Fishnet Read online

  ‘Why would I move from the flat? It’s my flat. We’ll be paying off the wedding for a while yet, and then we’re going to need to start saving for children. It’s home. Listen, I’ve not got long, and you didn’t come all the way to the top of a ski slope just to find out how I’ve been doing.’

  ‘Right. Sorry. Ehm. This is probably just paranoia on my part. Actually, of course it is. Sorry. But being back up here has been strange. I just thought - and I don’t want this to sound like an accusation – I just – thinking it over, was there, maybe, something you didn’t tell us? At the time? Just maybe to save our feelings?’

  She blew air out of her nostrils, stared straight at me. There was no trace of a thought process on her face; the thing she was about to tell me had been decided as soon as she saw me clambering off that chairlift. Maybe even sooner, when her husband had texted.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to say this in front of your Mum and Dad. I don’t want to say this to you, actually, but I will cause you’re here.’

  A couple of seconds, then it came out in a harsh whisper.

  ‘Your sister was. Was, eh. She was turning tricks from my flat. That’s why I threw her out.’

  ‘Turning –?’

  ‘Having sex with men. For money. You know.’

  There was breath between us, hot breath. Slightly sour. She spoke the rest very quickly, looking into her tea.

  ‘I thought at first she was just having a lot of men back and I didn’t like it but I didn’t think it was my place to, ah, judge. Ha. Although I couldn’t work out how she was managing to pay the rent after she got fired from the pub. But anyways, I didn’t twig until I was sent home sick from work one day and there was a. A man in the sitting room. With his thing.’

  Christina’s tiny sitting room, its functional, cheap uplighters. How ordinary and dull a room it was, how unsexy.

  I could still hear her talking, though.

  ‘Anyways, it turned out she was advertising. She’d been taking out adverts! It wasn’t just something she’d done for tips with a couple of guys she’d met in the bar or anything, not that that would have been excusable – I don’t know, maybes that’s how it started – but by the time I caught her she was advertising in the local paper and on the internet! On web forums! High demand, cause she was the only one, eh, servicing the tourists, but only working while I was out the house! It was my house, Fiona. My. House. I had to bleach everything. I got cleaners in, professional cleaners, and I moved in with a friend until it was done. Everything.’

  ‘Ah –’

  You’re in shock, I thought. This is shock. I actually put it in those terms to myself. While I was doing that, I asked the only question I could cope with.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell this to the police, Christina? It could have helped us find her. They could’ve tracked her online. We could have got them to look at arrest records or something.’

  ‘Look, I understand that you want to find your sister, and that that’s your main concern.’ Her voice had been very tightly controlled, but suddenly she let it go, that tiny whisper pissing through the room.

  ‘She was using my flat as an- an effing hoorhouse. I thought they’d think it was me, too, that I was her – pimp. I mean, I own that flat. I own that flat and I took her in when she bloody rocked up on my doorstep in tears, and she- She put my entire livelihood in danger, that dirty – hooker! After we’d been friends for years- oh, god, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Please don’t – look. I’m sorry for you, for your family, Fiona. But I just couldn’t. Still can’t. Sorry. I’m really sorry.’

  City

  These were not the women I was looking for. These bosoms, matronly and welcoming, these round backsides, puckered flesh spilling out and around suspender belts. These knowing winks from eyes beginning to wrinkle at the corners, these bodies that weren’t slim, or that young, or toned. These were vocal women, mainlining opinions and their own businesses through their blogs, on Twitter, organising themselves in unions, advising each other, protesting their rights.

  They didn’t tally with the story I had in my head. I went further, searched deeper into recommendations. I wanted younger women, women my sister’s age or less, women looking frightened, coerced, or just gone. Women who were being wronged by the system. Girls. I wanted girls, who men were using, girls who were doing this out of desperate necessity.

  I can find all these things, of course. Anyone can find anything they want, instantly, any story they want to believe in, any pictures they need to see. It’s all there. Almost.

  I’d had this picture in my head of Rona prowling round the streets, one of those ghosts dropping condoms outside my office, but that doesn’t seem to be how it happens these days. All you need is internet access and a picture with your face pixelated out.

