Fishnet
Fishnet
Kirstin Innes
First published 2015
Freight Books
49-53 Virginia Street
Glasgow, G1 1TS
www.freightbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Kirstin Innes 2015
The moral right of Kirstin Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or by licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-910449-06-6
eISBN 978-1-910449-07-3
Typeset by Freight
Printed and bound by Bell and Bain, Glasgow
For Bis.
Contents
Author’s note
Past
Present
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Future
Acknowledgements
Author’s note
All the individuals, organisations and institutions mentioned in this novel are entirely fictional. However, the background to this book was built up through many years of research, and interviews conducted with people who work within the industry. If you’re interested, do take a look at the work done by the English Collective of Prostitutes, ScotPEP (Scottish Prostitutes Education Project) and Sex Worker Open University.
Past
The next morning, she’s laid out there on the pillow beside you. Corn-yellow hair matted across her cheeks, crusty grains of makeup under her eyes and a sharp, feral smell rising from the duvet. You suspect maybe she’s wet herself, but she looks happy as a baby. Half a smile stuck gummily round her mouth.
It rushes through your system as you sit up, toxic pressure on sinus, stomach. Still, you’re awake, and still held together by skin. Underneath, though, that black emptiness of a comedown beginning. Pending holocaust of organ tissue.
The toilet flushes. Still here. At least he hasn’t done a runner on you. Why would he? The club’ll be paying for the room.
Tooth marks on your shoulder.
A towel or something on the floor near the bed. You pull it round yourself to cover up before he comes out, just observing formalities.
Water running.
Jammed stinking ashtrays and champagne bottles crowning the furniture, the cold slime of a spent condom underfoot; all that tawdry sort of carnage from other people’s money that you don’t think you’ll mind the next day. Her knickers are hanging off the doorknob, yellow-stained gusset peeking outwards, dainty.
The mirror is balanced on the wicker coffee table so you have to kneel down and bend your neck over for a basic check, sweep away roach material and leftover coke to see yourself clearly. Hair still more or less in place, and a couple of rubs get rid of the worst of the makeup. You’re pinching anxious colour back into your cheeks when there are suddenly hands on your haunches.
‘Ready to go again by the looks of you!’
Aw. You hadn’t listened properly to his voice last night. Not to take in, anyway, not by the time you’d got out of the club, away from the speakers, in the taxi, up to the room. It’s a boy’s voice, is what you think, a wee boy playing at the big man. Reedy, nasal, south of England.
The state of your head.
‘Heh. You look like I feel, babe. Glad you’re up, though. Didn’t want to run off without thanking you lovely ladies, but I’ve gotta catch this plane.’
Yes. A wee boy who still couldn’t quite believe his luck, spouting lines he’s heard playboys say on the telly. If you didn’t know who he was, you wouldn’t have looked at him; sagging jeans, music nerd’s t-shirt, tinted hipster specs he doesn’t quite believe in enough to pull off. This hand stroking your bum, this assumption he can; this is a man making up for lost time.
‘Although, I could be tempted to miss it for you. Oof.’
The squeeze becomes a maul, fingers stealing up under your towel. You try giving him a weak look.
‘Aw, sweetheart! Look at you, you poor lickle thing. Come here and let Daddy sort you out.’
He kneels down beside you, pulling the pouch and his card from the pocket of his duffel coat, and chops you a small line, patting your hair as you bend back over.
‘There we go. Breakfast time, baby. Yeah. Feeling better now?’
You are, actually. He’s unzipped himself and pulled it out, stroking fondly, casting it loving looks, this very average cock. Why not, you think. Poor sod. His next record could bomb, he’d lose his shine, and he’d be back to doing the sound at other people’s club nights, now that much closer and bitterer to forty than before.
‘Just a little morning fuck,’ he’s whispering, urging himself on. ‘Just a lickle bit of joy in the morning.’
Across the room, an alarm shrills and he stops, pulls out, tries to batter it back down into his boxers.
