by Vivian Wood
But what other option do I have?
A chair is scraped out and a girl in high-waisted trousers and a cropped tee sits down. She stares at me with big, green, sympathetic eyes, her pouty mouth twisted in sympathy. “Ciara. You poor goddamn thing.”
I give Sloane a wan smile. I met her two years ago when I transferred from art history to law. We’re both extremely competitive with each other for our grades. It motivates us to study, this friendly competition we have going. Or rather, it did. My heart hurts at the thought of giving up my degree.
“Hey.” I’m about to ask Sloane how she’s been, because I really don’t want to talk about the funeral, when she leans over and envelops me in a huge hug.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
I pat her arms and push her back. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
She studies me closely. “It’s not fine. Just because you haven’t talked to your parents in years doesn’t mean their deaths haven’t affected you.”
If one more person tells me not to bottle up my emotions I will scream. I’m sick of the platitudes, the expressions that say it’s okay to cry. I don’t want to cry, I want half a million pounds.
Sloane takes out her tablet and begins tapping the screen. Her acrylic nails are a glossy nude shade. “I looked it up: there are five stages of grief to go through and you don’t want to stall at any of them or you’ll never process it and move on.”
I don’t have time to process it. I’ve got bigger things to worry about. “I’m fine. Maybe I’ve already been through them all.”
“No way. Have you done anger yet? What about denial?”
“Can you stop going on about it?” I snap. “I said I was fine.”
Sloane’s eyes widen and silence stretches between us.
Crap. I didn’t intend to take this out on her. What can I say to make her understand without blurting the whole mess out? “It’s not Mum and Dad dying I’m thinking about right now. It’s a debt. I’m worried about a debt.”
She glances down at her tablet screen. “I don’t know, babe. That kind of sounds like denial to me.”
I don’t have a chance to reply because we’re interrupted by another chair scrape. It’s a student I think I vaguely recognize, a girl with long black curls, painted-on jeans and a scoop-neck top. She doesn’t ask before she sits down.
“Oh, be our guest,” Sloane says waspishly, flipping the cover over her tablet.
“Hey. I’m Bethany,” the girl announces, gazing around the courtyard with wing-linered eyes. “I hate the new semester, trying to figure out who’s in my classes so there are people to talk to. Land Law?” she asks us, naming the class that starts in fifteen minutes’ time, and we nod.
She casts her eyes over me and seems to notice my miserable expression. “What’s eating you?”
“Um, her parents died two weeks ago,” Sloane says, in a tone intended to make it clear that she thinks Bethany is being rude and needs to go away.
“That blows,” Bethany replies in an absent-minded monotone, adding sugar to her takeaway coffee.
Sloane rolls her eyes and turns back to me. “What debt? How much? Do you need money to tide you over? I have some savings.”
I feel a rush of affection for Sloane and I cover her hand with mine and manage a smile. “Thank you, but I can’t take money from you. I need a long-term solution.” There’s no way I’m telling Sloane any details about the debt. I can’t risk her getting involved or Ravnikar might hurt her, too.
I hesitate, because Sloane isn’t going to like this, and I don’t even know this Bethany girl, but I need to float the idea past someone. “I’m thinking of…stripping.”
Sloane gapes at me. “We don’t strip. We’re law students.”
I want to laugh because she says this as if we’re royalty.
Bethany doesn’t bat an eyelid. “Please. Half the girls in this courtyard have worked the pole at some point.”
Sloane flushes. “They have not. Ciara, you’re not that sort of girl.”
Newsflash, Sloane: I’m desperate. Anyone’s that sort of girl when they’re desperate. But I know what she means. I’m too uptight to get naked in a clothing store dressing-room, let alone on a stage in front of drunk strangers. A shudder goes through me. While dancing. But if there’s no other way then I’m just going to have to learn how. Vodka might help.
“I’ve had an offer to work in a place. I don’t really want to, but…”
Bethany shakes her head. “Then don’t. There are easier ways of making money without selling your ass.”
I look at her skeptically. “Easy” ways of making money always come with strings attached. Like prison sentences. “Oh? How?”
Bethany takes a sip of her coffee. “Sugaring.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, but Sloane makes a disgusted face. “Without selling your ass? That is literally selling your ass.”
I lean forward, waving a hand between them. “Wait, wait, wait. What is ‘sugaring’?”
Sloane is about to reply but Bethany talks over her. “It’s getting yourself a sugar daddy, seeing him for a couple of dates a month and receiving a fat allowance for your time. You can earn thousands with very little time invested.”
I make a doubtful face. “Men pay for dates?”
“Old men,” Sloane says with a wrinkle of her nose.
“Rich men,” corrects Bethany. “It’s really common, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it. There are a ton of sugar dating sites filled with students cashing in.”
Dates. That doesn’t sound so bad. I’ve been on dates. One man at a time seems easier to handle than a whole roomful of them expecting me to perform for them. I get out my phone and search for “sugar daddy”, and then feel my eyebrows creep up my forehead as I see dating site after dating site, all with some combination of “sugar”, “baby” and “daddy” in their names.
“Is this legal?” I ask Bethany suspiciously.
“Of course.”
