to seven foot, and a brunette like Eva. When we’d first met a month or so ago, I’d been surprised to learn these two were Norwegians. With my blondish hair, I looked more Scandinavian than either of them.
I didn’t want to look as if I was gawping at them entwined in each other, so I stared out of our sixthfloor window towards the shadowy treetops of Hyde Park, shaking in the wind. An image of the Dorchester’s phallic tower flickered through my mind. I smirked to myself. Lars was sure making a statement when he’d booked this place for our rendezvous.
I’d done the job I’d been hired for—to be hors d’oeuvre to Lars’s main course. I collected my clothes, nodded my ‘She’s all yours’ at him over her shoulder, and got a grin and a ‘Thanks, mate’ in return. Creeping into the sitting room to dress, I let myself out.
I took the lift down to the ground floor, satisfied that I’d left a couple of clients pleased with my service. Happy Birthday to you, doll!
I checked my watch as I hotfooted it across the lobby. It had just turned midnight and I needed to get home. There were people milling around the reception area but I took no notice. I’d pick my scooter up from round the side of the hotel and head back to my bed. I’d had a run of late nights this past week and needed to catch up on the zeds.
I stepped out of the main doors behind a glamorouslooking couple who were being snapped by a barrage of paparazzi. As I turned left out of the hotel, I took a quick look back. I instantly recognized the two of them. She was Shelley Yates, an American movie starlet who I’d read in yesterday’s paper was in town for the release of her new film. And on her arm was Guy Raynor, an English pop star who was last year’s cool thing and sure needed the publicity now. You couldn’t tell if the pairing up meant anything to either of them, but they were milking the attention for all they were worth.
Good luck to ’em.
But I was too damn tired to desire such sparkle at this time of night. I walked away from the cameras, down the side road, stepped onto my scooter and was away from there.
As far as I was concerned, Sunday was meant for lounging around, maybe watching the football on the box in the afternoon. I’d benefited from my lie-in and was in the mood for not doing very much at all.
The Girls seemed to have the same idea—I could hear them pottering around as I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt and cut across the hall to make myself some brunch.
Carrie was sitting at the kitchen table, the dregs of her own breakfast strewn around her. She’d pushed her plate and the jars of jam and marmalade out of her way and was engrossed in her Sunday redtop.
I started to prepare my own breakfast, putting bread in the grill and cracking a couple of eggs into the pan. Carrie looked up from her paper as I hovered beside the oven.
‘You had another night on the tiles? I didn’t hear you come in last night.’
I was unsure whether this was Carrie’s way of finding out my business. Since I’d moved in earlier in the month, I’d managed to fob my three new flatmates off about what I actually got up to, but I was very aware that that was going to be more difficult to get away with the longer I lived here. But for now, I was prepared to put that aside and only cross that awkward bridge when I came to it.
‘Oh, I can assure you I came in last night!’ I grinned.
‘Clubbing, were you?’
‘Oh, I had a night of it, y’know,’ I lied.
I decided to shift her focus away from me. ‘What about yourself, Carrie? Were you and the girls out larging it?’
‘You bet,’ she moaned, clutching her head in mock pain.
‘The others are still paying for it, I’m afraid, so no bashing any pots and pans when you’re putting together your fry-up, thanks.’
‘No worries,’ I replied, focused on the two eggs crisping round the edges just the way I liked them.
I sat down opposite Carrie with my breakfast and poured myself a mug of tea.
‘Anything happening in the world today?’
I was more interested in the back page, but I knew that the girls never read that far. Carrie flapped the front pages back and forward.
‘No X Factor scandal today, I’m afraid,’ she mused.
‘God, I don’t know what the world’s coming to!’ I spluttered. ‘What, have they got a blank front page or something?’
She flipped a wry grin across at me: ‘Might as well be, eh?’
None of us took the paper seriously. It was light relief of a Sunday. Hangover reading. But then again, the tabloids did help me keep in touch with who was in and who was out in celeb land—and that couldn’t but help me in my work. Especially some of the circles I found myself in. If only to massage some famous person’s ego by not looking blank when they told me what TV show they’d been on or pop group they were in. Not that I could let on to my new flatmates about that.
I let Carrie get on with reading and laid into my fry-up. God, there was something about a good English breakfast that set the world to rights whatever was in the news.
Carrie got up from her seat. ‘I need to shake the girls up. We’re off shopping this afternoon. You want to read the paper?’
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled through my full mouth.
She left me to finish off my breakfast alone.
I pushed my empty plate away and dragged the paper across the table towards me. I turned the pages without looking too closely at anything. My mind wasn’t ready for any proper news. I wasn’t up to looking at much more than the pictures, to be honest.
I stopped at the celeb pages. They snapped people coming out of the same nightclubs and restaurants that a good number of my clients hung out at. I focused on the photos, though I wasn’t taking a lot in. My head was still throbbing. And then a picture of a young woman and a guy managed to get my attention through the haze of my half-asleep brain.
Those two last night! Shelley Yates and Guy Raynor.
That brought me to my senses quick-smart. I took a closer look. They were standing in front of the Dorchester. For a second, I was back leaving the foyer through the glass door to be met by the paparazzi shield.
Oh fuck. No.
The thought hit me before I saw the truth in the photo. If they were being shot just as I was coming out, then chances are the paps had caught me too.
Panicking slightly, I smoothed out the page to take a closer look. Right first time. There was me at the back of the photo, heading out of the doors to my scooter round the corner. Only from where anyone else was sitting reading the paper at this time of the day, it appeared that I was part of Shelley and Guy’s entourage.
A wave of cold fear swept over me. Suppose someone out there who knew me—one of my clients, say, who definitely knew what I might be doing coming out of a top hotel around midnight—saw this picture, put two and two together and made five? And then all they needed to do was phone up the same paper and let them know about The Celeb Couple’s Appointment with The Hooker.
Oh God.
It wouldn’t take too many steps for the path to lead to my door. And my cover to be well and truly blown. And, God knows, in those sorts of stories it was always the escort or call girl who came off worst.
I closed my eyes for a second, half hoping that the picture would have disappeared when I opened them again. But it hadn’t, and Kirstie was breezing into the kitchen.
‘Morning, Luke,’ her voice rang out, crashing into my dread.
I rallied, turned over the page, and greeted her with a sunny, ‘And a good morning to you too!’, silently praying that she hadn’t spotted my unease when