Fishnet

by Kirstin Innes

  ‘So, I think, I’ll get a bar job. Easy, no? Pfff. Bar job. Hotel job. None of these pay me enough money to cover my big fat international student fees, let alone my rent, my living – no rich parents for me, hey? I have to do it myself. So this girl on my course, she says well, there’s a job going where I work, and where she works is a massage parlour.’

  I must be looking blank, because she expands, in the sort of voice used for tourists and fools.

  ‘A massage parlour. The men come in and pay for a massage; it’s very cheap. Anything they want extra, they have to tip for. You wear a tight t-shirt. They maybe have a sauna afterwards. You know? And hey, it suited me. It offered a way to make the sort of money I needed to be earning. This system, you know, it will keep us trapped if we let it: pay you the smallest amount so you never dream bigger. Me, I got out.’

  It isn’t what I meant. What I want and never manage to ask her is the stages in her head she’d had to go through to turn herself into a person who does this. Maybe I’d never know; maybe it was all there in the first thing she’d said. The gaps between us sag.

  ‘Then I come here,’ she’s saying. ‘And I am looking around for decent fetish clubs, for my scene, and I don’t really find anything too much here, so I started thinking, surely, the desire is still there. I think there must be some demand for it, no? So I set myself up as an independent. As a specialist. I had no desire to go back to working in a parlour – there were two older women there who were great to me, who talked me through it, but it can be a very bitchy environment, that one. I prefer to go solo, ha? But it was a valuable apprenticeship. It helps to learn things in a controlled environment.’

  The strange taste of the food, oily and green and new.

  ‘You need to learn to trust your instincts in this job. You always sense when something’s wrong. It’s something that grows, the more of them you see. I am a buddy: you know we have a buddy system, we women? We help each other out. Any new girl coming up who makes herself known to us, she always works with a buddy. There is always a person on the other end of the telephone. My new girl, she phoned me up once and said, oh it’s great, I’ve got my first booking! Two guys, in a Travel Inn! and you have to grab her, you know, say no, no, no. We don’t do that.’

  She’s not – I don’t think she’s deliberately trying to shock me. If I am shocked it’s a by-product, of the distance, is what it is. Yes.

  ‘Do you think you could ever be with a man again normally, though?’

  ‘Ho! That is another one of those questions. I have a boyfriend.’

  Obviously my face didn’t hide that one. She screws up her mouth in imitation of me.

  ‘Oooh. Look at you. This is not what you were expecting, hey? We have been together for a couple of years. He knows my job, knows everything. He is cool with it. I pay him to come and be my minder with new clients. Just to check. You can have sex with different people and have it mean different things. I like sex. I have sex normally with my clients. Yesterday I came four times and got paid for it, more than you’ll make in at least three days.’

  The exoticness of my salad. Of the people in here. Of the frankness. This whole other world, other way of thinking and being. It sort of bursts out of me when she says that.

  ‘I just – you don’t really, really think this is an – an uncomplicated choice, do you? A job that anyone could do? I just – sorry. No, I’m sorry.’

  I expect this to be the final straw, that I’ve lost her now, that she’s going to get up and stomp out, those thick-soled boots beating angry holes in the floorboards. I’m surprised that she leans towards me, says more gently than she’s said anything:

  ‘Listen. I have a little half sister at home. She is eleven. And that is the question they always ask, all the anti-prostitution campaigners, would you want your sister to do this, your daughter to do it? And I think about her growing up and going with some of these guys. The really sleazy ones. And I say no, to that, in my head. It is not hypocrisy, though. Do you see? I can want to do it for myself, still, and not for her.’

  I think about the only other person I’ve had this sort of discussion with, ‘Fiona’, the not-Rona. Her defensiveness, the need to apologise her way out of the job to another woman, and it hits me that this is absent here. This is shamelessness in the true sense of the word. She exudes it. And it’s why I’m compelled to keep looking at her.

  ‘So,’ she says, finally, as soy milk curdles in my second coffee. ‘You mentioned being able to help us. Do you mean, you will be able to give us information from your work? Are you, basically, proposing to spy for us?’

