Four
Off
Once you’ve made that shift, interrupted the smooth line of dayto-day living with some sort of dissent, it’s hard to go back. RDJ Construction had moved into sharp focus and I saw it all, its cold walls, hard carpets and the stale instant coffee on its breath, Elaine’s old tattered magazines in the break room, the listless chatter about last night’s telly. This grey place where we had to go, every day, none of us liking it, none of us able to change. I look around at Moira, Norman and Graeme, faces illuminated by their separate monitors but blank, all three powered-down humans at half-capacity.
This office had been just a thing that was, a condition of existence. Now everything about it, everything it asked of us enraged me. All the time and effort I’d taken to insure myself against feeling anything, all the careful barriers put up to avoid comparison with other possible worlds, all gone.
What if we all just said no? What would happen to RDJ Construction if Moira realised that the way they’d smiled and let her put Team Leader on her email signature after eleven years of service was appallingly patronising to any loyal worker, let alone one nearing fifty? Or if Norman worked out that his scrupulous insistence on double-checking the minute details of every task he was given, above and beyond his paid hours, meant the company got twice as much work out of him? What if Graeme just wanted to live a young person’s life?
What if I did?
A soft metallic noise, and my 9.30 reminder list pops up.
Order sandwiches x13 for weekly review
Last week’s minutes photocopy x14
Ian to call John McKenzie @ 11.15
File invoices
I stared and stared at the screen and couldn’t find the energy to reach for the phone anywhere in me. The sandwiches were a matter of urgency: the order had to be in with the caterers by 10. The sandwiches were a matter of urgency. The sandwiches were a matter of urgency.
What if I just stood up and started walking. They wouldn’t notice at first. I could be over in another department. They wouldn’t notice unless a phone call came through and they realised I’d left Ian’s desk unattended – Moira would reroute the calls through to her phone for a while, because it is assumed that that is what women do in this office. Questions would be asked at 11.25 when John McKenzie’s PA called and Ian realised he hadn’t been reminded. They would try my mobile number and I wouldn’t answer it because I would be walking, because maybe I hadn’t even taken my phone with me. There would be no sandwiches or copies of last week’s minutes at the meeting, and big George would file a complaint because he’s diabetic and the decision to keep everyone in over lunch for the weekly review was not taken lightly, and I would keep on walking, until I got to the edge of the city. Perhaps I could walk to Manchester. Perhaps I could walk to a village or a small town where the buildings didn’t advance above two storeys. By the time I got there, the sandwich problem would have resolved itself somehow and I wouldn’t be needed again until 5pm, when afterschool care would notice I hadn’t come to pick up Beth. Again, though, they would phone Mum, and she’d cluck and fluster, but she and Dad would take Beth in, just like they’d always wanted to. It’s not a rupture, a second daughter going missing. Not like the first. We’re so numb now my absence would cause nothing more than an irritation of scar tissue. And Beth, and Beth, wouldn’t her life be better with someone competent, someone experienced in parenting? Someone who didn’t sometimes resent her presence? The invoices would be filed by a temp girl from the same agency I’d been with originally, who would gradually mould this chair to her back as her contract was extended due to her extreme adequacy.
That the sandwiches were once not got, that would be my legacy.
The four numbers in the corner of my screen advance towards 10:00, and Ian’s face is there, above the monitor.
‘Fiona, Jackson Group have decided to send an extra representative to the meeting today. Can you make the sandwich order for fourteen? Thanks.’
And I pick up the phone because these are the things you do, because. And I begin to file the invoices, and I patch the phonecall through to Ian at 11.15, and then I go to the photocopier and I photocopy the minutes, and I take fulsome, competent notes in the weekly review meeting where we discuss the very precise plans for how to deal with the irritating anti-progress protesters who want to stop these two rich companies from getting even richer, type them up briskly and print out two more copies than I need to, and at 4.30 I leave the building carrying the extra-large handbag I’d specially brought that day, the one that can hold A4 documents without creasing them, every colleague I pass in the corridors charged with the exciting possibility of discovery.
On
A rapper is having sex on the sound system in the bar where Heather wants to meet. It’s a Jackson Group bar, the biggest pub chain in the city. RDJ Construction’s most valued, and valuable clients. Their bars spring up anywhere clusters of office workers or students can be found, called for babytalk, all of them. K-oko. Dada. BuU. Nuuba. Lol’lo. The same hard chairs on the floors, the same soft porn in the toilets. Straightening-ironed staff, squelchy RnB beats that bit too loud for conversation, that bit too rubbish to dance to.
I suppose it’s handy – five minutes from both my breezeblock tower and the glass-fronted palace Heather works in – but it doesn’t make you want to linger. The seats are primed to eject us, and the music’s so loud, so doosh doosh pumping pumping that we’re having to shout and it’s only Tuesday evening.
‘Hi doll. Hiya. How’s you? How’s my girl?’
Her hug is paper thin: I hardly feel it on me. She’s got a white shirt on today and her honeymoon-ruddied skin pops against it. This will be deliberate – Heather would always wear white vests to show off her sunburn on the first days of autumn term. She is a constant, Heather. This is always what she was going to be, this married lady tilting her anxious head, eyes big and loaded. I have a fair idea of what’s coming, so I head her off.
‘Look at your tan! So. Tell me all about it. How was the honeymoon? Was it amazing?’
She relaxes, basks a little.
‘Oh and look at that! I’m firing questions at you and we haven’t even got the drinks in yet. What you having?’
Her sense of purpose returns.
‘No, no hon. Let me. I’ll get this. You don’t have to. You don’t have to. Wine? Glass of wine? My treat, hon.’
She swings up and off. Through the gloom a couple of nearby blokey necks swing to appraise her, the fleshy bounce of her, flick to me and then back to their pints. If Samira had been with us it would have been different, but Heather and I, despite the tightness of our work skirts and the height of our heels, do not merit second glances. We never really have done, it occurs to me. I goggle at the lumpen male shapes, trying to make them feel my hostility. They’re laughing about something that isn’t to do with us, already forgotten.
Heather tilts back from the bar, shouts my name. I teeter over, conscious of the catwalk I’m on. Perhaps I’m exaggerating the wiggle a bit, wanting to be noticed again. I have begun buying flimsy, silky knickers recently, the sort of wispy things I see in pictures. The sort of thing I used to assume would fall apart in the wash or give me thrush. I run my thumb over the line of them, through my skirt. Outer lines of vision, but I think the men are looking.
There are posters all over the bar.
MIDWEEK SPECIAL: BUY TWO GLASSES, GET THE REST OF THE BOTTLE FREE.
‘They’ve got an offer on,’ she explains.
‘Really, I’m fine with just a glass.’
The young barman who has been salesman-flirting her smiles, familiar with this squabble.
‘Ah, go on,’ he says. ‘Can’t hurt.’