Sloane opens her mouth but I talk over her. “Is it good money?”
“Very good.”
A legal way of earning very good money. It sounds too good to be true. There must be a catch. “Would I have to sleep with these men?”
Bethany hesitates. “Possibly.”
Sloane snorts. “Possibly? What, you think these rich old men give money to broke students out of the kindness of their hearts? Of course you have to sleep with them. Ciara, no one needs money this badly. If you won’t let me lend you money, then go to a bank and get a short-term loan.”
A bank. She thinks a bank loan will cover what I owe. I turn to Bethany to ask another question but Sloane grabs my wrist.
“Ciara, it’s whoring. It’s straight-up whoring, dressed up with fancy dinners.”
Sloane doesn’t understand. She’s never seen the devil smile before. “So? Maybe I’ll be a whore. At least I’ll be in charge of my own life.” I’ll take independence over being forced into one of Mr. Ravnikar’s strip clubs any day.
Sloane reels as if I’ve slapped her and lets go of my arm. “It can’t be legal.”
“Technically, it is,” says Bethany. “The daddies pay for your time and company, not for sex. You just happen to sleep with them.”
“Daddies,” Sloane replies with a shudder, as if the word squicks her out. “And we’re law students. Technically isn’t good enough.”
I don’t like “technically legal” any more than Sloane. I didn’t choose to study law so I could learn how to get around it, I want to be a lawyer so I can help people.
Wanted to be a lawyer.
But if I can find one or two sugar daddies who pay decently maybe I won’t have to drop out. Hope flares in my chest. I just need a few hundred pounds a month for myself and I’ll give the rest to Mr. Ravnikar.
Bethany scrawls something in my notebook. “Here’s the web address of the very best sugaring website. All the richest daddies are on there. I need to go to the library before class so see you aroun
d.”
She picks up her coffee and saunters off. I watch her go, feeling vaguely like I’ve been visited by a disreputable fairy godmother.
Sloane’s about to start talking again but I don’t want to hear it. I’m not the same Ciara I was two weeks ago. The old Ciara would never have dreamed of getting into sex work to pay her bills but that girl died with her parents in the plane crash. The new Ciara does what she has to in order to survive.
“I have to go,” I say collecting my notebooks and handbag. There’s no point staying for class today as I won’t be able to concentrate. I’ll catch up if I find I can continue classes later. Before Sloane can protest I hurry away, heading for the Tube station. A moment later I feel my phone buzz in my pocket and dig it out.
Please, Ciara. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.
I tuck my phone back into my jeans without replying to Sloane. Regret is the least of my problems right now.
Chapter Three
Misha
“It’s done. Can I have my double pay check now?”
Bethany sounds as if she’s walking along the street, probably away from the university. Satisfaction washes over me but I keep my tone clipped as I say into the phone, “You can have it when I’ve given Miss Alders her first allowance. Now get back to the office.”
Bethany affects a pouty voice. “Oh daddy, I hope you’re going to be more generous with your little sugar baby.”
I twist my silver fountain pen in my fingers. “That’s the plan. Good job today.”
“Thank you. She’s a sweet one, daddy. Not like me. Porcelain doll-eyes and vulnerability. Needs a strong man like you to protect her from the big bad—”
I hang up on Bethany and think. Will Miss Alders take the bait? But what choice does she have? She has nothing and no one to help her. This is what pretty girls do when they fall on hard times, they leverage the most valuable commodity they have: their faces and bodies.
I bring the recording of the funeral up again. I must have watched the same five seconds twenty times over. Ciara Alders standing outside the church taking one long, slow, deep breath. She has nothing in the world but that small moment of peace, and even that is taken away from her when my brother appears.
I pause the video at the moment when she seems to be looking straight into the camera, though I know she can’t see it. A strange feeling spreads through my chest as I look at her. She almost looks peaceful. No mourners to greet. No Damir looming threateningly over her. I want…what? To give her something. Money, I suppose. That’s what women are after and while I’m interested in them they get it. Something is hovering at the edges of my consciousness but when I reach out it flits away like a frightened bird.
I close the video. Enough of this nonsense. There are a hundred other things I need to do rather than stare at a girl I don’t know.
But as I go about my work I feel a golden gleam of satisfaction. The trap has been set, and now all I have to do is sit back and wait for Miss Alders to fall into my lap.
Come to daddy.
Chapter Four
Ciara
“You’re not going to university, Ciara. Do you want to educate yourself out of a good marriage? No, you’re going to finishing school to learn how to be an asset to your future husband. As I did.”
I climb the stairs out of the Tube station, hearing my dead mother’s voice in my head. At the time I thought she was crazy—finishing school, in this day and age?—but now I wonder where I’d be if I’d taken her advice. Married to a rich man and cocooned from the world in Chanel, YSL and Gucci; a man who could pay off Mr. Ravnikar like it was nothing. But no, I had to go to university, didn’t I. I had to get an education. Better myself. Learn to be independent.
Like an idiot.
First, it was art history, not law. Art history was the most palatable degree I could choose as far as my mother was concerned and I did love it, even though it perhaps wasn’t as exciting as I wanted.
