Fishnet

by Kirstin Innes

  I’m trying to look like I understand.

  ‘No a big clubber?’

  ‘Not really, no. Not even, really, before Bethan. Just, like, the indie disco or something.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going to talk civilian speak for you. Stop me if I get too technical, eh. Rona. Rona had been working in a bar run by this pal of Jez’s – Actually, mate, I should write these things down for you, eh.’

  We have an eyeliner pencil and a table-top dispenser full of shiny napkins.

  ‘So, Rona was working in this bar called Dee-Lite on George Street, and I think it’s now called The Grand or something, but it’s under the same management. Somebody there would surely know who you were talking about. Anyway, as far as I could make out, eh, Jez had spotted her there and got her to do some modelling – not like that! Although I widnay put anything past that fucker. But she was – she’s a gorgeous lassie, Rona, eh. I mean, you know that.’

  I know that.

  ‘So he’s got her, like, in this tight t-shirt with the club name stretched out on her – aye. She was on the flyers, and the posters – she became, like, the face of Jez’s clubs for a while, eh. Part from anything else, it’s good for business to have lassies that good-looking at your club. So, of course, she started coming back to whoever’s house afterwards, when we all did. And that’s how we got talking.’

  ‘Was she doing drugs, Ally? I’m not going to, ah, judge you or anything. I’d just like to know.’

  ‘Coke. We were all doing a couple of lines of coke; all that lot did. Pills, sometimes too, but it was mostly coke. Thing is, I know that sounds serious if you’re – if you’re not that experienced with it.’

  ‘If you’re a square like me.’

  ‘Come on, man. You’re fine. What I mean is it sounds like a lot, but actually Rona was always pretty restrained with it. You never saw her off her face or making a fool ay herself or anything. You never got the impression she was desperate for it. I dinnay think it was an addiction or anything. No like some of the others. Yeah. Some of those lassies.’

  He drinks deep this time.

  ‘Just to make it clear, man, this is a long time ago for me. Coke is a fucking horrible drug, and the folk on it are even worse. The old Jack Daniels here is as hard as it gets now, and even then, only on special occasions, eh.’ He raises his glass, gloomy. ‘My wee cousin’s wedding.’

  ‘Oh god. Sorry.’

  ‘Will you stop apologising!’

  He’s smiling though.

  ‘Anyway, so, me and Rona got friendly, at the parties and that. A lot of the time I couldny quite believe it, that a girl that pretty was actually hanging out with the sound engineer when there were full on DJs and that in the room, eh. She was like that, though. She was the sort of person who’d always take the time to make you feel special. Like she cared.’

  I swallow the splutter rising up in me again. I smile. I nod.

  ‘She was maybe just that good with people, but I never felt she was snubbing me or anything, eh. Of course, a lot of the time at these parties we’d be the only ones there who hadn’t gone to private school, likes, and that kindy bonds you a wee bit. We could have a private joke about some of the accents on the go in there or whatever – I mean, I always try never to stereotype anybody, eh, but a lot of the time it really was that sort of, fwah fwah fwah fwah! Ken?’

  I’m wondering if I’ve ever actually met anybody from that sort of background, or if I’m thinking of comedy show caricatures.

  ‘So maybe that’s why we kind of ended up – eh. In bed together, a couple of times. Sorry, Fiona man. Your wee sister. Eh. Anyway. It was lovely. We’d maybe go and get a breakfast the next morning together, that sortay thing. Read the papers together, always a wee kiss on the cheek before she left me.’

  He’s smiling away at something beautiful in the corner.

  ‘It was never anything serious, like. I mean, the lassie was out of my league for a start, and only eighteen. But we became friends, even out of the parties. I’d come and hang around her in the bar before my shift started, and maybe I was sort of there cos I was hoping for a bit more, but she never minded me trailing about after her. Lovesick fuckin poodle, man, but she’d always pour me a pint on the sly. I just wanted to see she was alright, eh. Then she started hanging about with this. This lassie, Camilla.’

  With gin on the brain, it takes me a while to sort this out, so he’s started talking again.

  ‘Camilla is my daught– is Bethan’s middle name. Says so on the birth certificate.’

