He is very clever. He went to Eton which is a famous school where the Royal Family sends its sons and then he went to Cambridge which is one of the best universities in England. He makes me laugh and he seems very kind. I think he would make a very good husband for some girl. I asked him if he wanted a wife because I have friends in Udon Thani who would make really good wives but he said he was happy being single. A lot of girls in Udon Thani have married farangs but they are not as nice as Robert or as rich. Most girls in Udon Thani seem to marry old and fat farangs with very little money. I don’t think the girls marry for love, I think they marry because they want a farang husband to take care of them and their families. But if they want someone to take care of them, why marry a farang who is poor? Why don’t they look for a rich farang? I think the farangs who live in Udon Thani live there because it’s cheap. That means they have little money. I don’t think I would marry a farang with little money. I might marry a farang with a lot of money if he could take care of me, but if I did marry a farang I think I would live in his country. I have a friend called Poy who lives in Udon Thani. She is a school teacher and she has long hair and is quite pretty. She is thirty and has never married and she would be perfect for Robert. Poy can cook and she is very kind and I know she would take very good care of him. I think I will phone Poy and ask her to send me a photograph of herself and I will show it to him.
Before I came to London I never thought of marrying a farang. I always thought I would marry a Thai. Really, I thought Kung would divorce his wife and marry me but even if that didn’t happen I thought I would marry another Thai man. But now I think that I could marry a farang. If I met the right one. I don’t think I could marry a farang just for money, though. I think I would have to love him first. And he would have to love me and my son.
Before I went to sleep I got a text message from Simon, wishing me a good night. I sent him a message saying that I missed him and then I sent a text message to Robert, to say that I hoped I would dream about him. I called him ‘Daddy’ because I know that he likes that. Just before I fell asleep I got a message from Gordon saying that he missed me. I couldn’t remember who Gordon was but I sent him a text message back saying that I missed him and hoped to see him soon.
Chapter 27
Saturday May 2. John called me yesterday to say that the school had put lots of lessons online which I could see whenever I want, and they would be doing live lessons through Zoom. I remembered that one of my clients had said I should buy shares in the Zoom company because more people would be talking online because of Covid. He was a smart man. I told John that I wasn’t feeling well but that I would start to study online. He said he could come around with some medicine and some food for me but I told him that a girlfriend was taking care of me. I said I would try to go online next week. I really will try but I am so busy now. I usually see two or three customers a day and sometimes as many as five or six. John says that if I keep missing lessons I will never learn, but actually my English is already very good because I am talking to my clients all the time.
I studied at Ramkhamhaeng University, which is quite famous in Thailand. If I tell you how many students are at the university you will be shocked. Half a million! Really. That is how many students go to Ramkhamhaeng. It is what is called an open university and anyone can go if they want to. Actually, I found out that Vicky also went to Ramkhamhaeng University. She studied Mass Communication but she did not finish her degree. She studied for six years, she said, but she was lazy. I studied for four years and got my Bachelor of Business Administration and I was studying for my Master of Business Administration when Kung’s wife found out that I was his Mia Noi and I had to leave Thailand.
Ramkhamhaeng is named after a famous king who created the Thai alphabet. The main university is in Bangkok but I studied in Udon Thani. You can study all over the country but the teachers are in Bangkok. Vicky studied near her home in Buri Ram. You go to your local campus to study and see your teachers live on a satellite link. Then on Saturdays and Sundays sometimes the teachers come to where you are so you can see them face to face.
A lot of students at Ramkhamhaeng are lazy and do not study. Most of my classmates never did any homework and were always asking me for advice on their work. I studied very hard because I thought if I had a degree and a masters then I could get a good job. I didn’t know that I would be doing this job, that’s for sure! An escort does not need a degree or a masters, she just needs to be pretty and give a GFE. Cat taught me about that. GFE is Girl Friend Experience. It’s where the client thinks he has a girlfriend and not an escort.
