Belle De Jour: Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl

Mai

T-V

T is for Taxis

I usually ring a minicab for the way out and find a black cab on the way home. Minicabs will not necessarily know where you’re going, and I’ve ended up reading their maps more often than not. Black cabs will get you somewhere smoothly, but might try to take you on a scenic tour to push up the price. Sometimes I hail a black cab on the way out, but can’t count on finding one near home except on weekends.

Collecting local minicab cards is useful; it wouldn’t do to always get the same drivers.

T is also for Timewasters

Theoretically, working through an agency should prevent ghost bookings: the people who express interest in your services and even go so far as to reserve a time and agree on a price. Only to find that they have meetings later than they thought, or the wife did come along after all, or he forgot the phone number (my personal favorite-this is what mobiles are good for, no?). So sometimes you will go through all the prep and end up on the shelf. At least you can reassure yourself that unlike in real relationships, it’s not you, it really is them.

U is for Underwear

Matching underwear, sexy and luxe. For looks, not for comfort. Early on, the manager emphasized the particular look she likes the girls to have: big, expensive, lacy pants. No thongs. More is more. Garter belts are cliched but a nice touch. Don’t invest in anything that will be difficult to get in and out of. It must be clean and well fitting; there’s nothing more unattractive than rolls of back fat or the dreaded double cleavage from an ill-fitting bra.

V is for Vagina

Keep it clean. If you don’t wax or shave clean, keep the hair trimmed. Look out for any odd swelling, redness, discharge, or discoloration, and if you notice these symptoms, get yourself to a clinic as soon as. Do those squeezy tightening exercises gynecologists are always on about. Men love that. samedi, le 1 ^er mai

The flat I’m staying in is within smelling distance of the city’s fish market. This in itself is not a problem. No cracks about whores and fish smell, please.

The major drawback to the location is the trucks that rumble in at 4 a.m. to drop off the day’s catch. The men standing off the backs of the trucks, shouting to each other, unloading. Then it goes quiet for an hour or so before the first customers start coming to market.

Still, it’s probably about time I started learning what rising with the sun is good for. Nabbing the best fish, for one thing. dimanche, le 2 mai

I went to the beach with a small group. There was me and one other girl; the boys sat slightly separate from us on the pebble shore as everyone stripped down and tanned on their towels.

The other girl is not a close acquaintance. A few days ago we were talking, and she asked my age.

“Twenty-five,” I said, knocking a couple of years off. She is nineteen at the oldest.

“Wow!” she said, looking genuinely surprised. “I never would have guessed.” I shrugged. When I was younger, everyone thought I was far older; now, the situation is reversing itself. “You know, you don’t have to tell people your age,” she said helpfully. “You could probably say you were twenty and people would believe it.”

Only if said people were teenagers. Bless her, though.

I was reading. One boy, a blond, was listening to music and singing loudly-and tunelessly-along. You couldn’t help but smile. Some of the other boys threw a Frisbee around and splashed in the shallow water. When they got bored with that, they came back to where we were lying.

The other girl, who was flipping through a magazine and listening to music, turned toward me. “Are my sunglasses very dark?” she asked under her breath.

“Yes, they’re quite dark,” I said.

“So if I was looking somewhere, you couldn’t see my eyes, right?” she asked.

“I couldn’t, no.”

“Good,” she said, and turned away again, facing the boys, her head propped on one hand. Gazing, I noticed, in the direction of a particular young man. Her own boyfriend had stayed at home. lundi, le 3 mai

The first girl I ever slept with was a friend’s girlfriend.

One of my close mates at university was a shortish, thinnish, good-looking ginger boy who loved Doctor Who and was a complete sex bomb with the ladies. I can’t explain why. He just was, and we loved him.

We called him “the Jew Boy with the Moves,” because this guy could cut up your brother’s bar-mitzvah-party dance floor like a hot knife through butter. He was all slinky hips and sultry looks, and by Jove, I had an almighty crush on him. I’d never had a go, though in the first year he made his way through every single one of the women in our group. It just seemed a boundary destined never to be crossed.

Eventually he settled down with one girl. And I couldn’t resent losing out, because his girlfriend, Jessica, was an uber-desirable petite vixen with caramel-colored shoulders and dark blonde hair that was always in perfect curls.

