Undercover: The Adventures of a Real Life Gigolo
Undercover: The Adventures of a Real Life Gigolo
Luke Bradbury
When young Aussie Luke Bradbury finds himself alone, broke and out of ideas in London, things look desperate. Until he spots a temping ad. Lured by the promise of easy money – and the chance to bed as many women as he can handle – Luke becomes a gigolo. It’s a job millions of men would kill for.Luke quickly learns all there is to know about women in his quest to give them the ultimate pleasure, climbing inside their heads as well as their beds.But all too soon, Luke discovers the darker side of his lucrative new profession. Is he selling his soul as well as his body?
LUKE BRADBURY
Under Cover:
The Adventures of a Real Life Gigolo
With Catherine von Ruhland
To ‘Pretty’ for all your love and support.
Contents
All In A Day’s Work (#ueae71a15-d2b8-5e19-90e0-a113c5daec99)Beginnings (#ub9edb8d3-1dd1-549b-b153-d99a68a8ad44)Jenny (#uc3e6825a-229a-5948-accb-7daac4da9c5f)Clare (#u708d7d48-6faa-5366-ae62-c335e0a3a2ec)Louise (#uc31767a0-7c2f-5edf-9c35-aad967e0425b)Jenny Again (#u541cc8f3-1f04-58b6-8015-7f9e15060d85)Sasha Plus One (#u4ece5c08-a8d6-5d41-9b91-18ba2d1d110e)Mark (#u5fd1cbc5-6305-5b43-bd72-9fe8b0cc8a96)Adele (#u86d83891-8e53-561b-ac09-36751d231a57)Cyan (#ub4d6c814-179c-56be-b6aa-b3454de27220)Stagz (#u592f1057-6004-5d3d-9d93-6108abf00a69)Janice (#u3e68760b-aa92-5bd6-896e-5bcd10770deb)Mae (#u02a0b1bb-521b-5435-94d5-1dd34481f9b6)Shelley (#u1799843b-a281-5aa3-99c2-e3198d5f8b90)Sasha (#u2d35d858-6ca6-56d3-9bd2-a1e69af4042f)Fiona And Martin (#ua3836a44-0421-503e-86f7-812fd4a3a63f)Giselle And Friends (#u62fc115d-e1a0-5ca4-b9f7-8d566a71c450)Mae Again (#u1b183af4-3ae4-545f-84e6-c3937df90894)Sasha Farewell (#ub5995706-9b2d-5e29-9c25-deadf3161041)More Stagz (#u546fd6b9-c945-5118-b467-351c58e831bb)Emma And Louise (#u057f8317-69cf-59ee-a203-7b03810bf564)Bob And Deborah (#u69fd9abd-621a-518f-bbbb-c8183a65548c)Out With Mae (#uc7f515aa-b1e3-5813-8c8e-2d330d7aec99)Back Home (#ue13051fa-3be0-53b8-81fc-af936547ff77)Sheena (#u47ecb5a4-c5e5-5efe-8af3-efd3a03d5a74)Graham (#u04880246-1ecd-5fe0-bf07-68dc9e78229d)Ralph, Cindy And Us (#uff299987-b3ef-59a0-ba93-9df1a69aa4a7)Myleene (#u3853ad4e-1140-57af-aa99-6a8a49d21a73)David And Charley (#ue2953f0f-063b-51ef-ac71-ee6030e532e8)Ralph And Cindy’s Private Island (#u551c9be8-10a4-5903-b28b-749abc05ecbc)Helen (#u362cef20-c86b-53a9-8023-af6fd7f4157d)Original Titles from Mischief (#u719937c9-ef5c-52f3-8503-b1600471afdb)Acknowledgments (#u5e318cda-03bc-50e4-8b5c-9b6b680a8b74)About the Author (#ude2f7daf-d896-5985-864d-bf61c58da257)Copyright (#ua1027eb7-3e6a-5ae6-9434-6e1b647ab89c)About the Publisher (#u506c9639-9999-5aa7-88d2-bd525fb86f34)
All in a day's work (#uf92b4f6a-13f8-5322-8824-4351d4bbb0fe)
For fuck’s sake, how much longer? Ring the bell, you bastard!
There’s me and this gorgeous girl at it on the floor. Carrie or Emily or something, I can’t remember her name. It’s a bit of a blur by number six. It’s not as if she isn’t good at what she does. She’s been hired, after all, same as me. So she knows all the moves and is fit to boot. It’s just I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. Literally.
I’m trying my hardest. And both of us are into our stride. Hammer and tongs, wearing the creaking floor away. It’s like we’re swimming together in our sweat, our damp bodies sawing against each other. We’re barely coming up for air, and a strand of her long blonde hair is in my mouth, and everything else is drowned out except for our panting, heavy breathing and thumping heartbeats.
And all I yearn for is the tiny silver jingle of the bell, held between Brian’s index finger and thumb. He’s silent. Watching us.
When he finally shakes it, satisfied, both of us collapse, dead spent. As we catch our breath, Brian comes out from behind the curtain and tosses us both bathrobes. I help the girl to her feet, my arm around her narrow shoulders.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ she mouths through a half-smile, catching her breath. She’s pretty. She must be about twenty-three. Same as me.
‘Luke, you stay here a while,’ Brian instructs, tightening the belt of his dressing gown. ‘Emma, come with me.’
Emma. That was it.
Brian guides her out of the room. I look at her go, her bare legs glistening.
As they leave the room, Emma turns to me. ‘Nice meeting you, Luke. See you again, maybe.’
‘You too, Emma.’
Maybe.
I stand there, waiting. A short while later, the front door slams shut, and I head to the bathroom and wash Emma off my skin. The warm jet of water is like a curtain between her and the next one.
Is that it for tonight?
I step out of the shower and dry myself down and wrap myself in the bathrobe again. I like the feel of its softness against me. I’m still tying it up when I enter Brian’s lounge again. He pulls his armchair out from behind the curtain and sits low down in it, his legs stretched out before him. He raises his beer bottle to me.
‘Cheers!’
‘Bloody hell, Brian, I thought you were never going to ring that damn thing!’
‘I thought you enjoyed sex,’ he teases.
I sit down in the other armchair across the room, and pick up the open bottle that’s been sitting there since before Emma arrived.
‘Up to a point. It’s easy for you. You don’t have to put the effort in.’
‘Guys your age are supposed to be gagging for it!’ he smirks.
I lift the beer bottle to my lips and knock some back before answering.
‘Well, yeah,’ I laugh, ‘but even so. That doesn’t mean I don’t need to come up for air!’
My muscles silently scream in agreement.
With Brian, I gave as good as I got. We’d built up a rapport since I’d started working for him. Let’s face it, we’d had to. Because although he hired both me and some girls, we weren’t all there on an equal footing. Because Brian was a voyeur. Which, I suppose, made me his Tester.
Brian had once hired me as many as twelve girls in one night. He would call me early evening and we’d have a drink together, and then he’d phone for a girl for me. And the bell was his method of communication, of control. If he wanted the sex to stop, he’d ring the bell. It might be after twenty minutes, it might be after five. She’d go, I’d stay, have another break, and then Brian would phone the agency for someone else for me. And a quarter of an hour later there’d be another girl on the doorstep.
Brian never joined in. All he wanted to do was hide behind the curtain and watch. And whatever else he got up to back there. Everyone gets their kicks some way. Sometimes the sex went on for so long that, like with Emma, I was willing that damn bell to ring. You can have too much of a good thing…
Still, I couldn’t quite believe I was getting paid to do this. My mates would be up of a morning to go to work in offices, schools and cafés, whereas I could lie in bed all day or do whatever I wanted to. Until the evening. When I might have sex with five different girls Brian had selected for me. And earn in that night what my mates would in a week. It was almost too good to be true.
Brian was looking at me. His beer bottle was empty. Mine was still half full and held in mid-air on the way to my mouth. I could tell what he was going to say. He was pushing back the armchair with his bare feet even though he was still sitting in it, even as he was opening his mouth to speak. He held his mobile in the other hand. He’d put the agency number on speed dial so it took no time at all.
‘Right, Luke,’ he said with a wolfish leer. ‘Get ready for number seven.’
Beginnings (#uf92b4f6a-13f8-5322-8824-4351d4bbb0fe)
Early August
‘We’ve been shafted, the bastards!’
Mark spat the words out across the kitchen table. He’d just shown me his bank statement, and the evidence was there in bright red. I looked down into my mug of tea and nodded. I knew what he meant. But the truth was, we well and truly hadn’t been. That was the problem.
‘Meet loads of girls. You’ll be sent out on six dates a week, andmake £90 an hour…’
That was what the freesheet ad for the internet escort agency had promised us—and no doubt hundreds of other guys like Mark and me. Guys with too much male pride and not quite enough money to live on, who just assumed there would be women falling at our feet, and who were mugs enough to fork out £180 to register.
But in the three weeks since the two of us had coughed up our money, not one girl had called for Mark’s services. Nor mine.
I took a sip of my tea and looked across at Mark. It wasn’t even as if either of us was that bad-looking. Not that I’d ever admit I was good-looking. You got a clip for that in my family, for puffing yourself up. I’d been told that I looked a bit like the Spiderman actor, Tobey Maguire. Which was good enough for me. I was six foot tall with dark blond hair that bleached easily in the sun back home in Australia, while Mark’s hair was brown and he was slightly shorter than me. We worked out. Both of us had a reasonable Saturday-night success rate.
Mark shook his head. ‘This is London, for God’s sake. Where are all the girls?’ He took a digestive from the packet upended on the table and bit into it. He had a right to ask. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t seen enough of them falling over each other on any of our weekends out on the piss.
‘Not choosing to call out for a guy, presumably. That’s what blokes do.’
I could see the callbox windows in my mind’s eye, completely covered from floor to ceiling with brightly coloured ‘whorecards’. Blocking out the muted sunlight. That’d been my introduction to England nine weeks ago, dialling my mum to let her know I’d got here in one piece.
‘We can get a number for a girl from any phone box. But they can’t…’ I was working out the problem with our plan as I was saying it.
‘But that’s what the internet’s for!’ Mark spluttered, spraying crumbs. He swept them off the table with his forearm.
I ran a finger along the edge of the pine tabletop until it hit a dent in the wood. I drew my nail again and again through the groove and looked Mark in the eye.
‘Yeah, but they’re not looking because they’re not even aware that there’s a service for them. They take their chances on a Saturday night.’