It’s red, glowing blackish in those huge goldfish bowl glasses, even though I’d fancied white.There is really not very much in the bottle after the two glasses have been poured. We walk back past the men again. Hip, hip. Yes, they’re looking at us. Good. I try a small, coy smile and look back to my feet. A Rona move. Just because I could. Heather’s staring at me.
‘Right. So. I want all the details. Talk me through every bit. Was the hotel wonderful? And you got lots of sunbathing in –?’
‘We did. It was good, yeah. It was really good. How are you, though, Fi? It’s been all me-me-me-wedding-wedding for so long. Looking forward to getting back to normality. What’s going on in your life?’
She’s been back four days. This is ample time for her to have met up with Claire, crusading Claire, save-the-women Claire. I try and imagine it, a family dinner, perhaps, and at some point Claire catches Heather’s arm, takes her into the kitchen on a pretext. Your friend, she’ll say, Fiona. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. And Heather is shocked, of course she is. Perhaps she worries about it in bed that night, asks Ross for advice that he can’t give. Perhaps he makes an inappropriate joke and they have a fight about it. This is my oldest friend that you’re talking about here, she’ll say. This is how their married life will be, now. The next day she’ll phone Samira, who will be equally shocked, but less concerned because we are still not talking. I knew she was acting weirdly, Samira will say. Should we talk to her, Heather will ask, and Samira will find a way of getting Heather to do it without actually making Heather realise that we are not talking, because Samira is very clever like that. And that’s why I get the text message.
Hi hon!!! Back from honeymoon and really want to have a catch-up with you!!! Hows 2moro? After work? Xxxx
‘Oh, everything’s just the same with me. Had to buy Bethan a wedding dress, thanks to you! She’s obsessed with brides now, makes a change from princesses!’
‘Where’s Bethan tonight?’
‘My folks have got her.’
‘Right. They’re quite good about that, aren’t they? I mean, they must have to take her quite a lot–’
Heather was never good at subtlety. I think about that long chain of worry and whispered conversations, decide to enjoy myself.
‘Ha ha, yeah! All the overtime I’m having to do at work now, they’re beginning to joke that I never see her! She practically doesn’t recognise me. Still. Doing it for her future in the end, eh and it’s nice to have the extra money. Means we don’t have to worry too much. Lot of late nights, though. Whew!’
Something diamond-hard is glinting away in me tonight. I laugh larger than usual, force it out, throw my head back and notice that we still have our audience. Heather has almost finished her first, huge glass, and tops herself up before speaking, her sympathy face on.
‘I didn’t know – I hadn’t realised money was such a problem for you, hon. You should have told me. You know. You can talk to me. I’m so sorry I got preoccupied with the wedding and everything, but I’m here for you now. Eh? Eh Fi.’
‘Aw, that’s really sweet of you, honey. But I think we’re doing fine.’
‘No, really. If there’s anything you want to tell me. Anything at all you need to get off your chest. I’m your pal, eh. I’m listening.’
It’s a high, a sudden, powerful high. I flick one of Rona’s smiles at the two men, topnote, playing everyone in this bar like a virtuoso pianist. My glass is empty too. It always comes down to getting drunk, I think.
‘We drank those quickly, didn’t we? There’s the last of the bottle!’
‘Fi. Talk to me.’
I put my neck to the same angle as hers, meet her eyes for the first time all night.
‘What exactly do you want me to talk about, Heather.’
‘About – about –’
Here it comes.
‘Claire said she saw you. At a meeting. At a meeting of –’
‘Of?’
‘That meeting. You know what I’m talking about, Fiona. Stop pretending.’
She still can’t bring herself to say it, though, the dirty word.
‘Are you working as a… As a.’
Right here and now, I could let it all out. Let Rona out. Heather, who I’ve known for more than half my life, would understand how to absorb her, help me soak her up. It’s not just talking to a stranger at a wedding; it’s actively taking control. Getting things back on track. I wouldn’t have to bear the knowledge by myself any more; letting the air in on this private obsession, curbing it. Stopping it. I’d become normal again, and Heather would support me. She’s offering to, right here; she just doesn’t know she is.
It’s not me. Ohmigod, you thought it was me? I’d say. No, no. It’s Rona. And I’d tell her about what Christina had told me, about what Ally McKay had said. It would explain my strange behaviour on her hen weekend and since, which would go some way to bonding us back together again, and I’d feel less alone. She’d talk it through with me, help me straighten out all the tortured kinks of thought I’ve had in my head this past month. I might end up crying on her, if we stretch the talk into another buy-two-glasses-get-the-bottle-free and another, the barman winking at our drunkenness as barmen in this sort of bar do with office girls. Tomorrow she’ll tell Samira, and Samira and I will have a tearful exchange on the phone where we both apologise and make up, and we’ll be reunited, three fuckin muskahounds, and they’ll help me through this, this phase, and I’ll be a better friend and mother for it. I can’t believe you thought I was doing that, I’ll say at the end of the night, and we’ll laugh about it, one of those hearty, bittersweet shared laughs of friendship.
But I don’t say anything.
What Heather thinks she’s doing is bravely confronting a friend whose life has spiralled out of control, because we always seem to think that that sort of life must involve a spiral out of control. She might not have voiced it in these terms, but right now Heather thinks I’m a fallen woman, a desperate, shameful thing. Unclean. She’s shocked and ashamed for me, of me, and she pities me. She keeps touching her wedding ring, worrying at it.
‘You want to know if I’m working as an escort to make extra money?’
‘I – Fi –’
‘What would be the problem if I was?’
‘What? Fi, come on–’
‘I’m serious, Heather. What would be wrong with it, if I was?’
‘It’s… It’s prostitution. Fiona.’
‘It’s not against the law. It doesn’t hurt anyone.’ This is marvellously clear to me, for the first time ever.
‘You’re hurting yourself.’
And here they come. I couldn’t have scripted a better entrance point. English accents, bald patches.
‘Alright girls? We noticed you was running a bit empty there, so we got you another bottle of vino. Mind if we join you?’
Heather says: ‘No, sorry mate, we’re having a private conversation here. Not a good time.’
I say: ‘Thanks so much, guys! That’s so sweet. Pull up a seat!’
We say these things at the same time and then she’s shocked all over again, doesn’t know what to do.
‘Fiona,’ she’s hissing over the noise of stools being dragged to our table.
‘So, you ladies local, then?’
Off
‘This is good,’ Anya says. ‘This is really great stuff. So, we will need to get in there before them. It’ll probably mean organising some sort of occupation, but we can use this, definitely.’
I could have dropped the minutes of the weekly review in to Suzanne directly, at Sanctuary Base, but that way lay danger, I’d explained. I could have been spotted by a co-worker. Much better to hand the info over to Sonja, disguised as two friends meeting for coffee. Safer that way. Safer.
