Fishnet

by Kirstin Innes

  I creep into the flat with the lurch and guilt of a teenager trying to pretend she isn’t drunk. I’m not sure I fool my parents.

  ‘She’s just gone to sleep, about an hour ago,’ Dad says, like a soldier reporting mission accomplished.

  ‘Thanks. Thank you.’

  I’m trying to stand up straight, trying to cope with all of it and still seem normal.

  ‘I think I need a nap, now. Can I pop down and see you both tomorrow? I want to have a chat with you about a few things. To do with Rona.’

  And then it’s just me and my daughter. I stand perfectly still so that her breathing is the only sound in the flat and I think about that. About my sister is the only person in the world I trust.

  Bethan stirs a little when I push the door, but she doesn’t wake, and it’s enough just to stand there and watch her. Fat little pink thing. Asleep, she doesn’t resemble anyone at all, just herself.

  Camilla’s job is to make people feel this way about themselves. Give them release: work out where they need to be touched and peel back till she gets there. I could carry on investigating that moment in my head, play it back and back on itself, weigh out every nuance, until I conclude that it was very probably a lie.

  Or I could let it go.

  Me

  The taxi cranked its old brakes to a stop.

  ‘There you go, ma dear. Six pounds twenty,’ the driver said.

  White hair. Grandfatherly. Familiar. He needed to be reminded about the receipt and I hit a white note of panic, right off. Was it a giveaway, asking for a receipt? Should I tell him I was here to interview someone? Or for a business meeting? Would that make it look more suspicious, covering myself with excuses? Fumbling for a pound coin stuck in my purse, I heard myself apologising over and over again. This was no good. I couldn’t be like this.

  The first trick was just to walk smoothly past reception, wasn’t it? Not even to acknowledge them, or that you might not know where you were going. Even if you didn’t. Especially not to acknowledge the tightness in your stomach or that high-pitched flush of adrenaline flooding you.

  The second trick was Paulette’s. Look for the toilet near the lobby bar, she said. There’s always one. Get in there, and just you take a look at your gorgeous self there in the mirror. Drink yourself in, lovey. Drink her in.

  There she is. My fancy new frock of an other self, put on for the occasion. She winks like a corny cheesecake pin-up, dabs at her lipstick with gestures too delicate to be mine, and is completely in control again. Her heels ring out on the tiles, loud and teacherly.

  In the lift on the way up, I thumb out a text to Paulette, on the new slim mobile that slots into my new slim handbag.

  In the lift. On the way up.

  She’s got the grandchildren today, but she’s there for me anyway, at this appointed time.

  Will phone u in 3 min. Ur beautiful honey!

  I’m sure it will prove to be a fairly solitary life, but over the last couple of months, ever since all the pieces fell into place and I began to make mousy enquiries about buddying, I’ve been surrounded by concern, advice, affection. A new sort of sisterhood, one I’ve never really been involved in before. They don’t get paid for it, Paulette, Jo, or any of the other women I’ve met through the buddying system; they’re just there because they know that someone has to be.

  More than once, one of them has asked if I was sure. Did I completely understand. More than one person has told me that it won’t be all wine and roses. In the end, though, there was no great ethical struggle. No threshold. Just a very logical click.

  Here’s the room. The mad jolt through my veins as I raise my hand to knock. I could run away, right now, another half-crazed dash down an air-conditioned corridor. This, now, is the threshold. Is everything really, really going to change after this? Is everything about me going to change, my cells begin a slow death, shift to not-person?

  I don’t think I could be here if I still thought that, could I?

  Too late. The door’s opening, on a skinny man, shabby, in his early forties.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘I’m Jimmy.’

  Irish accent.

  XXX

  Noise of cooking and conversation steamed through from the kitchen next door. I thought I could hear Helen’s harsh, raggedy laugh, like a bassline. Music was playing – Dolly Parton, something corny like that. Shania Twain.