Mark nodded: ‘Or go without.’
‘Exactly. And even if they knew there were guys they could pay for via their PCs, that doesn’t mean they’d do anything about it.’
I picked up my mug and took another gulp of tea, and thought of the callbox again and all the sex phoneline ads in the freesheets that I’d seen when I was trying to find somewhere to live. That’d been a grim time, sleeping on friends of friends’ grimy floors while all the while I could sense they didn’t really want me there. Sharing a room with Mark in this house for the past month had been a damn sight better than that, even with the beer cans clustered on the floor round the bin from when we hadn’t thrown straight. He’d been looking for someone to make up the rent and I’d seen his ad on Gumtree. It’d helped that the two of us had hit it off as soon as we’d met over a drink. Same small-town Aussie background, I suppose.
‘I mean, have you ever phoned for a hooker?’ I raised my eyebrows at him as I said it.
He shook his head. ‘Course not. As if I need to…’ he crowed.
I put my mug down. ‘Well then.’
And that’s when it hit me. What hadwe been thinking?
There was not even a market for sex with straight guys. Or not one that involved money changing hands. On the girl’s part anyhow.
‘They’ve well and truly buggered us, haven’t they?’ I sighed.
A grin crept up Mark’s face. ‘Thankfully not. And that’s something to be damn grateful for.’
We both laughed, but it couldn’t disguise the fact that each of us was seriously out of pocket. We’d taken a gamble on making easy money and lost.
‘Well, at least we can’t be the only ones who’ve fallen for this scam,’ said Mark. ‘Think about it. There must be hordes of guys across London,’ he continued, flinging his arm out as if to embrace the whole city and not just our poxy kitchen in a crappy area of West London, ‘just like us, weeping into their tea at what might have been!’
I sighed. Surely it was the ultimate part-time job. Screwing girls for cash. We could have waved goodbye to the crummy minimum-wage waiting and bar jobs and selling stuffed pittas while hung over from a stall at Camden Market for friends of friends who always paid shit money. God, London certainly hadn’t turned out to be all it was cracked up to be.
I looked down at my half-full mug and felt the cogs whirring even as he was saying it.
‘Well then, that’s how we make our money back, isn’t it?’ I suggested.
‘What?’
‘Look, there’s clearly enough money out there to make it worthwhile setting up an agency that gets guys to pay to sign on.’
Mark’s face momentarily fell. ‘What, and rip people off just the way we were? Come on.’
Miserably, I nodded. ‘I agree it’s not exactly ethical.’ I thought for a moment. ‘But then it’s not exactly not. What if we were to set up an agency, y’know, advertise our services to women, and ask guys to sign on? The blokes cough up, and of course we’ll give them work if there’s enough going, but we’ll always have first call. What is wrong with that? We can’t lose.’
Mark cocked his head to one side and shook it. But he was also smiling. ‘God, Luke. A couple of months in this country and you’ve turned into a London spiv!’
I smirked back. He raised his mug to mine and we chinked.
My mind was already in overdrive. We’d advertise in the London freesheets. We could do it cheaply, surely. Advertise for clients, and put something on the internet to draw in the men as well. And photos. Me, Mark and the lads, to give the girls something to choose from.
‘Face it, Mark. We’re broke. We might as well make a go of it. We’ve got nothing more to lose.’
I suppose I expected it to happen overnight. But of course it didn’t. And when it didn’t, it meant it didn’t seem real. It was just mates mucking about. Even after I’d spent fifty quid I couldn’t really afford on a box ad in a London magazine; even after we’d put a whole lot of our pictures up on the net. Seven of us had spent an afternoon taking photos of each other, all of us with a big grin on our faces in front of the drawn curtains in our lounge room so it looked like we’d hired a studio or something. So we were able to still kid ourselves that we were only having a laugh.
But we weren’t, were we?
Or, as it turned out, I wasn’t.
The phone rang. Mark and I were lounging on the sofa with our cans of Stella and having our last-night debrief. We looked at each other for a beat, and since he didn’t get up, I did and sauntered across the room.
‘Hi?’
‘Male Escorts Esquire? I saw your advert.’
Shit!
I pulled up a chair and sat down, half out of shock. The name we’d come up with wasn’t the greatest, but it had clearly done its job. I struggled to get my head into gear. She was the first to call—though I wasn’t about to let her know that, of course.
‘Hello, how might we help you?’
What have we got ourselves into?
‘Uh, I’ve never done this before,’ she mumbled. ‘I was wondering if you might be able to send me someone tomorrow evening?’
What was I thinking? I can’t do this. This isn’t for me. That was why I’d volunteered my phone number in the first place, so I could act the receptionist and palm off anyone who rang onto one of the others.
It was one thing to fantasise about girls phoning you for sex, it was quite another to be faced with the sheer reality of going with whoever happened to ask. Suppose she sounded better than she turned out to look? What did you do then?
This one wasn’t too young—I could tell by the tone of her voice—and she was clearly nervous.
Join the club.
I sat up straight on the dining chair and went into professional mode.
‘Is there anyone on the website you liked the look of? Sorry, your name is—?’
Mark’s ears pricked up. He stared across the room at me with excited saucer eyes and a smirk. I shook my head as a sign to him to ease up, and tried to focus on what was being said to me.
‘Jenny,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have a computer.’
Ah, definitely an older woman. Okaay.
‘Nice to talk to you, Jenny, I’m Luke. That’s not a problem. What would you like him to look like? We have a range of young men on our books.’
Mark stifled a guffaw and I shot a glare at him.
‘I’m not—I’m not sure,’ she stuttered.
So, she was indecisive. That wasn’t a problem either. All I had to do was make sure she was satisfied with the service. She didn’t sound as if she could cope with someone too bullish, like Simon, our resident rugby player. She needed a gentleman who wouldn’t frighten her off.
‘You sound nice.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Are you available?’
Fuck!
‘Thank you, Jenny, but, sorry, I’m not.’ I tried to sound calm and friendly though I felt out of my depth. ‘I tell you what, though, I’ll make sure you have a pleasant surprise.’
I took down her details and we said goodbye to each other.
As I put down the receiver, Mark started clapping.
‘Congratulations. You’ve just nailed our very first client!’
‘Yeah, and now we’ve got to decide which of us’ll have her. Will you go?’
I sat down beside him, and picked up my can from the floor.
‘What’s she like?’
‘She sounded old enough to be my mother.’
Mark grimaced.
I laughed. ‘You’ve just discounted Madonna.’
‘Er, yeah.’
‘All angles and humourless. Fair point,’ I agreed. ‘Hang on, I know who.’ I got up again and returned to the phone.
‘What? Who?’ quizzed Mark.
I pressed the buttons and put the receiver to my ear, leaning against the wall. ‘Rob, of course. He’s always game on. For one thing, he could do with the cash.’
‘Well, yeah,’ shrugged Mark. ‘He could always do with the cash. Isn’t that his problem?’
Rob had never quite got the hang of money, especially since his bank seemed so keen to give him more of it whenever he wanted. Except they had now decided to call in the debt. The magic had fallen out of the plastic.
Come on, Rob, I prayed. Pick up, pick up.
He eventually picked up.
‘Hey, Rob. It’s Luke. How’d you like to make a fast buck? We’ve had a client call for an escort and your name came up.’
Flatter the guy.
Across the room, one of Mark’s eyebrows arched up. Rob was up for it too. I could sense his excitement down the line.
‘I tell you what. As this is your first time, forget about the commission and just come back and tell me all about it and buy me a beer.’
I took a swig from my own can, and set it down on the seat of the chair beside me. I couldn’t help noticing that, across the room, both of Mark’s eyebrows were now up his forehead. The sense of that anger was a distraction even as I gave Rob the details. I ended the call, and confronted him.
‘What?’
‘How’s the business supposed to survive if nobody puts any money in the pot?’ he steamed as I sat back down.
‘Aw, I know, but if you can’t help out a mate, eh? Anyhow, it is our first ever call—not that Rob knows that. It won’t happen again.’
We sat in silence and drank our beer. Then Mark grinned, his spirits obviously lifting.
‘God, Luke, we’re officially launched. Can you believe it?’
I smiled and nodded. We high-fived.
Rob called after I’d finished at the café the following evening and was putting together my dinner. I could hear pub clatter in the background and hoped he wasn’t soaking up too much Dutch courage before his assignment.
‘Luke, I’m not sure about this. I don’t know if I can go through with it.’
Don’t get cold feet on me, Rob.
‘Don’t worry about it. Think of it like any other date. You meet, have a drink, you go back to her place…’
I picked at the peeling wallpaper around the phone. A previous tenant had used the plaster to jot down numbers that I sometimes wondered if I should call just for the hell of it.
‘Yeah, but I fancy my dates,’ Rob flung back. ‘What if I don’t fancy her?’
‘Well, that’s where the dosh comes in. Just think about the money!’
I thought of nervous Jenny wanting someone who’d treat her well, who wouldn’t ride roughshod over her. No, it wasn’t justabout the money.
‘Look, Rob, everyone gets nervous their first time. Of course they do. She’ll be just as anxious. Take it easy.’
A slither of wallpaper came away in my hand, and I let it fall to the floor.
‘Did you get nervous, Luke? What was it like?’
I gulped. He had no idea he was the first of any of us to test out our escort scheme.
I evaded the question. On the carpet beneath the phone was a growing pile of peelings that needed a good vacuum. If we’d had a vacuum cleaner.
‘It’s different for everyone. You’ve got to go out there and make your own mark. Be every woman’s dream!’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Rob, not sounding at all confident.
‘You know what to do, of course you do. You’re used to scoring, yeah? Just be a bit more of a gentleman when you go about it.’ On second thoughts: ‘Unless of course she requests otherwise.’
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. That was better.
‘Okay, okay.’
‘Don’t worry. You’ll be fine,’ I reassured him. ‘Just be careful you don’t drink too much beforehand. You want to make a good impression.’
‘Will do.’
‘And I want to hear all about it afterwards. Now, go forth and enjoy yourself.’
When he called back around ten thirty, Rob was clearly back in the pub. He sounded as if he’d won the Lottery.
‘Easiest hundred and fifty quid I ever fucking made,’ he shouted over the bar hubbub.
‘Told you you’d be fine,’ I laughed, caught up in his high spirits.
‘Nah, you’ll never believe it. She didn’t want to go through with it.’
‘No!’ I was gob-smacked.
