‘Very,’ said Grace, with a small smile.
‘Me too,’ he said.
‘You?’
‘Yes.’
‘How come? Aren’t you an old pro at this? If you excuse the pun.’
‘No,’ said Greg. He leant towards her and lowered his voice. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you,’ he said, ‘but you’ve got the kind of face that makes me want to. I’ve got a small confession to make.’
‘Oh?’
‘You’re my first,’ he said.
‘Your first?’
‘My first client.’ He laughed a little. ‘Jeez, it sounds weird saying that!’
‘Oh!’ said Grace. ‘Your first client. Really? But your photo must have been up on that website for at least a month.’
‘Yes, it has. I’ve been biding my time. Waiting for the right person to be my first client.’
‘Oh.’ She was the right person for him. Interesting. Strangely it made her feel even more nervous. ‘So you’re new. What did you do before?’
‘I’m in between jobs. I want to start my own marketing business and I need to raise some capital. A mate of mine suggested I do escorting. A female mate, actually. She suggested I had all the right credentials.’
‘I bet she did,’ said Grace, raising her eyebrows. ‘So you’re planning to fund a whole new business from women like me. Investment angels.’
‘Yes,’ said Greg. ‘I suppose you could put it like that.’ He was unflinching in his gaze. His very blue eyes looked into hers without blinking.
The gazelle returned to the table.
‘Can I get you guys some drinks?’
He hadn’t been here before and Grace was his first client. They could just be your average couple having a meal out. A real couple. For the first time, Grace smiled at the gazelle and didn’t mind her long-limbed perfection quite so much.
Greg ordered drinks, and rattled off their food order, too, in an accomplished manner. He said things in what she assumed was the correct Italian. With the accent and everything. She was sure he had even pronounced focaccia properly.
‘How about you?’ he asked, after the gazelle had glided off. ‘What do you do?’
‘I work in a hat boutique.’
‘Oh, interesting. Married, kids?’
‘Well, if I was married I’d hardly be here.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Oh. My husband and I have separated. I have a son. I’m a single mum.’ Ugh, it sounded awful saying that. She hadn’t said it before. The ‘mum’ bit she didn’t mind, the ‘single’ bit she hated with a passion.
‘Well, good for you,’ said Greg, disappointing her for the first time. What did he know? It wasn’t good for her at all.
They sat in silence for a few moments. The gazelle returned with their drinks and Grace fell on her glass of wine like a desert wanderer arriving at an oasis. She took an almighty glug. That was better.
‘So,’ she said. ‘I’m the first person who’s hired you. The first person you’ve gone out for dinner with.’
‘Yes.’ Greg smiled. ‘First victim.’
He hadn’t slept with anyone for money yet, she thought. There was yet to be anything seedy about him. He wasn’t a seasoned pro who’d already shagged thousands of sad, lonely old spinsters, dripping with gold jewellery and lost baggage and bitterness.
The wine was warming her stomach. She took another gulp. ‘Do I get a discount, as you’re obviously still in training?’
‘Ha. I hope it doesn’t show.’
‘It doesn’t. I wouldn’t have guessed, on first seeing you.’
‘But you like the fact I’m an amateur.’
‘I guess I do. It makes you seem less smarmy.’
‘I hope never to be smarmy.’ Greg laughed.
Grace laughed too and drank some more of her wine. It was going down very well. She began to relax a bit. This man didn’t have loads of well-worn clients he was wearily doing the rounds of. He wasn’t putting his bow tie in his trouser pocket night after night as he gambolled down the plush steps of one glamorous apartment building after another. He was as new to this as she was.
‘But you are going to have sex with people?’ she blurted out, a little too loudly. She looked around, but nobody seemed to have heard her. There weren’t many people there.
‘Probably, later on,’ said Greg. ‘I will earn more money that way.’ She admired his honesty. He was someone who knew what he wanted and how he was going to get it.
‘Are you going to train for that?’ she asked glibly, looking sideways out into the restaurant, vaguely focusing on the dessert trolley, which was rumbling past their table. Ooh, tiramisu. She might have that later. She couldn’t look at him.
