The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (9 page)

BOOK: The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl
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samedi, le 13 novembre

The Boy’s room looked eerily identical to when I was last there, months and months ago. The pile of unopened post on a chair, the cards stuck on the wardrobe doors – some of them from me. A bunch of flowers, dry now, I’d bought when he was laid off from work.

In fact, it was almost as if he’d packed the whole room away when we’d split and put it back together now to amuse me. I looked for signs he’d been seeing other people, and there were a few – a half-empty bottle of massage oil by the bed, a fake rose with clear plastic ‘dew’ on the petals – but it shocked me to realise how much of the mess was not just his, but ours. Had he really kept it exactly like this all these months? What would another woman have thought? Or did she care to wonder whose hands had once lit the lavender candles on the edge of his desk, now coated generously with dust?

dimanche, le 14 novembre

We woke early, fucked, and fell asleep again. I heard the noise of his housemates downstairs but wasn’t keen to run into them. Every time his phone rang the Boy sprang out of bed and rushed up to the top floor, claiming poor reception in his room. It was odd – we were on the same network, and as far as I could tell, my phone’s reception was fine.

Finally, well past lunchtime, we went downstairs. I wandered into the kitchen, and on the counter was a letter for a Miss Susie Allen. So that was her name. Strange that whoever collected the post put her letter aside, on the edge of the counter, so that you could hardly walk past without knocking it off. Strange especially considering there’s no post on a Sunday.

He came into the kitchen and I held up the letter. ‘Friend of yours?’ I asked.

He snatched it out of my hand. ‘Um, yeah, just some girl, some friend of my housemate’s,’ he said. ‘She’s off travelling and gets her post here.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I would have thought she was a friend of yours. Looks like someone left it out for you.’

‘No! No way. I mean, no, absolutely not. What are you saying?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I simply wondered if it was a friend of yours.’ Men are such bad liars sometimes, you have to pity them. ‘Cup of tea and toast?’

lundi, le 15 novembre

Accidentally referred to the place where I work as ‘my crucible’ instead of ‘my cubicle’ during a team meeting today. Supervisor seemed not to notice. Sent off email to L first thing, telling her about it. She rang the office and didn’t say a word: only laughed for five solid minutes.

mardi, le 16 novembre

Contrary to popular myth, men are from Earth. Women are from Earth.

That doesn’t make the opposite sex any more comprehensible. The neighbour threw a bit of a pout when he found out about the Boy. Don’t quite know why – he’s the one with a partner, after all. Methinks this young man is somewhat confused. But I am confused about the neighbour as well.

Thus far the relationship with the neighbour is perfectly innocent in a quite porny way – we seem to spend a lot of time meeting for coffee and talking about sex. Rather like time with N and the As but without the baggage of being ex-lovers – laden instead with the baggage of not yet having slept together.

We were sat in a car together, eating Haribo Tangfastics. I know they’re not kosher but can’t resist. The neighbour pulled one of the ring-shaped jellies out of the bag, the pink and blue ones with an odd protrusion from the side.

‘I wonder what are these meant to be?’ he asked.

‘Dummies, I think,’ I said.

‘That’s not quite what they look like.’

I peered at the sweet. ‘No, more like a rubber cock ring with clit stimulator.’ We laughed.

Much later, the Boy rang. He was having a T&E moment (tired and emotional – you know, drunk). ‘I feel really sick,’ he said. Physically or mentally, I asked? ‘Both,’ he said. ‘I can’t live without you.’

Ho hum, tell it again when you’re sober sometime. ‘Have a pint of milk and a bowl of porridge and go to bed.’

‘I miss you so much.’

‘Drink some milk and go to bed.’ I rang off. The neighbour looked at me. I dared not admit what the conversation was really about. ‘Friend having lady trouble,’ I said. ‘It’s as if I’m Florence Nightingale to the single men of Britain.’

Afterwards we were in the neighbour’s car again, listening to music. He reached for my hand and kissed it. Then he closed his teeth gently round one of my knuckles. I shivered, in a nice way. ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ I smiled. Meaning, of course, Do it again, please. I can’t help it if I don’t say what I mean. It doesn’t make me an alien. It’s part and parcel of the female condition. He dropped me slightly nearer to his house than mine.

mercredi, le 17 novembre

‘I know it’s a bit late,’ the Boy said, ‘but I wanted to give you a birthday gift.’ His large hand was curled round something small. I wondered, What could it be? Surely not jewellery?