‘You bet. We met at Dunkin Donuts, like you said. Off Piccadilly. And it lasted about forty minutes and we just had a cup of coffee. And that was it. We never even reached the hotel. And she still paid me!’
The jammy bastard.
‘If it’s that fucking easy, send me out to every woman you get,’ he burbled.
‘If it’s that fucking easy, Rob, I’ll keep them all to myself.’
Jenny called the following week. The only call we received. We weren’t about to make a living out of this game just yet. Nor escape my shifts at the café and the pub anytime soon.
‘Hello, Luke, it’s Jenny.’
My mind went blank for a second. Jenny? I’d been so rushed off my feet with the waiting this week I’d almost forgotten about our advert. But then it all flooded back, and I went into receptionist mode straight away.
‘Hello, Jenny, it’s lovely to hear from you. Rob told me he enjoyed meeting you last week.’
Didn’t he just.
‘He was very nice.’
‘See, I told you I’d give you a pleasant surprise,’ I boasted.
‘Yes, thank you. Um…’
There was an awkward silence. I jumped in feet first. This was a business we were running, after all.
‘Is there anything we can do for you? Perhaps you’d like to see him again?’
When she spoke next, her voice was halting and quiet:
‘The thing is, Luke, I’d like to meet you.’
You fucking bet. Rob’s just made one hundred and fifty quid.Count me in.
‘Is that allowed?’
This time I was ready. But first I had to cover myself so Jenny didn’t start wondering why the last time she called I was just the receptionist.
‘Well, Jenny, as it happens, we do have a policy when there’s a run on the boys.’ Like heck we do. ‘We’d hate to leave any of our clients waiting.’
‘So we can meet?’ There was a hopeful girlishness to her voice.
‘Certainly, Jenny.’
I began mentally spending the money on some decent jeans, a couple of CDs, and putting something towards the phone bill. The calls back home cost a bomb. And she’d even be paying for the coffee!
‘Oh, I’m so glad. Because this time I want to go through with it. I want you to make love to me, Luke.’
There was a screech of brakes in my head.
Just my fucking luck.
‘When would you like me to visit? And if I could take your address,’ I asked, through gritted teeth I hoped she couldn’t detect.
I scribbled down her details, said goodbye and hung up.
Yep, we were officially launched, Mark. Well and truly fuckinglaunched…
Jenny (#uf92b4f6a-13f8-5322-8824-4351d4bbb0fe)
Late August
I caught my reflection in the tube window opposite but I couldn’t look myself in the eye. I glanced down at my hands, gripped together in my lap to stop them shaking.
I don’t need this stress in my life. I don’t have to meet Jenny. Icould get out at the next stop and go right home again.
This was it. My Day of Reckoning. My first time of making a go of the escort work and I was damned sure it showed on my face. I bit my lip and forced myself to look up at my fellow travellers, like what I was about to do was the most normal thing in the world.
I realised I was staring straight at a woman. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts I hadn’t even registered her. I turned my head upwards to view the ad above her head. It told me which number to ring if I wanted to hire some air-con. I slipped a glance back at the girl. She was a couple of years older than me and was engrossed in her copy of Metro. She had dark eyes and smooth shoulder-length brunette hair with a fringe, and was better than average looking. An English rose.
You could, couldn’t you?
That was the crux of the matter. I slipped a glance at all of the women on the seats around me and weighed up whether I would shag them or not. And wondered whether any of them looked anything like Jenny.
The tube drew into Shepherd’s Bush and I got up. I swallowed back my nerves. I didn’t want to think too much about what I was about to do. I turned left out of the station until I reached Jenny’s street.
The further I followed the curve of Jenny’s road, the seedier the terraced houses became. Her address had all the hallmarks of a cheap multiple occupancy. An unkempt front garden that nobody took any responsibility for. Check. Tatty labels taped next to the doorbells. Yup. Makeshift curtains at some of the windows. You bet. Rob had so had the better deal.
This was my very last chance to split. I braced myself and pressed Jenny’s doorbell.
‘Luke?’ A tinny voice came through the intercom. ‘Come on up.’
I pushed open the front door, crossed the scuzzy hallway and mounted the stairs two steps at a time while being careful not to slip on the worn floral carpet.
Jenny was waiting on the first floor at the entrance to her flat. She was dressed in an oversized navy jumper turned back at the cuffs and a calf-length striped cotton skirt.
‘Gosh, you’re a good-looking young man,’ she blushed.
‘Better than Rob?’ I teased.
She looked down at her slippered feet. I cursed myself. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded that she’d done this before and bottled out.
I was as much trying to relax myself as her. It wasn’t as if Jenny was ugly or anything. But she wore no makeup, and looked as if a harsh life had carved itself into her face. Her hair was short and black with white streaks and her colouring was mixed race, though I couldn’t for the life of me make out where she came from. Yeah, I could do her.
‘I liked how you sounded on the phone,’ she said.
‘What, startlingly handsome?’
What made things difficult was that she was closer to my mother’s age—she was in her forties or fifties, I couldn’t be sure which, and that was a whole new ball game altogether. That kind of business hadn’t been in either my or Mark’s head when we’d decided to get into this lark. We thought we’d be inundated with requests from hot young chicks, desperate for no-strings sex, or busy career women without the time for a relationship. I still hoped we would.
Jenny’s flat was sparsely furnished, aside from piles of unopened boxes. They were everywhere, and getting to the sofa in her living room was like wandering through a maze.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.
‘Yes please,’ I said, and stifled a laugh. Within a couple of days of getting here I’d realised that that was the Brits’ answer to anything.
She went out to the kitchen, and I sat down among the cushions on the seen-better-days sofa, stretched out my legs and tried to make myself at home and calm the rising sense of dread.
An ancient tabby cat appeared at my feet from behind a box tower and rubbed itself up against my ankles. It was followed by a younger one, which settled itself on the worn rug in the middle of the room and licked its paw, watching me as if it were sizing me up.
Jenny came back into the room. This was going to be tricky, I could see. It was one thing to talk about sex with my mates down the pub or kicking a ball around in the park. It was going to be quite another to switch my brain into a gear that could talk about such stuff with someone like her.
And then I remembered what I’d advised Rob. To ‘be every woman’s dream’. To do what he always did but just to be a bit more of a gent as he went about it. That wasn’t bad advice, even if I thought so myself. Mind you, it wasn’t as if he’d had the chance to test it out.
Jenny had two matching floral china mugs in her hands, and handed me one with a hesitant smile. She sat down a few inches from me.
‘Thank you. That’s a pair of handsome cats you’ve got there,’ I said.
‘Do you think so?’ she blushed, as if it was a long time since anyone had complimented her on anything.
We drank our tea for a few horribly silent moments, until I placed the mug down beside my feet and gently took Jenny’s hand in mine. She gave me a bashful smile, the lines around her eyes creasing a little, and funnily enough taking years off her. She reminded me of some scrubland creature you could only get up close to if you took it step by step, real quiet and slow.
No wonder Rob hadn’t even got to first base.
I wasn’t quite sure what the next move should be. But at least Jenny and I knew why I was in her home. And though I couldn’t quite see it now, clearly she had a thread of steel running somewhere through her to pick up the phone and make the call in the first place. And not just once. She knew what she wanted, even if the challenge remained for me to move on from the friendly small talk without scaring her off.
‘Shall we go to your bedroom?’ I all but whispered.
Jenny bit her lip and nodded and we rose to our feet together. Still holding her hand, I remained a step behind her and followed her around the wall of boxes into a room off the hallway.
It was a bedroom only in name. There were more boxes but not even a mattress. Just sheets and a duvet and matching pillows set out on the carpet in the corner of the room. In place of a wardrobe were a couple of open suitcases draped with her clothes.
Jenny must have sensed my disquiet, much as I fought to hide it.
‘It’s not as if I get much sleep anyhow. I work all hours.’
‘It’ll be fine, Jenny,’ I replied, and squeezed her hand as I stared down at her makeshift bed and wondered how we’d get from here to the actual sex. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, then took a deep breath and turned to face her.
‘Would you like to sit with me on your bed?’
She nodded and I made an ungainly move towards the duvet and trusted she’d follow my cue.
Head in the right direction and somehow we’ll get there.Surely.
We were sitting beside each other now. I threw her a tight-lipped smile as I gave her the once-over and worked out a plan of action. I didn’t say anything but reached out and took hold of the hem of Jenny’s jumper and raised it a couple of inches.
She looked back at me with her deep, dark eyes for a beat, then took the hint and stretched her arms behind her back and drew the jumper over her head. She shook it out, folded it and placed it on top of the pile of clothes in one of the suitcases. If we kept at this speed, the hour would be up before either of us got naked. Maybe that wasn’t the worst that could happen. For either of us.
Jenny ran her fingers through her hair. Removing the jumper had taken pounds off her. She wore a short-sleeved cream blouse. I still had my shirt on. Which meant that we were sort of on the same page.
‘I tell you what,’ I instructed as I reached for my own top button, ‘I’ll undo my shirt the same time as you undo yours. Okay?’
Jenny nodded in response but she still didn’t say anything. Her fingers fiddled with the little button at her throat and the cloth slowly parted. Her fingers dropped to the next in line but she kept her eyes from mine the whole time.
When she’d finished, her blouse was open and I could see her white bra beneath, but her head was still down and she was looking at her hands in her lap like she was ashamed.
I’d peeled my own shirt off without thinking. That’s just how it was back home. The climate made it easier to remove your clothes, not that you didn’t have to mind the sun. I’d been told about the Page 3 girls the Brits had in their papers before I came, but the people here didn’t seem like that at all. They wore layers because the weather changed so often. It had to be a really hot day by their standards for them to relax and strip down, and then it was like they did it with a real relief. Here with Jenny, I could see that it was vital that I respected a client and how comfortable or not she felt at every stage. The way to do that was to mirror her speed of undressing—though to take care to chivvy her along if I had to.
There was nothing I could do, it seemed, but spell out to Jenny what was needed and only hope that I didn’t scare her. I feared that if I went at her pace we’d never get anywhere. And the longer it took, the more gruelling it’d be for me too.
‘Jenny, slip off your skirt and underwear, will you, and while you’re doing that I’ll get myself ready.’
There. I’d said it. I’d made it clear what came next and there was no going back. I pulled off my jeans and my Calvins, and fished in a pocket for a condom. By the time I’d turned back towards her she was stretched out and waiting. She’d taken her blouse off but kept her bra on.
