The Gift of Girls

by Chloë Thurlow

  Jay Leonard rubbed my bottom with his palm. ‘There, there,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me that little touch hurt?’

  ‘Yes, it did.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good idea to get used to it.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Your bum was made for spanking and I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be getting more than its fair share in the future.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what a little bird told me.’

  ‘Then my advice is don’t listen to little birds.’

  His mates all laughed – at him for a change, not me. Jay Leonard just grinned and looked pleased with himself. Television actors are always show-offs and, with as much dignity as I could manage, I retrieved my circular tray, tossed my head like a pony and went back to work.

  I collected more drinks and, when I got back to the blackjack tables, Sandy was gathering his chips. He was having an early night and flying to Paris the next day.

  ‘You are coming back?’

  ‘I’m just doing the rounds. Can’t stay too long in one place,’ he said. ‘The casinos don’t like it.’

  ‘I’ll probably never see you again,’ I said sadly.

  ‘You’ll be seeing me again, that I promise.’

  Tuesday was a busy day at the office and it was late in the afternoon before I had a spare hour to log on to the online casino. By the time I was ready to leave at five, I’d won £50, acceptable but a little disappointing.

  Wednesday and Thursday were a little better and, in all, I managed to bank over £300.

  Thursday night at Rebels I was run off my feet. A party of Russian oil men drinking vodka tonics and shouting in agitated voices were losing their money as if there were no tomorrow, as if there were no longer hungry people in the world, and I couldn’t help feeling special with my secret knowledge. Getting your bum tanned for the odd tenner is all very well, but you’re going to be bruised the colour of an aubergine before you’ve got enough to buy a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes and, anyway, the Russians seem to think spanking the waitresses is all part of the service and save their tips for the dealers.

  That night in my little bed, with the sound of the headboard in Melissa’s room tapping against the wall, I came to what was probably the most important decision in my life. In a week, I had accumulated more than £500 and, with my savings, I had just enough to play the game with £50 chips: 1+2+4+8+16=31 chips; 31×50=£1,550. It was time to take Sandy Cunningham’s advice and ride my luck.

  There was very little to do that Friday morning and, when I finished, I should have gone and told the secretary that I was free. I didn’t. I stared out at the spires and rooftops of East London. It was like taking a breath before diving from the high board. Everything was polished in the morning sun. The sky was blue and clear. I could see Tower Bridge and the London Eye. I was in the same pale-yellow suit and daring top that I had worn on my first day at Roche-Marshall; I thought of it as my lucky outfit. I closed the blinds, logged on and sat down to turn a few cards.

  Ace of Spades, first card. I turned the Queen of Hearts and earned a bonus for the blackjack. Next hand: Queen of Diamonds and the eight of hearts. The dealer drew 17 and in two minutes I was more than £100 to the good.

  I drew a six of clubs …

  Time moves at a different speed when you’re playing. It doesn’t go faster or slower, it just vanishes like mist, like thoughts, like the past. You are living completely in the present, in a frozen moment, and that moment is pure and perfect. I lost a hand, I won a hand. I lost two in a row, doubled up twice and won it all back again.

  I seemed to be winning more than I was losing and didn’t feel the need to check. It didn’t matter. The thing is, if you’re feeling lucky good luck follows. When you draw 20 and lose to the banker’s 21, you don’t think about that; it’s like a bump in the road. You click play, hit 2, and two chips light up on the screen for the next hand. I drew a terrible 13, twist and bust, and entered a stake of four chips. I was really unlucky with that one. I drew 19 to the banker’s 20. I clicked on a stake of eight chips and didn’t think of it as being £400, just eight chips. I lost again.

  Did I have a moment’s doubt? I think I probably did. But it was just a moment. I was playing the system and the only way to beat the system is to play it to the end. I hit play, hit 16, and had £800 riding on a red ten. I drew an eight and watched spellbound as the dealer turned two picture cards. I’d beaten the law of averages. I’d lost five in a row. I sat motionless for several seconds before looking at my account. It was empty. I’d been wiped out. I’d lost everything. I sat there dumbfounded, staring at the screen, unable to move, and at that terrible moment Simon Roche appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I just had some reports sent over for you to check. It’s rather urgent.’