I’m trying to imagine what she’s like on her university course, in a context where people knew her as ‘Anya’, where her body didn’t matter, locked behind clothes. I’m trying to work out whether she’s wearing makeup. Just a trace, I think.
‘Well done. Thank you. I know this must have been difficult for you. I appreciate it and I’m sure Suzanne will too. You did not have to help us and you did.’
In her smile I get briefly bold.
‘Can I ask something? Why does all this mean so much to you? Personally, you. I mean, you aren’t affected by the new legislation or the closure. You don’t volunteer there. And the risks of putting your head up, becoming known for this sort of thing. Aren’t you worried they’ll find you out?’
I keep expecting her to slap me down, that at some point I will have gone too far. Why on earth she continues to tolerate me I’m not entirely sure. There is nothing about me that could appeal, I’m sure. She’s never seen the person I can pretend to be, the sparky one, inspired by her. Whenever we meet I fluster, make porridgy conversation at her.
Her smile gets tighter.
‘Shall we just say that I like the fight? Things get boring otherwise.’
‘Things get boring for you? Don’t try living my life then.’
That clanks, so I try and add a laugh on, making a joke of it.
She nods.
‘No.’
Nothing more to say on the issue. It glances off my cheek like a bruise, her honesty. Why would she want to live my life? Of course she wouldn’t. Perhaps I am just tolerated because I can provide information. Only that. With white hot clarity I realise I don’t really exist in either of her worlds, the academic or the other. This was always a transactional relationship. And I should ask for something back now.
‘Listen. I’ve got you all this. And it’s good. Could you – about my sister. I know some things. She was working with a girl called Camilla, in Edinburgh. An English girl, must be about my age. They, ah, they serviced – worked for – they did a lot of work for nightclub promoters, and I thought that this girl might, might know something, if I could find her. If you knew how to find her.’
She tips back in her chair and looks bored, blank.
‘I cannot help you find your sister. We do not have a full, proper network – it is one of the unfortunate byproducts of an unregulated industry, huh? The girls who really need the support, they sometimes just slip away. And you know, if she doesn’t want to be found, it is not my place to betray another working girl’s identity. That’s something I can’t do.’
‘Okay. Sure. Of course. Even, the girl Camilla, I thought, maybe. But, sure. Sure. Okay.’
A tall man is knocking on the window we’re sitting beside. T-shirt ripped at the sleeves, spiked, messed hair, and an absurdly beautiful face. Anya breaks into a smile at the sight of him.
‘So. My ride is here.’
She reaches across the table and pats my arm, one, two.
‘We appreciate this. Thank you.’
There is no mention of another meeting. ‘See you later,’ I call out, and she pretends not to hear me as she leaves, a move she must have had to practise, for persistent clients. I’m raw nothing, and they walk off together, down the street. She gets up on tiptoe to kiss him on the jaw as they go.
On
I’ve always had problems making small talk; never been able to fully relax into the weightlessness you need, the gaiety. Tonight it’s easy, though, pretending to be just as oblivious as these two lunkheads, Andy and Dave, in town for work for the one night, staying at a Travel Inn round the corner and thickskinned enough to butt into what is clearly a very serious conversation between two women on the merest sniff of sex. I giggle and chatter to compensate for Heather saying nothing, and her mounting disbelief gets me badder and bolder. I’m only able to be this thing because she thinks I already am, but it’s a pure, lovely high of the sort I haven’t felt in years. She and Claire will commiserate over me, and Claire will feed her statistics; perhaps they will work out how to rescue me from myself. The men are smiling, unfurling, telling rough-edged jokes. Dave strokes an enquiring finger up the outside of my thigh, almost accidentally. Andy goes to top up Heather’s glass, and she puts a firm hand on top.
‘No. Thanks guys, but no. It’s getting late and both Fiona and I have work in the morning.’
‘Oh, go on Hedge, have another drink! Heather just got married,’ I tell Andy and Dave, ‘but she’s not an old married lady yet. She used to be wild at school, didn’t you?’
‘Did you girls go to school together?’ Andy asks.
‘That must have been about a year ago, right?’ says Dave, and I preen for him.
‘Fiona. Can I talk to you for a minute, please?’
Heather has pushed her stool back and is clutching her coat. She steps away, towards the door.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Just having fun. We didn’t all get married this month, Hedge.’
‘I was trying to have a very serious conversation with you. Can we go somewhere else, get this sorted out. I’m worried about you, Fi. I want to help.’
‘What about the Travel Inn bar round the corner? I’m sure Dave and Andy would get us a residents’ discount.’
‘What are you doing? What are you – this isn’t you, Fi. This isn’t you. Come on, let’s go. Not with them. Come on.’
This isn’t you. I said that to Samira less than two weeks ago. How would you know, she said. This isn’t me, though. Poor Heather. She’s just trying to care. Her eyes are huge and hurt; for a second it flashes through my head that I must be a very hard person to love.
‘I’m going to stick around for a bit,’ not-me tells her, bright smile. ‘Seeing as I arranged Mum to babysit and everything. Might as well make the most of it, eh?’
‘I really think you should come home with me, Fiona. It’s not safe. It’s not.’
‘Heather. I’m a big girl. Come on. Thanks for the wine, and it was lovely to see you. You’re looking great. We should do this again some time soon.’
I’ve hugged her off and out of the door before she knows what’s happening, and somehow, she absolves me, takes all the worry with her. This isn’t me. Not me who strides back up to the table and says, sorry about that boys, she’s just had a wee bit too much to drink. You two don’t mind if I stay around for a little while? Not me who likes the genuine relief on Dave’s big red face when he says hey, gorgeous, thought we’d lost you there; not me who likes being called gorgeous, who laps it up, who shares her attention out equally between the two of them when she senses Andy getting bored. It doesn’t have to be me, not tonight, not even when we move to the shamingly bright lights of the hotel bar, and the jokes get uglier, the speech slurs and both of their hands fondle my kneebones with almost anthropological interest.
And it’s not me that makes a decision to go back to their shared room, flouncy green valances on its twin beds, to actually feel myself getting off on having two big, drunken men trying to explore my body at once, beer breath on my coat collar, fingers in my knickers and my blouse unbuttoned to let a mouth get at my nipple. They’re not really attractive at all, either of them; there’s very little to tell them apart. It’s not about them being attractive, though.
Two guys, in a Travel Inn.
I watch her in the mirror, being felt up and kissed, clothes still on, and feeling that surge again, I wonder if it’s possible to stop all of this, to just say, no, that’s enough now.
‘Boys. Boys. Have either of you got protection?’
Neither of them do.
‘Well, I would very much like to fuck both of you, hmm?’ Kiss, kiss. ‘There was a machine in the little girls’ room by the bar – it’ll take me two minutes. Will there be two big hard cocks waiting for me when I come back?’