One night JB and Jessica invited me and my then-boyfriend to a club. It was a place I didn’t know in a part of town I didn’t go to. I didn’t know what to wear, and met the other three at a pub in jeans, flip-flops, and a thin black satin shirt, no bra. Jessica and I stood in the middle of the room while the men fetched our drinks, and I was suddenly aware that everyone was looking at us.

We sank pints and moved on to our destination. The club was a gay club. My first. It was a mixed crowd, being a Saturday night in a medium-sized city where the staff couldn’t be too picky with the door policy. There were boy couples and girl couples, gangs of students, old single boys looking hangdog at the bar and men dressed like women dressing like men’s fantasies of women. There were gold-painted cages, but no one dancing in them. I didn’t know where to look. My boyfriend, alas, did-at his feet. All night.

The music was not good, but it was frantic and loud, like all club music was then. JB and Jessica spun me out on the dance floor. They were, together, an incredible couple to watch. Just too tiny and cool for words. Her slightly bony shoulders wriggled suggestively-her back was bare in a sleeveless tie-on shirt. I’d been attracted to girls before, but never felt so free to just stare at one. It wasn’t out of place here.

JB took me to one side. “You know, she wants you,” he said. Was he kidding? This wee goddess? But as soon as he said it, I knew it was true, and it was like a switch had been flipped. I could imagine taking her to the toilets, tonguing her as she laughed and sat atop the cistern. I could imagine putting things in her, my fingers, the end of a beer bottle.

“She’s your girlfriend,” I said, aware as the words came out how whiny and awful they sounded.

He shrugged. He said he’d take care of my boyfriend. He said he did this for her a lot-picked up girls for her. I was stunned.

JB drove us all home. My boyfriend lived closest, thank goodness. Then we went around to Jessica’s house. Her parents were away somewhere, or asleep, or didn’t care, I never knew. She held my hand and we walked through her door, plain as anything. Her boyfriend waited until she waved back to him from the doorway, then drove away. Her neck was the most slender, tenderest I’d ever seen. Her lips were softer than any I’d ever kissed. mardi, le 4 mai

I walked into a shop in the late morning. The Sicilian sun was already high, driving people to seek out shady spots.

Colorfully wrapped Easter cakes sat on a shelf. I reached up to take one down, but even on tiptoe the sweet was just out of my reach. A man came up behind me. “May I help you?”

“Can I have one of these?” I asked him.

“It depends,” he replied. “Can I have one of you?” jeudi, le 6 mai

We sailed on to Croatia and I bought a paper for the first time in a fortnight. They are full of disturbing images, the sort that lead one to think about politics, war, and the politics of war, and how these acts have always happened except we could never see them before. How righteous indignation and backlash sometimes seem products of ignorance, because who could not have guessed this would happen? Did we really need pictures in order to know? Are we truly angry at governments for doing what we knew they would do?

And you think, perhaps, there is one guarantee in life (that it ends) and one fairly safe bet as well (that it is painful), and freedom and property are illusions that can only exist in the mind. And that cleverer people have already thought these thoughts and discarded them and why don’t I stop this rubbish philosophizing already? Oh, look, a woman in a stripey hat walking a champagne poodle.

I don’t mean to make light of these events, but I’m hoping for a little pickup in the terror-sex department at work when I get home. It would do me the world of good. vendredi, le 7 mai

It’s a chalk-bright afternoon and I’ve been walking, listening to music all day the last few days. This helps-no one assumes you can hear them, with the headphones on, so no one speaks to you. This is good. I don’t understand the language very well. When I want to hear the sounds around me, I switch the player off but leave the headphones on. I smile a lot. People smile back. Are people happier everywhere else in the world? Sure seems so.

But I know it’s not the truth. I was in a bar, talking to a man my age. He’d been through three wars before he was twenty-one. Why are men so horrible to each other?” I asked, naive.

“In my experience all people are horrible.”

“So why are we this way?”

“We don’t know how else to be.” And we were quiet. He finished a drink, smiled at my guidebook. It was a smile that said, “Where do you want to go? You know you won’t find it in there.” Not that I’ve used it very much anyway-I like to choose a direction and keep going. In this way I found the Jewish quarter, decimated and abandoned forever ago, like a forgotten film set, and the edge of the water, which I hadn’t figured as being quite so close. His smile, it was so understanding, so accepting, I could feel the waves of goodwill just pouring off him, mixed with a little pity for me.

