The Woman He Loved Before Page 27

  ‘Do you have any ambitions, Honey?’ he asked me, studying me very carefully.

  I paused in slicing away a piece of my duck and smiled my Honey smile. I liked it when the men who didn’t fuck called me Honey – it reminded me that I wasn’t out socialising, I was working. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I’m saving up to go to college, and then to go on to university.’

  ‘And what would you read?’

  ‘Either English or Sociology. I’m fascinated by the workings of society. It’s the most important thing about us as humans, don’t you think?’

  He said nothing, just continued to study me, and I wondered if I had gone too far, had said too much. Had crossed that line between escort who can engage and escort who pisses a man off by being too clever.

  ‘I would have liked to read English,’ he said. ‘My father decided Law would be better for me. I came to agree with him in time.’

  I smiled and nodded in understanding, desperate not to speak until I had a better handle on what he wanted from tonight’s meal. Often he just wanted conversation and I was more than able to provide it: we would explore ideas together, challenge and tease each other. Other times he would want someone to listen to him and not interrupt or contribute too much, no matter how knowledgeable on the subject I might actually be. Tonight I had thought it was going to be a proper conversation, but I was obviously wrong.

  ‘I would like to make you an offer,’ he said after a while.

  I smiled, wondering what he could offer me.

  ‘I will pay you thirty thousand pounds – enough to get you through college and university – if you become my escort exclusively for six months.’

  That film with Julia Roberts – Pretty Woman – came to mind. I had seen it years ago, well before I started on this path, and I’d loved it at the time for being a sweet love story. Now I was on the other side, it was a different matter entirely. Even when she was walking the streets she seemed far too open and honest to be doing that. And, of course, he was a sleazebag who went with prostitutes – could you get anything more unromantic?

  But here I was, being presented with something not too dissimilar.

  ‘That’s a very generous offer,’ I said, ‘but I can’t accept it.’

  ‘You didn’t even consider it,’ he said, sounding surprised and a little perturbed. Who could blame him? Aren’t us hookers only in it for the money?

  ‘I did. And it’s not for me.’

  ‘You haven’t even asked what it would entail.’ He was affronted now. I didn’t want to upset him; he was a lucrative customer and I hadn’t had to have sex with him yet. Men like him were rare.

  ‘Sorry, sorry. What would it entail?’

  ‘Just being my escort, and not seeing anyone else.’

  ‘For six months?’

  ‘For six months.’

  ‘Thank you, it’s such a wonderful, generous offer, and thank you for thinking of me but, really, I can’t take you up on it.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, a little sternly. ‘I would have thought that it would be the perfect opportunity for you to get yourself on track with your ambitions.’

  ‘It is, it’s a wonderful, generous offer, but it’s just not for me.’

  ‘Give me a good reason why and I will let the matter rest,’ he replied. I could see upset on his face, well hidden although it was, and the pain of rejection in his eyes. But I still did not want to tell him why I couldn’t do it.

  I couldn’t do it because I could not be Honey twenty-four hours a day for six months – no matter how much money was on offer. I would not want to lose Eve, and I would not want to have to rip myself away from who I was to slip into this role whenever he turned up. I would always have to be well groomed – no matter what time of the day it was. I would have to do some of the disgusting things Dawn told me about to be able to work during my period. In short, I would be selling the parts of me that were not – and never had been – for sale. I did not want to tell him that because that would be admitting that whenever I was with him I was playing a role, and he might well guess that, away from being Honey, I felt neither empathy or compassion for the men who I saw. I tried my best to feel nothing at all.

  ‘Can’t we just agree that it’s not for me?’ I replied, suspecting that I was going to have to give him back his envelope of money and would probably not see him again.

  ‘Honey, I’ll be honest with you – you not jumping at this offer is one of the reasons why I made it. You’re not like other women I’ve encountered: you don’t just do it for the money.’

  I do, I thought.

  ‘You seem to really enjoy what you do.’

  I don’t, I thought.

  ‘You bring a special quality to this.’

  I really, really don’t. I’m just a better actress, apparently, I thought.

  ‘I’ll be even more honest,’ he continued. ‘I don’t like the idea of you seeing other men. I don’t like the idea of other men talking to you, and them participating in intimate activities with you.’

  ‘That’s very flattering,’ I said, to stop him embarrassing himself any more. This had never happened – I didn’t think it was possible – but it was sounding as if he was saying that he had feelings for me. That he was possibly falling in love with me when it would never be reciprocated: Honey wasn’t capable of love, just sex; Eve was in love with a man she’d spoken to for five minutes, months ago. Love was not on the agenda with me. ‘And I feel so honoured that you feel that way. In the light of what you said, I really can’t take you up on your offer. It wouldn’t be fair to seem to allay your insecurities for a few months and then to have them start up again if I do decide to return to normal work at the end of it. That’s the best reason I can think of. It just wouldn’t be fair on you.’