  Suzanne’s living room was cosy and unfashionable. Slightly shabby grey three-piece suite, perked up with flowery cushions. She’d put out a plate with jammy dodgers and iced fancies in an interlinking display on the coffee table – no-one had taken one. Paulette and another woman were sitting in the corner talking. I had tried to tune out what they were saying, just to be polite. Paulette’s intonation was high, calming, lilting up.

  It was very warm. My fingernails badly needed filing. I was wondering what I was doing.

  These are the buddying system open sessions – open groups for people who have contacted the SUSW or any of the forums because they’re considering becoming an escort. There will always be experienced independent workers there, offering advice. They’re held every couple of months, in different people’s houses. This one was Suzanne’s first time hosting, since the closure of the base. When I arrived, she hugged me to her hard on the doorstep, pulled back to look in my face with strong eyes, and hugged me again.

  I knew in advance that Anya wouldn’t be there – she’d been put on forced sabbatical by her university and gone travelling with her boyfriend. I say boyfriend, but I had just learned they got married in Lisbon two weeks earlier. His family weren’t happy. Suzanne updated me as she led me through and I breathed in warm savoury smells from the kitchen – just a couple of pizzas, some snacks, just to keep us all going, Suzanne said. Lisbon suits their temperaments, apparently – they were thinking of staying for a while, possibly taking on some teaching. A change can be a great thing, you know, she said. Even if you weren’t expecting it.

  Suzanne spilled all this in a rush of warmth. She was trying to make it all up to me – all this solicitousness an apology for our last encounter, when Anya accused me of betraying her to the press. You’re one of us, Suzanne’s soft hand on my back was telling me. I know you wouldn’t do that. I’m sorry.

  So I sat there, everything about me a great big fat deceitful lie. Across the room, a small thin woman in her forties was pulling her knees to herself, eyes moving quickly, back and forth.

  Paulette came over to me, perched on the arm of my chair, graceful. She smelled wonderful and expensive, smoothed a flick of hair around her ear.

  ‘Hello my darling. How are you today?’

  I’m not sure she recognised me from the meeting. It was a long time ago. I think this is how she is with everyone. With all of the new girls.

  Look, I had tried other things. I had. Camilla, for the price of a meal she barely touched, a bottle of wine and enough spirits to tranquilise a shire horse, had managed to provide me with something real and peaceful. I had some lovely unbroken sleeps. I felt whole. I felt bold. I tried to pick up the threads of my life where I’d left them, and applied for three jobs related to books and editing. I added my ex-boyfriend Simon as a friend on Facebook.

  Two of the jobs didn’t even send me a rejection. Simon lives in England and has been married for the past two years; it seemed to have been one of those very lavish weddings, that happens in a marquee, with no discernible personality.

  I applied for administrative jobs. Data entry. There were precious few – the jobs section of the local paper has got much slimmer since the credit crunch – all of them on even smaller wages than I’d had at RDJ. I signed up with a temping agency. I report to an oily-voiced man in his mid-twenties called Dan, who occasionally rings me up to tell me that he hasn’t found anything for me yet, babes, but I’m still his best girl, eh? Last week: two days stuffing envelopes on minimum wage in the sort of glassy office Samira works in. I’d
been given a desk in the corner by a woman who eyed me suspiciously and told me not to touch the espresso machine.

  I think I’d already made my decision, though. This particular switch had been flicked a long time ago, without my even realising it.

  Paulette stood up in front of Suzanne’s gas fire, fake coal glowing behind her. Her voice was beautiful. Musical.

  ‘We’re here to make sure you feel totally supported as you enter this phase of your life. If in fact you decide this is what you want to do. We’ve been there, remember, and we don’t want any of you to be taking this decision lightly. Use this afternoon to find out whatever you want to. Ask whatever you need to. There’s no judgement here – no question is too stupid. Helen, Suzanne and I have had very different experiences of working in this industry, and we feel it’s very important that you can benefit from that before making your final decision.’

  ‘At’s right,’ Helen called out from her seat, all jagged edges and smoker’s husk. ‘An youse dinnae want tae go the route ah did, ah’ll tell youse that for nothing, eh!’