That, or he may have just been trying to pick me up. We girls have an absolutely appalling reputation abroad. Was there a pamphlet distributed in the last decade to men in foreign countries saying that the small islanders are simply gagging for it?

(I mean, I am, but yo, I’m on holiday, creep. So lay off.) samedi, le 8 mai

Holiday sex is always the best sex. I’ve had it everywhere-Poole, Blackpool, swimming pools.

Someone else makes the bed afterward, empties the bin of spent condoms, even picks up your wet and smelly towels from the floor. If the people below are kept up all night with the noises above, odds are they either won’t know which people were responsible, or they’ll be away the next morning anyway, or you can get away with a mild blush and a sheepish giggle, because you’re on holiday, and only the sourest of pusses could deny anyone a healthy and vigorous bit of holiday exercise.

A1 always took me to the beach when my spirits were flagging. He didn’t enjoy the experience at all-sand gets everywhere, which is anathema to a man as fastidious as he is, and he burns easily, which meant most of the outing would be spent reapplying sun cream to the parts of his back he couldn’t reach. One time we went away and he forgot to put sunblock on his feet, and they burned. For the entire week afterward he couldn’t wear socks or shoes.

But he did it for me, so I could recharge my batteries, he always said. And because he knew he’d be rewarded with an almighty screw in whatever bed-and-breakfast we were staying in that evening.

A2 loved the act of getting to his destination better than the holiday itself. He would drive and drive, and we would cover the entire country in a week, making stops wherever the spirit took us. If we spent the night in the Highlands, you could almost lay money on the fact that within twenty-four hours we’d be holed up in a shabby guesthouse in Devon. He also liked taking pictures out the window of a moving car, which always made me laugh and dive for the steering wheel as he did so.

We stopped and posed by abandoned buildings, funny road signs, and large trees. We laid blankets in stands of trees and had sex as the mosquitoes attacked his backside. I sucked him off in Friday-afternoon bank-holiday traffic going north.

I thought in all our trips we probably never stayed in the same place twice. Until we booked into a hotel one night in the back end of nowhere, attracted by its slightly antique signs. The woman at registration greeted us familiarly. We’d stayed there only three nights before and completely forgotten it.

A3 and I took a trip together once, to look at caves. In the complete dark of underground, in the complete silence in the middle of the earth, he held my hand for the first time. It is difficult to think of a time before or since when I’ve been so thrilled.

A4 and I went on a beach holiday almost the first week we met. His housemate’s girlfriend wanted cockles. We didn’t buy any, but we went to three beaches looking for someone selling them. It was a very hot morning. At the first place we stopped, the water was in a shallow bay and the beach was more like a pile of shells. We walked into the water, which was exactly as warm as the air. It felt like bathing in sweat. We drove on.

At the second village, there was nowhere to park. We pulled off the road and looked at the beach and the water. We were still unsure around each other and didn’t have many topics of conversation yet.

The third beach was perfect, sandy and deserted. It was somewhere Al had been with me often. The wind was coming up and the heat had gone from the day. The water was open for miles and came in strong waves. A4 stripped down to his bathing shorts-I was in awe of his beauty then, and couldn’t stop staring at his body. He dove into the surf and flopped around happily. I walked out to the water’s edge and put a foot in. It was freezing! I jumped back.

“Are you mad?” I yelled out to his bobbing head. “Aren’t you cold?”

“It’s bracing!” he yelled back, and even at that distance I could hear his teeth chattering. I laughed and laughed. On the way home, we went past endless farms and looked at the pigs rooting in the last light of the day. A DJ on the radio was playing old songs, swing jazz, and we listened in happy silence. Sometimes to make me laugh he’d say, “Bracing!”

But the best holiday with him, and we went on many together, was camping. We set up a large tent in the woods next to a cold-water spring and stayed several days. The water was icy in the very hot summer and we bathed naked. A giant dead tree slanted out of the water, and balancing on that, he had me over and over. It felt so wonderfully primal. Until a naturist came along and paddled in the shallow water as if we weren’t even there.

Holiday sex is the best. No one to answer to, no work, no neighbors. And if you’re lucky, no phone reception. Pure sensation. It’s probably exactly what the clients at work are after. lundi, le 10 mai

There were no direct flights back. Spent one night in Rome at a large, central hostel.