Then, at the end of my first year at university, I overheard that fight. What would my life look like now if I’d never found out what Dad was up to? I’d gone downstairs to get a bottle of water at one in the morning and heard them.
“Are you insane? You’re embezzling from a crook.” Mother was fisting her hands in her hair, looking more out of control than I’ve ever seen her in my life.
“Calm down. It’s nothing I haven’t done before. You like this house, don’t you? You want that jet.”
“Well, I…”
“Then leave everything to me. Trust me.”
For a moment I thought my mother would stand up to Dad and tell him that Alders aren’t crooks. Then she lowered her hands and pinned him with an angry gaze. “I wish I didn’t know. It’s so much easier when I don’t know anything.”
As I crept back to my room I couldn’t help but agree with her. It’s a terrible feeling, discovering that your parents aren’t anything to be proud of. That the standards they so arrogantly maintained through displays of wealth and etiquette were a sham.
I stood frozen in the middle of my bedroom. Dirty money had paid for this stately mansion with its triple garage, the Monet painting hanging in the entrance hall, the ballroom lit by a huge chandelier. My canopied bed and ensuite with a claw-foot tub were stolen goods, and so were the manicured gardens and the stable full of my mother’s horses. Alders aren’t better than other people. In fact, we’re worse than most, and I wanted no part of it anymore.
The next day I transferred to law and cut up my credit cards. By the end of the week I had moved into a share house closer to my university and got a part-time job in a coffee shop. I left all my designer shoes, clothes and jewelry behind and just took the basics, because I didn’t want anything from my old life.
Now, as I walk up the steps to my front door I regret not taking something with me, because if I do land a date with a rich man I’ll have nothing to wear. I laugh to myself as I insert the key into the lock. Mother, I’m doing what you wanted at last and trying to land a rich man. Are you proud?
There’s no one at home when I let myself in. The house is over a hundred years old and backs onto a train line so it’s noisy at all hours of the day and night. I have the box room right at the top. The ceiling slants so low I have to bend double to get into bed and in winter it’s freezing cold. It’s not much, but it’s mine. I couldn’t even go back home if I wanted to. All my parents’ properties are sold now, and the money is in the pocket of that creep Ravnikar.
I’ve got so much homework and reading I should be doing, but I reluctantly shelve it in my mind. I need to look into this sugar baby thing. I won’t do anything illegal to pay off a criminal because that means I’m no better than he is. If a man gives you money to have dinner and then sleep with him when you don’t want to—I wince just thinking about it—is that honest money? It’s not that I think I’m too good to be paid for sex or that this type of work is beneath me. I don’t think sex work itself is immoral or dirty. But I swore to myself long ago that I wouldn’t rely on my body or my charms to make my way in life, I’d use my brains. And yet, here I am.
I hole up in my room with a mug of instant hot chocolate and my laptop open and I read everything I can find online about sugar babies and sugar daddies. First I start with magazine articles, glossy pieces written by female journalists with thinly veiled contempt for a world they’re only a tourist in. I find myself rolling my eyes at their vanity, because most of them slip in that, surprise surprise, they are “hot enough” to be paid for sex—not that any of them would actually do that for a job. Haha. LOL. Men are so silly. And then they go back to their regular jobs without even acknowledging the fact that they’re privileged enough to have other options.
I find myself gnashing my teeth and move onto social media. There’s a lot of nonsense to sift through on Instagram, pictures of Chanel bags and underwear selfies and glasses of champagne against a backdrop of fur coats and seaside balcony views. I suppose this is the sugar baby aesthetic. I
’m looking for the sugar baby reality.
I find it on Tumblr. There’s a lot of posing and bragging and crappy bathroom selfies with “DM me if you wanna be my daddy” captions, but I also find a few blogs that have a tell-it-like-it-is vibe, and I start to read.
Met a POT last night who could be my whale! He sent taxi money to my cash app along with a “little extra.” Two hundred dollars! On the date he ordered champagne. I checked the price on the wine list when he went to the bathroom and it costs five hundred a bottle. I could just smell the money all over him. He’s not a flashy dresser but dresses expensively if you know what I mean. At the end of the date he handed me the agreed upon three hundred, and didn’t even take out the two hundred he’d already given me.
Feeling so happy with myself. If men like spending and treating you then they WILL. You shouldn’t have to beg.
I figure out that POT is short for a Potential SD, or sugar daddy. A whale seems to be a sugar daddy who will spend large on you. I take notes as I go, as studious about this as I would be a homework assignment.
Last month my SD refused to raise my allowance and then complained I was wearing the same dress I’d worn twice before. I told him that if he wants me to look my best for him he needs to invest in me. I shed a few tears, too. Now I’m getting an extra five hundred a month and he’s taking me shopping on Saturday. This is how you finesse a man, ladies.
There’s something called a Splenda daddy, a man who doesn’t have as much cash to splash as a sugar daddy. Some girls say they’re time-wasters and you shouldn’t bother with them. Others love their Splenda daddies.
Why You Should Have a Splenda Daddy on the Side:
He won’t be able to give you a fat allowance but he won’t be demanding of your time either
Little cash gifts and presents add up