  His eyebrows shoot up under the cap.

  ‘Mate. Oh. Right.’

  He drinks.

  ‘Listen. I maybe shouldny –’

  ‘You’re going to need to tell me, Ally.’

  ‘Okay. But I’m buying this round, first. Naw, your money’s no good here, man.’

  Private

  Sanctuary Base is the bottom floor of a huge red-brick warehouse towards the bottom of the grid. The warehouses on either side are already covered in scaffolding and RDJ Construction signs: scaffolding that I’d put the purchase order through for. It was beginning to get dark.

  Suzanne had tucked her arm in mine as we walked down the street together, making conversation: the age of my daughter, the ages of hers, recommendations for music tutors if Beth ever wanted to learn an instrument. She’d shown me pictures of them, made me show her mine. When we arrive, though, she disengages, becomes taller and more businesslike as she pulls a computerised fob out of her bag, swipes it at a small black box by a nondescript side-door adjacent to the main entry with its friendly-fonted sign. There’s a people carrier with the same logo done small, on its flank, parked in at the curb.

  Anya had kept quiet and a couple of paces behind us: I’d needed to turn my head to make sure she was still there. I needed her still to be there.

  Inside, squeaky lino floors and the institutional smell of bleach. From along the corridor I can hear conversation and a fuzzily-tuned radio. Another swipe of Suzanne’s fob brings us into a basic office, hung with peeling posters advertising sexual health. It felt rather like doctors’ surgeries of my childhood. Not really what I’d expected. I should stop expecting, really.

  ‘So, this is us. Coffee?’

  Suzanne breezes through the room, her chunkily-beaded necklace clacking as she moves. A thin, small woman in baggy clothes and a boy’s haircut looks up from a phone conversation, smiled. Anya is right by me.

  ‘An– and, Sonja. Do you work here too?’

  She definitely notices what I was about to say, but I had to keep it up, this ridiculous fiction that I didn’t know her real name.

  ‘No. I have my own job. Suzanne is a friend, so I help her out with the campaign. I have done a volunteer shift for her once. It is fucking hard. I could not do Suzanne’s job in real life – she’s a magnificent woman.’

  She forces her accent over the big word, then abruptly turns away to a poster above the desk. Suzanne returns, places a mug of milky Nescafe in my hands, and steers me through to a space with rows of squat padded chairs and pinboards. A kettle and some cups on top of a small fridge, and a sign printed in bright sugar paper beside a table: UGLY MUG BOOK. Two girls stretched out on the chairs, foam spilling out from a sharp rip underneath one of them, what looks like a photo album across their laps.

  ‘We call this the rec room. Neutral space – there’s a kettle and things for hot drinks. Sometimes that’s as far as it goes – you see these lassies just slink in here keeping their heads down, shoogle some coffee into a mug, take a couple of slurps once the kettle’s boiled and when you look up, they’ve vanished, aren’t seen again. We try and get them to at least take a look at the Ugly Mugs book before they go, note the most recent descriptions, but we’re not here to insist that anyone do anything, you know. Not like that lot. It’s just a safe space. But the majority of them, we have good relationships with them now. As good as you can have. We take it in turns to drive around during the night, help them feel safe, and
they’ll pop into the van for a wee while if they’ve got anything to tell us. These rooms,’ she indicates three doors off the main space, ‘these are for advocacy work. Legal advice. In case they need a voice, someone to shout for them. It starts in there.

  ‘The other aspect of our service is outreach. We try – it’s tricky, but we try – to get in touch with the girls who work out of flats or for agencies. Check there’s no coercion there, that everyone’s okay. Actually getting through to them, though. Pff. I mean, in here, the girls are all out for themselves. But those anonymous names, advertising. Keeping a track on them, even actually making contact. That’s the bit that hits it home, you know, what it can be at this level –

  ‘Sorry. I should be talking in the past tense, now. We’ve not got the staff anymore. All our funding’s been completely cut, and there’s only so long you can power an organisation like this on the kindness of volunteers.’

  She’s brisk again, hand on a shoulder to take me to a side room, and I remember that this isn’t just an excursion for either of us. The door shuts behind us and I’m not quite sitting as she explains that she wants the building plans. It’s been an efficient solicitation, the music lessons, the coffee.