I studied for my degree but I also went to a language school in Udon Thani to learn English. I knew that it was important to be able to speak English and to read and write it really well. English is the most important language in the world, I think. Maybe one day Chinese will be more important, but not now. A lot of my friends can speak English quite well because speaking English is not too difficult. In fact I think it is easier to speak English than to speak Thai. Sandra speaks really good English and she says she learned it from her customers. And Nancy knows lots of slang and swear words. She keeps saying ‘innit?’ which sort of means ‘isn’t it?’ or ‘chai mai?’ in Thai. But Sandra and Nancy can hardly write English at all. I studied English every day and I watched American movies. I always put the subtitles on when I watch Netflix movies so I can see and hear the words. Also I kept a diary in English. I started when I was eighteen and every day I would write what I did in English. It was very hard at first but I got better and better and now I think I write English very well. It is like most things. If you want to do them well you have to work hard at it. It is the same with my job now. If I want to do it well and earn a lot of money then I have to try hard. I do not really like being an escort but now that I am doing it I want to do it well.
Chapter 28
Sunday May 3. I have been an escort for two months. I can hardly believe it. Two months. When I first started doing this job I cried a lot but now I hardly cry at all. Sometimes I cry if a customer is not nice to me and I cry when I miss my son, but I don’t cry all the time like I used to. Sometimes I even enjoy the job. Some of my customers are quite young and handsome and are good at sex, and some of them make me laugh and some tell me things I didn’t know. I always ask them about their jobs and if there’s something I don’t understand about England they can explain things for me.
You know, I can’t remember all the customers that I have seen over the past two months, even though I have all their names. It was Cat who showed me how to keep a book of my customers. I have a book with Mickey Mouse on the cover because my son Ice loves Mickey Mouse and it always makes me smile when I look at it. I keep the book in the kitchen drawer where I keep my knives and forks and spoons. That was where I used to keep my money but now I hide my money somewhere else in my room. I don’t tell anyone where I hide my money.
The book is very important. All the girls at the agency have to keep a book and we take the books with us to the Sloane Square flat when we go to see Oliver and Cat on Sunday night. Cat showed me how to divide the pages up into eight columns. In the first column you put the date. In the second column you put the name of the customer. Then you put the time you met the customer and the time he left. Or the time you left if it was an outcall job. Then you put how many hours you spent with the customer. Then there’s a column where you write ‘I’ for incall or ‘O’ for outcall. Then you write down how much he paid you. Then in the last column you write down how much commission you have to pay Oliver. At the end of every week you draw a line across the page and add up how much commission Oliver is to get.
So far I have paid Oliver a bit more than £9,000. Do you know how many customers I have had? I couldn’t believe it when I added them up. One hundred and twelve. Before I came to England I had made love to a boy at school when I was eighteen, then Ice’s father, and then Kung. Three men. That was all. And when I was working at the Thai restaurant
in Camden I never had a boyfriend, even though a lot of the customers would ask me out. I was a good girl.
I didn’t have sex with all one hundred and twelve men, of course. Some didn’t want sex. Some wanted just oral or a massage and of course there is Robert who just likes to kiss my feet. But most of the men want to have sex so I think I have almost certainly had sex with more than eighty men. Maybe ninety. I wonder what it would look like if they were all standing together in one room. I think we would need a very big room!
