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Eva’s arm reached out to stroke her husband’s leg. I didn’t have to turn to look at Lars. From the look of love his wife was giving him, I knew his scheme had worked for him as much as for Eva.
Because Lars had hired me as her birthday surprise. On top of the suite at the Dorchester Hotel he’d booked especially. Eva had had no idea I’d be turning up as her extra treat.
The surprise had made things a bit awkward to begin with. I’d been hired before by this pair when they came up to London from Cornwall. But since Eva hadn’t been expecting me, I couldn’t help wondering as I travelled upstairs whether she’d be in the mood. Suppose she was looking forward to a night alone with Lars? Though I was sure I’d be fine once she’d clocked me and realized what was coming to her.
Fortunately, as soon as I’d stepped into the suite, I could tell that we were all on the same page. Lars had made sure of that.
‘Ta-da!’ he’d announced, raising his glass of champagne to his wife: ‘My present to you, darling. Luke. For you to unwrap.’
I’d bowed as dashingly as I could. ‘Happy Birthday, Eva,’ I’d beamed.
She’d made a point of looking me up and down, the smile creeping up her face topped by the sheer lust blazing from her eyes.
‘Just what I’ve always wanted,’ she’d laughed.
Eva released herself from my hold, slipped out of the bed and crept on to her husband’s lap. Lars enfolded her in a bear hug and buried his face in her coppered brown hair.
Eva was a slight woman in her mid-thirties, with a sleek figure and cute neat ass that just begged a guy to run his hands over its contours. Lars was a few years older than his wife, and far taller than me. I’d presumed that I was doing well as a six-footer. Yet he was lean and must have been close to seven foot, and a brunette like Eva. When we’d first met a month or so ago, I’d been surprised to learn these two were Norwegians. With my blondish hair, I looked more Scandinavian than either of them.
I didn’t want to look as if I was gawping at them entwined in each other, so I stared out of our sixthfloor window towards the shadowy treetops of Hyde Park, shaking in the wind. An image of the Dorchester’s phallic tower flickered through my mind. I smirked to myself. Lars was sure making a statement when he’d booked this place for our rendezvous.
I’d done the job I’d been hired for—to be hors d’oeuvre to Lars’s main course. I collected my clothes, nodded my ‘She’s all yours’ at him over her shoulder, and got a grin and a ‘Thanks, mate’ in return. Creeping into the sitting room to dress, I let myself out.
I took the lift down to the ground floor, satisfied that I’d left a couple of clients pleased with my service. Happy Birthday to you, doll!
I checked my watch as I hotfooted it across the lobby. It had just turned midnight and I needed to get home. There were people milling around the reception area but I took no notice. I’d pick my scooter up from round the side of the hotel and head back to my bed. I’d had a run of late nights this past week and needed to catch up on the zeds.
I stepped out of the main doors behind a glamorouslooking couple who were being snapped by a barrage of paparazzi. As I turned left out of the hotel, I took a quick look back. I instantly recognized the two of them. She was Shelley Yates, an American movie starlet who I’d read in yesterday’s paper was in town for the release of her new film. And on her arm was Guy Raynor, an English pop star who was last year’s cool thing and sure needed the publicity now. You couldn’t tell if the pairing up meant anything to either of them, but they were milking the attention for all they were worth.
Good luck to ’em.
But I was too damn tired to desire such sparkle at this time of night. I walked away from the cameras, down the side road, stepped onto my scooter and was away from there.
As far as I was concerned, Sunday was meant for lounging around, maybe watching the football on the box in the afternoon. I’d benefited from my lie-in and was in the mood for not doing very much at all.
The Girls seemed to have the same idea—I could hear them pottering around as I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt and cut across the hall to make myself some brunch.
Carrie was sitting at the kitchen table, the dregs of her own breakfast strewn around her. She’d pushed her plate and the jars of jam and marmalade out of her way and was engrossed in her Sunday redtop.
I started to prepare my own breakfast, putting bread in the grill and cracking a couple of eggs into the pan. Carrie looked up from her paper as I hovered beside the oven.
‘You had another night on the tiles? I didn’t hear you come in last night.’
I was unsure whether this was Carrie’s way of finding out my business. Since I’d moved in earlier in the month, I’d managed to fob my three new flatmates off about what I actually got up to, but I was very aware that that was going to be more difficult to get away with the longer I lived here. But for now, I was prepared to put that aside and only cross that awkward bridge when I came to it.
‘Oh, I can assure you I came in last night!’ I grinned.
‘Clubbing, were you?’
‘Oh, I had a night of it, y’know,’ I lied.
I decided to shift her focus away from me. ‘What about yourself, Carrie? Were you and the girls out larging it?’
‘You bet,’ she moaned, clutching her head in mock pain.
‘The others are still paying for it, I’m afraid, so no bashing any pots and pans when you’re putting together your fry-up, thanks.’