  His demeanour shifted and he seemed to shrink a little, to stop being the distinguished gentleman who I accompanied and he became vulnerable and disappointed, bruised even. He reached across the table, placed his hand over mine, his touch different to how it normally was. Normally, he would be seeking affection, trying to take it from me to replenish his diminished stores; this was a touch that was giving affection, a way to make a connection and show his feelings.

  It wasn’t unpleasant, but that wasn’t the point, really.

  ‘Please, Honey, just think about it. If you think it through and it really isn’t for you, then I will concede defeat and I will not bring it up again. Will you do that for me? Please?’

  ‘Yes, I will think about it,’ I finally said to get him to leave it alone.

  And so here I am, thinking about it. A little resentfully, actually. It’s very clever of him to get me to agree to think about it, isn’t it? Because now I’m doing something for him for free and as Eve. That sounds callous, but he only pays for my time when I’m with him – away from him, I leave all that behind.

  Having said that, thirty thousand pounds is thirty thousand pounds. On what planet could I turn that down? He’s married and he has a demanding career – I probably wouldn’t have to see him every night. Also, from the way he was talking, I could probably take control of the situation and put some conditions in place such as only seeing him at night and him having to give me notice so I could prepare to become Honey.

  It wouldn’t take too much to strip the flat of anything that was Eve-like, but I would probably have to tell him my real name.

  Then there’s the agency: they would not be happy that I was taking on work behind their back. I would probably have to quit. But then, with thirty thousand in the bank, I could go back to cleaning while I studied for college.

  I have no idea what to do, to be honest. But that saying, ‘if something seems too good to be true, it probably is’ keeps coming into my head. I think I should probably leave it, don’t you?

  Puzzled of Brighton

  3rd April 1996

  It’s now forty-five thousand pounds for only three months because he brought it up again, despite promising not to – in fact it seemed to
make him more determined.

  How can I turn down forty-five thousand when it’s for an even shorter time? It’s a ludicrous amount of money. Does he even have it? When I asked him that, he said he would put it into a special bank account set up just for me that I could check on every day if I wanted, but would only be able to withdraw at midnight on the final day. In the meantime, he would give me enough cash to cover my rent, bills, food and other expenses and deduct that from the forty-five thousand at the end.

  When I said that I had a life away from escorting, he said I could set the conditions, if I wanted. So I asked for some outrageous things:

  1. No visits or dates during the day – no matter how desperate he might be.

  2. No visits without at least two hours’ warning.

  3. No staying over – he always had to be gone by three o’clock.

  4. No questions or jealousy about what I might or might not get up to.

  5. No talk of love or any of those types of emotions.

  6. No sex – if things were to become sexual – during my period.

  7. Contraception always.

  8. No quibbling if I need extra money for dresses or anything that is connected with going out with him.

  He agreed to them all without hesitation, which left me stuck. What good reason did I have for saying no? I would have notice of when I had to stop being Eve – much like I did now – and I would only be having sex with one man. I suppose that could become dangerous in that I could form an attachment to him, but that was the sort of thing girls who weren’t hookers did. Hookers knew that falling for a punter was more dangerous than walking the streets without anyone to look out for you – a punter is not someone you can trust your heart with, no matter how well meaning, kind, generous, hurt, loving and damaged they may seem. They will ALWAYS hold what you did against you. Always.

  I’m not going to tell him my real name – that’s for me more than anything. I need to be reminded that to him, to any person who pays me for sex, I am Honey. I will go with him to the bank and get a printout of the balance of the account. I can go and check that it is still there any time I want.

  I seem to have all the bases covered. And at the end of the three months, I will be able to stop worrying about money. I will be able to be a cleaner but with a pot money behind me, and I will be able to give up Honey for ever. I will have my life back. I may even take a bit of time off and go visit my mother. She hasn’t written to me yet, but it’ll be very hard for her to ignore me when I am standing on her doorstep.

  Looks like I’m going to do this, doesn’t it?

  It really is no different to what I am doing now, so why do I get the feeling – only a small little feeling – that I am going to regret it? But it’s only a tiny, grain of sand of a feeling, and I’m sure it will go away when I get started.

  Me

  7th June 1996

  Haven’t written in here because I have nothing to report. It has been two months into this agreement and you know what? I still haven’t had to fuck him.

  We lie together on my bed, and sometimes he asks if I’ll strip to my underwear, but he doesn’t seem interested in watching me take my clothes off. He simply likes to have me with bra and knickers on and lay his hands on me, not even in an overtly sexual way. He craves touching skin, it seems, and he snuggles close to me, and whispers in my ear his troubles like people do with worry dolls. He relaxes when I hold him and stroke his hair. But it never leads to sex.

  I don’t know if it’s because he can’t, if he fears it’ll be over too quickly or if he doesn’t want to, but he does get hard – I can feel it through his clothes.

