or she would go out and about
with them in London, but that was the limit of her accommodation to
them.

So, until this
trip, she had never even been on an aeroplane, let alone gone over
an ocean like the one which she could see below her.

She had decided
to fly from Heathrow via the Middle East for no particular reason
other than it was the most direct route. She chose Melbourne as her
destination. It was a similar sized city to Sydney but with a lower
international profile. She had a vague dread of meeting a wealthy
client in an airport concourse where her avoidance options were
limited.

She enjoyed the
flight, being left alone in a crowd, with no unsought attention.
She ignored the couple beside her. Instead she gazed over the
endless expanses of the oceans crossed, revelling in the sense
that, at trip’s end, she really would be on the other side of the
world.

In Melbourne
she stayed for two weeks in a comfortable self-contained apartment
in the city. She liked this city; it had a comfortable old world
feel, not dissimilar to London. However, on her fifth day, she
glimpsed a former client walking down the other side of the Bourke
Street Mall. That decided her, it was too well patronised by the
jet set for her taste. She had her hair cut short with a red rinse,
to reduce the chance of being seen by this man or others she had
known from her former life.

That night she
caught the train to Adelaide, deciding it was a far less visited
city by the “Glitterati”. This time, rather than staying in a
swanky apartment, she became one of the backpacker crowd, staying
in a hostel in downtown Adelaide.

She found it
liberating to be surrounded by a crowd of travellers from all
corners of the world. So many pasts and futures intermingled, she
was just plain Cathy, now a reddish brunette with a short bob
hairstyle, almost boyish looking, though her body belied any idea
that she was asexual.

A few hopeful
men from the hostel tried it on. She was so practised at deflecting
unwanted attention that she barely noticed.

She had no
clear idea where she would go or what she would do now.

Two weeks
passed as she drifted in and out of this place, walking around the
city streets, shopping, catching the beach tram to Glenelg, having
drinks and exchanging tales with other backpackers.

After a week
she sent a postcard to her parents, feeling she should let them
know where she was to spare them worry. She told them the address
here to allow them to write, saying she expected to stay for a
least another month before she moved on and, when she did, she
would give them her new address.

She had never
indicated she was not planning to return home, there would be time
enough to let them know this when she had worked out a plan for her
future.

She liked
Adelaide. It was a comfortable city, not too big, with nice
Victorian era houses, similar to those found in many parts of
London. It made her feel safe and at home. She thought that,
perhaps, in a month or two, she would look for a place of her own
here. A two bedroom cottage in one of the suburbs near the city was
something she could afford with her savings. Then she would find a
job where she used her brain and organisational skills to support
herself, but a job that did not include supplying favours in return
for advancement.

She enjoyed
listening to the tales of travel told by other backpackers, but
found little desire to go off exploring the cities and other famous
places around the coasts of Australia. The one place she wanted to
visit was the inland. It seemed to be a vast area, loosely termed
“The Outback”.

Her plan was
not well formed. She remembered, from long ago, reading a book by a
man called Neville Shute called, “A Town Like Alice”. From this
memory came a vague desire to see this place. She knew it was in
the middle of Australia. The train line north from Adelaide to
Darwin ran through it. So she could go that way. It was something
to do before she found her own place, a job and settled into life
in Adelaide.