  ‘You must have information on the history of the warehouse. It’s Victorian. Leftover scraps of the Empire.’ She laughs and I don’t feel I’m allowed to. ‘If there’s not some history in here, worth saving, then I’m sure the Jackson Group will have passed through some sort of dodge to get their all-out permissions. There’s something going on, and the records are the best place to look. We’ve got a week. Are you with us?’

  Public

  Camilla. Ally McKay is back from the bar, and he’s telling me about Camilla.

  ‘Camilla was just, always, like, around. I mean, she was about eight times as posh as the next of them, must have known Jez or Jules or one of that lot from, I don’t know, school or something. Rich people club. London. But she was, was something else. I mean, another gorgeous-looking lassie, probably only about the same age as me, as you, about twenty-two when this was going on, but, eh. Just dead behind the eyes, man. Ken those hyenas you see on nature programmes, eh? Like that.’

  ‘A scavenger.’

  ‘Aye.’

  She and Rona were well suited then, I don’t say.

  ‘But the thing about Camilla was, eh… For a start, she tended to supply all the drugs to that lot. And there was no way this little flower was a full-time dealer, so I presume she was employed by somebody, somewhere, some, eh, Mr Big. Camilla was the contact, ken? But she also did, eh, favours. She was also the, eh, the entertainment. Sorry. But, eh, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Less technical terms?’

  ‘It was – you’d hear jokes about it. Jez and that lot. If they had a big guest, or a DJ or something, and they really wanted to impress him, like. Camilla would, eh. Well. She would keep him company that night. And as I understand it, she would –’

  ‘Receive money for her services?’

  ‘No always. Sometimes, like, shoes or something – one time, when I was working for Jez, he sent me out to pick up like this £500 pair ay heels from one of they proper snobby boutiques, eh. That was the expenses code, entertainment, and I saw him handing them over to Camilla that night. Or coke. But she – eh – she didny do freebies.’

  ‘And Rona?’

  ‘Well, at first they were just pally, eh, couple of girls who liked to party. Good dancers, pretty, welcome everywhere they went. But after a while, I’d eh – I’d see Rona heading off, with Camilla and, eh, whatever visiting dignitary they were – Just in the taxi, and that. And then she just stopped turning up for her shifts at the bar. I’d go in to see her and the manager would say she hadn’t turned up, she hadn’t turned up, and then she was fired. But. Eh. She still had enough money to keep going out, to keep buying pretty dresses, eh. Shoes.’

  We drink. The lights flash for last orders and I almost run to get there. Just to be doing something else, concentrating on something else. But he’s there, now, still going when I come back.

  ‘I’d tried to talk to her about it, but she just seemed so happy, man. She said she was fine, could handle herself. And, to be honest, she didny look – no like Camilla. That lassie, you could see her shrivelling up. But Rona. Eh, they hung about together for maybe four months, five months, something like that, and then, one day, Rona just wasn’t there anymore. I was a bit freaked out about it, like. Well, you would be. I got hold of that Camilla at a club one night and I was just like, look, where the hell is she? And I swear to god, it was like the first time she’d ever actually lowered herself to acknowledge me, eh? And she just sort of bleated something about Rona having run away up north, couldn’t handle it, something. Called her a silly little cow, so I had to, eh, remove myself from the area, man. But I just thought – I thought she’d be alright. Eh. Was that it, then?’

  ‘Was what?’

  Oh, I’m so, so drunk.

  ‘Was that, it, the last – no. Wait. The baby. Fuckin hell.’

  ‘She did go up north. She went to Aviemore. Stayed with a school friend who’s a skiing instructor up there. Same story: got fired from a bar, made up the rent deficit by, ah… Taking payment. For sex. It’s just, it seems like she was advertising, this time.’

  ‘Advertising. Mate.’

  ‘She turned up here when I hadn’t seen her for six months, dumped a baby I certainly hadn’t heard of before on me, and ran away in the middle of the night. And that’s it.’

  He puts a damp hand over mine. It’s the least sexual gesture I’ve ever felt.

