by Ruth Jacobs
“Do you mind if I ask Tara to meet us there?” Nicole asked as they neared the road.
“I thought we were having a quick drink? She’ll be ages.” Shelley didn’t want Tara sharing her time with Nicole, nor did she want to wait for her to arrive in North West London from the West.
“She won’t be long. She’s staying at Hugo’s. They’ll probably be in The Freemasons.”
While Nicole spoke to Tara on the phone, Shelley wondered why she might be staying at Hugo’s. They weren’t a couple. She didn’t think Hugo liked her that much. And even though Shelley didn’t like her that much either, she felt left out that she hadn’t been informed Tara was staying in her part of London.
9. Keeping Secrets
Leant against the grubby tiles that clad the outside wall of The Magdala, Shelley and Nicole stood waiting for Tara. Within minutes, Shelley heard Hugo coming. Blaring music – Fugees: The Score – and a horn beeping in time to the beat.
On the other side of the road, Hugo pulled over in his red Porsche. Tara dashed from the car. For a second, Hugo waved then he zoomed off up the street.
“Isn’t he coming in?” Shelley asked, fiddling with the diamond in her necklace.
“I told him to go back to The Freemasons. His friends are there,” Tara said.
Shelley wondered what Tara was up to telling Hugo not to join them. And if he was in fact at The Freemasons, why did he drive to The Magdala when it was just up the road? It didn’t make sense.
Inside the pub, as with the outside, time had been at a standstill since the 1950s. The cream paint above the partially wood-panelled walls was yellowed from second-hand smoke. The carpet was threadbare from being walked over for so many years. And the wooden tables and chairs, and the bar and the stools, all showed signs of long-term abuse.
She knew her friends considered the pub a dive, but Shelley liked it like that. She preferred its unpretentious atmosphere, which was nearly dead apart from a handful of alcoholics. Tara and Nicole may have rather been somewhere more vibrant and upmarket but they were in her stomping ground now. They wouldn’t go to the clubs that she wanted to in the West End, but at least in Hampstead, most choices were hers.
While Nicole ordered their drinks at the bar, Shelley and Tara sat down at an empty table by a window. Sitting on the padded bench opposite Tara, even through the smoke-filled air between them, Shelley could see that her face was redder than usual. It wasn’t just her spots. She looked like she’d been crying.
“Is something wrong?” Shelley asked.
Tara’s face crumpled. “I’m having a really hard time at the moment.”
Shelley was relieved to see Nicole walking back towards the table with their drinks. She needed something to soften reality and though not her first choice, alcohol would help.
“What’s happened? Have you lost your flat?” Shelley couldn’t see any other reason for her to be staying at Hugo’s.
“What’s wrong, love?” Nicole took a seat next to Shelley on the bench.
“I think I’m going to lose my son.” Tara looked at them briefly before lowering her head.
“What are you talking about? When did you have a son?” Nicole asked. From the expression on her face, she was as stunned as Shelley.
“Before I knew you,” Tara replied. “I know I should have told you, but I’m not exactly a role-model mother, am I? I didn’t want you to judge me.”
“We won’t judge you,” Shelley said, unsure if she was capable of being non-judgemental.
“Max is four. He lives with my parents.”
“I can’t believe you never told me.” Nicole gulped her wine, emptying the glass.
“My— Well, he’s not my anything, Max’s father is trying to get custody and he’s going to take him to the Middle East. I’ll never see my baby again.” Tara sobbed.
Nicole stretched her arm across the wooden table and took Tara’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Tar. If there’s anything I can do, anything, love, you let me know.”
“Same goes for me,” Shelley said, taking Tara’s free hand. “I’m sorry I’m such a rubbish friend.”
“You didn’t know, Shell.” Tara squeezed her hand.
***
They spent hours talking in the pub and for the first time, Tara opened up. Shelley realised that she did actually quite like her after all. She made a mental commitment to be a better friend.