‘I don’t need to,’ said Greg. She looked back at him. She couldn’t help it. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
Grace was no stranger to frisson. She’d had lots of beginnings to lots of relationships. Loads. But she’d never experienced frisson like this, not even with James. Frisson sizzled up and down her body, an electric cattle prod playing over her skin in a figure of eight. Frisson took her by the hand and led her down the garden path with a rocket in her knickers. I know what I’m doing. Good Lord. He was incredibly sexy. He was looking her right in the eye. Please don’t wink, or anything corny, she thought, or you’ll spoil this very enjoyable moment. Please don’t ham it up.
He didn’t wink. He didn’t ham it up. He just sat with his eyes not moving from hers. She would like to say she was torn between being repulsed and turned on, but that wouldn’t be right – she was just turned on. Quick. She had to divert her mind. Where had the bloody dessert trolley gone?
She grabbed the passing gazelle and tapped her somewhere near the knee.
‘Could we have another bottle of white, please?’
‘Sure.’
‘You drink fast, for such a small person,’ commented Greg, after the gazelle had gone.
‘I know, sorry. Will it be women only that you sleep with?’
‘Women only. I like women.’ She wished she hadn’t asked. He was looking at her intently, again, as though he found her the most attractive woman in the world. Pull yourself together, she willed. Divert your energy from the front of your pants! He’s an escort! He may have practised that look in the mirror. And it wasn’t going to matter who he looked at. Any age, any size, any kind of woman. As long as they had money in their purse.
She stared into the bottom of her empty glass as though it held the meaning of life. She briefly thought about getting up and leaving. Then, she realised, this man couldn’t hurt her, he didn’t have the power to hurt her. It was all fine.
The gazelle brought their starters and another bottle of wine. It was more fine the more wine she sipped. This man was good-looking and good company. He was exactly as advertised. He’d be perfect to take to Nana’s do. And this was nice. It was nice to be sitting opposite a nice man in a nice restaurant, not side by side on a silent sofa, with a man’s smelly feet up on a footstool, or, more usually, alone on that sofa while that man was out shagging another woman. No, stop that. She didn’t want to think about James.
They finished their starters and had their mains. Their conversation was easy and flowed as freely as the wine. Greg was charming, attentive and those blue eyes had her captivated. He was spectacularly good-looking. She knew the gazelle fancied him too; as she cleared their plates away she smiled at him for just a little too long.
‘Dessert?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’ In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought.
They ordered one tiramisu, to share. She hoped he wasn’t going to spoon food into her mouth, like they did in the movies. Wouldn’t that be a cheesy, escort-y thing to do? Perhaps he was saving that for further down the line. Perhaps there was a whole list of things he was yet to employ. A wink with every smile, a stroke with a finger down a speckled forearm, an exaggerated look up and down a body as a client arrived. She took a slug of wine and imagined more. A hand pl
aced on a shoulder, another reached across a table to take a variety of women’s being held out eagerly – from smooth and pale, to wrinkled and over-tanned, or those women’s hands that were chunky, like men’s, with loads of rings. Would he help women into their coats at the end of the night like they did at the hairdressers? Gyrate opposite them in nightclubs, in a horrible Michael-Douglas-in-Basic-Instinct V-neck jumper? Would he have a repertoire?
At the moment he was still fresh and green. She liked the fact he wasn’t yet a practised, jaded, cynical escort man. And thank goodness she had suggested this awful restaurant and it wasn’t his choice – she didn’t like to think of him in weeks and months to come, sitting opposite a succession of random women at the same table. She was his first.
She pulled herself up short. She shouldn’t be jealous of future women who would be paying for his company. Get a grip, girl, she thought. This is not a first date!
