Some men expected strippers to be complete slags, to be anybody’s and everybody’s, to be usable and disposable. However, in Gabby’s experience strippers were no different from any other group of women. Some of them were slappers, but some of them were professional virgins. Some were happily married, some were practising long-term celibacy. Some were desperately looking for love, others were looking for instant gratification.
Gabby would always have said that she occupied the middle ground, but she’d admit that faithfulness didn’t come easily to her. If a man liked her, flattered her, was nice to her, bought her dinner and a few drinks and then asked nicely for sex, well, how could she say no?
She’d wanted to be faithful to Mick, she really had. In fact she’d wanted to be faithful to all her men, but there’d always been a reason why she’d failed in the end; sometimes it was boredom, sometimes it was too much drink, sometimes it was because a better prospect had come along, and that was partly the case here. A good-looking man with money, a flash car and some high-quality drugs had come along and he’d treated her decently and it had all just sort of happened. What was a girl to do?
His name was Ross McLennan and Gabby first met him at the agency that handled her bookings. Most of her dealings were with a chubby, motherly former stripper called Pat. McLennan was there in the office when Gabby called in one day to pick up some money and Pat introduced him as though he was an old friend, maybe even part of the business, maybe a sleeping partner. There was talk of him wanting to hire a few girls for a party he was throwing, but he never mentioned hiring Gabby.
She knew immediately that he wasn’t a good man. He looked difficult and dangerous, and though he smiled at her a lot, she knew it wasn’t a smile she could trust. He was older than Mick and usually that wouldn’t have been attractive to her, but he wore his age lightly, he dressed young, he looked like a somebody and she fancied him like mad.
Not that it seemed to matter at the time. She thought she’d probably never see him again. Then one night he was in the audience at a club in Rotherham where she was stripping. He watched her do the act. He looked out of place in the smoke and crush of the club and he didn’t appear to be enjoying himself very much and he certainly didn’t bother to applaud when she’d finished. Neither did he try to go backstage or try to speak to her as she was leaving. Mick was there and maybe his presence had scared him off, although he didn’t look like a man who was scared of much.
Next day he telephoned her. She knew the agency must have given him her home number, which was another indication that he was somebody very special indeed. She wanted to be angry that her number had been given out, but she couldn’t summon up the pretence. She was glad he’d called her and she didn’t bother to hide it.
He said, ‘Why the gloves?’
She was surprised and impressed. Nobody had ever questioned the gloves before. Nobody had ever seen them as anything more than part of a stripper’s paraphernalia.
‘I spent all night wondering what goes on underneath those gloves,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe it was ugly old tattoos, maybe an ex-lover’s name, but you look too clever to have done something like that. And then I thought maybe you were an old junkie and you were hiding needle tracks, but you don’t look like a junkie either. So then I wondered if it was deformity, burns or skin disease, or maybe you’re missing a finger or even a hand. So which is it?’
‘You’ll have to find out for yourself,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to take them off for me.’
Her words sounded too obvious, more salacious and silly than she’d intended, but she knew this man was going to be something in her life whether she liked it or not. What was the point of being evasive, and what was the point of resisting? He had been talking to her on a car phone and ten minutes later he arrived at her door. Ten minutes after that she was being unfaithful to Mick. McLennan peeled off her gloves, looked sympathetically at the scars on her wrists and forearms, and kissed them. She couldn’t stop herself submitting and she didn’t try. She could tell this wasn’t going to be just a one-off, not a case of him trying it on because he thought all strippers were slags. It was not going to be anything nearly so simple.
She never found out what he did for a living. He’d never tell her and she could never quite work it out, although over the next few months she pieced together a few tantalizing bits of information. From things he said it appeared he was involved with property and with gambling and with importing cars from Europe. This might have been legitimate for all she knew. Certainly he employed an accountant and a book keeper like any other business. But he also employed some dodgy-looking heavies, men without job titles, men who were not employed for their entrepreneurial skills.
Gabby knew better than to quiz him about what he did. They were both happy for him to remain mysterious. He travelled a lot, to Birmingham, to Manchester, even to Florida (where he topped up his already radiant tan). But whatever he did, he was obviously good at it and it was obviously extremely profitable. She sometimes thought his business must involve drugs too. He always had the very best dope, speed, cocaine, and he was free with it, at least where she was concerned. But maybe it wasn’t business. Maybe he had the best drugs because he had the best of everything; the best house, the best furnishings, the best cars, the best whisky and, as he repeatedly told her, the best women.
He seemed to take it for granted that she would have a boyfriend. It didn’t seem to bother him. He didn’t tell her to stop seeing him In fact he was very interested in hearing all about Mick.
Gabby felt disloyal enough just sleeping with McLennan; telling him about Mick was even worse. But she did tell him. She couldn’t stop herself, and McLennan seemed to have no ulterior motive. He was interested in a disinterested way, only wanting to know something about Mick, he said, because he wanted to know everything about Gabby. She told him and she was disappointed how little there was to tell, what a nothing he seemed to her now, how she seemed not to need Mick any more, how easy she found it to lie to him.
If she could tell McLennan all about Mick, she knew that Mick must know nothing about McLennan, and so it was. He remained blissfully ignorant. Mick trusted Gabby and he was easy to deceive. She’d tell him she was seeing her sister, staying over at her mother’s, and Mick never questioned it. It wasn’t that she thought Mick would do anything terrible if he found out. She didn’t think he’d hit her the way some of them might. Mick could be a brute but he was never a brute to her. It was more that he’d have been disappointed in her, that he would have valued her at more than she was worth.
She liked having secrets. The drugs were a secret from Mick. Having an affair with McLennan was an even bigger one. She wondered if she needed secrets because her life as a stripper was so utterly revealing. She showed everything to her audience, more than just her body. Like any good performer she revealed herself, gave herself away. And before long she had given everything to McLennan. Their nights were long and sleepless; intense, relentless sessions fuelled by alcohol, lust and drugs. They left her feeling worn, shaky, wrecked, but at least she knew she was alive.
Some addictions are instant, others take a slow, incremental hold. At first it was easy for her to juggle Mick and McLennan, to balance their opposing demands on her, but she knew that sooner or later she would be wholly McLennan’s. Even before he went to London, she knew that Mick was meaning less and less to her.
And when McLennan said, ‘You shouldn’t be a stripper. You’re far too good for that game,’ well, it was nothing that she hadn’t heard before from other boyfriends, but this time it mattered. This time it meant something. It sounded convincing and true. It felt like the thing she’d always been waiting for, the magic words she’d always wanted to hear. Once McLennan had said that, she was his. She’d do anything for him.