I realised I’d had nothing to worry about. Jenny wasn’t bad for her age, I could say that. She had the soft edges I’d expected, something to hold on to, which wasn’t the type of woman I was used to, but wasn’t something that repulsed me as I’d feared either. I was still going to have to give myself a helping hand though. She hadn’t stirred me that much.
Jenny’s eyes were fixed above my waistline all the while I nestled down beside her. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close for a few minutes to put her at her ease. One of her fingers drew a little nervous circle round and round on my chest.
‘I’m just going to protect myself,’ I whispered as I pulled myself gently away from her, ‘and then I’m going to make love to you.’
Just then I realised that the words I used and the way I spoke were as important as the sex act itself to Jenny. She was as nervous as hell and it was up to me to take account of that and make things good for her. But it wasn’t just about Jenny. Whatever happened after this, this was my first professional job. If I thought too much about that, I knew my performance would suffer—and Jenny’s enjoyment. Yet if I forgot I was providing a service, it wouldn’t be fair on her either. It was a fine line to walk. I fixed my mind back on my client. That was surely the key.
I took as much care as any guy can when he’s jutting into a woman. Jenny gasped and clung tight to me as my body lapped and battered against her then juddered to a halt.
I lay against her saying nothing for a couple of minutes and she stroked the back of my head.
‘This isn’t my first time, you know, Luke, though I’m somewhat out of practice,’ she said in a quiet but matter-of-fact voice.
That took me by surprise. It was as if the sex had broken her silence. I propped myself up on one arm to look at her lying there beside me.
‘Don’t diss yourself, Jenny. You were fine,’ I lied. She’d barely moved the whole way through, though it wasn’t as if I’d been expecting some sex-tiger anyhow.
‘I used to work in nightclubs, y’know. My boyfriend owned one and was a big promoter too. But that was a long time ago,’ she said with wistfulness. ‘It didn’t work out. And that was that. There’s been no one since.’
She made it sound so final. Which I suppose it was. Life had been hard.
‘But you’ve nothing to worry about, Jenny. You’re a lovely lady.’
I wasn’t lying this time. True, she needed more experience and a whole boost to her confidence, but she didn’t seem to have any edge to her. She was genuinely nice.
When Jenny spoke again, it was as if her mind was on another track and she sounded like she was somewhere else in her life.
‘And after him I fell ill, and by the time I was back on my feet, all my hours were taken up making ends meet. Still are. I haven’t had the time for anyone since.’
I sat up, my legs stretched out across the carpet.
‘So, it was quite something to call me and Rob out, then. You could have put the money towards a new bed.’
I regretted it as soon as I’d said it. Jenny looked at me, pained, and I wanted to swallow the words right back. Shit. It was none of my business. I’d stepped horribly out of line. But Jenny, to her credit, collected herself admirably.
‘I saw your advert, Luke,’ she said, stroking my arm with boldness, ‘and it reminded me of all I’d been missing. Not just the sex, but someone else’s touch and the tenderness. You’ve given me that this evening. It’s been lovely.’
‘My pleasure,’ I replied. And meant it. She hadn’t been what I’d been hoping for, but in a small way I felt proud. I’d helped out someone who obviously needed it.
We slipped off the duvet and got to our feet. I hugged her, and as I did I checked my watch. She had ten minutes left and I still had to get dressed.
‘I’m going to have to be leaving shortly,’ I said as I picked up my clothes.
‘I’d like to see you again, Luke. But not for sex or anything.’
I didn’t get it. Hadn’t she just told me that it was the tenderness she craved?
‘I’d like just to meet you for tea, and for us to talk, that’s all. Like I did with Rob? I’d pay you for your time. Isn’t that what escorting is about?’
‘Yes, but…’
Jenny held up her hand to stop me—‘Wait a minute’—quickly pulled her clothes back on and left the room. I got dressed. She returned a few minutes later with a wad of notes as I was buttoning up my shirt. She counted out the £150 onto a box lid and I scooped it up and folded it into my wallet. The easiest money I’d ever made.
I thought of how Rob had felt he’d won the jackpot. Which he had, for a mere chat over a coffee. Wasn’t what Jenny was now offering me the simplest part of this job? But it didn’t seem right.
‘I’d just like to see you for half an hour, before I go to work?’
‘Look, Jenny, I can’t have you pay for just that.’
‘But you’re not going to meet me for nothing, are you?’
She had a point. I was running a business, wasn’t I?
‘Well, no… But even so.’
Jenny took my wrist in her hand, and spoke without looking in my eyes.
‘I won’t hear another word, Luke. I’ll give you fifty pounds. How’s that?’
And then I got the message. She needed to pay something. She might have been hard-up but she had no need of my pity.
‘It’s a deal.’ And just like that I had my first repeat customer.
‘So, she was a right little goer, was she?’ leered Mark when I met him later in the local. He had just returned from the bar with our two pints. He set mine down in front of me and grabbed a chair, and I looked down into the mouth of the glass and the deep liquid. I lifted the beer to my lips and took a gulp. I didn’t know what to say. Because Jenny was outside what either of us had imagined, that was for sure.
‘Well?’
Mark wasn’t going to let up. He was facing me across the table, and this felt like an interview.
I set down my glass and flashed a ‘don’t go there’ glare.
‘Oh, come on, Luke. We’re in this together, aren’t we? You can tell me.’
I cradled my jaw in one hand, the other wrapped around my pint.
‘Look, the thing is, you weren’t there with me in the room, were you?’
‘Oh, if that was what she wanted, she only had to ask!’ he grinned, before knocking back more of his beer.
I shook my head at him and chuckled. For a second.
‘God, Mark. Be serious. It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t like that, y’know.’
There was a glint of anger in his eye.
‘What, suddenly you’re Mr Professional Escort all of a sudden? After one paid lay. Don’t make me laugh.’
‘No, listen. I didn’t mean that,’ I pleaded. ‘It was just… Jenny, she…’
‘Jenny,’ he sneered.
I ignored him. ‘Jenny is just someone who needed a bit of TLC.’
I spoke into my glass and heard my own voice grow quieter. I looked up at Mark and I could see he was listening.
‘And don’t we all,’ I sighed.
Jenny was hovering outside the Starbucks in Piccadilly. She hadn’t yet seen me approach. Her feet were turned slightly inward, and she was focused on the paving stones in front of them. One hand gripped the other against her thigh.
‘Jenny, it’s lovely to see you.’ I touched her shoulder and she turned towards me, a huge smile lighting up her face. I hugged her and felt her body relax against mine.
I ushered her into the café and went and ordered coffees for the two of us. She said nothing as I placed them on the table in front of us and sat myself down, but there was an expectant warmth across her face.
‘So, I didn’t put you off ever seeing me again, then?’ I smiled.
‘Oh, no, Luke.’
A tinge of pale pink washed across her face.
I flicked a look around the coffee shop and to the milling crowds in the street outside. We couldn’t have been more anonymous. I might even be mistaken for Jenny’s son.
‘So, do you have family in London?’ I asked.
She fiddled with the handle of her cup, and shook her head.
‘I’ve got a sister but I’ve lost touch with her. I’ve been trying to track her down.’
She changed the subject. ‘And you? That’s not an English accent.’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s not as if you’ll ever be alone in the Big City. There are plenty of Australians here.’
‘Yeah,’ I grinned back.
God, had I found that out. When I was out with Mark and our mates it was sometimes hard to remember that we were anywhere else but back home.
I switched the focus back to her. I was on her time after all.
‘You said when we last met that you’d be off to work after this.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, just round the corner. I’m a cleaner at a number of the clubs round here,’ she explained. ‘I spruce them up before they open, and afterwards when everyone’s left.’
Grim, tough work.
‘You see a different side of the city, then.’
She cocked her head at me. The words hung in the air. She didn’t want to talk about work. This was her break.
‘Tell me about yourself, Jenny. Have you always lived in London?’
That was the cue for her life story. It poured out. How she’d never been quite good enough. The rest of her family were teachers but she’d gone into the clubbing scene. And how when that’d fizzled out she’d ended up cleaning other people’s clubs. She just wanted to talk. Just needed someone to listen.
Jenny’s time was up. But it was she who made the move to go. She was the one who was racing against the clock. I, on the other hand, had plenty of time to kill until my evening shift at the pub.
She gripped the table as if ready to stand up. And then slipped back down in her chair like she had just thought of something.
‘Luke, I’ve got to go to work. And we haven’t had much time together.’
‘It’s flown by, hasn’t it?’
She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a small roll of notes and gathered them in her hand and scrunched them into my own in the hope that no one would see. I pushed my clenched fist and its contents into the back pocket of my jeans.
‘I’d like to see you again, Luke.’
‘Would you like me to come to your flat again?’ I fished.
She looked at me and pursed her lips. ‘When I said I wanted to meet you for tea, I didn’t mean it to be a one-off. I’d like to see you again. To talk, I mean.’
‘You mean here again? Like today?’
She nodded. ‘On a weekly basis. Before work, like today.’
I let her see me weigh it up in my mind, like I was working out if I could fit her into my busy schedule.
Like hell I could.
But at the same time I couldn’t help thinking that Jenny wasn’t what I’d quite bargained for when I’d decided to offer sex for sale. She clearly needed someone to talk to. A listening ear, then, was going to be another vital organ in this game.
A Bit of Give and Take
The joy of sex is that it’s not just about your pleasure. Consider the other person in the relationship and the benefits will be felt by both of you. As an ordinary guy, I know what guys tend to want, but having made my living as an escort, I’ve learned what brings the most pleasure to women too. Follow the tips through Undercover and it’ll be win, win for everyone!
1. Introducing yourself
So, you see someone you like the look of across a crowded dance floor or bar.
Smile, go and say ‘hello’, relax and be friendly.
Focus on them, find something to compliment, flirt with your words, eyes and hands.
Guys, don’t talk about the latest football scores, mistake joke-telling for a GSOH, or try too hard to impress with magic tricks and the like.
Girls, retain some mystery. Hold back on the life story and any problems you have. Find a mutual interest but don’t fake it; he’ll see right through it and it’ll sound desperate.
The sooner either of you gets to talk about sex, the more up for it you’ll sound. You’ll certainly grab his interest!
And if you get the brush-off? Hold your head up high, put it down to experience—and their loss—take a deep breath and live to love another day.