She’d drunk too much; she knew it. As they dug into the tiramisu with a spoon each (thankfully), she started telling Greg all about James and what he had done, despite promising herself earlier that she wouldn’t. How he’d cheated, how unreliable he was being. Greg was sympathetic, angry on her behalf and seemed to champion her in her strength to go it alone. He even expressed amazement at the age of her son, when she looked so young. She didn’t bother telling him about Frankie and Imogen and the whole single for a year vow, since she was breaking it so spectacularly.
He was so nice. So understanding. She didn’t know whether all this niceness was the act of a fledgling escort, but she hoped not. She hoped he was just a genuinely nice man. Grace began to imagine again this was a real date, but at the same time revelled in her bravery that it wasn’t. She was out for dinner with a male escort. It thrilled her that no one, not a soul, knew about this. It thrilled her that James would be so surprised if he knew about it. Even more thrilling was the thought of turning up with this man, at James’s family do, and giving James the shock of his life.
‘Some men are just programmed to be bastards,’ Greg was saying. Her vision and hearing were slightly blurred now. ‘But not all. You may feel like that at the moment, but you won’t always. There’ll be someone for you, at some point in the future. When you’re ready for him.’
‘No,’ said Grace, putting down her spoon. But she said ‘no’ quite happily, easily almost. ‘There won’t be a someone. No more men for me, unless I’m paying for one! Ha ha!’
She was a little more than drunk, now. She looked at his lovely face. Well, she hadn’t stopped looking at it. She wished he would stand up again so she could get a better look at all of him. She wanted to see his legs, his stomach, his bum. Perhaps she should spend a little bit more of Gran’s money. Perhaps she should sleep with him. Be his first.
‘So what’s the drill now?’ she asked, slurring slightly, and fiddling with the salt and pepper. ‘Do I have to tell you what additional services I require? Have you got a menu?’ She picked up the wine list and started thumbing through it as though scrutinising his price list. ‘Ooh, is it like Pretty Woman? Do you charge, like, £2000 or something, to stay overnight with someone? Can I chain you to a bed for a week, for a million pounds?’
‘No one’s chaining me to a bed,’ said Greg, shaking his head with a smile. ‘As for an over-nighter – I’m not sure if that’s a technical term, by the way – I don’t know yet. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’
‘Cross my palm with silver,’ said Grace. ‘Everything has its price. I’m deciding whether to sleep with you or not,’ she added, brazenly. To get my own back on James, she thought.
‘To get your own back on James?’ said Greg. ‘I don’t think that’s the right reason for doing it.’
‘You don’t want my money?’ said Grace. ‘Or you find me repulsive? You can’t bear to sleep with me?’ He wasn’t going to be a very good escort if he kept this up, was he? – if she excused herself another pun. Turning down offers.
‘Of course I’d be happy to sleep with you,’ said Greg. ‘You’re a very attractive girl. But my role as an escort – what I hope my role is going to be – is to make women feel good about themselves.’ How generous, thought Grace, somewhat scathingly. He rubbed two fingers over his chin and continued, ‘I think if you slept with me, tonight, so soon after James cheating on you, you’d feel very bad indeed. In fact, I can pretty much predict you’d wake up in the morning feeling terrible.’
‘Cross my palm with silver,’ said Grace, again. ‘So now you’re a fortune teller.’ But she knew he was right. She would feel terrible. She wasn’t ready to have sex with anyone: it would only remind her of James doing it…with that slut.
‘Shall we get the bill?’ said Greg. Subject well and truly changed, and she was glad of it, really. He was totally right. She didn’t want to have sex with him tonight.
Grace paid the bill. Credit card. She had already paid for Greg by bank transfer, before she left home.
They called for two taxis. Gazelle, at the wooden podium, looked surprised. They clearly looked like a couple that should be going home together. Greg had his arm around Grace and she was leaning into his shoulder. She was drunk, but they looked good together. Everyone could see that.
They stood outside in the breezy air. Greg insisted she got into the first taxi.
‘Call me if you want to see me again,’ he said, and granted her a light hug and a fleeting kiss. His lips grazed her cheek and he said, ‘I think you’re a really gorgeous girl.’
He thought she was gorgeous! A lovely warmth spread through her body.