The shop around the corner must have been the only one open in the early evening, as it was crowded. Bought bread, tomatoes, ricotta al forno. The markets of other countries are fascinating to me. Walking the aisles slowly, seeing what is given pride of place on the shelves. Single-serving meat pastes in the Czech Republic, screw-top bottles of sangria in Spain sold as if they were soda, the odd variety of things offered in the supermarket queues in North America. Razors, balloons, and dried meat especially.

The kitchen of the hostel was large and well equipped, with loud groups of young people at the tables. I sat on the corner of one, eating sandwiches and reading a newspaper. Wrapped two rolls and some cheese in a bit of paper to save for breakfast.

A few people sat nearby. They were English, but not traveling in a group together. I asked one where he was from. Cheddar, he said. Ah, I said. I knew someone from there a long time ago. Asked what he was doing in Rome. Not much, he said. Meeting a friend but she had gone on elsewhere. Did he like Italy? Yes. He showed me a map of all the places he’d walked in Rome. Someone had left a sweet bread, a loaf of colomba, in the communal food cupboard. We tore it to bits. The buttery flesh was sticky on top with crystallized sugar and candied peel. One of the others asked if we wanted to go for ice cream.

“Which flavor?” I asked.

“They have every flavor,” he said. The boy from Cheddar agreed. It was late, but they were open late, apparently.

We walked for almost an hour. The city was waking up, groups of men and women everywhere. I was pleased to be in the company of these men. They were each funny and clever, though I took a shine to the one from Cheddar. “Is it that one?” I asked as we walked past yet another gelateria. “No, not yet,” he said. “It’s better than that.”

It was. I couldn’t help but laugh, when we finally reached our destination. The large bright store had every flavor imaginable. I mean that. They had Nutella flavor, Ferrero Rocher. Peanut butter. Fruits I’d never heard of. They had more flavors of chocolate ice cream alone than most places had altogether. I was delighted, ordered a cone with one scoop of coconut and one of mango. The three of us nibbled from each other’s, then bought more, different flavors.

We stood outside in a little plaza. The other boy disappeared, I don’t know where to. The bit from Cheddar and I were talking about twins, and sex, and twins he’d wanted to have sex with, the sort of things that really only drunk people discuss, except we weren’t drunk. Perhaps high on ice cream. I asked what he did. He was a student, he said. Some variant of chemistry. Poor, of course. Though someone had once offered him a job as a stripper.

“Didn’t you take it?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Pity. I did it for a while, once. When I was a student.”

“Really?” he asked. I nodded. The other one came back. We dropped the subject.

They wanted to see the Trevi Fountain. Actually, both of them had seen it before. They wanted me to see it. “How many times have you been to Rome?” Incredulous. “And you’ve never seen the fountain?” We walked and walked. Well-dressed couples were going in to lamplit restaurants.

At the fountain there were groups of tourists, though it must have been about midnight. People selling cheap electronics. Short Asian girls with rosebuds who would stand almost in your armpit. The water was full of coins and rubbish. They say throwing money into the fountain ensures your safe return to Rome someday; I wonder what disposing of your candy wrappers there signifies. We left.

Walked along the river, crossed a bridge. On both sides were statues of angels; we stopped, talked about sculpture, talked about Titian. How the male form looks better in stone but the female looks better painted.

We looked at the map, turned down a road toward the Vatican. Stood outside St. Peter’s. There is an obelisk there, a single needle point into the sky. There’s another obelisk in London. Strange how we moderns have moved them around the world singly, when the Egyptians put them up in pairs. It would be like erecting half a minaret or just the nave of a church. You can go up in the dome of St. Peter’s, I said. From the roof there is a gift shop staffed by nuns, you can buy a postcard of the Vatican and post it from the roof. That, in my opinion, is the finest thing in the religion, which has no shortage of amazing things.

We walked back. We circled round ruins, pillars of the Romans fallen into piles of stone discs. Something-I can’t remember what-reminded me of a poem, and I told it to them. The boys talked about children’s television. Cheddar told us about The Singing Ringing Tree. We others could not remember it. Neither of them had ever read The Little Prince as children, so I told them that story.

“That’s terrible,” Cheddar said. “What a story to tell a child.”

I shrugged. We saw a scooter that had silk flowers glued all over it parked outside a restaurant. We bought and shared a terrible, overpriced slice of pizza with an artichoke topping.

