She hears Lily clattering from her bedroom before she appears at the top of the stairs, cradling the laptop they’re supposed to share under her arm and asking, ‘You’ve heard? About Mr Kent’s mum’s place?’
Abi swallows, nods.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Lily sighs. ‘Poor them.’
Abi realizes Lily is the first person she’s met this morning to express any sympathy, any real feeling out loud.
Lily’s long red hair shudders as she thuds down the stairs towards Abi. Abi opens her arms to her, but Lily doesn’t move in for a hug, so Abi has to be satisfied with putting her hand briefly on her shoulder as Lily moves past her saying, ‘Come into the kitchen with me? I want to ask you something.’
Lily puts the laptop on to the round kitchen table. It wobbles, so Abi bends down to adjust the piece of cardboard she’s rammed under one leg while Lily puts the cereal bowls Abi and Margot used for breakfast into the sink.
Lily sits at the computer and Abi pulls up a chair next to her so she can see the screen as well.
Before Lily opens the laptop, she looks at Abi and says, ‘You’re probably not going to like this but I needed to know, wanted to know more about your … um, old job. So …’
She opens the laptop and there in front of them are a dozen or so thumbnails of women’s faces, tits, crotches, legs wide open like butterfly wings. ‘Sex mad!’ one of them cries. ‘34GG all natural!’ ‘Hungry whore!’
Abi stands up like one of the women has slapped her. She wants to slam the computer shut, shout at Lily for looking at this stuff, send her with a disgusted face and pointed finger to her room.
But, of course, Abi can do none of those, would do none of those things; she just stares at her daughter, who stares back at her, noticing the angry flush Abi feels rising up her face, the sudden tension in her body, the taut way she asks, ‘Why are you looking at that shit, Lil?’
Lily’s cheek twitches. ‘I’m just trying to understand, Mum.’
Abi looks away, up towards the ceiling. She hates this. Hates the thought of Lily’s green eyes flickering over that pumped, pressed and airbrushed flesh. These women who, in London, Abi used to think were just like her. Women doing what they could to improve their lives suddenly seem so desperate to Abi, so vulnerable and one-dimensional, in this little, privileged town. Context really is everything.
Lily keeps her eyes on Abi and waits patiently, until Abi sighs and asks, ‘You were looking for me, weren’t you?’
Lily nods.
Abi looks away, up to the ceiling again, in the vain hope gravity will pull the tears she feels building back into her ducts. But it doesn’t work so she wipes her hand across her face and reminds herself that no matter how hard this is for her, it’s harder for Lily. She must get this right. So she looks back, into Lily’s wide-eyed, freckled face and, sitting back down, next to her daughter, says, ‘What do you want to know?’
Abi starts by typing in the password for her old website. She’d spent an afternoon before they moved down to Waverly removing links to www.theladyemma.com which she paid other websites for, before taking it offline completely. Without any sadness or regret, she thought that she might not ever see it again. It feels like years since she took it offline but it must be fewer than ninety days because she still has access. She watches Lily’s face, her heart frantic; it feels like something trapped inside her as Lily reads to herself the words Abi still knows so welclass="underline"
‘Hello, I’m Emma. Your open-minded, discreet and passionate companion based in central London …’
The text is set in front of photos of Abi, images of her naked back, her clavicle, her feet lifted in the air, crossed at the ankle, some of her tattoos airbrushed away. She’d been proud of her website when she made it so many years ago, pleased she’d taken the time to get the wording, the tone exactly right. Diego helped a bit but she knew he worried about her, so she didn’t ask for him to be too involved.
When Lily’s finished reading, she turns to Abi and asks, ‘So, you were, like, um, high end?’
Abi looks at Lily. She has no idea what words to use, no idea how to tell her daughter that, really, it didn’t feel that different to Abi whether her arse was pressed up against the stale upholstery of an old car or against cold marble in a five-star hotel. The exchange was the same.
‘I suppose so, but really I was just careful to be safe …’ She thinks about how many times Lily, just by existing, saved Abi. Lily needed Abi so Abi had to be careful. She couldn’t ever risk any time in a hospital bed or a police cell because she always had to get home for Lily.
‘I learnt over time the kind of client I wanted to attract …’ Lily is looking at her quietly, frowning in that way she does when she’s concentrating hard. But there’s no disgust in her face, there’s no longer even any shock. She does, like she said, just want to understand. It’s the best response Abi could have hoped for, really.
Abi keeps talking. ‘I learnt a hell of a lot doing that job. I learnt how to market myself, where to advertise, how best to try and dodge time-wasters. I even learnt about boring stuff like bookkeeping and tax. But probably the most important thing I learnt was about boundaries.’
‘Like what you were prepared to do and stuff?’
Abi nods, remembering how she was pinned down once, only fifteen, Lily’s age now, by her friend’s older brother. He’d been unzipping his jeans, Abi crying beneath him, when Abi’s friend burst into the living room.
‘I actually found that it was clearer with clients than it was with other partners I had outside of work, because, you know, we’d discuss what we were going to do before meeting.’
Lily frowns. ‘Come on, Mum, what are you talking about, “other partners”? You haven’t been on a date in … Well, have you ever been on a date?’
Abi grimaces, widens her eyes, innocent, exclaiming, ‘I don’t have time!’
‘That’s what you always say.’ Lily glances back at the website and asks, a little sadly, ‘Is this the real reason why?’
Abi breathes out, rolls her lips together and says truthfully, ‘Perhaps. In part.’
Lily is quiet for a moment. Abi wants to stroke her hair, but senses Lily’s not done talking yet and she doesn’t want to disturb her.
‘How did you start? What happened?’
She’d anticipated this one.
‘You were six months old. It was the first time your dad had you for a night, looking after you at his mum’s place, which was on the same estate where I grew up. Anyway, I was pretty antsy, worried. An old friend from school was working in a bar in King’s Cross. She said she could smuggle me a couple of free drinks, so I decided to go along and distract myself from missing you. I met a man at the bar; he kept buying me drinks. It turned out he was staying at the hotel and … well, when I woke up, he was gone but he’d left cash on the side.’
He told her his name was Claude. He was probably in his forties, muscled and short, sunburnt although it was February.
‘So that’s it, you started doing it from then?’
Abi nods. Maybe, in time, she’ll tell her about how she went back to the hotel and was kicked out by the smirking security staff, the shifts she worked in a Finsbury Park brothel, the other women sneering and competitive. Maybe, one day, she’ll tell her how sometimes a girl working in the brothel would disappear without explanation. Deported? Kidnapped by a boyfriend? Arrested? The rest of them would ask briefly as they adjusted each other’s bra straps before never mentioning her name again. But she won’t tell her any of this, not now, not yet. Instead, she says, ‘I really am sorry, you know, for keeping all of this from you.’
Lily nods, accepting her apology before she says, ‘Well, I suppose all this bullshit with Blake’s mum going for Mr Kent just shows why you couldn’t be open about it.’
Abi nods; Lily’s right.