  The thin, nervy woman had stood up.

  ‘I’m really sorry – I can’t do this. I’ve made a mistake. Sorry. Sorry.’

  She jerked towards the door, knocking the plate of biscuits off the coffee table. Suzanne followed her out.

  Paulette smiled.

  ‘That’s absolutely fine. And a completely natural response, you know. If anyone else’ – here she’d looked around at those of us remaining – ‘feels similarly, at any point today, just feel free to walk out. Make a complete break. We’ll understand. We won’t be in touch again.’

  The three of us left nodded. We didn’t make eye contact. A busty girl with flicked eyeliner, big skirts and rolls of red hair. A clever-looking woman, possibly Chinese, late forties, long hair, leather boots. And me. A liar and deceiver with no prospects and no money.

  Camilla, her brittle bones, the coked-up car crash of her.

  Little Holly, fucked up and acting out.

  Helen, raw, burnt and surviving.

  The other Fiona: pragmatic, defensive, always there at the school gates.

  Anya, beating the fire and anger of her brain against it, righteous and strong.

  Rona. What would my sister think about all of this? About what I’m intending to do?

  I couldn’t even begin to answer that one, because I don’t know how my sister thinks. I’ve never known. And it didn’t and doesn’t matter, because I realised there, in that living room, that I was surer of this than I had been about anything in a long time.

  Us

  We crash back down together after the second time, his fingers still clenched in mine.

  ‘Oof. Oof. Bloody hell. Bloody hell, babe.’

  His thighs are heavy over me, and I twist round to give him a little peck on the cheek.

  ‘Oof. Did you like that? Did you?’

  ‘I did. Yeah, I really did!’

  We laugh together, and I pull back a bit to let him wrap around me.

  ‘Mm. Mm, this is nice.’

  He plants a couple of kisses on my arm, and we lie there for a while, smiling, until I feel his muscles begin to slacken into something like sleep.

  ‘Alright now, I’d better go.’

  I unpeel myself from his arms, slick with a faint sheen of his sweat. Aftershave and sex. He’s sleepy, moans a little.

  ‘No. No, you should stay here.’

  I sound out a couple of notes of a laugh. Faint limb ache. Slightly raw upper thighs.

  ‘Is that right, Jeremy?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right. You should stay here for ever. We should stay here. We should run away.’

  I’m already out and on the floor, easing into my pants. I swat his foot with a stocking.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you can afford to keep me forever, can you?’

  He beams out contentedly, a fat mass of bedding and loose skin.

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  Bathroom. The door closed, a breath. Wipes. One for face, to sort out the smudged mascara, one for under the arms and a third to catch the excess lube. From through the door a fuzz of static as he switches the telly on, then soothing bland afternoon chat. I don’t want to shower here, eke out the time. Not with this one. Powder. Deodorant. Hair clipped back up on top of my head. Bag on my shoulder, a quick kiss for Jeremy as I’m walking out the door. I don’t break stride.

  ‘I’ll be back this way in November. I’ll be in touch, babe.’

  ‘Sure thing, darling. I’ll look forward to it.’

  Kiss off on my fingers, one, two. From bed to hallway in two minutes. I have this bit down now. Into the box of the lift with the warm animal smell of myself as I pull my flats out of my bag, swap shoes. Straight through the lobby, not looking, and on to the street. My fourth and my last of the week.

  Flat grey Scottish day, the sky just void, doing nothing. I take my place in the press of pedestrians, and even if you looked specially, you wouldn’t be able to pick me out. Two crossings and a slight slope down to the station, quick, fluid. Up escalators where I let myself rest behind suitcases, stride through the concourse, people lost, smell of baking pies, and down the grubby glass staircase. It’s 30p entrance to the ladies and another £4 for a shower; the coins are counted and waiting in my coat pocket.