Simon came to see me last night. He booked me for two hours and he brought a pizza and some DVDs with him. The first time he came to see me I had told him that I liked action movies so he bought Die Hard 3 and Déjà Vu. I had seen Die Hard 3 but I hadn’t seen Déjà Vu so we watched it and ate pizza and I opened a bottle of wine. We sat on the sofa and he put his arm around me which was nice. When the movie had finished he wanted to go into the bedroom but I said that we didn’t have time because his two hours was almost up. He looked a bit sad and said that he wanted to make love to me and I said that I wanted to make love to him too but that if we did he would have to book more time with the agency. I could see he wasn’t happy so I kissed him and said that he had to understand me. I was a working girl and so if he wanted more than two hours he would have to speak to the agency. I kissed him again and rubbed myself against him and he laughed and said okay. He phoned Oliver and booked me for another hour and Oliver gave him a discount because it was his third hour so he only had to pay another £120. I gave him a massage and then gave him oral. He came really quickly so we didn’t get to make love. I feel a bit sorry for Simon because he has such a small dick. I think it must be really difficult for him to get a girlfriend. I know some people say that the size of a man’s dick isn’t important and in a way that is true. It’s not important unless it’s really, really small, and Simon’s is really, really small. But he is a nice man. He let me keep the DVDs because he said he’d bought them for me. Just before I went to sleep I got a text message from him saying that he missed me and that he wanted me to have sweet dreams. I sent him a message saying ‘good night, darling’ and sent it to six other customers, too. Then I sent a good night message to Robert, but I called him Daddy. He’s the only customer that I call Daddy. Robert sent me a message back saying that he missed me and that he’d see me soon. Robert is the perfect customer. I am so lucky to have him.
Chapter 29
Monday May 4. Last night something terrible happened. Really terrible. It was the worst thing that has happened to me since I came to England. There was a fight between Alice and Bee and now Bee is hurt and Oliver is mad at everyone. I was so scared that I was shaking because I have never seen people fighting like that. Not girls, anyway. I went to a Muay Thai boxing match with Kung once in Udon Thani but I have never seen girls fighting before.
We had all gone to the Sloane Square flat and were showing Oliver our books and giving him our money. Cat was cooking Thai food in the kitchen and I had brought a huge watermelon, one of the biggest I had ever seen. I was cutting the watermelon into slices when Bee arrived.
Bee was grinning and she took her money out of an envelope and waved it around before giving it to Oliver. She gave him £2,800. We were all very surprised. That meant that she had earned £8,400 in one week. I asked her how she had earned so much and she said that a customer had booked her for three days. Not three overnights but for three full days and three nights. Oliver had charged him £2,100 for each day which meant that the customer had paid her £6,300. I couldn’t believe it. Why would a man pay a girl £6,300 to be with him for three days? Bee said he was really rich. He worked for a big bank in New York and he earned millions of dollars a year. He had seen Bee last week and liked her so much that he had come back to see her especially. He had flown first class and was staying at a rented house in Mayfair but he spent most of his time with her in her flat in Paddington. He had brought her some gifts from America - two Chanel bags and a Rolex watch. She showed everybody her watch. It was gold and studded with small diamonds. I was so jealous. I would love to have a customer like that.
I could see that Alice wasn’t happy. She kept glaring at Bee like she was angry with her, but she didn’t say anything. Everybody was asking questions about Bee’s customer because I think they wanted him to be their customer, too. Bee was laughing and saying that he was old and bald and fat and had five children and that she was younger than all his children. I don’t know why old men want to be with young girls so much. I would think that being with a young girl would just make them feel old. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe having sex with a young girl makes them feel young again.
We ate the food that Cat had cooked and everybody said how tasty my watermelon was. Then after we had eaten the food we started to play cards. That was when the trouble started. We were playing Pok Gow as always and we were taking it in turns to deal. When it was Alice’s turn to be the dealer, she gave everybody two cards. Then she gave Bee a third card. Bee picked it up but said that she didn’t want it. Alice said that she had touched it so she had to have it but Bee said she didn’t want it. She turned over her cards to show that she had the king and seven of hearts and she said that there’s no way that she would have wanted a third card. Then Alice said that Bee was cheating and Bee said that a dog could go and fuck her mother and then Alice threw the pack of cards at Bee and screamed that she was a whore which was pretty funny actually because really we are all whores.
Bee was drinking whiskey and coke and she picked up her glass and threw it over Alice. Alice picked up the bottle of beer that Oliver had been drinking and hit Bee across the face with it. The bottle broke and there was blood everywhere. They were both screaming and Bee grabbed Alice’s hair and pulled out a big chunk of it. Nancy was crying and Sandra was yelling at Alice and trying to pull her away from Bee. Oliver stood up and forced himself between the two of them and shouted at them. It was the first time I had ever seen Oliver angry.