‘Andy can go, can’t you mate?’ Dave is a little irritated. Andy takes a couple of seconds to work out what’s going on.
‘Why can’t you go, mate?’
‘No, no, I’ll do it. Really. This is a fantasy of mine, yeah?’ I kiss them both again. ‘And I need you to make it come true. Hard cocks, okay?’
And I’ve slipped out, just like that, into the air-conditioning. Leaning up against the lift, breathless from running the length of the corridor, I contemplate actually going back up there, actually doing it. I’m horny. I could. It might feel good.
It feels even better to have been able to stop it, though. To know that that was possible. I sneak quickly past the receptionist, convinced I can feel his disapproval, out into the night. There’s a taxi rank just round the corner with only two cabs at it, the drivers both reading their papers, and I’m sure they think they know what I am too, a girl by herself in this area, leaving a hotel at this time of night. My driver says nothing, though, just takes me home.
In my bathroom mirror I come back to my body, inky wine stains on my lips and crazy eyes, and I don’t mind at all.
Heather spends the next morning on Facebook, changing her surname to Buchanan and posting a flood of honeymoon photos. Ross, grinning, lobster pink in his trunks. The two of them by the pool with their arms round each other.
Off
Just the hush and hum of computers. If anyone calls from the papers I am to say RDJ Construction are unable to comment at this time, and take a number for a callback that won’t happen. There have been three already this morning, bloodhounds blindly following scents.
Norman, bristling with the importance of himself, was in the office to brief me.
‘It’s like they’d anticipated our every move,’ he said. ‘Bunch of lunatics. They’ve been in there since god-knows-when, and they’ve barricaded themselves in. Some people. Some people.’
Norman doesn’t understand that people could care this much, I thought, cruel, hard to him on the inside. And then I looked at him properly, his genuinely baffled face, and I realise I’ve hit it exactly. He’s been forced up against a whole way of being that simply doesn’t make sense to him, the company man, doing his time in the Territorials, driving home to the family every night and earning his World’s Best Dad mug. He’d never expected to encounter these sorts of people beyond scare stories in his favourite newspapers. And in a way, it was me that did this to him. I’d enabled the sit-in; I’d enumerated every possible tactic for them. Hell, I’d even given them the names of the RDJ staff most likely to be involved in any break-ins.
I felt a bit sorry for the poor fucker. Just for a second. He sensed it.
‘Just because we’re all out, that’s no excuse for you to be prancing about on the internet all day, remember. We’re a steady ship and it’s staying that way. There’s work to be done. Ian says to carry on as planned – he’ll still need the blue files couriered there this afternoon.’
It must be comforting to be Norman. To have everything you’ll ever say or think already scripted for you. That’s why he’s struggling to cope just now. I did the finger at his retreating back, pulled up my browser almost as a reflex. The words were already forming around my fingers.
Holly’s blog
OMG, bad day today. A lot of shouting in my head and I feel like I can’t breathe
New tab.
Scandi Sonja
This weekend, the Jackson Group will begin demolition and reconstruction on a Victorian warehouse space in the so-called International Finance District. Their plans are for a huge leisure complex: bowling alleys, three bars, chain restaurants. The council spokesperson commenting on this transfer of property – oh yes, this was a council property – said that they felt the development would “bring new leisure investment into the area and open it up for regeneration”.
Now, as I am sure a number of my regular readers are more than aware, there is already a considerable amount of leisure activity in the area. It’s not really the sort that the council want to encourage these days, of course. And that particular Victorian warehouse currently houses the Sanctuary, which is a shelter for street-based sex workers of all genders, run by a team of people who are basically volunteers at this stage. The Sanctuary team have been served a notification of eviction for tomorrow. The council claims to be replacing the Sanctuary with a “mobile unit” (a bus, in case you don’t speak bureaucrat. Maybe a people carrier) from which they will practise their new Ways Out scheme. Ways Out, right now, is only available to female sex workers.
But Sonja, I hear you saying. This is all very well but you’ve been talking about this Sanctuary for a while now. How does this affect you, as an independent escort, or me, as one of your clients/a fellow independent escort or parlour sex worker/an interested bystander?
Well, Ways Out will eventually affect all of us. It’s the first stage in legislation to criminalise the purchasing of sex between consenting adults – which, as I don’t have to remind anyone who reads this, is perfectly legal at the moment. It’s also the first stage in a citywide scheme to infantilise and further stigmatise sex workers. I’ve written at length about this in the past: see here and here.
Which is why I invite you to join me in occupational action. They can’t knock down the Sanctuary and take that first step as long as there are people inside, demonstrating its use. We could use as many bodies as possible down here: there will be filming, so bring any sort of disguises you feel are necessary. Gathering point available if you leave your email address in a comment.
Staring at the words on the screen was all I could manage. Cold heat pulsing. She’d shared the plans. The plans were on her blog. Bowling alley, three bars. Not that RDJ Construction was the only place that information could have come from, but questions would be asked. So much for your fucking discretion. And then she just gets back to business as normal.
I ran possible scenarios for what was happening at the Sanctuary Base site. Strange that I could cause this sort of situation – well, okay, not cause, but I helped, I did – and not be part of it. My colleagues put into action their containment strategies, the management and sustaining of a project I have typed minutes, couriered files and organised meetings for but had no real involvement in. And Anya and Suzanne and their helpers and supporters, yes, they’re using my information, but the protest would have happened anyway, the fight to save something that doesn’t touch me, at all.
Anya’s face, closed off, shutting me very deliberately out once I’d served my purpose. With distaste, almost, I began to think. Like she’d seen the shame of me, had worked out something in the heat of my body, my nervousness around her. Norman’s officious kiss-off. Both sides letting me know exactly how little I count for. Again, it all comes back to Rona, her fault. Her selfish fault I’m in this job that I could be about to lose, in these cheap nothingy office clothes. Her fault I even began investigating escorting, her fault about Anya. Her fault I feel like this and her fault I’m still, now, doing what I always do, peering at the action from a distance, through a computer screen and other people’s secondhand accounts.
A shovel. One good crack.
I hurl the nearest heavy thing – the mug on my desk – at the door Norman’s just left through, and I scream sounds, wordless angry sounds as it breaks. Fuck them all. Really. The phone rings – I assume it’s Elaine, the nosy bitch, fidgeting around any sort of deviation, wanting to know what on earth that noise was, Fiona – but the light is beeping for an outside line. I take three breaths in and pick it up, and I try to remember what I’m supposed to tell any journalists, muckrakers.
‘Good morning RDJ Construction surveying department how can I help you.’
My mouth just spills it out, like I’ve been bent this way now. And I haven’t.
‘Hello darling. It’s Malcolm from the Express here. Just wanted to ask you a couple of questions…’
His voice is supplicant, wheedling. I take a deep breath in and realise I already know what I’m about to do.
