by Sam Hayes
‘Nice to meet you, Mr Knight,’ she continued, grinning. ‘My name, as you know, is Helena.’ She closed the door and leaned against it, as if to indicate there was no escape.
But Robert didn’t want to escape from Helena, whatever she looked like. He wanted, no, needed her – perhaps even more than her usual clients—and was desperate to find out about and understand his wife’s secret life. But the thought of touching her body repulsed him. He had to find a way into her mind, to see what drove her. Simply to find out why.
‘Take a seat and make yourself comfortable.’ Helena indicated to the bed and slid a bolt home on the door.
Robert could see more clearly now even though the purple nylon curtains were closed. The room was small and lit by a single lamp. There was little else in there, apart from a chair holding a pile of clothes and a wooden coat stand behind the door. Robert shuddered when he saw that it was draped with whips and leather garments and several pairs of handcuffs. Helena noticed him looking.
‘Fancy a bit of that?’ She winked.
‘Not really my scene,’ he croaked. Helena approached the bed and sat down next to him.
‘What is your scene then, Mr Knight? What can Helena do for you this afternoon?’
He studied her before answering, trying to see behind her worn-out eyes and catch a shred of reason, to find out why she had turned to prostitution. Her skin was like waxed crêpe paper clinging to her cheekbones and her long hair was over-washed, over-bleached and badly needed styling. Even without seeing her naked, Robert could tell that Helena was very thin. The way her bony fingers pushed the cigarette into an ashtray, the way the collar of her robe swamped her scrawny neck, the way her forehead jutted above her face as if the rest of it had been eroded told Robert that she didn’t eat much.
‘Just, you know, perhaps we could talk.’ Robert swallowed, wondering why he felt so powerfully protective towards Helena’s over-used body. At that moment, he wanted to get to know her more than any other woman in the world and yet he found her as attractive as a dead rat. Was it that she represented Erin? Was she the next best thing?
Robert found himself being pushed gently back onto the pillow. Helena unbuttoned his shirt and attempted to remove his trousers but Robert stopped her with a hand firmly on hers.
Suddenly, the noise from the television downstairs grew louder and Helena scuttled to the door.
‘Turn it bloody well down, Josh!’ She returned to the bed and removed her robe, grinning at Robert as he lay perfectly still. He couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. She started to rub his chest, pulling his skin around in rough swirls. ‘Don’t look so scared, Mr Knight. I won’t hurt you.’ Helena coughed violently, layer upon layer of tar and phlegm working loose through her cigarette-deepened voice.
‘No!’ He sat up and stared at her body, unable to speak as an image of Erin’s perfect body transposed itself over Helena’s. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to see if she really was Erin. He longed to brush his hand along the concave stomach which was made from fabric that had long since lost its stretch, just in case he met with the firmness of Erin’s skin.
But Erin disappeared and Robert stared at Helena’s breasts. Her huge nipples, hugging the lower portion of the flaccid sacks, looked as if they’d been dipped in melted chocolate.
Not taking no for an answer, Helena’s bamboo-like arms and hands pressed firmly into Robert’s upper body, lowering him back onto the bed, in what was undeniably a deep, relaxing massage. As she moved around him, he could feel her body warmth and he caught a whiff of her natural scent, the smell of soil after heavy rain mingled with old sweat.
‘That’s my son downstairs with the bloody telly too loud.’ Helena cackled as she worked on Robert. ‘Ready for a bit more now, love? You don’t seem quite so tense.’
‘Your son?’ Robert sat up again. It didn’t seem right.
‘Don’t worry. He’s used to it. How else am I going to afford the amount of food he puts away or get him through university? I’m a student myself, you know. I’ve gone back to school to learn something useful.’ Helena pushed Robert back onto the bed and dragged her fingers around the rim of his trousers.
‘What are you studying?’ Robert was incredulous.
‘I’m doing psychology and English A levels. Then I want to train as a counsellor. A women’s counsellor to help all them screwed-up bags out there.’ She laughed and coughed again. ‘Like me,’ she added when her throat was clear.
Then, in one nimble action, Helena brought her body down upon Robert’s. She lay on him like a thin leather hide and began to move provocatively.