He told Alice to go into one of the bedrooms. She was very angry and shouted at him that it wasn’t fair, that he was sending all the best customers to Bee but Oliver said he wasn’t going to argue with her and the she had to go to the room. Alice did as she was told.
Cat got a wet cloth from the kitchen and cleaned the cut on Bee’s forehead. It was next to her eye and it wasn’t too bad a cut but her eye is going to be really bruised. She was still angry and wanted to fight Alice but Oliver told her that it was over and that there was to be no more fighting. He was very angry. He said that Bee wouldn’t be able to work until the bruises had gone and the cut had healed. That got Sandra angry because she is the one who paid for Bee’s contract. She said that Bee had to work because she had to pay back the money she owed Sandra. Oliver said that she couldn’t work because a customer might think that Oliver had hit Bee and report him to the police. The police didn’t worry about girls working but they did care when they got hurt. That got Sandra angry so she took off her shoe and tried to get into the room where Alice was to hit her but Cat stopped her. Then Sandra tried to hit Cat but Vicky and Wanda pulled her away and took the shoe off her.
Oliver said that Sandra had to take Bee home. When they had gone, Oliver went into the bedroom to talk to Alice. We couldn’t hear what he said to her but he was in there for half an hour and then she came out and she was crying and she went home.
The rest of us played cards but we were all very quiet and all a bit shocked by what had happened. Oliver said that we weren’t to worry, that it would be all right.
I don’t know why they were fighting. We are all working girls, we should be a team, we should be helping each other not fighting each other. We finished playing cards quite early and I went home with Nancy and stayed with her. I was just about to go to sleep when her doorbell rang. It was her boyfriend. Her kik. His name is Chris and he is nineteen and quite good looking. I didn’t want to stay there while he was there so I went home. Kung kept phoning me but I didn’t answer the phone. I set it
to silent so that I could sleep.
Chapter 30
Tuesday May 5. I watched the news on television. England now has the highest Covid death toll in Europe, the second highest in the world. More than a thousand people a day are dying of the virus. Every day. I don’t understand what is happening. In Thailand nobody is dying of the virus and the Chinese say no one is dying in China. All the pubs and bars and restaurants are shut now and the only shops that are open are the food shops and the supermarkets and the pharmacies.
Kung phoned me twenty times yesterday. He knows that I can see his number when he has phoned so it’s just stupid to call me so much. And what did he want to talk about? Money. He needs more money to pay the bank and to pay the builders. They are doing the kitchen now and it will cost more than 700,000 baht in total, which is more than £17,000. When I first came to England I missed Kung a lot and I was always happy to talk to him but now I think he doesn’t care about me, he just cares about money. I sent him £1,000 by Western Union this week and £1,200 last week and he is still asking for more. He never asks how I am or tells me that I miss him and when I ask him when he will leave his wife he says that he doesn’t want to talk about that until the house is finished. He doesn’t even ask why I have so much money now. He thinks I am working in a restaurant but he must realise that I can’t be earning so much by serving food. I don’t think he cares what I am doing, he just wants my money. Before we used to share the cost of the house but now I think I am paying for everything.
I answered the phone when I woke up and all he said was ‘call me back’. I did call him back but I don’t think that’s fair. If he wants to talk to me he should pay for the call. Then all he did was ask for more money. I really don’t think he loves me any more but I’m not sure what I can do. I have so much of my money in the house we are building and he did all the paperwork so I am not sure what he will do if I say that I want to split up with him. Maybe he will try to keep the house. I think when we have finished the house will be worth about 2,500,000 baht which is about £65,000. Maybe if I tell him I will give him £20,000 he will let me have the house for myself. I am scared to ask him in case he says no and steals the house from me, so I just keep sending him money.
Desperate Measures Page 6