‘God. Sorry, my darlin. Sorry. Sorry.’ As though it even mattered to you. Bless, you think. Bless him, running about now with a stiffy still poking out, throwing the last remnants into his bag and scooping up his massive headphones. God. You’d never see your actual major-league DJs this stressed about missing a plane, none of the ones you’ve met, anyway. Perhaps next year, if he made it through, he’d lose the jitters, the charm. But now, his jeans falling round his ankles, he’s adorable. Bless bless bless. You sit back on your heels and beam up at him.
It’s maybe the chaz, right enough.
He scampers over for a surprisingly sweet kiss.
‘Right. Ready. Check-out’s not for, like, an hour, so you just take it easy, gorgeous. I will be sure to see you next time I’m up here. Ma wee Scottish lassieee, eh? And maybe Sleeping Beauty over there too, yeah!’
All the high pitched excitement. He’s pressing something into your hands.
‘I’m sure Jez has got you covered, but have a lickle token of my appreciation, babes. I wouldn’t have got that past airport security anyway.’
The door crashes shut and you wonder idly whether he’d remembered to zip himself up.
Wrapped round the half-empty coke pouch in your hand is what looks like – you count – £300 in crumpled twenties, soft and grubby to touch.
‘Tell me he left us the chaz. God.’
Even half asleep, Camilla’s accent cuts diamonds. She’s wrapped the sheet round her skinny self, and you reach for the towel again, conscious of your stomach bulging. Camilla’s hair rises out in a static halo. She’s made that bedsheet look like a ballgown.
‘I think I’ve pissed the bed, so let’s scram before they try and charge us for it. But god, sort me out with a line first, lovely.’
The ritual scraping and chopping, scrabbling for grains, feels tinny and pathetic done in daylight with shaking hands. You only take enough to get you through, not tip you back over. Camilla leans her head back on her neck, letting the rush take her, wake her.
‘Ooh. We might just make it. Anyway. How much has he left?’
‘Cam, he left us like, cash –’
‘Mm. How much?’
‘Money. Like he thought, like –’
Camilla seizes the pile of notes and flicks, expert, croupier-quick.
‘The f
acking cheapskate bastard. One-fifty each? For the whole night? For a threesome and a go around with you next morning? Well, it’s not going to buy a decent pair of shoes, lovely, so why don’t we get the hell out of here and get some breakfast? Honestly. Jez can owe us this one.’
In ten minutes, you are slinking out of the hotel back door in skimpy bandeau frocks and last night’s heels. Camilla pulls an enormous pair of shades from somewhere in that little clutch, and between those, the thin shoulders and posh-girl cheekbones, she looks like a movie star. You tell her that and the big sunglasses turn blankly on you, the words just sitting there.
She steers you round the corner onto George Street, its rows of fancy doors marked with portable topiary. Perhaps it’s the drugs, perhaps that you’ve only had about three hours’ sleep; but there’s nothing awkward between you. And there should be, surely. After last night. Given that you can still smell her on your fingers. Surely.
You’d first spoken about three months ago – difficult to pinpoint, just because Camilla has always been there. Always on the guest list, an air kiss for the promoter; sauntering behind the decks, waving across the floor; an air kiss for the DJ. ‘Cam!’ they all shout, all the well-off boys whose tables you sit at. ‘Milly! Baby!’ If Jez has an afterparty in the dressing room or someone’s huge-ceilinged flat, she arrives late and electrifies the whole thing all over again, perching on knees to distribute pills on tongues, her laugh chiming into whatever cold, soaring vocal is on the stereo. One night in a bar, one of those theme bars that are popular in this city, where everyone kicks off their shoes and squats on Turkish carpets, you’d ended up hunched beside each other, in separate conversations. A tap on the shoulder and Camilla’s face, all bored and lovely, was up close.
‘Mm. You went to Gordonstoun?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
She puffed out on her cigarette, blew it in your eyes.
‘Oh fuck. Sorry. God lovely, that wasn’t deliberate, you know.’