Robert lay perfectly still, frozen by what he had learned about her. How desperate, how determined must she be to sell her body to strangers while her son watched television beneath her? As she reached for the button on his trousers again, apparently admiring what she had to work with, Robert swiftly drew up his legs and rolled to the side.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Not with your son and . . . everything.’
That was when Robert realised that everything was Erin; that everything was his life. That everything was what he wanted back and he would stop at nothing to get it.
‘And everything?’ Helena wasn’t angry; she seemed more amused by his withdrawal.
‘Stuff in my head.’ Robert reached for his shirt. ‘I didn’t come here wanting to have sex with you.’
‘I can cater for all tastes. Just the massage if you prefer.’ Helena’s low voice betrayed a tinge of desperation. ‘Or the whips. You can do it to me if you like.’
‘I’ll still pay you. It’s just that . . .’ Robert fingered his hair, ‘. . . I wanted to know more about how you work. About prostitutes.’ He didn’t like calling her that, labelling her with such a loaded title. He didn’t want to class this woman with his wife.
‘What is there to know?’ Helena put on her robe and sat on the end of the bed. ‘I do it because it makes me a living. Perhaps it’s desperation, I dunno. I don’t feel desperate though.’ She said that as an afterthought and reached into her robe pocket and fished out her cigarettes. She offered one to Robert, who accepted, and they both sat in a sphere of blue-grey smoke discussing how Helena first got into the game.
‘I don’t see nothing wrong with it. It pays my bills, keeps my son in education and a roof over my head. I provide a service to all you deprived men who might otherwise go preying on young girls.’ Robert cleared his throat in protest. ‘Present company excluded, of course.’ Helena winked. ‘I had to do it when my husband left. It started off casual down the pub. If someone came onto me, I’d make it quite clear from the start that they’d have to pay for it. If I met a builder in a pub and wanted an extension building, I wouldn’t expect him to do it for free.’
Robert decided not to mention the small issues of love and marriage, trust and respect. Instead, his mind filled with Erin striking a deal, stripping, having sex and hoarding her cash. Did she do it for Ruby? Did Ruby even know that her mother was a hooker? Silently, Robert buttoned his shirt and prepared to leave.
‘Why d’you want to know so much, anyhow?’
Robert stared directly at Helena, shuddering partly from his still damp shirt and partly because the image of Erin working like Helena was now firmly burned in his mind. ‘Someone I love once earned a living this way. I wanted to find out why.’ He breathed out heavily.
‘And have you?’
A gap of time, only seconds, but as Robert looked at Helena – her eyes open and honest, her body spent and used – he knew that, yes, he had gained a glimpse of Erin’s life before they met. He had coloured in a tiny corner of his paint-by-numbers wife. He didn’t like it one bit.
‘I think I have,’ he admitted. ‘She’s like you. Determined and a survivor.’ Robert leaned forward and kissed Helena hesitantly on the cheek before opening his wallet and removing fifty pounds. ‘Most expensive kiss I’ve ever had,’ he said flatly and gave her the money. She took it and stuffed it in her dressing-gown p
ocket.
‘Count yourself lucky, Mr Knight. I don’t normally do kissing.’
‘Thanks,’ Robert added, although thanking the woman for illuminating how his wife once lived seemed a contradiction. He felt worse than ever now about Erin’s past. A push-pull game of love and loss. ‘And good luck with your studies.’
‘Good luck yourself,’ Helena growled as she showed him out.
After Robert left Helena’s house, he was overwhelmed with need for his wife – to hold her and touch her and love her in all the ways that she would have done for hundreds of others. He fought hard to keep down the repulsion and begged himself to remember, when he was finally sober again, that his wife must have done it for a reason.
But when he arrived home, when he saw the remnants of life with Erin, when he saw her haphazard possessions, the drooping flowers, the jumbled laundry, the jacket hanging crookedly over the back of a chair, the notes stuck on the fridge to buy tamarind paste and flaked almonds, when he saw all these things with the memory of Helena ghosting his thoughts, he knew that before he’d met with Helena, forgiveness would have been as hard as having sex with a prostitute. Now it was merely a mountain he had to climb and with determination, he reckoned he could do it. If only she’d come home.