  I clicked out of the casino and stared back as if he were a stranger. I wasn’t flushed. The colour had drained from my face. I was trembling, I realised, and took a grip on the edge of the desk to steady myself.

  ‘Are you all right, Magdalena?’ he asked. His voice seemed far away.

  ‘Yes, yes I am,’ I said in a tiny whisper.

  ‘If you’re sick, I can get someone else on it.’

  ‘No, I am fine, really, I … I …’

  ‘Look, it’s nearly lunchtime, you should get something to eat and see how you are after lunch.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’

  He left the room and I continued to sit there. Just like Daddy, I had lost everything. Like Mummy, I felt suicidal. I left my office, rode down in the lift and walked around London unable to eat, unable to think. I wouldn’t be able to go to the London School of Economics. I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent. I’d be punished like some fallen heroine in Greek myth and be forced to wear the corset and garter belt like a badge of shame. That night and every night for the rest of my life I’d be watching the gamblers at Rebels losing their money and I’d be offering up my bottom to solicit their meagre tips. I thought about fleeing abroad, to Spain or Italy. I thought about jumping in the Thames from Tower Bridge, and I thought I’d ask Simon Roche to give me a full-time job. I didn’t need a degree. I could do the job already. I was working on important accounts. I had access to all the files, all the software.

  I was trusted.

  4

  Spanking

  THE REPORTS WERE waiting in my inbox. I clicked open the first file and, as I did so, an odd idea entered my mind like a refrain and grew from idle thought to inspiration. I felt like Einstein confronting E=mc2 on the blackboard inside my head.

  I had obeyed the rules of the system. After losing five times in a row, I had stopped. That’s what you are supposed to do. The next step was to start again. I thought, if I borrowed £310 from the Roche-Marshall sundries account, I could make a little money and put it back before anyone noticed. It was just a few clicks away.

  The room was cool and quiet. My hands were clammy. There was sweat between my breasts. I hung my pink jacket on the back of the chair, sat very still, very upright, completely poised. This was a bad thing I was about to do, but it was the right thing. The only thing. There were butterflies in my tummy as I entered the Roche-Marshall account. I entered the account numbers, the secret code and keyed in £310. My finger hovered over the zero and, like an echo, I pushed the zero once more.

  It would take weeks playing with £10 chips to get my money back. With £3,100, I could play £100 a time, and solve my problems before I went home at five o’clock. I’d lost once, it’s true, but I had won every time before that. I was sure to win again.

  I transferred the money from Roche-Marshall straight into the online casino. I drew a picture card first time out and won £100. The butterflies grew still. It felt good to be back on the tables again. Time went into that suspended-animation thing and I played the system, taking my winnings, doubling up when I lost, relying on the law of averages.

  How did it go so terribly wrong? Why? I was
playing the system taught to me by Sandy Cunningham. I’d seen him win over and over again. I was born under a lucky star. I was playing my luck. Better being lucky than clever.

  It was nearly five. I had lost four in a row, but with 16 chips, £1,600, on the last card I would be able to put the money back in the Roche-Marshall account and still be up a modest £100.

  I drew a nine, a four, the Ace of Clubs and then an eight.

  I’d bust.

  The cards disappeared. The money had gone. Computers don’t pause for human grief.

  I stared at the screen in disbelief. My heart was thumping. I could barely breathe. The flashing lights of the casino logo faded to black and I was gazing at the revolving shapes of the screen saver as if hypnotised when the door opened and Hannah, Simon’s secretary, broke the spell. She was wearing a floral suit like curtains with white shoes and for some depressing reason I remembered Mother once saying that except at summer functions it was déclassé to wear white shoes.

  ‘Mr Roche would like to see you before you go home, Magdalena.’

