OCTOBER
It had all started out so easily. Harry and George were chilling in their rented flat. They had ordered in pizza, they had beer, they were sorted. They’d watched the match and then a cheesy old Richard Gere film had come on. As the action unfolded they were paying it scant attention. They were busy moaning on about how they were always skint.
George was bored with working as a dealer at Lorcan’s place, but what else could he do? And Harry was Job Seeking, only not really. They had few qualifications between them, and it was George’s firm opinion that they were screwed from now until they fell off the twig at ninety. Well, sixty more likely. But it would feel like ninety years had crawled by, because the whole damned circus was going to be such a long dull pain in the arse. And there was Richard Gere, being a gigolo on the screen. Humping beautiful girls and – for God’s sakes! – getting paid for the privilege. George liked the ‘getting paid’ bit. As for humping the girls, well, he could do it. He wasn’t crazy for it like Harry was, but as Tina Turner so rightly said, Keep your mind on the money.
‘We could go for that,’ said George idly.
‘For what?’ Harry was yawning, nearly ready to turn in. He had to go and sign on again tomorrow – what a fucking treat.
‘Being a thingy. You know. A gigolo. Boffing the birds for money.’
Harry burst out laughing. ‘You what?’
‘Look, the girls do it, don’t they? Escort work? Guys do it too. And it’s safer for guys. They make major money.’
‘Oh sure.’
‘Damn right I’m sure.’ Now George was sitting up straight, and there was that mad light in his eyes that he always got when he had a bright idea. George’s bright ideas had landed Harry in a lot of trouble over the years, involving him in gang fights, territorial disputes, all sorts of shit, so Harry was starting to feel a little nervous. He’d come this close to getting a knife shoved between his ribs once, and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.
But still . . . escort work.
Maybe George did have something there.
‘I could set up a website,’ said George. ‘We could get some cards printed.’
‘Maybe,’ said Harry.
‘Oh come the fuck on, Harry, it’ll be a laugh,’ said George, grinning. ‘You got anything else going on?’
Harry shook his head. ‘No, but . . .’
‘Well then.’
‘I don’t want any trouble, George.’
‘Trouble?’ George was wide-eyed and innocent. ‘This’ll be like taking candy from a baby. No trouble involved.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Oh come on. Let’s do it. Okay?’
Harry started to smile.
‘Okay,’ said Harry, and they high-fived. Harry was con fident that George would forget all about this conversation by the morning. He was drunk as a skunk. They both were.
But George didn’t. Morning rolled around and George was still talking about his escorting idea. He was on a roll.
By the end of that week, their website was no longer a drunken dream in George’s head: it was fact. And before long they had booked their first client, and then, in quick succession, came their second, their third, their fourth . . .
‘Christ!’ laughed George, his eyes dancing as he playfully waltzed his younger brother around the room. Their tenth client had just booked. ‘Look at this, boy. We’re going to be minted!’
‘We got another bite. And she’s a cougar,’ said George. He was excitedly tapping keys and gazing at their brand-spanking-new website on the computer screen up in his bedroom.
‘She’s a what?’ asked Harry.
George was very proud of this website. He’d drafted in one of their nerdier mates, Gaz, to do it, and it had cost them heavy, but it was done in double-quick time and it was good. Lots of red to excite the punters, but enough black and gold to convince them that this was a classy and efficient operation.
There were some good pics of George on there, but the best were of the wildly photogenic Harry. They’d purchased a dinner jacket and a dicky bow from one of the grunge shops, and in the first photo he wore that with a white shirt, à la James Bond, his thick, dark-red hair swept back, his soulful dark grey eyes smouldering into the camera lens.
‘The chicks are gonna love you, boy,’ promised George.
Harry had a relaxed, cat-like indolence about him, a sweetness of nature that earned him many friends, and bucket-loads of lethal charm.
The second shot of Harry showed him, torso only, oiled, muscled and brooding; the third showed him dressed smart/ casual in a tweedy jacket and open-necked shirt, giving it his best Sandhurst-officer-material swagger.
‘So, explain. What the fuck is a cougar? Really?’ asked Harry, sprawling back on the bed and watching his brother tap-tap-tapping on the keys. He felt just about shagged out, to be honest. All these women! And all of them so pitifully desperate to date men who were not old, boring, smelly or downright mean. Harry hadn’t worked this hard in . . . well, actually, he had never worked this hard.
‘You know so little,’ sighed George, not looking round. ‘Cougar’s an older woman with a thing for younger men.’
‘Ew,’ said Harry.
‘Not “ew” at all. Some of these older ladies are hot.’
‘How old we talking here?’
‘Forty,’ said George promptly. Jackie Sullivan, their prospective client, was an interior designer in her fifties, but he didn’t want Harry to completely freak out.
‘That’s fifteen years older than me. That’s gross.’
‘Keep your eye on the ball, grasshopper,’ said George, pressing send. ‘It’s a hundred quid, that’s fifty each, and all you’ve got to do is escort her to a black-tie do and home again.’
‘Listen, sensei, you keep your eye on the frigging ball. I’m going to be beating off an old lady stoked up on HRT and looking for sexy extras. And why me? You looked good in the pics too.’
George sighed and swivelled his chair to look at his younger brother.
‘You know the deal. It’s your trembling young body she wants. You got the beauty, boy, I got the brains.’
‘No, you got the gob.’
George considered this. ‘All right, that much is true.’ It was their sister Gracie who had all the brains, but George could blag with the best of them; that was his talent. That and working in his ex-brother-in-law’s casino flipping cards for over-eager punters; and he was bored to death with that.
‘And I got some looks too, I think you’ll agree,’ said George.
Harry didn’t agree. George was chunky as a barn door and brutish-looking with a squashed-in nose, and his dark red hair was shorn into an unflattering crew cut, but he did have laughing dark-brown eyes and the roguish mouthy charm of a market trader, and some women responded to that. Harry was the quiet, gentle-mannered one. Looking as he did, he didn’t have to say a word to get the girls to fall at his feet.
But