  Just a couple of clicks and I’m back in the right narrative again. I’ve found a forum where the girls and men both go, where the girls advertise themselves and the men critique them. Where be dragons. Where be young women photographed from behind, a lipsticked grimace and a splayed, waiting arsehole on every individual profile. Where be punters, and the opinions of punters. Field reports, they’re called.

  Her tits were really disgusting. Once I got the bra off they just sagged all over the place. They were flopping in my face.

  She’s back on the scene after a long break and I’m thinking she must have had a kid cos my god, the stretchmarks on her. Boobs not as pert as I remember either, and it was like a fucking tunnel up there.

  She went down on me and it was alright, but not anything special, and her hand moved on my shaft just mechanically.

  Holly is a real gem, who should only ever be treated like a lady.

  Wow! What a technique! And that’s all I’ll say ha ha. Afterwards we cuddled for a nice long stretch. I certainly didn’t get the idea that she was a “clock watcher” or anything like that.

  I eventually fucked her doggy while trying to ignore the disgusting smell coming from her fanny. But then the most repulsive thing hapened, my cock was suddenly covered in blood. It even ran all over my sheets!!!! She said she didnt know she was due well poor excuse if you ask me, how can you not know??? It was like something out of a horror movie!!!

  She’s also a great conversationalist, can talk about any subject really well.

  It says on her blog she likes to wear boots and so I was pleased to see she’d come dressed in them and her fishnet stockings, just like I’d asked. She has the most beautiful legs, too.

  We did it twice: i was so anxious about pleasing her that I maybe finished a little bit quickly the first time, fortunately Angela is a lady and was very nice about it, and let me go down on her for some time. She certainly seemed to enjoy herself, too, she’s a real sexual adventuress.

  Tiffany is a really sweet girl. Now I truly understand the meaning of “girlfriend experience”. I’ll be back.

  XXX

  By the time I left the office, it was dark outside. The station is at the top of the hill, the concrete felt treacherous, slippery in the rain. We’d all had to stay late, cover for work lost in the protest mess, and I realised I’d missed my window for leaving before the transfer happened. These streets were no longer my place.

  It was the first time I’d seen it happen up close, though. The woman walking across the road from me, skinny jeans, eyes ringed and her hair up in a high band, the tail twitching as she walked, hitting her shoulders. Probably not even nineteen. Her limbs were thin, very very thin. A car pulled alongside her; she looked, indicated her head round the corner to a lane with a dead end. The car blinkers turned smoothly and she carried on, catching up with it without ever breaking her stride, although she looked over her shoulder at me. Alley cat flexing and spitting on a wall.

  Oh.

  Even the click of my heels on the concrete was full of meaning, suddenly, the noise of them. Another set of footsteps cut over my beat. Speed up, head down, grip knuckles round my handbag. Keys in my other fist,
in my pocket, ready to strike at someone’s face, but it passed.

  I’d got halfway up when headlights smeared the wet tarmac ahead and around me, the noise of brakes cranking together at my back. The car made warm animal noises as it pulled in, waited for me.

  Me. The fucking cheek of it. Me in my work clothes, my plain trousers and heeled boots, my fitted coat. Me, a woman in this area, a woman who works here. Did the very fact of my being female and in this patch of real estate after dark mean that they think I’m-

  The car purred sexily, a hot gust on my legs, and a sudden bad bit of me thought, what if I did it? What if I turned round to meet this car, the man inside, leaned in at the window? What if I got in, pulled my trousers down to my knees, climbed on top? In one minute, if I wanted to, I could have had a stranger’s cock inside me.

  Instead, I broke into a run, up the hill. The scuttle of an outraged, virtuous member of society. Every noise in the dark, every shadow on the empty platform once I’d made it to the train station was a threat. I’d shrunk my muscles in on myself, tense up and wait the train out, those agonising seventeen minutes counting down in yellow computer font on the screen. It was a fright when the recorded monotone began, in an itchy burst of static:

  The train now approaching

  Platform two

  Is the

  Seven

  Twenty-three

  To

  Helensburgh

  The car hadn’t followed me.