The house was empty – Louisa had left no trace of her earlier presence – and so Robert slept off the remains of the bourbon.
The telephone woke him the next morning although, when he answered it with a thin hope that it would be Erin, he believed he had only slept for a couple of hours. It was Louisa. She was calm and soothing and, after a gentle laugh at his sleepy state, she said that she had some interesting news.
TWENTY
I’m so silly. It’s not until I’m wrapped in a blanket sipping sweet tea beside a coal fire that I realise he has Ruby safe and he’s not going to kill me or nick what’s left of my money. I manage a smile as he perches on the arm of an old ripped chair, watching me, licking his lips.
‘Gonna get you looked at, sweetheart,’ he says and I wonder why because he doesn’t know me and didn’t have to pick me up off the ground. ‘I don’t think you’re very well and that’s a shame because you’re a pretty girl.’
‘Where’s my baby? What’s wrong with me?’ It hadn’t occurred to me that I was ill.
‘I ain’t no doctor, sweetheart, but Freda used to be a nurse. When she gets back, she’ll give you the once-over and get you some medicine.’
‘Freda?’ She must be his wife, I think, although he doesn’t look the marrying sort. I can see his shadow on the wall opposite, flickering in time with the flames. His nose sticks out like a shelf and his mouth joins straight down onto his neck. ‘I want to see my baby? Where is she?’
‘Freda looks after things around here.’ The skinny man pauses, staring as if he’s trying to recognise me. ‘And your baby’s quite safe.’
‘Oh,’ I say, thinking that he’s nice and how lucky I am not to have been picked up by the police. They’d have marched me straight home.
‘Freda and me, we run a sort of hostel. A place for pretty young women to stay.’ His mouth forms a point as he speaks, chiselling the other features on his face as if too much bone has been carved away. He’s very thin and tawny.
‘Do you mean homeless women?’ I sit up now, hardly believing my luck but cautioning myself as I remember how my friend Rachel was sent home by the hostel when she ran away. I will pretend I am older, which will also make having a baby more plausible. God knows what’s been on the news about me.
As he thinks, as I wait for his reply, I can smell hope on my hot breath but suddenly I am gripped with pain. My belly feels like it’s burst open and the mess is soaking into my clothes while my left tit is as tight as a brick in my bra.
‘Yeah, for homeless women.’ He grins and comes over to me, crouching down by the chair. He puckers his already distorted lips. ‘You wouldn’t be looking for a roof, would you?’
I nod, not wanting to appear too keen. I’ve really fallen on my feet but shouldn’t let on that I’m desperate or he’ll hike the price sky high. I’m not stupid. I really wish he’d bring me my baby.
‘I dunno about vacancies though, sweetheart.You’ll have to speak nicely to Freda when she gets back. We’re bursting at the seams. All these homeless girls to look after.’
My burning belly chills and sinks. ‘Is it because I’ve got a baby? She’s very good and hardly cries.’
‘It’s not to do with your baby, sweetheart. Several of our girls have ended up with babies and they all help each other out. I can’t promise nothing though. Drink your tea.’
‘But can you get my baby? When I fainted and you found me, I had a baby. She’s called Ruby. My baby. Will you get her?’
He stands and walks away. His words echo in a vapour trail behind him as he looks back over his bony shoulder. ‘What baby, sweetheart? There’s no baby, lover.’ And he locks the door behind him.
In my head I make a cold, precise scream that, although I don’t know it yet, will cut me in two for the rest of my life. I don’t run for the door and beat my fists against the locked panels, not at first. I don’t fall to the floor and thrash and sob and break a window and escape, searching, searching for my baby. I haven’t even asked him what his name is or where exactly I am and suddenly the quest for my baby drops to the same level of importance because who am I, a teenage runaway with a newborn baby, to question anything?
I passed out in the street and he rescued me and brought me to wherever I am now. It seems nice, although shabbier than the semi that my mother kept tidy and sterile. The man seems nice and I bet Freda will be, too. I will do as he says and finish my tea and wait for Freda. I’ll hope that she’ll take me into their hostel and I’ll think a thousand times a minute about my baby, and then maybe I will get her back.