  My brain has been racing through so many things I trip, need to double back on myself. Yes. I suppose that was what I meant.

  ‘I have answered an awful lot of your questions. What do you say to mine?’

  The air sharpens into transaction.

  I’m forty-five minutes late back to work and I creep in like a traitor. Norman, sour-faced, turns cold eyes on me. I seek absolution at Moira’s desk.

  ‘I got a call from the school: Beth had got into a wee squabble with a classmate. Nothing big, really - bit embarrassing. It knackered my phone battery, taking the call, so I couldn’t phone you, let you know. I’m going to make the extra time up this evening - my dad’s picking her up. Is Ian angry?’

  In my head, I apologise to my little mouse-girl, to her quietness. Moira is not sure that she believes me. ‘He’s still down at the site with Graeme, love.’

  ‘I never got a call from the school with my Toni. They’d tell you afterwards, when you picked them up. If anything was wrong.’ Norman releases his proclamations into the air with the gravitas of a preacher, and I’m not sure if he’s calling me a liar or berating a feeble new-fangled school system, but I find myself turning round anyway, snarling at him.

  ‘You maybe never got a call, Norman, but I’m pretty sure your wife would have done!’

  I type up data from manila files for the rest of the day, in self-righteous silence. I give myself a papercut. Occasionally I flip open my diary, stroke the new entry for next weekend. Scottish Union of Sex Workers meeting, Glebe St. Hotel, 4.30pm.

  Public

  ‘I hope she wasn’t too much trouble,’ I’m saying, auto-pilot mother.

  My face still feels hot from the encounter with Samira. I’m absolutely not equipped to deal with the judgement of the older woman from my wedding table just now. She’s marched me up from the bathroom in silence, back into the body of the kirk. Samira’s over there at her table, talking with forced sparkle at the man she danced with earlier, radiating shrapnel.

  ‘No, no, we had a lovely chat, didn’t we, Bethan? Bethan was telling us all about what her wedding’s going to be like.’

  This is all directed at Beth, for Beth. Not for me.

  ‘She’s going to have a pink dress! Can you imagine? A pink wedding dress. And all the bridesmaids – thirty of them – are going to be covered in sequins, and there’ll be a pink horse to ride in on. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘That sounds lovely, Beth.’ I’m picking up the woman’s sugary tones.

  ‘Anyway,’ and her voice drops back to flat, contemptuous, adult-speak, her head flicking at her husband, who is holding their coats, ‘we need to be going, now. Nice talking to you, Bethan!’

  ‘We should probably go home too, darling. It’s getting late.’

  ‘It’s only late because you were gone for ages. And I haven’t been allowed to dance yet.’

  ‘Mummy’s not feeling so well, Bethan.’

  ‘Is it because you’re being drunk? I wa-ant to daa-nce! You sa-aid I could da-ance!’

  ‘I’ll dance with you.’

  It’s one of the henz, the one from our table. Andrea? Andrea.

  ‘If that’s alright with your mummy?’

  She gives me this smile, this smile of camaraderie and friendliness, this we’re-in-it-together smile, and I almost burst with something, almost want to hug her or cry or something. Then she bows l
ow to Bethan, who is star-struck again, and asks her formally for the pleasure of the next dance.

  I get out my phone, tap out a hurried rescue message to Dad.

  Come and get us. Please. She’s overtired, and it’s a nightmare.

  Thirty seconds later.

  Ok.

  I sink back into my chair.

  ‘Eh, hiya.’

  It’s the guy, the one in the weird baseball-cap-and-suit combo. I must look a state. I try and manage a smile, anyway.

  ‘Mind if I sit –’

  ‘Go for your life.’

  I reach for one of the not-empty bottles on the table, shoogle it at him.

  ‘D’you want a glass? We’ve still got half the bottle over here.’

  ‘Eh. Are- No. Sorry. Thanks. Sorry to bother you, man. It’s. Eh. You just look like someone I used to know.’

  Could be.

  ‘My sister,’ I say. ‘I look like my sister.’

  ‘Was your sister called, eh, Rona?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Oh god. Have you seen her?’