On
‘No. Absolutely not.’
Beth’s school had been closed due to a problem in the kitchens. Exasperated parents were clustering at the gates when we got there.
‘Well, what the bloody hell do you expect me to do with him, then?’ A man in a suit was shouting at one of the teachers, nodding down at an inconvenient piece of luggage in a Spider-Man coat.
‘Your dad just swore.’
Over the heads I’d seen the other “Fiona”, staring at her son, worried eyes, before nodding, decisive, turning, pulling him down the road.
I had taken the day off specially. Okay, I’d called in sick, doing pathetic tones down the line, thankful it was credulous Moira I’d got.
‘Aw darlin. You just tuck yourself right up in bed, okay, and get lots of rest. I’ll get Elaine to cover the phones today. It’ll be fine.’
I was going to go through to Edinburgh and follow up every name, every half-remembered bar and manager that Ally McKay had been able to scrawl drunkenly down for me. I was going to take some action for myself, stop bothering with other people’s business. The point was to find Rona, that’s what, and I intended to re-trace her steps until I did. Or found something. This girl Camilla, maybe, or their pimp or whatever he was, Jez. I just needed to be there, in the city, keep feeling her around me. It would be the key. I knew it.
‘Your mother and I have both got jobs to go to, Fiona. We are not a twenty-four hour babysitting service and we’re getting tired of you treating us as such. You already have a day off.’
‘I have things to do today. A lot of walking about. She’d slow me down.’
Mum pats my hand.
‘Be good for the two of you to spend some proper time together, love.’
And they’re gone.
There are two schoolgirls draped over the sinks at the bus station toilets when we come in. They can’t be more than fourteen; in fact, they’re probably younger, but my synapses have snapped back fifteen years, recognised the hard kids and prepared for flight. They peer up at us for a second through faces toughened by layers of makeup, then decide I’m not worth the bother.
‘The lighting is barry in here. Come on, take a couple pictures of me.’
I usher Beth into the mother-and-baby cubicle, the one with more room. She cranes her head back over her neck to look at them, in love again. Their conversation filters over the sound of her pee.
‘Awright. You ready? Naw, naw, you need to look way sexier than that. Right, I’m gonny take it from above, and you should look up at me.’
‘Like this?’
‘Aye, that’s good.’
‘Let’s see – ohmigod that’s minging. I look so fat. Take another wan.’
‘Mibbe if you showed your tits a bit more. Think ae that picture ae Jemma whatsherface from the fourth year that did the rounds. Okay. Cheese!’
‘I wisnay rea-dy – oh here, actually that’s quite nice...’
‘Sex-ay. Okay, pull your shirt down a bit more.’
Beth has been silent throughout the procedure, eyes fixed on the door, alert to every sound and nuance. We come out, and one of them is standing on the sinks, training the lens of a pink mobile phone down. The other, sucking her cheeks to the pouted bone, shirt unbuttoned to the waist, is manhandling the lace-trimmed puppy fat where her breasts will be in a couple of years into a make-believe cleavage.
‘Aye aye aye! Like that! Bet you could get it on that Jailbait site. Make a fortune.’
I wash Beth’s hands for her, as she’s fascinated, unmoving. I pull her out through the turnstile, and she’s still silent.
On the bus, after staring determinedly at her hands for a while, she turns a small face up to mine.
‘Mummy, what were those big girls doing?’
‘The ones in the toilets?’
‘Those ones. The ones with the pink phone.’
‘Well.’ Fuck. ‘They were playing, sweetheart. They were just playing dressing. Up. Dressing up. They were very bad girls, honey.’
Very bad girls. I wonder if this is where it comes from. That early. The understanding of all the things that good girls don’t do. I think about the stigma that Anya and the others talk about and I wonder if I’ve just infected my daughter with it.
She nods, seriously, and I look at her, how very, very small she is, toggled up in her little red coat.
‘Well. They weren’t actually bad girls, darling. It was wrong of Mummy to say that. They were just a wee bit confused, and they were trying out things. But those things that they were trying out could hurt them.’
Was that even worse? The enormity of it all, the responsibility for filtering and probably warping this child’s idea of the world is hitting me, fast as grey towns rush past the window.
‘Were they playing Sexy Ladies?’
‘What? Where did you get that one from?’
‘Sexy Ladies. It’s a game we do in the playground.’
‘Okay. How does Sexy Ladies go, sweetheart?’
She wriggles up onto her knees, and I reach to keep the seatbelt round her.
‘You go: duh duh duh duh de neh deh! Sexy! Ladies!’
Her little bum waggles aimlessly and she flails her arms into a child’s approximation of a cheesecake pose, wheeling round to me at the last minute with the same dull fish pout the girl in the toilets had done. Across the aisle a grey-haired man begins giggling, innocently enough, but I stare him out for a second.
‘Sometimes we get the boys to pretend to take photos, but they get bored quite quickly and they just want to run about. Sometimes they want to blow us up.’
‘I don’t know how happy I am about you pretending to be a, eh, a sexy lady.’
‘It’s nice to be a sexy lady! They’re pretty, and everyone looks at them!’
‘Hoo! She’s got a point there!’ the man across the aisle says, snorting out coffee. I ignore him.
‘Bethan. What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I know what the answer will be. We’ve asked her this over and over, since she was old enough to understand what it meant, giggled each time at the answer, Mum, Dad and me.
‘A princess.’ She lowers her gaze a bit, flicks out a glance, a little smirk wrestling at her lips. ‘Or a Sexy Lady.’ She’s giggling, but not sure if she’s going to get away with this.
All this time. I come home from work, and it’s late, and I put her in front of the television or a DVD and the stories tell her the same things. And because she was little, the point at which it stopped being colours and fairy stories and started being something tangible as concrete, the foundation she builds the world on, has slipped by me.
‘Mmhm. Do you know that ladies can be other things, as well as sexy?’
Her face suspects a lesson coming.
‘They can be teachers –’
‘Like Miss Armstrong.’
‘Just like Miss Armstrong. And they can be, ehm. Doctors. And – and bus drivers, like Granny.’
And administration and data entry officers. She’s picking quietly at the buckle of her shoe, as bored as if I’d actually said that.
The day I’d planned ahead of us. Walking around a city, in and out of beer-soaked rooms, asking coded questions of hungover staff who aren’t old enough to have been there seven years ago. Beth straining my wrist, whining, pulling us into toyshops. Me snapping, taking her home early or buying her some pink tat to shut her up. The bus coughing its way into the city by increments, the route it takes to get there. The five photos of teenaged Rona in my bag, sneering, pouting. The route the bus takes.
‘Do you know what else ladies can be?’ She’s not even pretending to listen any more. ‘Beth. They can be zookeepers. Do you remember that time Granddad took you to the zoo? To see all the animals? You were quite little. You were only four.’