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Luke Bradbury
When young Aussie Luke Bradbury finds himself alone, broke and out of ideas in London, things look desperate. Until he spots a temping ad. Lured by the promise of easy money – and the chance to bed as many women as he can handle – Luke becomes a gigolo. It’s a job millions of men would kill for.Luke quickly learns all there is to know about women in his quest to give them the ultimate pleasure, climbing inside their heads as well as their beds.But all too soon, Luke discovers the darker side of his lucrative new profession. Is he selling his soul as well as his body?
LUKE BRADBURY
Under Cover:
The Adventures of a Real Life Gigolo
With Catherine von Ruhland
To ‘Pretty’ for all your love and support.
Contents
All In A Day’s Work (#ueae71a15-d2b8-5e19-90e0-a113c5daec99)Beginnings (#ub9edb8d3-1dd1-549b-b153-d99a68a8ad44)Jenny (#uc3e6825a-229a-5948-accb-7daac4da9c5f)Clare (#u708d7d48-6faa-5366-ae62-c335e0a3a2ec)Louise (#uc31767a0-7c2f-5edf-9c35-aad967e0425b)Jenny Again (#u541cc8f3-1f04-58b6-8015-7f9e15060d85)Sasha Plus One (#u4ece5c08-a8d6-5d41-9b91-18ba2d1d110e)Mark (#u5fd1cbc5-6305-5b43-bd72-9fe8b0cc8a96)Adele (#u86d83891-8e53-561b-ac09-36751d231a57)Cyan (#ub4d6c814-179c-56be-b6aa-b3454de27220)Stagz (#u592f1057-6004-5d3d-9d93-6108abf00a69)Janice (#u3e68760b-aa92-5bd6-896e-5bcd10770deb)Mae (#u02a0b1bb-521b-5435-94d5-1dd34481f9b6)Shelley (#u1799843b-a281-5aa3-99c2-e3198d5f8b90)Sasha (#u2d35d858-6ca6-56d3-9bd2-a1e69af4042f)Fiona And Martin (#ua3836a44-0421-503e-86f7-812fd4a3a63f)Giselle And Friends (#u62fc115d-e1a0-5ca4-b9f7-8d566a71c450)Mae Again (#u1b183af4-3ae4-545f-84e6-c3937df90894)Sasha Farewell (#ub5995706-9b2d-5e29-9c25-deadf3161041)More Stagz (#u546fd6b9-c945-5118-b467-351c58e831bb)Emma And Louise (#u057f8317-69cf-59ee-a203-7b03810bf564)Bob And Deborah (#u69fd9abd-621a-518f-bbbb-c8183a65548c)Out With Mae (#uc7f515aa-b1e3-5813-8c8e-2d330d7aec99)Back Home (#ue13051fa-3be0-53b8-81fc-af936547ff77)Sheena (#u47ecb5a4-c5e5-5efe-8af3-efd3a03d5a74)Graham (#u04880246-1ecd-5fe0-bf07-68dc9e78229d)Ralph, Cindy And Us (#uff299987-b3ef-59a0-ba93-9df1a69aa4a7)Myleene (#u3853ad4e-1140-57af-aa99-6a8a49d21a73)David And Charley (#ue2953f0f-063b-51ef-ac71-ee6030e532e8)Ralph And Cindy’s Private Island (#u551c9be8-10a4-5903-b28b-749abc05ecbc)Helen (#u362cef20-c86b-53a9-8023-af6fd7f4157d)Original Titles from Mischief (#u719937c9-ef5c-52f3-8503-b1600471afdb)Acknowledgments (#u5e318cda-03bc-50e4-8b5c-9b6b680a8b74)About the Author (#ude2f7daf-d896-5985-864d-bf61c58da257)Copyright (#ua1027eb7-3e6a-5ae6-9434-6e1b647ab89c)About the Publisher (#u506c9639-9999-5aa7-88d2-bd525fb86f34)
All in a day's work (#uf92b4f6a-13f8-5322-8824-4351d4bbb0fe)
For fuck’s sake, how much longer? Ring the bell, you bastard!
There’s me and this gorgeous girl at it on the floor. Carrie or Emily or something, I can’t remember her name. It’s a bit of a blur by number six. It’s not as if she isn’t good at what she does. She’s been hired, after all, same as me. So she knows all the moves and is fit to boot. It’s just I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. Literally.
I’m trying my hardest. And both of us are into our stride. Hammer and tongs, wearing the creaking floor away. It’s like we’re swimming together in our sweat, our damp bodies sawing against each other. We’re barely coming up for air, and a strand of her long blonde hair is in my mouth, and everything else is drowned out except for our panting, heavy breathing and thumping heartbeats.
And all I yearn for is the tiny silver jingle of the bell, held between Brian’s index finger and thumb. He’s silent. Watching us.
When he finally shakes it, satisfied, both of us collapse, dead spent. As we catch our breath, Brian comes out from behind the curtain and tosses us both bathrobes. I help the girl to her feet, my arm around her narrow shoulders.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ she mouths through a half-smile, catching her breath. She’s pretty. She must be about twenty-three. Same as me.
‘Luke, you stay here a while,’ Brian instructs, tightening the belt of his dressing gown. ‘Emma, come with me.’
Emma. That was it.
Brian guides her out of the room. I look at her go, her bare legs glistening.
As they leave the room, Emma turns to me. ‘Nice meeting you, Luke. See you again, maybe.’
‘You too, Emma.’
Maybe.
I stand there, waiting. A short while later, the front door slams shut, and I head to the bathroom and wash Emma off my skin. The warm jet of water is like a curtain between her and the next one.
Is that it for tonight?
I step out of the shower and dry myself down and wrap myself in the bathrobe again. I like the feel of its softness against me. I’m still tying it up when I enter Brian’s lounge again. He pulls his armchair out from behind the curtain and sits low down in it, his legs stretched out before him. He raises his beer bottle to me.
‘Cheers!’
‘Bloody hell, Brian, I thought you were never going to ring that damn thing!’
‘I thought you enjoyed sex,’ he teases.
I sit down in the other armchair across the room, and pick up the open bottle that’s been sitting there since before Emma arrived.
‘Up to a point. It’s easy for you. You don’t have to put the effort in.’
‘Guys your age are supposed to be gagging for it!’ he smirks.
I lift the beer bottle to my lips and knock some back before answering.
‘Well, yeah,’ I laugh, ‘but even so. That doesn’t mean I don’t need to come up for air!’
My muscles silently scream in agreement.
With Brian, I gave as good as I got. We’d built up a rapport since I’d started working for him. Let’s face it, we’d had to. Because although he hired both me and some girls, we weren’t all there on an equal footing. Because Brian was a voyeur. Which, I suppose, made me his Tester.
Brian had once hired me as many as twelve girls in one night. He would call me early evening and we’d have a drink together, and then he’d phone for a girl for me. And the bell was his method of communication, of control. If he wanted the sex to stop, he’d ring the bell. It might be after twenty minutes, it might be after five. She’d go, I’d stay, have another break, and then Brian would phone the agency for someone else for me. And a quarter of an hour later there’d be another girl on the doorstep.
Brian never joined in. All he wanted to do was hide behind the curtain and watch. And whatever else he got up to back there. Everyone gets their kicks some way. Sometimes the sex went on for so long that, like with Emma, I was willing that damn bell to ring. You can have too much of a good thing…
Still, I couldn’t quite believe I was getting paid to do this. My mates would be up of a morning to go to work in offices, schools and cafés, whereas I could lie in bed all day or do whatever I wanted to. Until the evening. When I might have sex with five different girls Brian had selected for me. And earn in that night what my mates would in a week. It was almost too good to be true.
Brian was looking at me. His beer bottle was empty. Mine was still half full and held in mid-air on the way to my mouth. I could tell what he was going to say. He was pushing back the armchair with his bare feet even though he was still sitting in it, even as he was opening his mouth to speak. He held his mobile in the other hand. He’d put the agency number on speed dial so it took no time at all.
‘Right, Luke,’ he said with a wolfish leer. ‘Get ready for number seven.’
Beginnings (#uf92b4f6a-13f8-5322-8824-4351d4bbb0fe)
Early August
‘We’ve been shafted, the bastards!’
Mark spat the words out across the kitchen table. He’d just shown me his bank statement, and the evidence was there in bright red. I looked down into my mug of tea and nodded. I knew what he meant. But the truth was, we well and truly hadn’t been. That was the problem.
‘Meet loads of girls. You’ll be sent out on six dates a week, andmake £90 an hour…’
That was what the freesheet ad for the internet escort agency had promised us—and no doubt hundreds of other guys like Mark and me. Guys with too much male pride and not quite enough money to live on, who just assumed there would be women falling at our feet, and who were mugs enough to fork out £180 to register.
But in the three weeks since the two of us had coughed up our money, not one girl had called for Mark’s services. Nor mine.
I took a sip of my tea and looked across at Mark. It wasn’t even as if either of us was that bad-looking. Not that I’d ever admit I was good-looking. You got a clip for that in my family, for puffing yourself up. I’d been told that I looked a bit like the Spiderman actor, Tobey Maguire. Which was good enough for me. I was six foot tall with dark blond hair that bleached easily in the sun back home in Australia, while Mark’s hair was brown and he was slightly shorter than me. We worked out. Both of us had a reasonable Saturday-night success rate.
Mark shook his head. ‘This is London, for God’s sake. Where are all the girls?’ He took a digestive from the packet upended on the table and bit into it. He had a right to ask. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t seen enough of them falling over each other on any of our weekends out on the piss.
‘Not choosing to call out for a guy, presumably. That’s what blokes do.’
I could see the callbox windows in my mind’s eye, completely covered from floor to ceiling with brightly coloured ‘whorecards’. Blocking out the muted sunlight. That’d been my introduction to England nine weeks ago, dialling my mum to let her know I’d got here in one piece.
‘We can get a number for a girl from any phone box. But they can’t…’ I was working out the problem with our plan as I was saying it.
‘But that’s what the internet’s for!’ Mark spluttered, spraying crumbs. He swept them off the table with his forearm.
I ran a finger along the edge of the pine tabletop until it hit a dent in the wood. I drew my nail again and again through the groove and looked Mark in the eye.
‘Yeah, but they’re not looking because they’re not even aware that there’s a service for them. They take their chances on a Saturday night.’
Mark nodded: ‘Or go without.’
‘Exactly. And even if they knew there were guys they could pay for via their PCs, that doesn’t mean they’d do anything about it.’