  I’m pouring out those words, but my brain’s ticking, thinking, first of all, he called her by her actual name, so he wouldn’t have been one of her – punters.

  Second, he said was.

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  I can’t make that come out casually. It’s not small talk and he knows it, pulling back from me as I realise I’m clutching at his wrist.

  ‘Oh. Eh. Dunno. Must be, like, five years ago, easy. More.’

  ‘Five? Are you sure?’

  ‘Naw. Hang on. Ehm. It would have been before I left Edinburgh. Probably more like seven, eight years, now.’

  I let him go.

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. Rona - Rona went missing, six years back. We haven’t heard anything since then. Sorry. That must have come on quite extreme, there, eh?’ I do a little chuckle to try and brush it off; he stares like I’m madder than ever.

  ‘No, no, it’s understandable. I didn’t know that. That she was missing. Sorry, man, eh. Fuck.’

  He sucks the sweaty air in through his teeth, reaches for the wine bottle after all.

  ‘What, eh. What happened? Was it when –’

  ‘When what?’

  ‘Naw, eh. She just kind of vanished one day, wasn’t around any more, didn’t answer her phone and we all thought she’d just gone back home or something, man. Had enough. I’d hoped so. Was that it?’

  ‘When you were living in Edinburgh – did you know her well?’

  He wishes he hadn’t sat down, I can tell. I’m making him uncomfortable, because that’s what I do, tonight.

  ‘I did. Aye, I did. I was pretty fond of her, eh. She was nice. She was a nice lassie.’

  I resist the temptation to snort. Nice is an interesting word, I want to say. Swallow it, swallow it. He could have said no, there, fudged it, walked away from the intense drunk in the low-cut dress and back to the warmth and skirl of his family. He didn’t.

  ‘Did you know she was – how she made her – sorry. Sorry. Hi. What’s your name?’

  ‘Ally,’ he says. ‘Ally McKay. Cousin of the groom.’

  ‘Fiona Leonard. School friend of the bride.’ And we shake.

  ‘Right, Ally. Did you… When you knew her, was she working as a – as a hooker?’

  Not the word I was going for. Just the one that came out, sitting there between us, full of what feels like judgement. A tut, in the air by my head. Claire and her boring man are making for the exit, coats in arms, and it seems she would like me to know she disapproves of my language. I gulp wine, probably not from my own glass, ignore her, try and suppress that burn that happens when you realise someone doesn’t like you.

  He doesn’t look surprised, though, this Ally McKay, with his pleasant, handsome face and his trucker cap.

  ‘No exactly, eh. No, like, the girls you’d see in the street. But aw, man. That’s really shit. Sorry.’

  He’d really, really cared about her. His face, like someone’s emptied it out. I do the gentle voice, the police officer delivering bad news.

  ‘Were you her boyfriend?’

  ‘Ach, we had a fling. A wee tiny thing. I was more into it than she was, eh. We were mates though, I thought. I’d tried to –’

  ‘Did you see me, Mummy? Did you?’

  Andrea is being led by the hand back to the table. She looks worn out.

  ‘Yes. Yes, you were beautiful, sweetheart. You’re such a good dancer.’

  Beth nods, pleased, and looks up at this Ally McKay.

  ‘Hello,’ she says, and she is so inescapably Rona in that moment that I almost break up and I can see he’s thinking the same.

  On the table, my mobile flashes.

  Outside.

  My father is not a garrulous communicator.

  ‘Stay here,’ I say to him. ‘Please. Five minutes.’

  I have her coat picked up quickly before she knows what’s happening. We’re out, fresh air kniving my skin under flapping chiffon layers.

  ‘Oh look! There’s Granddad! Am I going home?’ She’s disgusted.

  I open the backdoor. Dad is in his pyjamas in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Dad, I want to stay out. Please. Can you take her? Put her to bed at yours tonight?’

  ‘Fiona, come on. I’m ready for bed myself.’

  ‘Da-ad. It’s my best friend’s wedding. I never get a night out to myself. Please. Please.’

  The car drives off, Bethan’s fury steaming up the windows. Lying seems to come much more easily to me these days.