  I took my bag and coat off at the door, put my shoes in their place on the rack, began the sort of comforting bustle that helps the brain short-circuit back to home mode. Mum nodded at me from the sofa, began to gather her things, retreat back to the flat downstairs.

  ‘She’s asleep?’

  ‘Like a light. About half an hour ago.’

  ‘Great. Thanks. She wasn’t any trouble?’

  ‘No, no.’

  She made her way to the door. I heard it close. Beth was pouting in her sleep. I propped her door a little more ajar and moved to the computer, without really thinking. You want to know a thing, you type it into a white, blinking space.

  prostitute scotland

  And now the clock says 02:14. I’m probably going to be late for work tomorrow again. I take my clothes off and the mirror looks at me, red eyes, faded cotton pants around its ankles, and I’m not sure what I was supposed to do with that, so I go to bed.

  Do you remember the first time?

  Early forties. Thin, short, unhemmed like his edges had been gnawed. Something feral about him, but not bad looking. Not really.

  I’d thought he would be ugly. Old and fat and ugly. I’d thought about fucking someone repulsive, fantasised about rolled lolloping flab that’d shake as he shagged, kept my fingers and brain in place on the transaction, the power, tried to train myself into it.

  Old skin touching me.

  Instead, just this little vulpine man, smell of dead smoke off him. His mouth was dry, smacked as he opened it to say hi, white flecks in the corners.

  I said hi back, and he let me in.

  Just two of us in a room, a very ordinary hotel room. ‘I’m Jimmy,’ he said. Irish.

  ‘RXXX,’ I said. (That was the name I used, when I was starting out.)

  ‘Yeah – I guessed.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘So.’

  That’s when I realised it was my job to break through this. My job, this, to ease him out of the nerves, to take his hand through it. Maybe it was his first time too.

  All I had to do was smile at him, and say, in that voice like it was a normal thing to say:

  ‘So. Shall we discuss services?’

  And I smiled at the end, a little bit, like we both knew how awful a thing it was, to have to ask, to have to reduce it down to money.

  ‘Just the basics, please. Just the hour.’

  The words flat, no expression.

  He handed me an envelope without me having to ask.

  It probably wasn’t his first time.

  My phone rang, before I could check the amount.

  ‘I’ll just need to –’

  ‘Of course,’ he said again.

  No, not his first time.

  ‘So?’ she said, down the line.

  And I thought, well, I’m not sure. It was something you were supposed to know, by instinct, she’d said.

  Well, my instincts weren’t telling me to run, but they weren’t telling me anything at all. I was just in a room with this expressionless man, and he was skinny.

  ‘I’m here, and it’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Okay. I’ve got the hotel on speed dial anyway,’ she said. ‘Two rings as soon as the hour’s up. And good luck, my honey.’

  If my instincts had been telling me anything, the code was ‘I’m here, and he’s really lovely.’

  We both stood there in the silence again, and I remembered that this was also part of my job.

  ‘Give me two seconds,’ I said, taking a step towards the bathroom, ‘while I go and change into something, eh –’

  ‘Just do it here,’ he said, gesturing to a space on the floor. ‘I’d like to see you undress.’

  I was thinking, I haven’t been able to count the money yet. I was thinking, I haven’t done the lube yet.

  He sat down on the bed, looking at me, and I stood in front of him, and pulled at the zip on my dress. It stuck for the first few seconds, and I had to wrestle with it, trying to keep smiling, swaying my hips a little to distract him. Cheap fucking thing. It came, eventually, and I let it swish down around me, stepped out of it. See through panties and a half balcony bra, so this man, this stranger was now pretty much seeing me naked.

  He didn’t say anything, his face didn’t change, but he unzipped the front of his trousers and pulled himself out, already mostly hard.

  ‘Would you like me to suck your cock?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m right in thinking I don’t need to wear a condom?’

  ‘Not for oral, no,’ I said, like that was what I always said.