I picked up my mug and took another gulp of tea, and thought of the callbox again and all the sex phoneline ads in the freesheets that I’d seen when I was trying to find somewhere to live. That’d been a grim time, sleeping on friends of friends’ grimy floors while all the while I could sense they didn’t really want me there. Sharing a room with Mark in this house for the past month had been a damn sight better than that, even with the beer cans clustered on the floor round the bin from when we hadn’t thrown straight. He’d been looking for someone to make up the rent and I’d seen his ad on Gumtree. It’d helped that the two of us had hit it off as soon as we’d met over a drink. Same small-town Aussie background, I suppose.
‘I mean, have you ever phoned for a hooker?’ I raised my eyebrows at him as I said it.
He shook his head. ‘Course not. As if I need to…’ he crowed.
I put my mug down. ‘Well then.’
And that’s when it hit me. What hadwe been thinking?
There was not even a market for sex with straight guys. Or not one that involved money changing hands. On the girl’s part anyhow.
‘They’ve well and truly buggered us, haven’t they?’ I sighed.
A grin crept up Mark’s face. ‘Thankfully not. And that’s something to be damn grateful for.’
We both laughed, but it couldn’t disguise the fact that each of us was seriously out of pocket. We’d taken a gamble on making easy money and lost.
‘Well, at least we can’t be the only ones who’ve fallen for this scam,’ said Mark. ‘Think about it. There must be hordes of guys across London,’ he continued, flinging his arm out as if to embrace the whole city and not just our poxy kitchen in a crappy area of West London, ‘just like us, weeping into their tea at what might have been!’
I sighed. Surely it was the ultimate part-time job. Screwing girls for cash. We could have waved goodbye to the crummy minimum-wage waiting and bar jobs and selling stuffed pittas while hung over from a stall at Camden Market for friends of friends who always paid shit money. God, London certainly hadn’t turned out to be all it was cracked up to be.
I looked down at my half-full mug and felt the cogs whirring even as he was saying it.
‘Well then, that’s how we make our money back, isn’t it?’ I suggested.
‘What?’
‘Look, there’s clearly enough money out there to make it worthwhile setting up an agency that gets guys to pay to sign on.’
Mark’s face momentarily fell. ‘What, and rip people off just the way we were? Come on.’
Miserably, I nodded. ‘I agree it’s not exactly ethical.’ I thought for a moment. ‘But then it’s not exactly not. What if we were to set up an agency, y’know, advertise our services to women, and ask guys to sign on? The blokes cough up, and of course we’ll give them work if there’s enough going, but we’ll always have first call. What is wrong with that? We can’t lose.’
Mark cocked his head to one side and shook it. But he was also smiling. ‘God, Luke. A couple of months in this country and you’ve turned into a London spiv!’
I smirked back. He raised his mug to mine and we chinked.
My mind was already in overdrive. We’d advertise in the London freesheets. We could do it cheaply, surely. Advertise for clients, and put something on the internet to draw in the men as well. And photos. Me, Mark and the lads, to give the girls something to choose from.
‘Face it, Mark. We’re broke. We might as well make a go of it. We’ve got nothing more to lose.’
I suppose I expected it to happen overnight. But of course it didn’t. And when it didn’t, it meant it didn’t seem real. It was just mates mucking about. Even after I’d spent fifty quid I couldn’t really afford on a box ad in a London magazine; even after we’d put a whole lot of our pictures up on the net. Seven of us had spent an afternoon taking photos of each other, all of us with a big grin on our faces in front of the drawn curtains in our lounge room so it looked like we’d hired a studio or something. So we were able to still kid ourselves that we were only having a laugh.
But we weren’t, were we?
Or, as it turned out, I wasn’t.
The phone rang. Mark and I were lounging on the sofa with our cans of Stella and having our last-night debrief. We looked at each other for a beat, and since he didn’t get up, I did and sauntered across the room.
‘Hi?’
‘Male Escorts Esquire? I saw your advert.’
Shit!
I pulled up a chair and sat down, half out of shock. The name we’d come up with wasn’t the greatest, but it had clearly done its job. I struggled to get my head into gear. She was the first to call—though I wasn’t about to let her know that, of course.
‘Hello, how might we help you?’
What have we got ourselves into?
‘Uh, I’ve never done this before,’ she mumbled. ‘I was wondering if you might be able to send me someone tomorrow evening?’
What was I thinking? I can’t do this. This isn’t for me. That was why I’d volunteered my phone number in the first place, so I could act the receptionist and palm off anyone who rang onto one of the others.
It was one thing to fantasise about girls phoning you for sex, it was quite another to be faced with the sheer reality of going with whoever happened to ask. Suppose she sounded better than she turned out to look? What did you do then?
This one wasn’t too young—I could tell by the tone of her voice—and she was clearly nervous.
Join the club.
I sat up straight on the dining chair and went into professional mode.
‘Is there anyone on the website you liked the look of? Sorry, your name is—?’
Mark’s ears pricked up. He stared across the room at me with excited saucer eyes and a smirk. I shook my head as a sign to him to ease up, and tried to focus on what was being said to me.
‘Jenny,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have a computer.’
Ah, definitely an older woman. Okaay.
‘Nice to talk to you, Jenny, I’m Luke. That’s not a problem. What would you like him to look like? We have a range of young men on our books.’
Mark stifled a guffaw and I shot a glare at him.
‘I’m not—I’m not sure,’ she stuttered.
So, she was indecisive. That wasn’t a problem either. All I had to do was make sure she was satisfied with the service. She didn’t sound as if she could cope with someone too bullish, like Simon, our resident rugby player. She needed a gentleman who wouldn’t frighten her off.
‘You sound nice.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Are you available?’
Fuck!
‘Thank you, Jenny, but, sorry, I’m not.’ I tried to sound calm and friendly though I felt out of my depth. ‘I tell you what, though, I’ll make sure you have a pleasant surprise.’
I took down her details and we said goodbye to each other.
As I put down the receiver, Mark started clapping.
‘Congratulations. You’ve just nailed our very first client!’
‘Yeah, and now we’ve got to decide which of us’ll have her. Will you go?’
I sat down beside him, and picked up my can from the floor.
‘What’s she like?’
‘She sounded old enough to be my mother.’
Mark grimaced.
I laughed. ‘You’ve just discounted Madonna.’
‘Er, yeah.’
‘All angles and humourless. Fair point,’ I agreed. ‘Hang on, I know who.’ I got up again and returned to the phone.
‘What? Who?’ quizzed Mark.
I pressed the buttons and put the receiver to my ear, leaning against the wall. ‘Rob, of course. He’s always game on. For one thing, he could do with the cash.’
‘Well, yeah,’ shrugged Mark. ‘He could always do with the cash. Isn’t that his problem?’
Rob had never quite got the hang of money, especially since his bank seemed so keen to give him more of it whenever he wanted. Except they had now decided to call in the debt. The magic had fallen out of the plastic.
Come on, Rob, I prayed. Pick up, pick up.
He eventually picked up.
‘Hey, Rob. It’s Luke. How’d you like to make a fast buck? We’ve had a client call for an escort and your name came up.’
Flatter the guy.
Across the room, one of Mark’s eyebrows arched up. Rob was up for it too. I could sense his excitement down the line.
‘I tell you what. As this is your first time, forget about the commission and just come back and tell me all about it and buy me a beer.’
I took a swig from my own can, and set it down on the seat of the chair beside me. I couldn’t help noticing that, across the room, both of Mark’s eyebrows were now up his forehead. The sense of that anger was a distraction even as I gave Rob the details. I ended the call, and confronted him.
‘What?’
‘How’s the business supposed to survive if nobody puts any money in the pot?’ he steamed as I sat back down.
‘Aw, I know, but if you can’t help out a mate, eh? Anyhow, it is our first ever call—not that Rob knows that. It won’t happen again.’
We sat in silence and drank our beer. Then Mark grinned, his spirits obviously lifting.
‘God, Luke, we’re officially launched. Can you believe it?’
I smiled and nodded. We high-fived.
Rob called after I’d finished at the café the following evening and was putting together my dinner. I could hear pub clatter in the background and hoped he wasn’t soaking up too much Dutch courage before his assignment.
‘Luke, I’m not sure about this. I don’t know if I can go through with it.’
Don’t get cold feet on me, Rob.
‘Don’t worry about it. Think of it like any other date. You meet, have a drink, you go back to her place…’
I picked at the peeling wallpaper around the phone. A previous tenant had used the plaster to jot down numbers that I sometimes wondered if I should call just for the hell of it.
‘Yeah, but I fancy my dates,’ Rob flung back. ‘What if I don’t fancy her?’
‘Well, that’s where the dosh comes in. Just think about the money!’
I thought of nervous Jenny wanting someone who’d treat her well, who wouldn’t ride roughshod over her. No, it wasn’t justabout the money.
‘Look, Rob, everyone gets nervous their first time. Of course they do. She’ll be just as anxious. Take it easy.’
A slither of wallpaper came away in my hand, and I let it fall to the floor.
‘Did you get nervous, Luke? What was it like?’
I gulped. He had no idea he was the first of any of us to test out our escort scheme.
I evaded the question. On the carpet beneath the phone was a growing pile of peelings that needed a good vacuum. If we’d had a vacuum cleaner.
‘It’s different for everyone. You’ve got to go out there and make your own mark. Be every woman’s dream!’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Rob, not sounding at all confident.
‘You know what to do, of course you do. You’re used to scoring, yeah? Just be a bit more of a gentleman when you go about it.’ On second thoughts: ‘Unless of course she requests otherwise.’
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. That was better.
‘Okay, okay.’
‘Don’t worry. You’ll be fine,’ I reassured him. ‘Just be careful you don’t drink too much beforehand. You want to make a good impression.’
‘Will do.’
‘And I want to hear all about it afterwards. Now, go forth and enjoy yourself.’
When he called back around ten thirty, Rob was clearly back in the pub. He sounded as if he’d won the Lottery.
‘Easiest hundred and fifty quid I ever fucking made,’ he shouted over the bar hubbub.
‘Told you you’d be fine,’ I laughed, caught up in his high spirits.
‘Nah, you’ll never believe it. She didn’t want to go through with it.’
‘No!’ I was gob-smacked.
‘You bet. We met at Dunkin Donuts, like you said. Off Piccadilly. And it lasted about forty minutes and we just had a cup of coffee. And that was it. We never even reached the hotel. And she still paid me!’
The jammy bastard.
‘If it’s that fucking easy, send me out to every woman you get,’ he burbled.
‘If it’s that fucking easy, Rob, I’ll keep them all to myself.’