  I didn’t answer. I just nodded. My throat was constricted. A pain ran down my left arm. I thought I might be having a heart attack.

  Hannah turned with a little skip on her white shoes and closed the door. I sat there, unable to move. If there had been a lock on the door, I would have shot the bolt and stayed there for ever. If only the windows had opened, I could have jumped seven storeys to oblivion. I could do nothing. Nothing. I sat like a prisoner in the dock waiting for the judge to don the black cap.

  He appeared in the door, tall in his dark suit like a monster in a child’s nightmare.

  ‘Come through to my office, please,’ he said.

  I pulled my jacket on and followed.

  He waited for me, closed the door and sat in his chair behind the wide desk. There was no chair in front of the desk and I stood before him as I had stood many times before Sister Benedict.

  ‘Do you have anything to tell me, Magdalena?’ he asked.

  I lowered my head. ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘What is it? Speak clearly, please.’

  I coughed and tried to look back at him. Tears had started to form in the corners of my eyes. ‘I moved £3,100 from your account.’

  ‘That’s the first bit of honesty we’ve had from you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was playing blackjack and I thought I was going to win. I lost all my savings, and then, then I just …’

  I ran out of words. The tears were streaming down my face. On the desk was a parcel in a large plastic bag. He drummed his fingers on the surface, the sound for some reason reminding me of the headboard in Melissa’s room tapping against the dividing wall.

  ‘Now we know what you have done, what I want to know is what we are going to do to rectify the matter?’

  ‘I’ll do anything, anything.’

  ‘Anything?’ he said.

  The words were like an echo from the past. I had a sense of déjà vu. I had a sense that my life, my destiny, was not in my own hands.

  ‘Yes,’ I said with a little more confidence. ‘Yes, anything.’

  ‘Magdalena, let us be very clear what you mean. Are you offering to repay your debt with sex?’

  He made it sound so sordid. I took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘You are absolutely sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  This is what it had come to. I had slept with Sandy Cunningham to learn the system. Now I was offering my body to Simon Roche to pay off what I had embezzled. I was a slapper, a slut, a whore, a fallen woman. I was Mary Magdalene, unchaste, the peccatrix, the prostitute, the fallen woman. As if with some terrible inevitablity, I had become my namesake.

  Simon was quiet for a moment and made a spire with his long fingers.

  ‘You know, at any good hotel the concierge will arrange to have a whore sent to the room. Do you know how much that will cost?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘About £100,’ he answered. ‘I can go to Kings Cross and find a girl your age, even a good deal younger, and pay half that amount. There are a lot of girls like you, Magdalena.’

  Girls like me? What did he mean? He made me feel small and dirty and insignificant.

  ‘I am so, so sorry …’

  ‘Now, Magdalena, when you say anything, do you actually mean anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, I do. I really do.’

  ‘You must remember when you came here for the interview, I told you that I reward those who respect my trust, and those who betray it I punish with extreme severity?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Taking money from my company accounts makes me feel as if I have been violated. I have been humiliated. I have been made a fool of,’ he said. ‘Do you appreciate that?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Roche.’

  ‘That is what I am offering you.’

  What did he mean? Violated? Humiliated? What was the alternative? He must have been reading my mind.

  ‘The alternative is that I call the police and let them deal with the matter.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll do it. I really, really will. I’ll do anything.’

  ‘Magdalena, take off your clothes and fold them here on the desk.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Magdalena, did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes.’ My voice had become a whisper.

  He sat back in his chair and I stood there before him, trembling slightly. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It seemed unreal, like a dream. Like a nightmare. Men really are weird, I thought. I knew by the look in men’s eyes as I passed that they fancied me. I’d known that since I was about fourteen, and there is power in the knowledge that you are desired. Simon Roche didn’t merely want to have sex with me. He wanted to humiliate me, break me, remove any feelings of pride or power. No longer was I the desirable girl beyond reach, I was a thief being disciplined for what I had done.