Back at the hostel the other boy went to bed. Cheddar and I stayed up, talked and talked, mostly about Brighton. I drew nonsensical things on a paper napkin, he kept it. He talked about going back to the Vatican to see the Pope in the morning first thing. Stand in queues for the confessionals that stand also in long rows, organized by the language the priest inside speaks. Asked if I would go.

“My flight is at eight,” I said. “I need to get some sleep.” It was about five.

“I think I’ll stay up,” he said.

“You should nap first, you’ll die at this rate.”

“I haven’t written in my journal yet,” he said. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” He walked me to my floor, we exchanged e-mail addresses, touched lips on the stairs. mardi, le 11 mai

Only just awake enough to check e-mail when I finally arrived home. A note from Dr. C, who is visiting the UK soon. And wants to see me. Must go sleep on it, as if I had a choice. dimanche, le 16 mai

A few days ago, before going to Rome, I had a missed call from the agency and a text from the manager, confirming a client at half nine.

I rang her back. “Terribly sorry, you’ll have to cancel, I’m still away.”

“Ah, right, darling. You see, this man, he is so nice…”

“No-I’m actually away. Out of the country. I’m not back until late Tuesday.” As I told her, in several calls and e-mails through the last few weeks.

“Are you certain? Because he asked specifically for you.”

Am I certain I’m not home? Yes, fairly sure of that. Unless North London has suddenly turned into a sunny seaside locale full of flowering plants. It could happen. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Can I ask him if he would be willing to book you for tomorrow instead?”

Lady, are you deaf? “I can’t do tomorrow. I’m not back until Tuesday.”

She sighed. For the love of… It’s not as if the man wants to marry me. Someone else from the agency would probably do just as well. I said so, as gently as possible.

“I think perhaps you should take this job less casually,” she said tartly and hung up. Ten minutes later a text came through: LOST BOOKING.

I texted her on returning, but have not heard back yet. mardi, le 18 mai

Ah. I must look like the world’s largest mug, as I was just approached by three fundraising youths from the very same charity, all on the same street. Sorry lads-did you not see me brushing off the last one?

Fundraiser 1: “Where are you from?”

Me: “Guess.”

“Barnsley.”

“Sorry, no. Where are you from?”

“Barnsley.”

Fundraiser 2: “What’s your name?”

Me: “Linda.” (obviously, not my real name)

“Fantastic, Lucy. Have you ever thought about how many people will be afflicted with mental illness in their lifetimes?”

“No, but I understand short-term memory is a growing problem.”

Fundraiser 3: “Can you guess what proportion of the UK will suffer mental illness at some time in their lives?”

Me: “One out of three. I just heard all this thirty seconds ago, thank you.” mercredi, le 19 mai

There is one client with my real name and phone number. He rang to ask why I wasn’t seeing anyone. Being a regular, after all, shouldn’t he be the first to know if I was off the market?

“I’m not,” I said. “Have you heard otherwise?”

He said he’d rung a couple weeks ago and the manager said I was on holiday.

“Ah, yes, that’s because I was,” I apologized.

“Then I rang yesterday,” he said. “And she said you were away indefinitely and offered me someone else.”

Have I been not-so-subtly dropped? I checked the website and the profile’s still there, though rather lower in the listing than before. No matter. He offered to book with me privately for next week. I said I’d think about it. jeudi, le 20 mai

Things you may not have needed, but perhaps were curious to, although there are perhaps a few people who already, know about Belle.

• I love to sing.

• When alone, I am usually listening to music or singing. The As and N are cruelly and repeatedly subjected to this. I always sing in the shower. Once, I forgot myself and started singing in a client’s toilet-when I came out, he was laughing. I love to sing, but am not a very good singer, alas.

• I love perfume.

Especially if it smells of citrus or lavender. I love smelling it (in small doses) on other people, as well.

• I prefer the texture of food to the taste.

Raw mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, sandwich pickle, and fudge all feel good to the tongue. Pasta, peanut butter, and cooked carrots do not.

• I can tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. Usually.

Admittedly, this is not a skill that comes into use very often. I can also identify most of the speedwell (genus Veronica) wildflowers. This is of no use to man nor beast.

• The day of my birth was predicted by my mum’s best friend.

Spooky.

• My dream dinner party would include…

William Styron, Katharine Hepburn, flip-flops, Noel Coward, Iman, cashew nuts, Alan Turing, Margaret Mead, Dan Savage, fruity cocktails, Ryan Philippe, and a dungeon.