‘Four! That’s tiny!’ She is very amused, animated again, giggling.
‘Do you remember seeing the animals, honey? Granddad said you liked the stripy tigers.’
Her face furrows.
‘I had strawberry ice cream.’
‘Probably. Probably you did.’
The bus drops us off just across the road. I use my body to shield her a bit from the velocity and force of the cars going by, grip her hand tight. We wait for a quiet moment, run across. The sign is huge and she stares up at it, impressed into silence again.
This time round, she likes the red pandas, and the poisonous tree frogs, and the way the penguins swim, and the rainbow-winged parrots that flock to you if you have bird seed, perch on your shoulders, and I’m so proud of her for not flinching or crying like the few tourist kids there.
‘Look! There’s one, Beth. A zookeeper who’s a lady.’
A girl in a polo shirt, pleasant face, wearing gloves, throwing fish to the seals.
‘Is there a dance for that, do you think? Duh duh duh duh de neh deh! Zookeeper! Ladies!’
‘No. Duh.’
She says it with such scorn, full force of her Rona-face, that I feel winded for a second.
‘That one goes like this. Der der, duh DAH! Zookeeper! Ladies!’
It’s exactly the same dance, but I don’t point that out. Instead, I pick her up and swing her round, there on the path, till her shoes brush the foliage and we’re both laughing.
Off
One lovely day’s respite, then back to it. Screaming protests over brushing her hair. Gritting my teeth as the train just stalled, stayed stalled, vibrating, overheating. Everyone inside, their frustration mounting with the driver and the signals and each other. Didn’t even manage to get a copy of the paper, either; the last one swiped by the woman ahead of me who fumbled for an age in her purse for change while I tensed and tensed and tensed my fists. I decide to tell Ian there seems to have been an accident in the motorway tunnel. In fact, I could come into the office asking about it. Has anyone else heard about it on the news this morning? I imagine Moira shaking her head and worrying about smashes and the people trapped inside them all day, checking the news websites, holding out for the afternoon paper to come round. I imagine that the seriousness of it would put Ian off from having to have the time management talk with me again.
The office is empty. Particles of old skin and paper dust dancing, tiny, in the blind-slatted sunbeams. None of the computers seem to be on. I cough, and Ian opens his door.
‘Ah. Fiona. Could you come in here a minute, please?’
‘Look, I’m really sorry, Ian,’ I’m saying before I even get through the door, but he’s just holding up a hand. Sitting back in his chair, holding up a hand and looking older than I’d ever seen him before.
‘Fiona. Graeme and Norman were called down to the Jackson site yesterday evening. After the, ah, public demonstration at the site yesterday afternoon, once we’d finally got them out of there, our partners in the Jackson Group asked me to make sure that the protestors hadn’t, ah, caused any structural damage.’
My brain flickers over it. He’s telling me this because someone left my notes down there. Anya. Anya did it. Maybe she did it deliberately, maybe she just didn’t think, or care, what it meant for me. She just didn’t care. Shit. Shit.
Ian is still talking.
‘While they were at the site there was, there was an incident, Fiona. One of the ceilings of the hall collapsed, and they were underneath it.’
‘Oh. Oh god.’ Words are coming out of my mouth. ‘What, where. Are they –’
‘Graeme was relatively unscathed. He’s been treated for shock and a few minor cuts and bruises. He acted with considerable bravery and foresight at the time, you know. It was Graeme who contacted the emergency services. It was Graeme who managed to pull Norman out.’
‘Ian,’ I say. ‘Ian, how’s Norman.’
It’s taking him a gigantic effort of will even to make his mouth shape the words.
‘Norman was caught underneath a great deal of falling masonry. His legs were trapped. It’s not certain he’ll ever have the use of them again. He, ah, he hasn’t yet regained consciousness, but his family are with him, and the doctors have described his condition as stable.’
‘Stable,’ I repeat. Stupidly.
‘Fiona, I had to tell Moira this morning. Myself. As you know, they’re, ah, very close, and she is – naturally – very upset. She hasn’t really been herself today.’
‘Surely you sent her home, though,’ I say.
‘Moira, ah, Moira may be in shock too. I believe she’s still in the building – she seems to have, ah, locked herself in a stall in the ladies’ bathroom. I didn’t feel it was appropriate – I’ve been waiting for another female member of staff to come in.’
‘Of course.’ I say. ‘Of course.’
The Ladies is so quiet I wonder if Ian is mistaken. One of the two cubicle doors was bolted, though, and when I stand very still I can hear faint scrabblings of tissue from behind the door.
‘Moira?’ I’m using her own soft voice back to her. ‘Moira, it’s Fiona. Do you want to open the door to me?’
Silence. I imagine Moira perched on the lid, staring at nothing, maybe not even hearing me. But then the lock clanks back, its noise a shock in the still.
‘Oh hen,’ Moira is saying. ‘Oh Fiona, hen. Oh.’
I put my arms around her strange flat body. She still has her fleece jacket on, handbag strapped across her torso. She collapses onto me and I lean against the cubicle wall to hold the two of us up.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s get you out of here, just for now. Come on. We’ll get you home, Moira. I’ll call your husband, eh? Have him come and pick you up?’
‘Nobody told me, but,’ she says. ‘Nobody called me last night to tell me. Well why would they, really, eh? Why would they, hen? I’m not his family. I’m not his wife.’
I take it all in again, their fourteen years of working at the same desks beside each other, the quiet ways they looked out for each other, the reverence in their voices. That it would never occur to them.
You give people in shock sweet tea, usually, so I guide her through to the one decent armchair in the staff kitchen and fold her into it. I pull down her outsize teacup with its stupid wispily-sketched design and we wait, in silence, for the kettle to boil. Moira looks at the cup on the counter and moans, flops forward in her seat.
It’s only after she’s come back round that I realise I’d automatically set out Norman’s World’s Best Dad! mug too. Stupid. Stupid.
On
Anya hadn’t answered her phone all day. I’d even risked calling from the work line after a while, in case she was deliberately avoiding my mobile. Nothing.
Actually, she might not have even been at the Base, now I thought about it. It could have been any one of Suzanne’s volunteers who’d done it. It could have been Suzanne herself.
Suzanne answers the third time I rang. ‘What? Oh yes, I heard about that, yes. Your colleague. The poor man.’
‘Suzanne, I’d like to come and talk to you about it. Today, please. Anya too.’
‘Today isn’t a very good day. Not for either of us really. What with everything. You know. I take it you’ve seen the papers?’
SLEAZY STUDENT’S DOUBLE LIFE
AS £500-A-NIGHT VICE GIRL
By day she’s a boffin... by night she’s a-bonkin’! Brainy blonde Anya Sobtka thought she’d found the perfect way of raising money for her PhD – by working as a vice girl.