  ‘Miss Wallace,’ he said in his dark voice and I awoke from my nightmare. This was real.

  My fingers nervously undid the button of my jacket. I folded it as if to be packed in a suitcase and placed it on the desk where I had been told. What next, I thought? My top or my skirt? It didn’t matter but I fooled myself into thinking that in having the choice I had some control. I lowered the zip at the back of my skirt, wriggled slightly and pushed the waistband over my hips. I stepped from the skirt, folded it along the seams and put it on top of the jacket. My lacy top had a row of six buttons and my fingers were all thumbs as I fumbled my way through them. I placed the top on my suit and, standing there in my little knickers and bra, I had never felt more exposed in my life.

  I must have delayed a moment too long because he snapped his fingers and I hastily stretched my arms up my back to unhook my bra. I lowered the straps from my shoulders and, with false modesty, kept my breasts hidden until the last possible moment. I placed my bra on the pile and realised to my horror that my nipples had grown erect; gorged in raging blood, they were painful and pointing at him as if in accusation or alarm.

  It was as if I’d just finished a gymnastics routine, a cartwheel, a handspring, a somersault. My body was clammy. My underarms were dripping. I was panting for breath. I couldn’t control it. There was no air in the room. The shades were drawn and in the diffused light the feeling I’d had the first time I had been in that office came back to me, that sense that Simon Roche had been probing my hidden desires and secrets.

  Did I want to be standing there taking my clothes off for him? Was that my secret desire? I thought I knew myself but standing there half-naked I realised I didn’t know myself at all. A month ago I’d been playing hockey at school and talking about boys with their dirty minds and groping fingers.

  So much had happened and so fast. I had taken a job as a casino waitress where my boobs and my bum were the only assets that mattered and had done so because it was daring, because I knew deep down that Melissa, for all her talk, would never have had the cou
rage. I had slept with an older man – and enjoyed every moment of it. I had stolen £3,100 from the Roche-Marshall account and lost it playing online blackjack. Even Sister Benedict wouldn’t have believed it.

  Was this me? Was this the real me? In just four weeks I had gone from convent school to the edge of the abyss. A sigh left me and my shoulders sagged. I looked into Simon Roche’s eyes and he just furrowed his brow and flicked his finger in a downward motion.

  There was no escape. No way to double my bet. No way to put the stolen money back in the account. I hadn’t beaten the system. The system had beaten me. I hooked my thumbs into the thin band of elastic, eased forward to lower the ivory silk over my bottom and, as elegantly as I could, I ran my knickers down my legs and over my shoes. As I was about to place them on the pile of clothes, he held out his hand and I felt utterly disgraced and wretched as I dropped my knickers in his palm. He studied the gusset and I’m sure it was stained and smelly.

  ‘And your shoes, if you please.’

  As I removed my shoes, he took a green and gold box from the plastic bag on his desk. He gave me the bag and told me to put my shoes and clothes inside. I did so and, the moment my clothes had gone, I felt bereft, as if with my clothes my very person had been folded away inside that bag.

  He opened the green and gold box and removed a pair of black high-heel shoes which he stood on the desk.

  He said nothing.

  I stared at the shoes and back into his eyes. My lips began to tremble. My knees were giving away beneath me.

  By the way, what size shoes do you take?

  A narrow six.

  That day at the first interview his probing eyes had looked into me and he must have foreseen the future. He had given me access to the passwords and codes. He had led me on to the path of temptation and I was standing at the end of the path barefoot, naked as a child, my breasts throbbing with the beat of my heart. Tears swam into my eyes and my hands were shaking as I reached for the shoes.

  They were gorgeous shoes, shoes a girl covets, stylish but elegant. They fitted snugly and must have cost a fortune. The leather was so soft, the supports so solid, the heels so sleek and graceful. The moment I pushed my toes into those shoes, my spine curved forward in a faint bow which made my sagging shoulders straighter, my breasts poised and, as I looked back at Simon Roche across the desk, he seemed to wear a look of approval and for that I was grateful.