‘No worries,’ I replied, focused on the two eggs crisping round the edges just the way I liked them.
I sat down opposite Carrie with my breakfast and poured myself a mug of tea.
‘Anything happening in the world today?’
I was more interested in the back page, but I knew that the girls never read that far. Carrie flapped the front pages back and forward.
‘No X Factor scandal today, I’m afraid,’ she mused.
‘God, I don’t know what the world’s coming to!’ I spluttered. ‘What, have they got a blank front page or something?’
She flipped a wry grin across at me: ‘Might as well be, eh?’
None of us took the paper seriously. It was light relief of a Sunday. Hangover reading. But then again, the tabloids did help me keep in touch with who was in and who was out in celeb land—and that couldn’t but help me in my work. Especially some of the circles I found myself in. If only to massage some famous person’s ego by not looking blank when they told me what TV show they’d been on or pop group they were in. Not that I could let on to my new flatmates about that.
I let Carrie get on with reading and laid into my fry-up. God, there was something about a good English breakfast that set the world to rights whatever was in the news.
Carrie got up from her seat. ‘I need to shake the girls up. We’re off shopping this afternoon. You want to read the paper?’
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled through my full mouth.
She left me to finish off my breakfast alone.
I pushed my empty plate away and dragged the paper across the table towards me. I turned the pages without looking too closely at anything. My mind wasn’t ready for any proper news. I wasn’t up to looking at much more than the pictures, to be honest.
I stopped at the celeb pages. They snapped people coming out of the same nightclubs and restaurants that a good number of my clients hung out at. I focused on the photos, though I wasn’t taking a lot in. My head was still throbbing. And then a picture of a young woman and a guy managed to get my attention through the haze of my half-asleep brain.
Those two last night! Shelley Yates and Guy Raynor.
That brought me to my senses quick-smart. I took a closer look. They were standing in front of the Dorchester. For a second, I was back leaving the foyer through the glass door to be met by the paparazzi shield.
Oh fuck. No.
The thought hit me before I saw the truth in the photo. If they were being shot just as I was coming out, then chances are the paps had caught me too.
Panicking slightly, I smoothed out the page to take a closer look. Right first time. There was me at the back of the photo, heading out of the doors to my scooter round the corner. Only from where anyone else was sitting reading the paper at this time of the day, it appeared that I was part of Shelley and Guy’s entourage.
A wave of cold fear swept over me. Suppose someone out there who knew me—one of my clients, say, who definitely knew what I might be doing coming out of a top hotel around midnight—saw this picture, put two and two together and made five? And then all they needed to do was phone up the same paper and let them know about The Celeb Couple’s Appointment with The Hooker.
Oh God.
It wouldn’t take too many steps for the path to lead to my door. And my cover to be well and truly blown. And, God knows, in those sorts of stories it was always the escort or call girl who came off worst.
I closed my eyes for a second, half hoping that the picture would have disappeared when I opened them again. But it hadn’t, and Kirstie was breezing into the kitchen.
‘Morning, Luke,’ her voice rang out, crashing into my dread.
I rallied, turned over the page, and greeted her with a sunny, ‘And a good morning to you too!’, silently praying that she hadn’t spotted my unease when she entered the room.
I sipped at my tea and tried to read the rest of the paper as she busied herself around me. My mind was elsewhere. Even the sports pages didn’t do it for me. All I could think of was the photograph and me hovering in the background, just asking to be identified.
Kirstie sat down with her bowl of cereal. She ate a spoonful, and reached across for the paper.
‘You finished with this?’ she asked, her mouth full of cornflakes.
‘Yup,’ I replied, ‘not that there’s anything worth reading this morning.’
I felt sick with nerves. There was nothing I could do. The morning paper always did the rounds of the flat of a Sunday. It wasn’t my paper to snatch away and hide in my room—its absence would have been noticed. And if I’d simply removed the celeb spread, that would have been noticed too. It was the page we all turned to.
That hit me. Carrie must have seen the pages before I’d even entered the kitchen. Had she seen me? Surely not. If she had done, she’d have mentioned it to me, wouldn’t she?
My mind was a mixture of horror and worry. The shock of seeing myself in the paper. The fear of my cover being blown. The trouble that would cause. The Girls recognizing my picture. The questions they would ask. What if, what if…? All I could hope was that Carrie hadn’t seen the photo, and Kirstie wouldn’t. If any of the Girls did pick me out, then all I had to do was lie.
They had no idea of my business, so all I had to do was say I was there because I was visiting someone from home. A distant relative, or someone like that.
I would have to think on my feet, but sitting here, fearing the worst, was no help to me. I stood up from the table.
‘I’ve got to sort myself out for the day,’ I smiled. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’
I left the room only hoping that all the damage that picture could do would remain in my imagination.