We can exclusively reveal that the Polish exchange student, 27, who has been living in Scotland for four years, has been buffing up her income as a high class hooker.
By day, she works as a PhD researcher in Strathallan University’s Politics Department.
By night, the only politics she studies are sexual.
The sleazy swot’s actions in the recent disturbances against the Jackson Group’s new city-centre development brought her to public notice.
A spokesperson for the police has confirmed that Sobtka has been twice cautioned in recent weeks for disturbance of the peace and making a public nuisance of herself.
Our reporter endured the filthy language and obscene images on Sobtka’s website, where she poses as ‘Sonja, a sexy Swedish girl who’s up for anything’ and claims to ‘specialise’ in ‘fetish fun’.
He arranged a ‘date’ with her in a luxury city centre pad– a far cry from the stories of starving student bedsits.
On arrival, he was greeted by the blonde, who has several piercings, in a negligee.
In our exclusive recording, which can be heard on our web-site, the curvy Pole asks our reporter ‘what do you like?’ before going on to list a range of sordid, kinky practices, and confirming that the minimum charge for the night is £500.
At this point our brave reporter made his excuses and left, but not before obtaining a photograph of Sobtka in action at great personal risk to himself.
We later confirmed that the flat is rented in the name of Anya Sobtka. A spokesperson for the letting agency said ‘We had absolutely no idea that the flat was being used for sordid purposes. We are absolutely shocked.’
A spokeswoman for the Jackson Group said ‘It comes as no surprise to us that an individual who has been so outspoken about the restructuring of a base for prostitutes should turn out to have been acting from self-interest.’
The Jackson Group is a Scottish-run company, who have been operating for fifteen years, and have made a large number of charitable contributions to the city.
A spokesman for Strathallan University, said ‘The University has no comment on this matter at this time.’
Page 4: Prostitute protests leave local man fighting for life
Page 7: City’s vice girl shame: is immigration to blame?
The second photograph was captioned, rather unnecessarily:
PIERCED: Polish vice girl Sobtka.
‘It’s like a poem, isn’t it? Like blank verse,’ Anya says, from Suzanne’s kitchen table.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Sure. Sure. There were maybe ten people waiting outside my door this morning, with cameras, and the head of my department has suddenly taken a personal interest in my career, as we have a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. But physically, no scars! At least I got a good look at the little fuck, huh?’
‘They won’t – they won’t throw you off your course?’
‘I don’t think they can. I haven’t actually broken any law or done anything illegal, and I do not think they want to lose my nice big foreign student tuition fees.’ Her smile. ‘But it will not be pleasant, no. I imagine I will be told I have brought the department into disrepute. Certainly, there will be no job for me, no nice reference, now. I expect they will, ah, restrict my student contact time, too. This is not a loss. My students are mostly assholes. Luckily, they did not get a picture of Dan, so his job is safe.’
I must be staring blankly.
‘My boyfriend who looks after the incalls? Although I wonder if we may have to have an uncomfortable conversation with his parents some time.’
‘I’m amazed you’re being so, eh, strong about it.’
‘It is like I told you,’ she says, shrugging. ‘I have had a feeling that this was coming. I am an immigrant and I am a working girl, and I am not quiet and I do not let them pretend I do not exist, so they will punish me. They do not like it when you stick your head above the, ah…’
‘The parapet,’ says Suzanne.
‘So. It is not as though I am a celebrity. It is not Britney Spears who charges £500 a night. This will be gone by next week. For now, Suzanne is being very lovely and Dan and I can sleep on her sofa.’
‘Oh, I’ve got a spare room! You can come and stay with me,’ I say, the words spilling out too quickly.
She looks at me for a fraction of a second longer than is easy.
‘No, it’s okay. You have your daughter.’
‘She won’t mind!’
‘Fiona. You have not seen the scrum outside my flat. These people are animals. You do not want them to know your face, or your daughter’s face. Trust me. You are safer staying out of it. Although, thank you for your offer.’
‘It’s nice you’ve come, really,’ says Suzanne, ‘but I think you might need to be careful. You could lose your job if you’re pictured with us, think.’
They are managing me as though prearranged, encoded meaning flickering between the two of them. I can feel it.
‘Well. Not really much of a job, is it. Working for them.’
Suzanne’s face sets, because she hasn’t caught the sarcasm.
‘Everybody needs a job. Especially with that lovely wee girl.’
The judgement in that nips the air for a couple of seconds.
‘Right. So, what you’re saying is, I shouldn’t have jeopardised my livelihood to help your campaign out with some inside information? Because right now, I’m feeling exactly the same way.’
Anya has turned away, so she doesn’t see that I’m saying this right at her.
‘You volunteered to help us,’ she says, with a shrug. ‘And it was the right thing to do, dear.’ Suzanne has switched back to mothering.
‘No, it wasn’t. Because what seems to me to have happened is that I gave you information which you have used to cause structural damage – maliciously – to the building once you’d conceded defeat. That damage has left a man who I have worked beside for three years hospitalised and possibly unable to work again. As you can imagine, I’m not feeling very good about this.’
‘You think we did that? You’re swallowing the line those murderous bastards at Jackson Group have fed the press, huh? This is what you think of us? We are not the ones who disregard human lives, Fiona.’
She’s flicking through the paper, rustling it angrily. The story of Norman’s accident is thrust in my face, the word ‘HOOKER’ in the screaming headline accidentally right above his photograph, and I have to swallow an impulse to burst out laughing at Norman’s own personal hell. Anya’s furious face is up close, her spit on my cheek as she talks, her accent stronger than usual.
‘So, either your buddies in Jackson Group have this fantastic, sharp PR team, or they have perhaps been expecting something like this to happen?’
A finger with chipped black polish directs me to the final paragraph.
A spokeswoman for the Jackson Group said ‘We are deeply saddened by this incident, and our thoughts and prayers are with Mr Black and his family at this time. We are also working with our partners RDJ Construction to examine whether this might have been the result of deliberate structural damage occurring during yesterday’s protest. Mr Jackson urges parties involved with the ongoing campaign against the development who might have any information about this incident to come forward immediately.’
‘They got that into an edition of the newspaper that came out last night.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t you. Maybe you didn’t do it deliberately, but you still might have done something.’
‘Fiona, you need to remember that you weren’t there,’ says Suzanne, in a purposefully reasonable voice. ‘We spent most of the time in our own main space, absolutely not touching the walls or beams. We didn’t want to give them an excuse to arrest or sue us. ’
‘We made a film of us in there, to put up on the campaign page,’ Anya says. ‘We will be able to prove this if it ever comes up. You know what I think? I think your good friends Jackson Group maybe wanted out of this altogether, hey? Maybe they discover the investment won’t work, set this up, have it pulled down for scrap, save their fingers from being dirty, huh? Maybe your Norman Black is just collateral damage for them. For them, not for us.’