Shortly after nine-thirty, Tara received a call on her mobile. While she took the call outside, Shelley took the opportunity to tell Nicole their cars would be locked inside the car park at Kenwood, and they wouldn’t be able to get them until the morning.
When Tara returned, Shelley could tell she’d been crying.
“Has something happened with your lad?” Nicole asked Tara.
“It’s fucking Marianne. She wants me to do an anal job and I’m not doing it.” Tara stood by the table, looking down.
“That’s all right. You don’t need to get upset over it. She’ll call someone else,” Nicole said softly.
“The punter wants me. He’s seen me before, but I’m not doing it. I told him last time. Now he’s told Marianne he’ll pay five-grand and she said if I don’t go, she won’t give me any more work.”
“I’d tell her to shove it up her arse, see how she likes it,” Shelley said, cajoling a weak smile from Tara.
“She’s such a bitch. She said I’m lucky to still be working for her, earning decent money ’cos I look like a druggie and should be working the streets.” Tara wiped one eye with the back of her hand. “I’m too good to be a streetwalker.”
“She’ll come round. She’s all bark and no bite.”
Nicole’s sympathetic response surprised Shelley. Whenever Tara spoke condescendingly about their counterparts who worked the streets, Nicole – having once been one – always corrected her.
“It’s all right for her, she can use her mouth for anal. With a face like a slapped arse, a punter couldn’t tell the difference anyway.” Shelley smiled, hoping humour might take them off on a tangent, away from the confrontation she was sure was on the horizon.
“She was stunning when she was younger though. Have you seen her pictures?” Nicole said.
“She’s shown me pictures but I don’t believe it was really her. It could have been any tall blonde.” Shelley allowed herself to follow in Nicole’s new direction. Perhaps she was letting it slide for the first time.
“She’s a disappointment to everyone behind her.” Tara sat back down at the table.
“What are you saying? We’re gonna look like her in thirty years?” Nicole asked.
“I fucking hope not.” Shelley slugged down a quarter of her pint of snakebite and blackcurrant.
“I mean anyone who’s seeing her from behind,” Tara said. “Like when you see a man from the back, he’s got broad shoulders, good build, nice hair, blah-blah-blah. You imagine if he turned around, he’d be hot. Well with her, you see a tall, slim, blonde. You’re expecting one thing, but when she turns you’re stung by a haggard, old, witch face.”
“Maybe that’s why she doesn’t work any more. She’s in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act.” Shelley grinned.
“That’s mean. Don’t laugh at her,” Nicole told them. “I bet she’s had a hard life.”
***
Tara brightened up. She seemed particularly cheerful hearing about Nicole’s latest catastrophe. She hadn’t realised the clocks had gone forward on the weekend. On the Sunday when she’d arrived at her client’s house, the door was opened by his teenage son accompanied by his teenage friends. “I told them I was a Jehovah's Witness,” Nicole said. “They only went and asked for a damn leaflet. I said I’d get one out the car, but I just got in and drove off.”
They began swapping stories about the clients they’d seen through Marianne. With two years’ service, Shelley was a more recent addition to Marianne’s girls in comparison to Tara and Nicole, who had both worked for her for three years.
Nicole talked
about a job she’d done at The Hilton in Olympia, where she’d handcuffed the client to the bed then mislaid the key and spent three hours searching for it in the hotel room. Tara shared the details of a recent visit she’d had with Resident Crack Wrap, the regular who liked to be bound in clingfilm, and fed a combination of the crack pipe and poppers on a cigarette, while she read him erotica.
They moved on to discussing the bizarre scenes clients wanted them to act out. Shelley shared about her original assumption of what angel lust was. They all laughed, but Shelley stopped abruptly when she realised what she’d said.
She rushed from the table and into the ladies’ room. She sat in a cubicle with the seat down and keeping her jeans on. She didn’t need to go. She needed to clear her head. If they remembered talking about angel lust then they must remember talking about her dead punter. What had she said exactly? She tried to recall. Had she mentioned that it was Tara who told her about angel lust in the first place or had she just brought up angel lust out of the blue? She couldn’t remember, even though the conversation happened minutes ago.