Jenny called the following week. The only call we received. We weren’t about to make a living out of this game just yet. Nor escape my shifts at the café and the pub anytime soon.
‘Hello, Luke, it’s Jenny.’
My mind went blank for a second. Jenny? I’d been so rushed off my feet with the waiting this week I’d almost forgotten about our advert. But then it all flooded back, and I went into receptionist mode straight away.
‘Hello, Jenny, it’s lovely to hear from you. Rob told me he enjoyed meeting you last week.’
Didn’t he just.
‘He was very nice.’
‘See, I told you I’d give you a pleasant surprise,’ I boasted.
‘Yes, thank you. Um…’
There was an awkward silence. I jumped in feet first. This was a business we were running, after all.
‘Is there anything we can do for you? Perhaps you’d like to see him again?’
When she spoke next, her voice was halting and quiet:
‘The thing is, Luke, I’d like to meet you.’
You fucking bet. Rob’s just made one hundred and fifty quid.Count me in.
‘Is that allowed?’
This time I was ready. But first I had to cover myself so Jenny didn’t start wondering why the last time she called I was just the receptionist.
‘Well, Jenny, as it happens, we do have a policy when there’s a run on the boys.’ Like heck we do. ‘We’d hate to leave any of our clients waiting.’
‘So we can meet?’ There was a hopeful girlishness to her voice.
‘Certainly, Jenny.’
I began mentally spending the money on some decent jeans, a couple of CDs, and putting something towards the phone bill. The calls back home cost a bomb. And she’d even be paying for the coffee!
‘Oh, I’m so glad. Because this time I want to go through with it. I want you to make love to me, Luke.’
There was a screech of brakes in my head.
Just my fucking luck.
‘When would you like me to visit? And if I could take your address,’ I asked, through gritted teeth I hoped she couldn’t detect.
I scribbled down her details, said goodbye and hung up.
Yep, we were officially launched, Mark. Well and truly fuckinglaunched…
Jenny (#uf92b4f6a-13f8-5322-8824-4351d4bbb0fe)
Late August
I caught my reflection in the tube window opposite but I couldn’t look myself in the eye. I glanced down at my hands, gripped together in my lap to stop them shaking.
I don’t need this stress in my life. I don’t have to meet Jenny. Icould get out at the next stop and go right home again.
This was it. My Day of Reckoning. My first time of making a go of the escort work and I was damned sure it showed on my face. I bit my lip and forced myself to look up at my fellow travellers, like what I was about to do was the most normal thing in the world.
I realised I was staring straight at a woman. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts I hadn’t even registered her. I turned my head upwards to view the ad above her head. It told me which number to ring if I wanted to hire some air-con. I slipped a glance back at the girl. She was a couple of years older than me and was engrossed in her copy of Metro. She had dark eyes and smooth shoulder-length brunette hair with a fringe, and was better than average looking. An English rose.
You could, couldn’t you?
That was the crux of the matter. I slipped a glance at all of the women on the seats around me and weighed up whether I would shag them or not. And wondered whether any of them looked anything like Jenny.
The tube drew into Shepherd’s Bush and I got up. I swallowed back my nerves. I didn’t want to think too much about what I was about to do. I turned left out of the station until I reached Jenny’s street.
The further I followed the curve of Jenny’s road, the seedier the terraced houses became. Her address had all the hallmarks of a cheap multiple occupancy. An unkempt front garden that nobody took any responsibility for. Check. Tatty labels taped next to the doorbells. Yup. Makeshift curtains at some of the windows. You bet. Rob had so had the better deal.
This was my very last chance to split. I braced myself and pressed Jenny’s doorbell.
‘Luke?’ A tinny voice came through the intercom. ‘Come on up.’
I pushed open the front door, crossed the scuzzy hallway and mounted the stairs two steps at a time while being careful not to slip on the worn floral carpet.
Jenny was waiting on the first floor at the entrance to her flat. She was dressed in an oversized navy jumper turned back at the cuffs and a calf-length striped cotton skirt.
‘Gosh, you’re a good-looking young man,’ she blushed.
‘Better than Rob?’ I teased.
She looked down at her slippered feet. I cursed myself. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded that she’d done this before and bottled out.
I was as much trying to relax myself as her. It wasn’t as if Jenny was ugly or anything. But she wore no makeup, and looked as if a harsh life had carved itself into her face. Her hair was short and black with white streaks and her colouring was mixed race, though I couldn’t for the life of me make out where she came from. Yeah, I could do her.
‘I liked how you sounded on the phone,’ she said.
‘What, startlingly handsome?’
What made things difficult was that she was closer to my mother’s age—she was in her forties or fifties, I couldn’t be sure which, and that was a whole new ball game altogether. That kind of business hadn’t been in either my or Mark’s head when we’d decided to get into this lark. We thought we’d be inundated with requests from hot young chicks, desperate for no-strings sex, or busy career women without the time for a relationship. I still hoped we would.
Jenny’s flat was sparsely furnished, aside from piles of unopened boxes. They were everywhere, and getting to the sofa in her living room was like wandering through a maze.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.
‘Yes please,’ I said, and stifled a laugh. Within a couple of days of getting here I’d realised that that was the Brits’ answer to anything.
She went out to the kitchen, and I sat down among the cushions on the seen-better-days sofa, stretched out my legs and tried to make myself at home and calm the rising sense of dread.
An ancient tabby cat appeared at my feet from behind a box tower and rubbed itself up against my ankles. It was followed by a younger one, which settled itself on the worn rug in the middle of the room and licked its paw, watching me as if it were sizing me up.
Jenny came back into the room. This was going to be tricky, I could see. It was one thing to talk about sex with my mates down the pub or kicking a ball around in the park. It was going to be quite another to switch my brain into a gear that could talk about such stuff with someone like her.
And then I remembered what I’d advised Rob. To ‘be every woman’s dream’. To do what he always did but just to be a bit more of a gent as he went about it. That wasn’t bad advice, even if I thought so myself. Mind you, it wasn’t as if he’d had the chance to test it out.
Jenny had two matching floral china mugs in her hands, and handed me one with a hesitant smile. She sat down a few inches from me.
‘Thank you. That’s a pair of handsome cats you’ve got there,’ I said.
‘Do you think so?’ she blushed, as if it was a long time since anyone had complimented her on anything.
We drank our tea for a few horribly silent moments, until I placed the mug down beside my feet and gently took Jenny’s hand in mine. She gave me a bashful smile, the lines around her eyes creasing a little, and funnily enough taking years off her. She reminded me of some scrubland creature you could only get up close to if you took it step by step, real quiet and slow.
No wonder Rob hadn’t even got to first base.
I wasn’t quite sure what the next move should be. But at least Jenny and I knew why I was in her home. And though I couldn’t quite see it now, clearly she had a thread of steel running somewhere through her to pick up the phone and make the call in the first place. And not just once. She knew what she wanted, even if the challenge remained for me to move on from the friendly small talk without scaring her off.
‘Shall we go to your bedroom?’ I all but whispered.
Jenny bit her lip and nodded and we rose to our feet together. Still holding her hand, I remained a step behind her and followed her around the wall of boxes into a room off the hallway.
It was a bedroom only in name. There were more boxes but not even a mattress. Just sheets and a duvet and matching pillows set out on the carpet in the corner of the room. In place of a wardrobe were a couple of open suitcases draped with her clothes.
Jenny must have sensed my disquiet, much as I fought to hide it.
‘It’s not as if I get much sleep anyhow. I work all hours.’
‘It’ll be fine, Jenny,’ I replied, and squeezed her hand as I stared down at her makeshift bed and wondered how we’d get from here to the actual sex. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, then took a deep breath and turned to face her.
‘Would you like to sit with me on your bed?’
She nodded and I made an ungainly move towards the duvet and trusted she’d follow my cue.
Head in the right direction and somehow we’ll get there.Surely.
We were sitting beside each other now. I threw her a tight-lipped smile as I gave her the once-over and worked out a plan of action. I didn’t say anything but reached out and took hold of the hem of Jenny’s jumper and raised it a couple of inches.
She looked back at me with her deep, dark eyes for a beat, then took the hint and stretched her arms behind her back and drew the jumper over her head. She shook it out, folded it and placed it on top of the pile of clothes in one of the suitcases. If we kept at this speed, the hour would be up before either of us got naked. Maybe that wasn’t the worst that could happen. For either of us.
Jenny ran her fingers through her hair. Removing the jumper had taken pounds off her. She wore a short-sleeved cream blouse. I still had my shirt on. Which meant that we were sort of on the same page.
‘I tell you what,’ I instructed as I reached for my own top button, ‘I’ll undo my shirt the same time as you undo yours. Okay?’
Jenny nodded in response but she still didn’t say anything. Her fingers fiddled with the little button at her throat and the cloth slowly parted. Her fingers dropped to the next in line but she kept her eyes from mine the whole time.
When she’d finished, her blouse was open and I could see her white bra beneath, but her head was still down and she was looking at her hands in her lap like she was ashamed.
I’d peeled my own shirt off without thinking. That’s just how it was back home. The climate made it easier to remove your clothes, not that you didn’t have to mind the sun. I’d been told about the Page 3 girls the Brits had in their papers before I came, but the people here didn’t seem like that at all. They wore layers because the weather changed so often. It had to be a really hot day by their standards for them to relax and strip down, and then it was like they did it with a real relief. Here with Jenny, I could see that it was vital that I respected a client and how comfortable or not she felt at every stage. The way to do that was to mirror her speed of undressing—though to take care to chivvy her along if I had to.
There was nothing I could do, it seemed, but spell out to Jenny what was needed and only hope that I didn’t scare her. I feared that if I went at her pace we’d never get anywhere. And the longer it took, the more gruelling it’d be for me too.
‘Jenny, slip off your skirt and underwear, will you, and while you’re doing that I’ll get myself ready.’
There. I’d said it. I’d made it clear what came next and there was no going back. I pulled off my jeans and my Calvins, and fished in a pocket for a condom. By the time I’d turned back towards her she was stretched out and waiting. She’d taken her blouse off but kept her bra on.
I realised I’d had nothing to worry about. Jenny wasn’t bad for her age, I could say that. She had the soft edges I’d expected, something to hold on to, which wasn’t the type of woman I was used to, but wasn’t something that repulsed me as I’d feared either. I was still going to have to give myself a helping hand though. She hadn’t stirred me that much.