You’re still new enough to this place that you haven’t quite got used to the accents; that people your own age could open perfectly straight faces and make strangled, clipped Merchant Ivory noises. Something about this city, all its history and money, it pulls that sort of person to it. You can hear your own voice changing around them, adapting, but that’s okay.
To apologise, Camilla had grabbed your hand and scurried to the bogs. You’d locked yourselves into a cubicle, shared a couple of lines off the toilet lid and danced together a little, arms round necks, getting off a bit on the close sensation of your bodies. The friction.
Ally, who does sound at one of Jez’s nights, who you occasionally had a sweet, small fumble with after hours, little cuddle next morning, nothing major, Ally had pulled you aside.
‘Listen, Rona, just gonny watch yourself with her, eh? Bad scene. Be careful.’
Mumbled out from under the trucker cap he kept pulled low on his forehead. It was his trademark; all the guys on the scene here seemed to have a trademark thing that they wore.
Aw, you told him. You’re such a sweetheart. A genuinely nice guy, you told him. You kissed him on the cheek.
This, you know, this is nothing. Bad scene. You’ve been clubbing since you were fifteen, in harder, fiercer sets than this. Far badder scenes. The worst you’re going to get here is a wee bit of well-meaning class snobbery, you’d told him. He hadn’t got the joke.
With a vague nod at a waiter in an apron, Camilla has you installed at a table on a raised dais, surrounded by pot plants and gleaming brass.
‘Bottle of Tait, two glasses, jug of orange juice and a couple of black coffees. Double shot in the coffees.’
She waves away the Sunday brunch menu as though it offends her. You realise you probably can’t face food either.
Sunday.
‘Shit. Shit. I’m supposed to be at work to open the bar up in half an hour, Cam.’
‘God, lovely. Don’t even think about it. For what, £3 an hour? Call in sick. Don’t go back.’
She shrills out one chink of a laugh and spreads the manky notes on the table. A few of them curl back on themselves, probably the ones you’d used last night.
‘One-fifty each. Fah. Straight down the middle less breakfast? Ugh. When I saw he’d clambered back on top of you I decided to play dead in case he wanted another round of Show and Tell. Absolutely did not have the energy, yeah?’
Last night. His set finished, the adrenaline reeking off him as he came back to the private section with a stained towel round his neck, beaming with it. Everyone applauding as he walked in.
‘Mate. That was absolutely bloody spectacular,’ said Jez, arm round his neck in a sweaty hug. ‘Seriously. I have, like, never seen the place go off like that.’
He was pulled in, into the circle, someone dispatched to get him a drink, and soon you and Camilla were sitting either side of him and Jez was saying:
‘Let me introduce you to two very good friends of mine. Ladies, I’m going to leave our guest in your all-too capable hands from now on.’
And you’d raised your glasses, the ice clinking, the ripple of bubbles, to toast him.
Present
I’ve stopped doing it now, but for a while, maybe three years after you went, I collected cuttings. The Big Issue was the best for it, because they have that missing person page; four faces a pop, the images all grainy and scanned in from their mum’s ancient photo album. They’re maybe red-eyed from the flash and smiling; there’s sometimes a Christmas tree in the background, the boys with too much hair gel and a pressed, checked shirt on. Pearl buttons. The kind that snap shut.
It was the photos I went for, because the details were sparse: just height, weight, eye colour, and what they were wearing. Disappeared from her home on [date]. Occasionally a tantalising wee hint of motive: was said to be distressed. Had been suffering from depression.
Pretty blonde children with hair ribbons. Dead-eyed prostitutes.
I had a separate section for the ones they found, the ones whose stories had proper, satisfying endings. In a ditch. Floating up out of the river. In a dumpster. Then the manhunt, then the arrest. There is usually an arrest. Beginning, middle, end. But let me know. Let me see.
It might be that I became a bit ghoulish, just after. At my worst, I used to fantasise that you’d come back one day, just stroll into the kitchen and sit down and say nothing, and that I’d bring something heavy down on your head; a shovel, a frying pan maybe. I remember thinking that there would be an end to it, then, and I’d know.
Like I say, I’ve stopped doing it now.
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