“This is what heroin has done to you, stupid girl,” said one of the harsher directors on the board.
It wasn’t her short-term memory she wanted erased, it was what happened a long time ago that haunted her the most. If she couldn’t remember a conversation that had taken place minutes ago, how would she ever remember anything at university? What was she going there for anyway?
“You’re just a junky whore. You’re a slut. Who are you kidding?” continued the harsh director.
In her handbag, she had a tiny spot of heroin on a small piece of foil. She kept it for emergency use, hidden in the pages of a 1975 edition of The Escaped Cock – a short paperback that was a convenient size and weight for living permanently in her handbag. She took out the book, and with a spare section of foil, she rolled a small tube.
Quickly, she chased the molten brown up, down and around the shiny silver. Once she’d finished creating an irregular pattern of burnt out lines, she lit a cigarette to cover any residual heroin lingering in the air.
She felt better, not high, but relaxed. Her achy bones eased a bit too. She looked in the mirror. Her eyes weren’t pinned. That was good. Her friends wouldn’t notice. She just had to keep herself from scratching and she’d be fine.
Remembering why she was in the ladies’ room, she shook her head and laughed aloud at the irony. She’d forgotten why she was in there – and she was in there because she’d forgotten what she’d said in the pub, and the reason she was worried about that was because she couldn’t remember for sure if a conversation had taken place at Tara’s. And the cause of the problems – well, she’d just had some more.
***
When Shelley returned to the table, the mood was sombre. She could sense it. Had they been talking about the dead punter? She wished they’d just come out and say it.
“Were you raped by the first client Marianne sent to your flat?” Tara asked Shelley.
“Nicole! What the fuck have you been telling her?” Shelley’s heart thumped hard in her chest. It was the flight or fight Dr Fielding had told her about.
“Twice might be a coincidence, but not three times. He did exactly the same to her.” Nicole nodded her head in Tara’s direction. “It’s gotta be the same man.”
Shelley legs felt strengthless. She put her hands on the table and slowly lowered herself onto the seat. “Was he the first Marianne sent to you too?”
“He was.” Tara stood up and walked over to the bar.
In Shelley’s mind, the rape replayed. She saw the red, sweaty face above her. Its vicious expression. The soulless eyes rolling back to the whites. She could smell him.
Nicole handed her a lit cigarette. Shelley took a deep pull as if it might push down the pain. The recording continued. Now, she was seeing it from above – out of her body. She could see herself fighting, struggling underneath him, trying to get out. He had her pinned down by her wrists, trapping her under his heavy weight. She was crushed.
She could see the lamp on the bedside table that she’d imagined smashing over his head, but she couldn’t reach it. She couldn’t get to the knife either. The one she kept under her bed and that she’d pictured herself stabbing him with. She stabbed him again in her head.
She’d wanted to scream, but she didn’t want her neighbours to find out what she did for work. She’d only just moved into the Belsize Park flat a couple of weeks earlier. And she’d moved there after an agency sent her a client who raped her in her last working flat. She’d registered with Marianne because she thought that with a madam she’d be safer. Following that first client from Marianne, her three-month wait for a conclusive HIV result started over.
“Marianne’s got to have a hand in this,” Shelley said when Tara came back with a round of drinks.
“She does.” Tara tipped her head back, downing her vodka and coke. “She’s making money out of us being raped.”
“No way! She wouldn’t do that to me.” Nicole shuffled back on the bench, shaking her head.
“She fucking did. To all of us, and God knows how many others,” Tara said. “I heard her talking to him on the phone. She was fucking talking to him. They’re in business together.”
“Sick fucking bitch.” Shelley lit another cigarette with the end of the one she’d just smoked down to the filter.
“If they were, she’s not stupid enough to talk to him in front of you, is she?” Nicole said.
“She didn’t know I was there. Matt let me in and I was waiting in the lounge. I heard her on the phone when she came back. I’m telling you, she’s making money out of girls being raped.”