‘As long as it’s not something you’re regifting me, or something half eaten.’ This was not much of an exaggeration. The Boy has a long history of offering gifts that either obviously came to him from someone else (the half-unwrapped stone-ware mug) or are partially eaten (German white chocolate). The one gift I really liked was a sheepskin for my bed; I later found out he gave an identical one to his mother. We’d had sex on it, and he gave the same thing to his mum? That’s just wrong.

He scowled and put the hand back in his pocket. ‘Fine, then. Clearly you don’t want it.’

‘Don’t be silly, I was only teasing.’ He wasn’t pleased, though, and it took a good bit of coaxing to calm him down. Whatever the gift was it must be important to him, I thought.

Finally he gave it me. I opened the box. It was indeed a piece of jewellery.

A tiny silver bee brooch set with a piece of amber. It was rather like the one a client had given me once, only … not quite so nice as that one. ‘I noticed you like things with insects on them,’ he said. I suppose it was partly true; I think there is a butterfly-printed tea towel somewhere in the depths of my kitchen cupboards.

‘Oh, this is lovely,’ I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. Not that I was expecting anything better, or indeed anything at all: he’d been talking about taking a weekend abroad and I considered that gift enough. But it was the sort of thing you might have bought for a young niece, or a girl you didn’t know very well; not for your girlfriend. I wished he’d kept the money and spent it on something else. ‘Just the sort of thing I would have bought for myself,’ I said.

But it was too late, he’d clocked the disappointment. I smiled and pinned the brooch to my shoulder. ‘See? It’s just right.’

jeudi, le 18 novembre

The neighbour is driving me batty. After text mini-argument (he claims too busy to meet; I reply am fine with busy, just can’t take cancellations because I’m busy, too), he stops answering his phone. Resign self to fact that he has bottled out and doesn’t have the guts to tell me. This morning, of course, he texts: lost phone. Okay, willing to forgive. He says he’s free early this week. He came round for breakfast this morning, and we talked about weddings, which Scandinavian country has the cutest girls, and writing books. He was on a pushbike; I was feeling lazy and took the Tube to work instead of the bus.

N says of the neighbour: ‘You know, if he was the woman and you the man, we’d have a term for this, and it would be Cock Tease.’

The Boy came round unexpectedly again last night and I didn’t send him away. He definitely has one thing working in his favour, and that is the sex. The man has a way with a rope, especially the third time, with my wrists and ankles bound, my back on the bed. He knelt on the bed, entered me, pulled my legs towards him so they rested with the backs of my calves on one of his shoulders. I sat up slightly – the way my hands and feet were tied it was difficult not to. When he came, still kneeling, he pulled my legs in to his body, put his hands round my wrists, and picked me up off the bed. He is a lot taller than I am and very strong. A mental image I hope to remember for a very long time.

vendredi, le 19 novembre

Flagrant violation of company policy #5: Using company phones for non-work-related purposes. ‘So how is the City girl,’ Mum asked.

‘Mum, I don’t work in the City.’ Nothing like talking to the parents to bring you straight back to the searing whininess of pubescence.

‘Yes, dear.’ She sounded amused. ‘Will they be giving you much time off at the end of the year, or do they force all the new kids to work through New Year?’

‘I get two weeks off, I think,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of taking the time closer to Chanukah and coming to see you and Daddy for a bit. Work the week between Christmas and New Year.’

‘Oh, honey,’ she said. She sounded so sad. ‘The thing is, and I hate to have to tell you this way, but your father and I are splitting up. So maybe your coming for Chanukah wouldn’t be the best time.’

‘I’ll say. I’m coming up right now.’

samedi, le 20 novembre

Something wrong with the trains; we were transferred to coaches instead about halfway. Ho hum. I don’t mind so much: if you’re not in first class, a train is like being in a coach anyway. But with overpriced tea.

I love the drive north. It gives me a thrill just like it did when I was little, seeing the exit that means home coming closer and closer. The countryside opening up, changing from unrelenting sprawl to discrete cities and villages in rolling fields. Passing the sign for Elland Road and the Royal Armouries, which Daddy and I always called the Royal Ovaries, because at a distance the pictograph looks like a uterus.

dimanche, le 21 novembre

The house, in fact, does not look any different from how it looked last month. ‘I let him have the spare furniture in the extra bedrooms,’ Mum says. ‘He’s living round the corner in a flat at the moment. Do you want me to drive you round to see him?’

