Esther cooked us a chicken curry, which I woofed down in the way that an alcoholic who gets most of his nutrition from beer will do when a plate of real food is put into his hands.
"I'm working tomorrow," she says. "Better make sure he's still coming," and goes to the yards-long glass table to find her work phone.
We turn the flat upside down looking for it. My manly nine-and-a-half-stone frame is called upon to lift up settees and move beds. We decide it must have been stolen by Midge Ure's Best Friend the other night.
All her clients' details and texts are on there, and she hasn't backed anything up, nor put a lock on it, nor a GPS tracker, and my suggestion to ring the phone company to have the SIM barred was shunted aside by her loud worry -- competing with her as loud television -- about the "petrolheads". These are men who find a callgirl's location, are let in, then douse her with petrol before holding a match in front of her whilst asking her where she keeps the money. I will never consider engaging a prostitute again.
After what felt like hours of me ineffectually going "hmm", and "yeah" and "fuck", after exhausting what help I could suggest, she resigned herself to the phone's loss, and we watched an interesting television programme about Whitney Houston's coke addiction. Esther said that she had indeed been, as she told me in our first five minutes of aquaintance, an offshore tax advisor, living in a flat in Chelsea that even fifteen years ago cost £2000 a month. Parties every weekend, sugar bowls filled with coke.
"I'm sorry looby, you've really had it in the neck tonight haven't you? Do you want to stay?" and we slept together, me wanting to stroke her in sympathy but knowing that would be interpreted as an unwelcome sexual advance.
We got up about eleven; her client was coming at two. "We could have a cup of tea -- or actually, what about some lager? I have to get pissed before I can do this," so we had a breakfast of San Miguel and vodka. As she was getting what she called her "whore's kit" out of her bedroom cabinet, she slapped me on the back and gave me an unwonted kiss. "Look what I've found!"
She asked me to help getting the place straight. I did the kitchen and hoovered about. She got her clothes together and did the bathroom and got her hair and make-up done. The client is seventy-eight and likes her in an evening dress and nothing else.
"It's not just sex, you know. You've got to be a cleaner, a make-up artist, an actress, a hotel owner...it's not just an hour. My trick is to keep them talking, talk talk talk, and then 'Oh look at the clock, we'd better get on with it!' I could charge more if I did some of the things I get asked for. They want you to shit in their mouths. Fuck. I couldn't do that anyway -- I can't remember the last time I had a solid shit."