“I can’t believe this.” The colour drained from Nicole’s face. She kept shaking her head. “I can’t fucking believe it.”
“It’s the truth, Nic. They were talking about money, ten thousand, and she was saying stuff like, ‘don’t worry she’s new, she won’t put up a fight... It’s her own flat, she won’t want any noise... She won’t be a screamer.’ She’s fucking evil.”
“How could she do that to me?” Tears were streaming down Nicole’s face.
How could Marianne have a business arrangement, a financial agreement with a rapist? “She’s a fucking cunt! That’s how.” Shelley’s nails dug hard into the palm of her clenched fist.
“How long have you known this for?” Nicole snapped at Tara.
“Two or three weeks.”
“You should’ve said something then. Why didn’t you tell me? What were you thinking?” Nicole wiped her face with the sleeve of her white blouse, leaving a trail of mascara and foundation.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just had all this stuff with my son and I...”
“I’m sorry, love. At least we know now.” Nicole took Tara’s hand.
“We can’t let this go. We need to do something.” Shelley’s head spun, thinking of a way to put a stop to Marianne and her rapist client that didn’t involve the police. She knew her friends were as unlikely to turn to the police as she was.
The table rocked as Shelley slammed down her fist. “I know how to deal with that cunt.”
10. Seething with Loathing
“Nicole... Nicole.” Shelley shook her friend’s body, as she lay asleep in the bed next to her.
“Hmmm.” Nicole rolled over to face the opposite direction.
“Wake up. I need to ask you something.” Shelley turned on her bedside light and continued rocking Nicole until she roused. “I’m worried. What if Marianne knows Tara heard her on the phone? Her flat’s big, but it’s not that big – and if she knows, then she’s gonna know Tara told us and then this could all come back on us.”
“Calm down, love.” Nicole sat up. “She said she didn’t know.”
“But she can’t be sure, can she?”
“Marianne would’ve said something, you know what she’s like, and Tara said she didn’t. Anyway, she’s been totally normal with me. Has she been off with you?”
“No, she hasn’t but—”
“Well then, there’s nothing to worry about. What’s she gonna do anyway?” Nicole lay down and closed her eyes.
Shelley turned out the lamp on her bedside table. For a couple of hours, she stayed awake, considering the worst Marianne could do. Finally, she fell back to sleep just as daylight began creeping into the bedroom.
***
At eleven o’clock on Friday morning, Shelley was woken by her early-rising guests, and not her nightmare alarm clock that seemed to be set for mid-afternoon. In her striped pyjamas, she walked barefoot into the lounge. Tara and Nicole were sitting on the leather chairs at the circular dining table, eating toast. The bread in her freezer must’ve been in there for over a year. Keeping that to herself, she joined them and they began going through the names of working girls who might be able to help.
Although they’d listed fourteen names between them – and they only needed to choose one – it wasn’t easy. None of them were actual friends. They knew little about them.
“There is one other girl... but she’s a bit older,” Shelley said.
“They’ve gotta be young, love. He might only book the young ones.” Nicole was waving her arm as if it might encourage the air to dry the wet sleeve of yesterday’s blouse. How did she manage to remove mascara and foundation from white silk? She was magic.
“I think she’s mid-twenties, twenty-five, twenty-six, but she says she’s twenty for work.”
“That’s too old. I was eighteen when he booked me,” Nicole said.
“If she looks twenty, it’ll be fine.” Tara spoke with a mouthful of toast. “I was twenty. How old were you, Shelley?”
“Nineteen.”
“How well do you know her? Can we trust her?” Nicole asked.
“I’m sure we can trust her. But I did only meet her once, on a job.”
“Once!” Nicole stopped sleeve-shaking. “You don’t know you can trust her if you only met her once.”
“I know more about her than these girls.” Shelley pointed to their list on the table. “And I’ve worked with them loads of times, but we never really talk. Me and Angel talked for hours—”