‘We’ve no proof of that,’ Suzanne says, quickly. ‘They’re a corporation; of course they will have a PR team who move fast. Who knows what they do. Don’t get paranoid.’
The meetings I take minutes at with the Jackson Group representatives, their expensive aftershaves choking the air conditioning. Norman nodding seriously along with everything they say.
‘Whatever has happened, they are capitalising on it pretty nicely, hey?’
‘Anyway, it’s been a rough one, Fiona. I think both Anya and I could do with a nap. Remember, we’ve had it pretty hard today too. Anya especially.’
As I wonder whether Suzanne knows she’s being quite so patronising, the secret understanding between the two of them crystallises in the air around me, begins to escort me out. I just need to check.
‘Do you know who it was, the person who tipped the paper off about you, Anya?’
‘Oh, we’ve got ideas.’ Suzanne’s lips are set tight.
‘This information, I think, could have come from someone at Jackson Group,’ Anya says, ‘or maybe from our lovely friend on the council, Ms Claire Buchanan: she certainly was not happy with me the other day, was she?’
‘Oh no: Claire is an idiot, but she’s not –’ I’m saying before I’ve thought it through. Shut up, I’m urging myself. Why are you standing up for her?
‘So you do know her. We thought so.’ Anya is staring me down, one eyebrow raised, her nostrils flared again.
‘We just met at a hen party. She’s not a friend. We don’t get on.’
‘What is she, an old girlfriend? You are angry with her so you try to help us, make up some story about a missing sister to get in? Then, maybe she takes you back, or you make up after you see each other at our meeting, after your eyes meet, and suddenly you want to help her again? So you tell a journalist who I am? Is that how it worked?’
‘Anya,’ Suzanne says, flashing a warning. ‘You maybe just need some sleep now.’
It’s rising in me.
‘Sure. Sure. That’s what you think of me? Sure.’
‘Well, you know that I am at the university, don’t you? You seem to have worked out my real name somehow although I have only ever referred to myself as Sonja around you. And it would not have been difficult for you to contact a journalist – I would bet many of them are calling your office at the moment, hey?’
Her face is red with it, red and sharp with scorn for me, scorn that I realise has always been there. Anya thinks I’m a weed, something flimsy and disposable, and she’s right. I don’t stay and stand up for myself. I run mimsily out, take my anger out in tuts and forceful elbows on other bodies in the bus queue. I grip Bethan’s hand too tightly pulling her up the hill away from afterschool, and when we get in I put a bowl of cereal and a carton of milk in front of the television for her, then go straight to the computer and spend three hours composing a long and nasty email to Anya. In it, I point out that
| – | my sister is very real |
| – | Claire is not my ex-girlfriend, and I am not a lesbian |
| – | her real name was in the paper after the first report on the protests and it couldn’t have just been me who made the connection |
| – | she is disgustingly ungrateful given that I risked my job to help her |
Because that is how we do things, we cowards. By stealth, behind backs.
I have a look at the copy of the paper, after I’ve hit send, after I’ve fizzed, after I’ve noticed that Bethan has fallen asleep on the sofa and felt, again, like a terrible mother. Norman and Anya, Anya and Norman. The two people I’d been most angry at, on pages one and four.
I scoop Bethan up in a move I’ve practised over the years, so gently that she doesn’t wake. I tuck her in and decide to curl myself around her, as though tonight she needs an extra layer of protection.
Anger
Alright. It’s going to get political. And angry. I am very, very angry. So those of you who just come here for the pictures of my bum, be warned there’s going to be precious little in this one for you.
On Tuesday I was on my way to a booking with a new client. I sat in the back of the taxi, checking my phone, idling away the time, when the news filtered through, as it does. A woman who I knew, as we all know each other, by her pseudonym Ravishing Rosa, was dead.
I never met Rosa, but we’d been in touch online, and I knew her work. I admired her for her keen anger, her sense of justice, her humanity. She was a mother, a great writer, a passionate campaigner and a sex worker, and she was murdered. Not, as you’ve immediately assumed, by a client or a pimp. Like the vast majority of murder victims the world over, Rosa was murdered by someone she knew very well indeed.
Rosa was murdered by her ex-husband, who had made a number of threats against her, but who she was forced into contact with three times a week by the legal system in her country in order to have access to her children. Rosa lived under a legislative system which has criminalised the purchasing of sex, leading to a rise in rapes and attacks on sex workers as they’re forced into the shadows to carry on living, and which proclaims loudly that sex workers, or ‘people who have been prostituted’, as it would rather have us called, are victims. Victims of the wicked male demand for sex on tap, and victims of their own bad choices. A legal system which looked at a woman who has fled an abusive husband, and ordered him sole custody of the children because she, as a ‘person who had been prostituted’, was suffering from ‘diminished responsibility’. They didn’t conduct any sort of mental health assessment, the people who declared this (although they work for a state which sanctions sexual assault – in the form of forced genital swabs – on sex workers when collecting evidence to pursue their cases). They simply looked at her occupation and declared her not sane. Unable to care for her children. So, when she reported that her husband was making threats upon her life, these threats were not taken seriously. Rosa was told by the legal system that could have stopped this that sex work was a form of self-harm, and as she refused to accept this, she was mentally unstable. There are no other circumstances where a man with a conviction of violence could have been granted sole custody, and no other circumstances where a woman who claimed this man was making threats against her would be forced into continual contact with him.
Rosa was twenty-six years old.
And now.
This is the same system, the same way of looking at sex workers, that certain politicians are trying to introduce in this country today. This month. Despite it not having led to any convictions, in the ten years it’s been part of legislation in Rosa’s home nation. This is the way that a certain percentage of the population of our country – our friends, perhaps, our neighbours, the people we sit beside on the bus – think of us. As babies. Damaged children, incapable of making our own decisions.
They say they want to bring this legislation in because they want to send a clear message to the men who purchase sex. That message is ‘women are not for sale’. They say that they’re doing this out of concern for us. That this is about equality. That this is about feminism.
What they’ve forgotten, in their excitement to spread their message, is the day-to-day lives of their poor little victims. Our right to safe working conditions and being treated like the adults we are. Our equality, with every other human being.
If there’s one thing that Rosa’s case shows, it’s that sex workers need, above all else, to be able to trust and confide in the police. It’s very difficult to do that when even just admitting what your job is makes you immediately an accessory and uncooperative witness to a crime; it’s even harder to do that when it means immediate erosion of your basic rights as an adult.
The Scottish Union of Sex Workers will be taking part in worldwide protests this Saturday to remember Rosa and make it clear that her death, and the attitudes leading to it, will not be allowed to stand in this country. There’s a complete list of the protest sites across the country here. We expect there to be some photographers there, so please do bring a wig and mask or some sort of disguise if you’re attending. And a red umbrella. Bring a red umbrella.