  He has started taking me to evening business meetings because he says it looks good having someone like me on his arm. Most of his business associates all have their ‘companions’ (it’s obvious to all of us who the others are) too, while others bring their wives.

  My cover story if anyone – not just the wives – ask is that I am thinking about majoring in Law so have been lucky enough to shadow Caesar on all aspects of his work. But no one asks. No one is interested. Every now and again some of them will ask what I think of the wine or the meal, but mostly they are more interested in themselves and their conversations and their businesses.

  Last night we went to a dinner at the same hotel where I met Jack Britcham and my heart was in my throat, throbbing out the conflicting emotions in me, because I wanted to see him (not that it was likely he’d be there, but there’s no reasoning with my feelings for him) and I also didn’t because I didn’t want him to see me with another man. I wanted to be able to say to him, ‘I’m free!’ When of course I wasn’t.

  At this dinner, there were at least three men – not at the meeting – there in the hotel that I had escorted. They all looked straight through me, of course, which was fine but, if I were Eve, I would have wondered how they could have been so callous. They’d had intimate relations with me, had been naked with me, had probably all told me the same line about their wives – none of which looked ‘past it’ or ‘not up for it’, by the way – and they had needed me to make them feel better but now they could ignore me. Or, worse still, they could forget me.

  I had slept with a lot of men – and I remember them all. I remember their faces, their names and I remember the type of sex we had. I have to: for safety, so that I don’t put myself in a dangerous position if the man had unsettled me before; and for business reasons – men are flattered if you remember things about them, and they show their flattery through their wallets. Like I say, that’s the sort of thing that Eve would never think. That’s why it’s a good thing that Honey is the one who does all this work.

  It’s nice, though, to not have sex. It’s healing. He still uses my body to get the comfort and affection he craves, but he isn’t doing anything more than touching my skin. I can live with that for another few weeks.

  Me

  27th June 1996

  Three days to go and everything has changed.

  Caesar came over last night, and seemed quiet and troubled.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a desolate nod, ‘I am.’

  ‘Here, let me help you unwind,’ I said, and undid his gold tie and unbuttoned his top button.

  ‘I’d like to lie on the bed, if that’s acceptable to you,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. Inside I was feeling a little sad because his mood was starting to rub off on me.

  ‘I’m aware of what the date is,’ he said. He was pressed close to me and I could feel his erection beneath his clothes, pushing into my leg. His hand was working its way up the skirt of my summer dress with buttons up the front, and caressing my thigh. ‘I have been fooling myself that the end of this wasn’t going to come. I’m going to miss you, Honey.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, too,’ I said, automatically, although it was true: I would miss him. It’s been nice, calming, not to be always dressing up to go out and not knowing who I would meet, what they would want from me. It was nice to be in a pseudo-relationship without the emotional entanglements.

  It took a moment for me to register that he was undressing me, was rather clumsily undoing the buttons on my dress. I was taken aback, but not horrified – this was, after all, what he’d been paying me for. He found the clasp of my bra – front-fastening – and opened it, and before I could brace myself his mouth was working rather amateurishly on my breasts. Then he rolled me onto my back and was tugging at my knickers. While I lifted my hips to let him get them off, I realised that he wanted to do this himself. He wanted to unwrap me himself.

  Soon he was freeing his erection, which I didn’t look at because I was reaching for the bedside table and the condoms. Before I could fully pull the drawer open, he was inside me. His eyes were tightly closed, his face scrunching and releasing in a strange mix of agony and ecstasy in time with his thrusts. In minutes his body was jerking as he came and I had barely moved. Like most of the sex I had as a prostitute, it
was barely necessary for me to be there.

  ‘I’m sorry about the condoms,’ he said as he rolled off me. ‘I needed to feel you completely.’

  I said nothing because it was not OK. Thankfully I was on the Pill but I did not know where he had been, or who he had been with. But, after nearly three months of being paid by him and not having sex, it seemed a small thing to get cross about. I’d have to make sure it didn’t happen again and I’d have to go for a HIV test sooner than I usually went.

  ‘Was, was it OK?’ he asked, sounding nervous. But if he hadn’t had sex with his wife in years, as he’d told me, then it was understandable for him to be nervous.

  I thought about it: the act itself. Was it OK? It was more clumsy than expected. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing, and he didn’t seem very experienced, which surprised me about a man such as himself. His persona gave the impression that he was a man of the world, had bedded quite a few women – some of them probably prostitutes – and had become rather skilled at it. Maybe, I thought, with more than a hint of shame, he was telling the truth. Maybe his wife really was the love of his life and not being able to have sex with her, and her not wanting to hug and cuddle because they both knew it would lead to a failed seduction attempt, were a great source of pain to him. Maybe he was genuinely craving affection and had only crossed the line with me because it would feel like another loss when this came to an end.