  Inside, the party is already fading and it’s not even ten pm yet. The band are on a break; couples cling to each other and sway limply to the love ballad on the PA. Heather and Ross are nodding at an elderly relative. Samira and her gentleman friend are not in the room.

  He’s still there, though. Ally McKay, where I left him. Frozen to the spot, maybe.

  ‘She looks so much like Rona, eh, your daughter.’

  ‘That’s because she’s Rona’s daughter.’

  It strikes me that I haven’t admitted that out loud to anyone for ages.

  Poor fucker. I don’t know that he can take much more of this. He’s living out a concentrated dose of my last six years. I pat his arm.

  ‘I need something stiffer than wine. There’s a bar next door. Fancy nipping out for half an hour?’

  Private

  I’d been expecting, I don’t know. An amphitheatre rustling with PVC and lipstick, maybe. Pillars. Glitter. Something.

  Rentable meeting room in a chain of budget hotels. Corporate-purple carpet, pale wood-toned plastic on the tables. Projector with laptop connection up front, paper cups of coffee from the machine out in the hall. On the door, a printed-off sheet of A4 said SUSW. A table outside with a man behind it, starched shirt, spiked hair, so clean-shaven he looks like he can’t actually grow facial hair.

  ‘Hi. Sorry, don’t recognise the face - what’s your name?’

  He’s friendly, but I have no doubt I will not be allowed into the room if I don’t pass.

  ‘Fiona Leonard.’

  ‘Ah…yup. Sonja’s accounted for you.’

  Sonja, then. I wonder if any of them know each others’ real names.

  The spikes of her blonde hair over someone’s shoulder, in the front row. A skip, somewhere near my stomach. About thirty people in the room.

  Why am I always surprised by how ordinary they look? Do I expect them to be perpetually in fishnets, lubed-up, damaged and hollow? Yeah, I’ve realised. I do.

  Jeans. Shirts. Business suits. Jumpers and skirts. Sure, there are a couple of girls up the back with suspiciously buoyant breasts, teased hair, false lashes, but for the most part these are just the sort of women you’d see in a supermarket. Not sex dolls, not desperate smackheads. There are men, too, three of them, well groomed, two younger and the one from the door, probably around forty. Pimps? I think, rent boys?

  There is so much about all of this that I don’t know.

&
nbsp; I take a seat in the back row, by the two heavily made up girls. They’re about my age, run their eyes quickly, appraisingly, over my clothes, find me wanting, and settle back into their conversation.

  ‘And have you seen her new set of pictures? I was like that, eh, hello! Photoshop!’

  ‘Yeah, would those be the ones where she’s claiming she’s a size ten? In what universe? Or does she mean an American size ten?’

  I glance around, checking to see if any of the ones whose blogs I’ve read are here, trying to tease out the faces from behind the pixels. Holly, the young one who I saw in the street, Holly is absent.

  A tiny woman in her fifties with elegant, streaked hair and a very beautiful face stands up, facing the rows of seats. She has the presence of a schoolteacher and the talk in the room ebbs its way to a respectful silence, at which she smiles.

  ‘Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming.’ Her tones are strong, clear, almost accentless.

  ‘Not a problem, Paulette. Anythin for you, ma darlin.’ A smoker’s cracked voice from the row in front of me. Paulette smiles at it, moves on, delicate, professional.

  ‘We’re going to hear from a number of different speakers today, and I trust that you’ll treat them all with the respect our speakers are accustomed to. First up is a familiar face both to our meetings and to the, ah, local media recently: Suzanne Phillips, director of the city centre Sanctuary Base.’

  Suzanne Phillips stands up, and I recognise her as the motherly woman from the protest at my work, the one the papers had outed as a “former masseuse”.

  ‘Hello everyone. I’m going to keep this short and – well. It’s not going to be very sweet, I’m afraid. As you’ve probably read about by now, if you weren’t actually there, we staged three simultaneous protests the week before last: outside the council offices, at the building company who’ll be in charge of, em, of knocking us down, and at the vacant warehouses next door to Sanctuary Base, which the Jackson Group intend to be the cornerstone of their new... Well. Leisure complex.’

  A laugh I don’t quite understand moves softly through the room.