• I don’t really want to work independent of an agency.

Regardless of what happens. The clients are vetted through them and (most) never even get so much as my phone number. I spend enough time on the phone as it is, and I’ve seen the manager having to take inquiries in public. I do actually have other avocations besides what is reported here. Managing my own appointments would cut into that.

• I still haven’t heard from the manager.

You would think she’d at least have the decency to ignore me on a sunny weekend.

• Je ne regrette rien.

If the textbooks are to be believed, this makes me a psychopath. If the glossy magazines are to be believed, this makes me an independent modern woman. dimanche, le 23 mai

The manager and I are still at apparent loggerheads. She hasn’t rung, and I haven’t tried to ring her. While I appreciate this sort of treatment may be a mainstay of all madames’ arsenals, I don’t half feel like calling her up to say, “Pardon me, but do you know who I am?”

Must resist the urge to smack-down, though. I always wondered why the profiles on the website were occasionally shuffled to put some girls above others. Now I suppose I know.

Ahh, the (relative) freedom. No particular desire to make or keep manicure/waxing/any other appointments. Though I daresay if the sun comes out and I go into the garden in a bikini, someone may be forgiven for coming at me with a lawn-trimmer.

Walking last night from a A3’s house to the tube station, I passed a shop festooned in the most horrible things ever: little plaster babies’ feet. Painted in pastel colors. Sticking out of the wall. Someone please assure me that the biological desire to reproduce does not signal the end of taste. It’s enough to put a girl off her vibrator for fear of being impregnated with jelly babies. mardi, le 25 mai

And still no word.

“I want out,” I groaned to N. The manager’s cold shoulder is beginning to wear on me. There are plenty of other outfits around, but the thought of going through another agency seems like another dead end. I’ve even gone so far as to pull out an ancient CV, think how it might be updated so the gaps in employment don’t look Grand Canyon-wide.

“Okay, but don’t leave just to sell out.”

I rolled my eyes. Aren’t we past the age where authenticity matters more than solvency? Everyone I know has a career, spouse, property, or retirement fund. Or several of the above. I questioned his choice of words.

“What is the definition of selling out?” he said. “Never do anything for money that you wouldn’t do for free.”

“I spend a lot of time picking at my nails.” It came out sharper than I expected. “Don’t think there’s a chance of a career in that.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” N said. “It never suited you.”

There is, in the end, only one place for a woman to turn in her hour of desperation. When all else has failed, when the bank accounts are running from black to red to overdraft limit to carefully worded letters from the bank. She has to draw on every nerve she has and steel herself for the inevitable.

The job pages.

I started with the administrative positions. General knowledge of computers? Check. Organizational skills? Plenty. Self-motivated and hardworking? Sort of. Dedicated?

To what, scheduling meetings and faxing letters? Being able to seal envelopes and transfer incoming calls requires dedication now?

Maybe not for me. I perused academic posts instead.

Depressing. It would seem the higher the degree, the lower the corresponding starting salary. A2 and A4 are academics, and confirm my suspicion that research grants are a convoluted plan by the powers that be to keep clever people from thinking about things like world affairs. Why pay attention to politics and other matters of import when there is a?5,000 grant to be fighting tooth and claw over? jeudi, le 27 mai

I am determined not to give up, in spite of the fact that papers and websites suggest the London economy is based on exactly three things:

1. Copywriting and copyediting. Been there, done that… actually, I haven’t as such. Tried to be there and do that, and been turned down by everyone from scientific journals to World Walrus Weekly. The country’s finer philately organs did not even honor me with a rejection letter.

2. Temping and PAs (personal assistants). Definitely been there and don’t ever, ever want to do that again. Revisiting calloused fingertips from sealing billing envelopes at a stockbroker’s is a fate too depressing to contemplate. The abject degradation of having to collect someone’s daughter’s school uniforms from the dry cleaner makes scat play look a doddle.

3. Prostitution. Damnation.

I could stay in the business and go independent. It would mean never having to give up a third of my earnings to an agency again. On the other hand, it would mean vetting my own clients, taking calls all hours of the day and night, maintaining a portfolio, organizing security and… oh. Too much work for me on my own. There’d barely be time for scheduling waxes, let alone any other essential maintenance operations. samedi, le 29 mai

Letters. Applications. Download, print, fill in. Envelopes and stamps on letters I’ll probably never have replies to. And then, late yesterday afternoon, a call from a personnel department. They want to see me for an interview. A position I would love to have.