  ‘Last time I saw Camilla, it was about three years ago, eh. I’d been back, visiting the folks – I moved through here for my job. Ach. She was sitting up at the bar where I was meeting my brother. I recognised the voice, first, eh. She kept laughing too loudly and planting her hand on the knee of this old, fat dude. She looked fucked man, eh, snappable. Nothing left of her, inside. About to crumble into dust. Like a – like an Egyptian mummy or something. Death mask.’

  And we drink, and we drink.

  ‘Fucking hell. Tell me something good, eh. What about you, man. What do you do.’

  ‘I do nothing. I just work in an office.’

  ‘You’re raising – her – kid, though. As your own. That’s fuckin something, Fiona man. That’s pure amazing-style, right there.’

  For that, he gets a smile. Hear that, Samira?

  ‘And you. Ally McKay. What about you, now?’

  ‘Eh. I work with kids – I run a youth club out in the housing schemes in the east. Teaching them all how to be wee DJs! They like some pure terrible hardcore stuff, man.’

  ‘Seriously? You’re actually almost too good, aren’t you?’

  And it is as close as we get to a joke.

  When our bodies eventually flop together, you couldn’t call it a seduction. The boozy inevitability of it all. We stand, across the table, as if accepting that it’s now the time for it, and we press damp, sour mouths on each other. In the toilets I check that I’m wearing passable underwear, buy condoms from a rusty machine, half-worried he’ll have run off while I’m in there, but he hasn’t. He’s there, acknowledging it. We kiss again and again on the fifteen-minute walk to my flat, as though we’re trying to convince ourselves we’re really into it.

  My muscles creak out, remembering this sensation. I am not quite wet enough for entry, so there is some fumbling, some spit, a couple of sweet, whispered assurances that yes, I do want this. Because I really, really do, despite it all. Then the good, warm, filling, much missed. Then the gentle sound of something falling repeatedly onto wet sand. He doesn’t come. I don’t come. We just warm each other for a while, though, skin on anonymous skin. The being beside another person. Touching base for a while.

  When I wake up again, it’s fully light. Proper daytime. I can still feel that small kiss on my forehead. There’s a note on the bedside table, beside the scribbled-on napkin and the torn condom wrapper.

&
nbsp; She’s still downstairs. Thought it best she didn’t see you like this.

  Please come and get her when you wake up.

  Hope you had fun.

  Mum.

  I cried for five minutes. Just to get the gin out. Then I got in the shower, picked up a still-resentful Beth, smelling of clean wet hair. It was that night that I emailed Anya. Sonja. Whoever she is.

  Split Personalities

  We are exceptionally good at duplicity, we persons in the hussying trade. And I don’t mean that we’re more likely to double-cross or betray you, despite the number of movies I can think of which imply call-girls are not to be trusted (almost as many as those where we’re killed in the first act, to alert the town to the presence of a murderer on the loose. The canaries-down-a-mine-shaft of the serial killer world, us). Actually, I’ve met few people as honest as ladies of negotiable virtue. It’s all out there, you see. In one way.

  What I mean, though, is that the vast majority of escorts are, at any given time, keeping up a complex series of appearances. We’re all suffering from split personalities.

  Try and think of those casual acquaintances of yours. The friends-of-friends. People you were at school with, maybe, but don’t keep regularly up to date with. Your neighbours. The sort of people you’d wave to in the street or wish happy birthday to on Facebook, but don’t trust enough to share the intimate parts of your life with. It’s not that they’re not to be trusted, either, it’s just that you don’t know them well enough.

  Now, imagine every single one of those people in your life knew that you did a job like mine. A job everyone has an opinion on, without usually knowing very much about it. A job that many people presume you have to be damaged in some way to do; a job that the very doing of means people make serious, deep assumptions about you in ways they certainly don’t do with dentists. Exactly. So that’s your basic, entry-level secrecy right there: you need a convincing backstory to explain, as boringly as possible, your income, just in case these people take an interest. Now, perhaps certain members of your family and friends aren’t as enlightened as you’d like them to be about the business. You either force all manner of uncomfortable discussions on them, or you up the secrecy even further. This amount of disclosure varies from person to person, depending on a whole host of variables conditioning your relationships with each one.