  Not ideal, but I’ve come to like it. Undressing in a tiny private space, knowing that a city’s worth of people are still zooming about just through that door. The blue plasticky soap squeezed from a wall-mounted dispenser, the quick hard scrub, and discard the smell of complacent rich-man aftershave with the throwaway towel. Jumper, knickers and leggings from one corner of my bag, not too creased, still-new leather jacket back on and I’m a completely different person by the time I come out. I queue up with everyone else to buy myself coffee, smile at the puffed-out lady behind the counter, scorch my palms slightly through the cardboard. Like every day.

  Passing through the ticket barriers at this station, coming or going, is my secret doorway. I leave at different exits depending on whether I’m going to the college, a hotel or the incall flat, pull myself up smart, beat time with the click of my heels. Early in the morning I’m a social policy student, folders under my arm, sitting keenly up the front with the other mature students, asking all the questions and irritating the younger ones. Lunchtimes, I usually have a client: lipstick and lube in my locker, all washed off immediately afterwards. In late afternoons I turn myself into a mother again, soft flat footfalls, drift to a window seat and watch the city turn slowly to hay bales, shimmering water and big melting sky as we get closer to the village, the grass, the neighbours, the crabbit cat and the cottage that Beth and I call home these days. My work phone buzzes occasionally with bookings and the sort of timewasting idiots who want me to send them pictures for free, with the daily anonymous abuse I had to grow elephant skin to cope with. It doesn’t matter as long as I’m heading home, as long as the city and all its wants are slowly receding behind me.

  Beth doesn’t want me to pick her up from school any more, and that’s alright. I’m there when she comes home, and she can wrap her arms around me as soon as she gets in, my girl.

  But I’ve got a different mission today. A different route – back up the hill, bearing to the left. The hard stone of the Drag, again, as grey and nothing as today’s flat, void sky.

  XXX

  We stand there for a while, outside the Sanctuary Base. Me, with my head tipped back, her silently at my side, height and weight.

  She breaks it by putting a gentle hand on my sleeve.

  ‘Hi.’

  Claire has not changed. Not in the least. Her hair’s slightly longer, and she’s wearing quite a smart coat, but that’s all. There’s a plain wedding band on the hand touching me, but I knew about that from Heather, who had two weeks of hard rage that she wasn’t asked to be a bridesmaid. Perhaps the touching is new: I don’t remember her being one for physical contact, for the softness of social affection. But we did
n’t really know each other at all, back then.

  I can still smell the station soap on myself.

  ‘It’s good to see you. Really. Thanks for coming.’

  ‘I take it you wanted to rub my nose in it?’

  A half-laugh, but she’s on the defensive.

  ‘In what?’

  ‘Your choice of place.’

  It had been deliberate, and my earlier pettiness is making me anxious now. I don’t want her hurt.

  ‘Not very subtle of me, was it?’

  ‘Shall we go and get a coffee?’

  ‘Actually Claire, can we stay here? I honestly don’t mean to be rubbing your nose in it.’

  She snorts at me, but she’s friendly.

  ‘Okay, I don’t mean to rub your nose in it much. But can we just stay down here, walk around? It feels like an appropriate setting, and I like it, a bit. The quiet. It’s never usually quiet, this area. Only weekend mornings.’

  And we walk the block.

  ‘I probably deserve some nose rubbing,’ she says.

  It would be childish to quibble about that ‘probably’ right now, when we’re on friendly terms. This conversation will soon end exactly the way that all of our email exchanges have, with the statement and re-statement of two completely entrenched points of view and a slightly huffy sign-off. There’s no point pre-empting it.

  We don’t want to fight, Claire and I. We’ve danced this dance over the past couple of years, back and forth, always reengaging, because we actually seem to like each other. Can you like someone without respecting their views? We can’t understand each other, but we do like each other.

  ‘I’m really glad we’re doing this,’ she says. ‘I’m really glad you said you’d come. It took me a long time to work up to asking you.’

  ‘I’m glad that I’m here.’ We’ve never groped this awkwardly for conversation online, but then it’s always easier when you don’t have to look someone in the eye. She seems pleased by that, though. Patronising, bossy Claire with a shy smile on her.