Shortlisted. And I know the list is extremely short. My chances are good.

That’s it-I’m off the game.

From the profiles on my agency’s website, it’s apparent that a lot of the girls-maybe not the majority, but a large proportion-are not from the UK. Eastern Europe, North Africa, Asia. Britain is doing a roaring trade in importing sex workers.

I don’t ask about their motivations for doing the job. It’s not my business. I wasn’t forced into working for the agency and hope they weren’t either. If the agency was really a stable of illegal workers under the thumb of an abusive pimp, they wouldn’t hire so many local girls.

Would they?

I realize that all that aside, I’m not really in a very different position from those Jordanian and Polish girls right now. Maybe they’re over on student visas and in extreme debt. Somewhere along the way, it was implied-not guaranteed, I understand that, but implied-that the reward for working hard at school and completing a degree was a reasonable career. Now here I am wondering whether a six-month appointment color-correcting magazine illustrations or assistant managing at a high-street retailer would be a better career move. And competing with hundreds of other graduates for the same paltry pickings.

But for now, I have shirts to iron and interview questions to worry about. lundi, le 31 mai

I rose early to catch a train. This was a London I had only heard rumors of: suited men and women crowding the platforms, waiting for a place on a packed carriage. Most looked slightly dazed, not quite awake; others had clearly risen early and had their schedule down to a science. I wondered whether some of the freshly made-up women had to rise at half four to look so pulled together by eight.

The train arrived on time, but it took less walking than I expected to find the offices. I went round the corner for a cup of tea and to waste time beforehand. A woman whose grasp of English was remedial at best prepared my drink, pouring in the milk long before the tea was steeped and before I could stop her. I sat at a small table facing a window on the street. Everyone around me, builders to executives, was bent over a newspaper. I had none, and looked out on the human traffic.

When I arrived, the other two interviewees were already there. We introduced ourselves, talked briefly about the social and professional connections that joined us. Then we filed into a room and, with a group of interviewers, watched each other’s brief presentations. We were directed back to the first room afterward, and called in one at a time for the interview proper.

A dark-blonde, pudding-faced girl was the first candidate. When she left for her grilling, the other interviewee smiled wanly at me. “I knew when I saw you I didn’t have a chance,” he said. I had thought something similar, since while my degrees and references were better, his experience was enviable.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “It could be any of us.” Either, I corrected silently, since it was fairly certain the other girl didn’t have a chance. Her degree was only tangentially related, her graduate experience nonexistent, and she had mumbled and dragged through her presentation, the content of which was not terribly impressive.

The second candidate went for his interview and must have left straight after, as he didn’t come back to the room.

I entered the room for my interview already sweating. Don’t walk into the table, I thought. Don’t drop anything. There were three people on the other side: a tall, thin man, an elderly gentleman with glasses, and a thirtyish woman with short dark hair.

They took their questions in turns. The division of labor soon became clear: the older man asked very little and was clearly more senior. The thin man asked questions relating to personality-the usual things, such as what I thought my weaknesses were and where I saw my career in five years’ time. The younger woman was left the technical questions, and these scared me the most, but I thought before starting to answer each. At some points I was aware that composing an answer left them hanging for the start of my sentences, but I thought it better to get it right than to amble aimlessly.

When the interview concluded, the three stood with me. The selection should be made fairly quickly, they said, since they wanted someone to start as soon as possible. I could expect a phone call or letter in the next few days. Since I was the last candidate, they left the room as well. The elderly man and the young woman turned down the hall one way, to walk to their offices. The tall man offered to walk me through to the lobby.

We stood quietly in the elevator together. I smiled. “I remember you from a conference three years ago,” he said. “Impressive presentation.”

“Thank you,” I said. Crud. Most of the presentation I’d given earlier in the day had been recycled from that one.

We walked through the quiet carpeted hallways. He started talking about his own work, something he was clearly passionate about. I like people with passion. I asked him leading questions, argued the devil’s advocate while making it clear I actually agreed with his side, and in the end he stood with me at a taxi queue until the cab came to take me to the station. He shook my hand warmly and closed the door for me. As the taxi pulled away, I could see him still standing at the curb.

My heart was beating fast. That was good, I thought. Now I have someone on my side.