No, not yet. I can just about hold it together in front of my mother, but I’ve always been a Daddy’s girl, and the thought of seeing him in some poky rental makes me want to cry. ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ I say. We spend the rest of the day cautiously around each other: it’s the first time we’ve really been alone together, probably since I was a baby.

‘Why did you marry Daddy?’ I ask.

‘He always made me feel safe,’ Mum says. ‘And I knew we would have clever children.’

‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ I say. But I notice she hasn’t said anything about passion, or true love. ‘Did you always know it was going to be him?’

‘When you know, you know. Sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it happens slowly.’

Or not at all, I think. She might as well come out and say, I settled down too early and this was all a mistake and I should have spent the seventies travelling Kashmir with a rucksack rather than raising children in the suburbs, but it can’t be undone. ‘I guess,’ I say. My parents married when they were still students. By the time she was my age, my mother had an eight-year-old daughter – me. ‘Would you have split up sooner if you hadn’t had children?’

‘Don’t be so glum,’ Mum says, squirting dishsoap into the sink with more force than strictly necessary. ‘Your father will always have a place in my heart.’ We finish the washing up in silence. I know about having a place for someone in your heart. That’s where they go when they don’t have a place in your life any more.

lundi, le 22 novembre

Being at home gives you loads of time to think. Luckily, there are upsides as well, as the sheer amount of brainpower I expended in the last forty-eight hours on the subject of relationships could be used to power Leeds for a week.

You may be wondering why on earth I am letting my ex back into my life after everything that happened. To be honest, I wonder why as well. It is probably a lot to do with how well he compares to the neighbour.

Boy:

Sex is reliably good, if perhaps one-track.

Neighbour:

No idea what sex with him is like.

Boy:

Does not know when to go away.

Neighbour:

Does not know when to ring.

Boy:

Lives with insufferable twats (and possibly another woman).

Neighbour:

Lives with girlfriend.

Boy:

Talks loads; says very little.

Neighbour:

Talks loads; impossible to keep up.

Boy:

Riddled with known faults and baggage.

Neighbour:

Most likely riddled with unknown faults and baggage.

Will have to sleep on this one.

mardi, le 23 novembre

I nodded at L in the coffee shop at lunchtime. She was tucked up in a big chair, reading, a pair of oval glasses slipping down her nose in a rather fetching manner. Sometimes I envy people with glasses. Not so much her red hair; I tried that, it doesn’t work on me. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked. ‘Not too badly,’ she said. ‘Having one of those days. I came in and scanned the room, and didn’t see any men worth my time. But now I’m getting annoyed that not one of them is even looking at me.’

I looked around; she was right. Not a single possibility in the room. Not even one you’d sleep with if you were drunk and the lights in the club had just come on and they were playing ‘Time of My Life’. ‘I know that feeling,’ I said. ‘It’s the need to have sex more often.’ ‘Maybe. Or maybe it’s the need to be praised as one of the world’s great beauties.’ L has a hard and fast rule with men: she’s hard, she’s fast, and if they can’t take it she’s not interested.

‘You mean, keep the men in a tight, yet distinctly unbreachable, orbit?’ Oh, to be Garbo.

‘Precisely,’ L said, sipping her tea. The best part of friendship, really, is the little bit of joy I get just thinking that someone like L is out there.

mercredi, le 24 novembre

Flagrant violation of company policy #6: Took a sick day without ringing in until after 10 a.m.

There are risks involved in promiscuity. Some of these involve viruses and I am sorry to announce I have succumbed. I have had a stinking cold since Monday – as best as I can figure, courtesy of the neighbour. My own fault, really. Although I will be dead upset if it turns out he caught it from his girlfriend.

Still, this makes a nice change. When I was a call girl there was almost no chance of taking a sick day. I remember the first time it happened, and I asked the manager if she couldn’t get the punter to reschedule. She said no, and that he didn’t want anyone but me, so I had to go. ‘But what if I give him my cold?’ I whined. ‘Who cares?’ she said. Considering how conscientious we were regarding sexually transmitted infections, I thought her attitude rather ruthless. I dosed myself with as much Day Nurse as I could stand and staggered on, determined to last the two hours without giving him bird flu. It remains the only appointment in which I lied and told the client I didn’t do kissing; what I didn’t say was that it was because I was afraid of giving him my cold. I have no idea whether it’s possible to contract influenza through blowjobs.

BOOK: The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl
11.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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