I am so hot. My forehead is tacky and seeping sweat as I stand up, as I stagger to the locked door, but I still manage to rattle the handle and smack my fists against the wood and press my lips to the crazed paint and squeal out for my baby. I do this until my voice dries up and I slide to the floor not knowing if it’s tears or blood or fear dripping down my cheeks. Then, for the second time that day, the world goes black.
I don’t know how long it’s been but there’s a hand on my shoulder gently tapping and nudging me. I open my eyes. There’s a woman beside me and I can’t think where I am and for a moment I think it’s my mother but then I remember the skinny man who rescued me off the street although I can’t see him, just this woman leaning over me. She’s wearing sweet perfume. I remember they’ve got my baby.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I’m Freda.’ She bends down lower, giving me a glimpse down her low-cut top. ‘Who are you?’
‘Where’s my baby?’ I whisper, quite tired of hearing the words and wondering if Ruby ever existed.
‘What baby, love?’ And her words echo like the beat of butterfly wings in the sun. ‘You don’t look too well.’ She reaches for a cushion and plumps it behind my head. ‘Go on, tell me your name.’
I’m tired and hot and shivering and hungry although I couldn’t eat. I’m aching and sore and scared but not so stupid that I’d give my real name. I’d thought about this on the train, about how telling everyone who I really am would be a bit silly seeing as I bet my folks have reported to the police that I’ve run away; a fifteen-year-old on the loose, in the papers, on the TV. They’ll be after me for sure.
‘I’m Milly,’ I say as confidently as I can although it sounds strange. I saw the name Milly on the badge of a girl working in McDonald’s. She was pretty and wore rings and had a cross on a chain around her neck. She smiled and was nice to me even though most people usually aren’t.
‘That’s a pretty name.’ Freda pulls up a footstool and sits beside me. ‘Becco tells me he found you passed out in the street. What’s a lass like you doing wandering around in this weather?’ Freda’s voice is like chocolate milk. She takes off her jacket, exposing more of her deep, wrinkled clea
vage. She lights a cigarette, the glow from her lighter showing me that she has furrows ploughed around her mouth and eyes. Her hair is short and grey but sleek, not brittle like grey hair can be, and her skin is the colour of smoked fish. Freda’s eyes are dark and hardly have any whites. She could be my fairy godmother.
‘Not sure,’ I say, picking my nails. At least that’s the truth. ‘I think that man’s got my baby somewhere. Can you ask him?’ My heart crashes against the back of my sore tit.
‘Where do you live?’ She sucks on the cigarette and when she blows out, the smoke is drawn towards the chimney.
‘Further north.’ Careful, I think. ‘My baby?’
‘Are you new to London?’
I nod. She’s intuitive. I like that. My mother didn’t know things about me; didn’t notice I was pregnant until I was six months gone. ‘Is she OK, though, my baby?’
‘Do you have anywhere to stay? A job to go to?’
Loads of people run away to London and survive, don’t they? Hundreds come to seek their fortune. I’ll manage just as soon as she gives me my baby back. ‘No, but I’ll find something. I just wasn’t feeling very well and fainted. I’ve got this pain in my stomach.’ Even as I speak, it’s like I’m turning on a spit over a fire with a rusty bar stuck through my insides. ‘I’ll be OK in a while. Will you fetch my baby now?’
‘Baby?’ She draws a lungful of smoke. Then, finally, ‘Your baby’s being looked after, love. It’s best that way for a while, until you’re both better.’
‘Is she sick? Can I see her?’
‘She’ll be fine but it’s best you let her rest. You need rest too, love.’ Her voice smoothes my pain and when my vision goes foggy, as if I’ve washed my eyes in milk, I reckon that she’s right. Ruby and I both need to rest. I trust this woman. She is nice.
We chat for a bit longer but then I need the toilet and when I stand up, the room dips and spins. Eventually, I make it to the hall and down a dark corridor to the loo. It’s a big old house, with tiled floors and not decorated very nicely but at least it’s a roof. I don’t notice much else because I’m in agony and when I pull down my pants, something bloody and sloppy falls out of me like the liver Mother used to buy from the butcher’s. The smell makes me retch and I yell out for Freda.