Jenny’s eyes were fixed above my waistline all the while I nestled down beside her. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close for a few minutes to put her at her ease. One of her fingers drew a little nervous circle round and round on my chest.
‘I’m just going to protect myself,’ I whispered as I pulled myself gently away from her, ‘and then I’m going to make love to you.’
Just then I realised that the words I used and the way I spoke were as important as the sex act itself to Jenny. She was as nervous as hell and it was up to me to take account of that and make things good for her. But it wasn’t just about Jenny. Whatever happened after this, this was my first professional job. If I thought too much about that, I knew my performance would suffer—and Jenny’s enjoyment. Yet if I forgot I was providing a service, it wouldn’t be fair on her either. It was a fine line to walk. I fixed my mind back on my client. That was surely the key.
I took as much care as any guy can when he’s jutting into a woman. Jenny gasped and clung tight to me as my body lapped and battered against her then juddered to a halt.
I lay against her saying nothing for a couple of minutes and she stroked the back of my head.
‘This isn’t my first time, you know, Luke, though I’m somewhat out of practice,’ she said in a quiet but matter-of-fact voice.
That took me by surprise. It was as if the sex had broken her silence. I propped myself up on one arm to look at her lying there beside me.
‘Don’t diss yourself, Jenny. You were fine,’ I lied. She’d barely moved the whole way through, though it wasn’t as if I’d been expecting some sex-tiger anyhow.
‘I used to work in nightclubs, y’know. My boyfriend owned one and was a big promoter too. But that was a long time ago,’ she said with wistfulness. ‘It didn’t work out. And that was that. There’s been no one since.’
She made it sound so final. Which I suppose it was. Life had been hard.
‘But you’ve nothing to worry about, Jenny. You’re a lovely lady.’
I wasn’t lying this time. True, she needed more experience and a whole boost to her confidence, but she didn’t seem to have any edge to her. She was genuinely nice.
When Jenny spoke again, it was as if her mind was on another track and she sounded like she was somewhere else in her life.
‘And after him I fell ill, and by the time I was back on my feet, all my hours were taken up making ends meet. Still are. I haven’t had the time for anyone since.’
I sat up, my legs stretched out across the carpet.
‘So, it was quite something to call me and Rob out, then. You could have put the money towards a new bed.’
I regretted it as soon as I’d said it. Jenny looked at me, pained, and I wanted to swallow the words right back. Shit. It was none of my business. I’d stepped horribly out of line. But Jenny, to her credit, collected herself admirably.
‘I saw your advert, Luke,’ she said, stroking my arm with boldness, ‘and it reminded me of all I’d been missing. Not just the sex, but someone else’s touch and the tenderness. You’ve given me that this evening. It’s been lovely.’
‘My pleasure,’ I replied. And meant it. She hadn’t been what I’d been hoping for, but in a small way I felt proud. I’d helped out someone who obviously needed it.
We slipped off the duvet and got to our feet. I hugged her, and as I did I checked my watch. She had ten minutes left and I still had to get dressed.
‘I’m going to have to be leaving shortly,’ I said as I picked up my clothes.
‘I’d like to see you again, Luke. But not for sex or anything.’
I didn’t get it. Hadn’t she just told me that it was the tenderness she craved?
‘I’d like just to meet you for tea, and for us to talk, that’s all. Like I did with Rob? I’d pay you for your time. Isn’t that what escorting is about?’
‘Yes, but…’
Jenny held up her hand to stop me—‘Wait a minute’—quickly pulled her clothes back on and left the room. I got dressed. She returned a few minutes later with a wad of notes as I was buttoning up my shirt. She counted out the £150 onto a box lid and I scooped it up and folded it into my wallet. The easiest money I’d ever made.
I thought of how Rob had felt he’d won the jackpot. Which he had, for a mere chat over a coffee. Wasn’t what Jenny was now offering me the simplest part of this job? But it didn’t seem right.
‘I’d just like to see you for half an hour, before I go to work?’
‘Look, Jenny, I can’t have you pay for just that.’
‘But you’re not going to meet me for nothing, are you?’
She had a point. I was running a business, wasn’t I?
‘Well, no… But even so.’
Jenny took my wrist in her hand, and spoke without looking in my eyes.
‘I won’t hear another word, Luke. I’ll give you fifty pounds. How’s that?’
And then I got the message. She needed to pay something. She might have been hard-up but she had no need of my pity.
‘It’s a deal.’ And just like that I had my first repeat customer.
‘So, she was a right little goer, was she?’ leered Mark when I met him later in the local. He had just returned from the bar with our two pints. He set mine down in front of me and grabbed a chair, and I looked down into the mouth of the glass and the deep liquid. I lifted the beer to my lips and took a gulp. I didn’t know what to say. Because Jenny was outside what either of us had imagined, that was for sure.
‘Well?’
Mark wasn’t going to let up. He was facing me across the table, and this felt like an interview.
I set down my glass and flashed a ‘don’t go there’ glare.
‘Oh, come on, Luke. We’re in this together, aren’t we? You can tell me.’
I cradled my jaw in one hand, the other wrapped around my pint.
‘Look, the thing is, you weren’t there with me in the room, were you?’
‘Oh, if that was what she wanted, she only had to ask!’ he grinned, before knocking back more of his beer.
I shook my head at him and chuckled. For a second.
‘God, Mark. Be serious. It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t like that, y’know.’
There was a glint of anger in his eye.
‘What, suddenly you’re Mr Professional Escort all of a sudden? After one paid lay. Don’t make me laugh.’
‘No, listen. I didn’t mean that,’ I pleaded. ‘It was just… Jenny, she…’
‘Jenny,’ he sneered.
I ignored him. ‘Jenny is just someone who needed a bit of TLC.’
I spoke into my glass and heard my own voice grow quieter. I looked up at Mark and I could see he was listening.
‘And don’t we all,’ I sighed.
Jenny was hovering outside the Starbucks in Piccadilly. She hadn’t yet seen me approach. Her feet were turned slightly inward, and she was focused on the paving stones in front of them. One hand gripped the other against her thigh.
‘Jenny, it’s lovely to see you.’ I touched her shoulder and she turned towards me, a huge smile lighting up her face. I hugged her and felt her body relax against mine.
I ushered her into the café and went and ordered coffees for the two of us. She said nothing as I placed them on the table in front of us and sat myself down, but there was an expectant warmth across her face.
‘So, I didn’t put you off ever seeing me again, then?’ I smiled.
‘Oh, no, Luke.’
A tinge of pale pink washed across her face.
I flicked a look around the coffee shop and to the milling crowds in the street outside. We couldn’t have been more anonymous. I might even be mistaken for Jenny’s son.
‘So, do you have family in London?’ I asked.
She fiddled with the handle of her cup, and shook her head.
‘I’ve got a sister but I’ve lost touch with her. I’ve been trying to track her down.’
She changed the subject. ‘And you? That’s not an English accent.’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s not as if you’ll ever be alone in the Big City. There are plenty of Australians here.’
‘Yeah,’ I grinned back.
God, had I found that out. When I was out with Mark and our mates it was sometimes hard to remember that we were anywhere else but back home.
I switched the focus back to her. I was on her time after all.
‘You said when we last met that you’d be off to work after this.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, just round the corner. I’m a cleaner at a number of the clubs round here,’ she explained. ‘I spruce them up before they open, and afterwards when everyone’s left.’
Grim, tough work.
‘You see a different side of the city, then.’
She cocked her head at me. The words hung in the air. She didn’t want to talk about work. This was her break.
‘Tell me about yourself, Jenny. Have you always lived in London?’
That was the cue for her life story. It poured out. How she’d never been quite good enough. The rest of her family were teachers but she’d gone into the clubbing scene. And how when that’d fizzled out she’d ended up cleaning other people’s clubs. She just wanted to talk. Just needed someone to listen.
Jenny’s time was up. But it was she who made the move to go. She was the one who was racing against the clock. I, on the other hand, had plenty of time to kill until my evening shift at the pub.
She gripped the table as if ready to stand up. And then slipped back down in her chair like she had just thought of something.
‘Luke, I’ve got to go to work. And we haven’t had much time together.’
‘It’s flown by, hasn’t it?’
She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a small roll of notes and gathered them in her hand and scrunched them into my own in the hope that no one would see. I pushed my clenched fist and its contents into the back pocket of my jeans.
‘I’d like to see you again, Luke.’
‘Would you like me to come to your flat again?’ I fished.
She looked at me and pursed her lips. ‘When I said I wanted to meet you for tea, I didn’t mean it to be a one-off. I’d like to see you again. To talk, I mean.’
‘You mean here again? Like today?’
She nodded. ‘On a weekly basis. Before work, like today.’
I let her see me weigh it up in my mind, like I was working out if I could fit her into my busy schedule.
Like hell I could.
But at the same time I couldn’t help thinking that Jenny wasn’t what I’d quite bargained for when I’d decided to offer sex for sale. She clearly needed someone to talk to. A listening ear, then, was going to be another vital organ in this game.
A Bit of Give and Take
The joy of sex is that it’s not just about your pleasure. Consider the other person in the relationship and the benefits will be felt by both of you. As an ordinary guy, I know what guys tend to want, but having made my living as an escort, I’ve learned what brings the most pleasure to women too. Follow the tips through Undercover and it’ll be win, win for everyone!
1. Introducing yourself
So, you see someone you like the look of across a crowded dance floor or bar.
Smile, go and say ‘hello’, relax and be friendly.
Focus on them, find something to compliment, flirt with your words, eyes and hands.
Guys, don’t talk about the latest football scores, mistake joke-telling for a GSOH, or try too hard to impress with magic tricks and the like.
Girls, retain some mystery. Hold back on the life story and any problems you have. Find a mutual interest but don’t fake it; he’ll see right through it and it’ll sound desperate.
The sooner either of you gets to talk about sex, the more up for it you’ll sound. You’ll certainly grab his interest!
And if you get the brush-off? Hold your head up high, put it down to experience—and their loss—take a deep breath and live to love another day.
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Luke Bradbury
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Биографии и мемуары
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: When young Aussie Luke Bradbury finds himself alone, broke and out of ideas in London, things look desperate. Until he spots a temping ad. Lured by the promise of easy money – and the chance to bed as many women as he can handle – Luke becomes a gigolo. It’s a job millions of men would kill for.Luke quickly learns all there is to know about women in his quest to give them the ultimate pleasure, climbing inside their heads as well as their beds.But all too soon, Luke discovers the darker side of his lucrative new profession. Is he selling his soul as well as his body?