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘What are you doing on the 1st of April?’
Chapter Ten: Imogen
They were still in Chinatown and on dessert. Imogen always had dessert. Why come out for a meal if you weren’t going to have everything? She was having banana fritters and ice cream, Richard was having lychees in syrup.
He liked his food. He’d wolfed down everything they’d been brought: dim sum in those cute wicker lidded baskets, steam escaping from the woven gaps; noodles and rice on willow-patterned dishes; aromatic pork and peppers on sizzling skillets; chilli beef and cashew chicken. He’d seemed to really enjoy the whole experience – the over-lit canteen-type atmosphere, the clattering of trolleys, the way the waiters and waitresses stamped a card with pretty Chinese characters when you ordered your dim sum. Imogen liked Richard’s delight in everything and his boyish enthusiasm. It made her want to take him outside and rip his clothes off.
The muscles she could see bulging under his shirtsleeves weren’t helping matters. She imagined, not for the first time, what he would look like with his shirt off. Oh, she’d imagined it several times. When they’d had a drink at the tiny bar before they’d sat down, during the starter, during the main course and every time he’d raised his chopsticks to his mouth. Oh sod it. It had been pretty much constantly.
Richard was very polite to the waiters. This was a deal-breaker for her. How a man talked to waiting staff told you everything you needed to know about him. They had a guy who was slightly nervous. He told them it was his first week. He stumbled over his words a bit, apologised that his English was not that great and spilt some white wine over the rim of Imogen’s glass and onto the table. He was over-apologetic but Richard was great. He was really kind, told him not to worry about it, and even said, ‘We’ve all been in our first week, once.’
They talked about loads of things: his job, her job, his parents, her parents, New York, London, chat shows in both countries. She was careful how much wine she drank. Not too little – she didn’t want to seem boring. She wanted to look as though she enjoyed food, good wine and conversation, which of course she did; she was a seasoned old pro in going out for dinner, after all. But she was also mindful of not getting too sloshed. It was suddenly very important that she looked poised, in control. An English Rose. She didn’t think many English Roses got off their heads on white wine and found themselves face down in their fritters. So she slowly sippe
d one glass of wine. Savouring it. Holding the glass as she’d imagined she would when she was a little girl dreaming of going out for nice meals in smart restaurants with handsome men.
The conversation was relaxed and they laughed a lot. They had an excellent exchange about silly English words, when Imogen called herself a numpty for knocking one of the dim sum lids off the table.
‘Numpty?’ said Richard, in delight. ‘That’s a new one. He got out his Blackberry and pretended to write it somewhere. ‘I’ve learned quite a few quaint British insults since I’ve been here. Wally, berk, duffer – duffer, is that right?’ Imogen laughed and nodded. ‘Git, minger, munter, plonker, wombat,’ he continued. ‘Though I thought that could be Australian?’
‘Yep, Australian,’ said Imogen. ‘I sometimes use that one though.’
‘And an Irish guy, in jest, I hope, called me a bollix? I always thought it was bollocks, but I could be mistaken.’
Imogen laughed. ‘Bollocks in English, bollix in Irish,’ she said. ‘It’s an education.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Richard.
They really did laugh a lot. They had the power to make each other laugh and it was a heady power that thrilled her. It was exhilarating to have your pithy one-liners and dry, witty observations bouncing across the table like exuberant ping-pongs and making an alpha male American roar with laughter.
‘You’re funny,’ he said, at more than one point. She took it as a compliment. He had a sense of humour she adored, too. Mocking, slightly sarcastic, so un-American – he was as far from have-a-nice-day, straight-down-the-line blandness as you could get. They laughed all the way through jasmine tea and those minty chocolates that come out on a saucer.
‘You’re my kind of girl, Imogen,’ said Richard, as they sat and waited for their bill to be brought to them. He looked all serious, suddenly, and she felt a thrill of heat surge all the way down to her toes.
‘Am I?’ she answered flippantly but doubted she concealed her delight.
Year of Being Single Page 11