Gray
Early March
Gray had his hand around his pint and was staring intently at the picture in the paper. He looked across at me and screwed up his eyes as if he was really taking me in, looked back down again and shook his head a couple of times. Then he picked up his beer and took a couple of gulps. Gray was playing for time, keeping me in suspense, in that way he had.
‘Come on,’ I laughed. ‘Give it to me. What do you think?’
‘It’s definitely you, all right,’ he teased, setting his glass back down on the table.
I rolled my eyes in mock exasperation. ‘I knew that! But do you think I’m likely to be found out?
That was the crux of why I’d called him up. The paparazzi shot had got under my skin, and the only person I knew who’d help me make sense of it was Gray. As the manager of my ‘Satisfaction with Luke’ website, he knew exactly what I was about. There was no having to explain myself with him.
He half whistled out of the side of his mouth. ‘That’s a hard one. It’s a possibility, of course.’
‘Isn’t everything?’ I countered, as I picked up my beer glass to take another swig.
‘True. My point is, there’s a strong chance nothing’ll happen.’
‘And if it does?’
‘Cross that bridge when you come to it, mate. And never admit guilt or shame. That’s what the bastards want, y’know.’
He set down his glass hard on the table, signalling that that was the end of it.
Gray wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t expected, or already thought about myself. But it helped to have him reflect it back to me. And to have someone listen to my worries.
Let’s face it, it wasn’t as if I could talk to my flatmates about my escort work. They were the very people I feared would find me out. It was just too early days for them to know my business and, anyhow, why should they need to? As long as I paid my bills on time and was friendly enough, surely that was all that mattered?
It was as if Gray was reading my thoughts. ‘Have the Girls seen this? They know about what you do, right?’
I nervously ran my fingernail against the table edge, filing a groove. Certainly it did concern me that the wider world might find me out. Because should I ever get mixed up in some scandal or other, there wouldn’t be too many steps between my identity being made known here in Britain and it being picked up by the expat Aussie press and beamed home for my friends and family to read. That’s not what I wanted at all.
But my more immediate worry was that Carrie and the others might find out. And where would that leave me?
‘They don’t know?’ gasped Gray, his pint held in mid-air on the way to his mouth. ‘What the fuck do they think you’re doing?’
‘Oh come on, Gray. Why the hell would I want to tell them about the escort work? I’m getting paid for sex, for God’s sake!’
He had a broad grin across his face. ‘Exactly! So what’s your problem?’
I laughed along with him. Both of us knew exactly what I was getting at. It might have been fine for us guys to make light of the way I made my living. After all, it was most blokes’ dream. But there were plenty of other people who just didn’t get it. God, in this country, most people still believed prostitution was illegal.
But it wasn’t just that. The idea of someone they knew being involved went way beyond most people’s imaginings, and I couldn’t be sure how my three female flatmates would respond to having a hooker in their midst. I didn’t want to risk things, especially so early in my tenancy. I’d only just got here. I’d hate to have all the hassle of moving out again any time too soon.
Gray was frowning, as if he’d just thought of something. ‘What do you tell them, then? Y’know, about the countless phone calls. And especially the overnighters?’
I gave him a massive grin in return. ‘I’m an Aussie guy in London, Gray. What else would I be doing?’ I raised my glass to him and we chinked like a high-five.
Not that I put it so bluntly to the Girls, of course. They raised an eyebrow at how often my BlackBerry went off, but I just shrugged it off by hinting at my amazing popularity with their compatriots out there. I’m not sure they completely believed me.
Or whether Gray was convinced, come to that.
‘And they’re OK with that?’
‘Seem to be,’ I shrugged.
He gave a low whistle through his teeth: ‘And you’re shacked up with those three too. It’s women all the way with you, isn’t it? God, I wish I was in your shoes, Luke!’
I set my half-full pint down on the table: ‘I bet you do!’
It was funny how the guys I knew made such a big deal of me being the only bloke in my flat. I mean, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have sex on tap. What difference would three more babes make to me? When I’d just moved in, just before my Aussie mates had left for home, they’d been the same as Gray. Not believing my fucking luck. None of them seemed to get that I didn’t see Carrie, Kirstie or Laura like that. They were just mates. Good fun to have around, but anything beyond that wasn’t top of my agenda.
Not that I completely ruled out a drunken fumble some time with one or other of them—a wild night that we’d look embarrassed about in the cold, hungover light of the next morning. Never say never. It wasn’t that I was planning anything of the sort. It was just…Three of them, one of me; a statistical probability at some point in the future. Surely.
But I could see where Gray was coming from. The Girls’d be certain to get curious about what I got up to some day soon. And end up asking questions I needed to have answers to.
I’d been on good terms with enough women to find out that they were open about their own relationships and sex lives amongst themselves. If I wasn’t too careful I could see myself getting caught in the crossfire—being forced to open up about my own relationship status.