  Eyes closed, and it’s just like giving any other blowjob. Could be someone I’d met in a bar. Could be a new boyfriend. I was touched that he’d washed it.

  We spoke in these clipped, formal sentences, both of us. Like neither of us were there for the conversation, so what was the point in pretending? Made sense. He helped me in a way, that wee skinny Irishman, because my response would have been to crack jokes, to ease things through a bit. And of course, with some clients you can do that, and it’s great, but the first time, this one, he helped me pare everything right down, establish a rhythm and a way of being in the room. It wasn’t a kindness to me, he was just a customer, waiting for a service; I was the provider, that was the point.

  It didn’t occur to me until afterwards that I’d crossed over, that I’d actually done it, that I was now not one of us.

  Anyway. Ooh. Yowza, has this blog got serious, right? For being such good and patient little pervs, you can have a sneak preview of my new panties. I do love my bum.

  Tags: clients memories irish outcalls | Comments (3)

  Two

  Back

  The first time I noticed what Rona could do was the year after the divorce. Mum was renting out the house while she travelled; Dad had moved to a tiny suburb on the outside of the city. The sort of place that had probably once been a village in its own right, co-opted into the city by bypasses and Tescos and housing schemes.

  It was February, the air was sharp and good for you; we’d just started having to put an extra jumper on under our coats. Thirteen. She was thirteen, for fucksake, probably hadn’t even started her periods yet (not that I’d know).

  There were five of us at my school who lived out that way, the only ones. Me and Rona, Jenna Anderson in the fifth year and her wee brother, and Malcy Lamont. If we made it in time, which we usually didn’t, we could catch the school bus, the one put on by three city centre schools for a disparate bunch: kids fr
om village schemes and the part-timers staying with the parent who made less money.

  Anyway, that day we were on time; weren’t going to shamble shamefaced into first period as usual to everyone mock-tutting, James Gibson pointing and going oooooh! Crossed the road and I went to grab her hand out of instinct. She glared right up at me.

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ she hissed. ‘And there’s no bloody traffic.’

  Screw her. I was in a good mood that day. We sat down in the wee shelter and I leaned out the one window where someone had punched the scratched Plexiglas away completely, grinned up the hill, still a bit heathered, the sky above it blinking off the last of the sunrise.

  Rona was thirteen, but she already had more chest than I’d ever get. Not that I knew that at the time, still clinging to old Judy Blume tales of hope and late development. Even in uniform I was nobody’s fantasy of a schoolgirl; I’ve never really worked out how to stand. But this was the day I realised it.

  Dad lived at the last stop before the bus turned and ploughed down the bypass. It usually filled up at the five earlier stops and we almost never got a seat together. Not that Rona would mind that day. After a few seconds she got up and marched down to the verge, glaring into the road, hood of her duffel coat pulled up in the sunshine, shooting the odd glare back at me. Still all pissed off because I’d tried to take her hand. Oh, get over it, you stupid kid, I muttered at her in my head.

  Just the two of us there, that day. Looking up the hill again, I saw him coming.

  Malcy Lamont. He was in my year, but we never spoke. What would we say? He’d been in trouble ever since he arrived, just turned up one day about six weeks into second year. I think it was just the way he looked at the teachers, default expression of solid, nasty insolence. Eyes deep set with a shock of long fantasy girl’s eyelashes, greasy gingery curtains over a round head, fat lips always wet and half open. Not sixteen and already sexed, sizing the female teachers up when they told him off, just standing up there, itemising them – breasts, legs, back up to the crotch, where he stopped – till they backed down, every one. There were whispers about who he’d poked round the back of the science building, who had let him get three or even four fingers up, who he’d gone all the way with. Nobody really mentioned whether the girls had had much say in the matter. It was Malcy Lamont. He just happened. My plain girl’s invisibility cloak didn’t work on him, either – I’d had to pass him in the corridor on the way to PE once and he’d put his arm up, not let me through till he’d had a good, slow look. No words. Just letting me know that he would, if he felt like it. You dreaded getting anywhere near him during country dancing, in the progressive numbers, but you dreaded it silently.