a big fucking mistake, because he pushes a button and chonk! all the doors are locked. The big car stinks of. . Jennifer, Juniper . . rides a bottle of . . gin — and the Yank, who’s wearing a camel-hair overcoat, puts his foot down hard. Through the back window Genie sees the Bellavista disappearing fast, and Gloria out in the road waving her hands — which means she hasn’t been able to get his number plate. Good old Gloria . . who shoved all her mortgage payments up her snooty nose, posted her keys back through the letterbox and clip-clopped down here from Hampstead. Funboy Three, the dealer she owes, turned out to be a pimp who stopped grinning his gold crowns at Gloria and fed it to her hard and fast. . Arseholes are cheap to-day, Cheaper than yes-ter-day, Buy one for two-an’-six, Big ones take lotsa pricks —. So, the Yank interrupts, I thought it’d be cool if we went somewhere quiet — so we can get properly acquainted, yeah, far away from the madding crowd. No busy-buzzy-bodies flyin’ up in our faces, right? Genie doesn’t really hear what the man’s saying — only registers a palpable threat: the curls ungum from the back of her neck, the scabs in the pits of her elbows scratch the sleeves of her sparkly Lycra dress. Lazily, with one hand, the man circles the Merc’s steering wheel, so the big car rears up on to the main road. Saw-toothed shadows snag on the knots of his face and Genie’s terrified because. .’e’s old! and old men can get very, very angry when they can’t perform. The Yank has gnarled hands, his nose is a grater made of cheese — what’s left of his hair has been scraped back into My-Little-Pony-tail . . His speech is clear and level, his accent nasal. . the way posh Yanks’ are — why didn’t ’e call a proper escort, he’s obviously got the readies . . Genie’s hours away from her last hit — if her judgement had been clearer I’d never’ve got in. There’s a charged malevolence about the Yank — it’s in his lip-chewing and the blinking of his eyes, his fingers tapping and the jiggling of his knee as he forces a petrol tanker to slow down and admit him. The Yank turns left at Manor House — Genie looks at the clock on the dashboard. It reads 8. 15, and she acknowledges the truth: I’m back with the heavy mob — ’cause that’s the time it’s always bloody been. Back knocking out hand-jobs in Delilah’s, a massage parlour off Maid’s Causeway in Cambridge. . way off it — carefree days, though . . Candles stuck in Chianti bottles and beef buggered-up — which was what they called their five-day stews, eaten on check tablecloths they spread out on the damp floor of the squat in James Road. Carefree days, all arty-farty types together: naive students — innocent whores: I was exploring my sex-u-ality and drinking a lot of Abbot Ale after evenings beating the bishop, her arm cranking that hot piston innanout, innanout . . until it ached fit-to-buggery. But it weren’t too much bovver — the punters were mostly wimpy geezers, some of ’em profs from the university. . rub ’em up, flip ’em over, flash yer tits, finish ’em off, bish-bosh, another happy ending, another fiver. — One summer evening, just after eight, ’cause that’s when I knocked off, the two ginger apes who own Delilah’s pitch up, they’re Seth Effricans — twins, Genie assumes. . they’ve identical shaving rashes . . who force out their hard shitty words between tightly squeezed lips: Git in — they’ve pulled their old Jag over so it blocks the back door. . poor little Genie. They give her a slap, bundle her in and drive her to a town. . a stew later she finds out is Newmarket. There’s a bandy-legged gnome waiting for them in a flat smelling of fresh paint, new carpet underlay, ammonia and cigarette smoke. The cigarette is poised on the edge of a hefty cut-glass ashtray on a glass-topped coff ee table — everything in the flat is brand-spanking new except for the gnome. Genie thinks, A girl could get ’erself cut to pieces in ’ere. . Danger UXB is on the telly, and as he watches a brave bomb-disposal expert crawl towards the Nazi blockbuster, the gnome — who wears a zip-up cardigan with suede facings — draws heavily on his Embassy. . my new Mumsie. PeeOay, one of the apes squeezes out, as fuckin’ egreed. And the gnome, whose name is Terry, picks up a car key on a leather fob and tosses it at them, saying, It’s down by the garages. — When the gingers have gone, Genie says, What’s the big-fucking-idea here, then — you just buy me, didja, for a fucking motor? Terry says, An XJS — but it’s second-hand. — He requires her to wear a maid’s uniform: a shortie black nylon dress with white collar and cuffs, a frilly white apron and a frilly white cap that she fiddles into her thick curls with pins ’e foughtfully provides. Genie flicks the Venetian blinds with a purple feather duster — she flicks it at his purple cock and he spunks on the fitted carpet. Ooh, she says, what’s this dreadful mess we have here. . and goes to fetch kitchen roll from a kitchen smelling of Lemon Jif. There are jars on the shelves labelled SUGAR, FLOUR, SALT — all empty. Genie is the empty vessel of a woman in a maid’s uniform — she thinks often of latex blow-up sex dolls that’re. . forty-two inches plus. He likes to wear her knickers while she dusts him. . We free kings of orient are, selling ladies’ underwear, ’ow fan-tastic, no elas-tic! Terry tells her he’s a top racehorse trainer, but it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be — the stable lads are always giving him grief: they won’t keep the yard clean, they think it’s enough to hose the stalls down. His wife’s a slut innall — which is why he got the flat with the BREAD BIN what’s never known crumbs. On the telly — which is a fancy colour one — orange-faced Ken Barlow breathes down the necks of his machinists. On the black leather sofa Terry sits with his corduroy breeches and Genie’s knickers down round his ankles. Every time Genie makes him come he goes and washes his hands — he never lays one on her. Each afternoon he brings her a portion of cold chow mein and some gelid sweet-and-sour pork balls, and each evening when he leaves with the carefully crushed foil containers double-wrapped in plastic bags he carefully double-locks the door. All the windows are barred and locked. Appearances can be deceptive, Terry says. . the fucking loony: this is a high-crime area, lotta break-ins. At night Genie sweats out the dregs of the Abbot ale and that day’s MSG on to pale-yellow Terylene sheets that she changes every morning. From the window she sees small children throwing a beachball at a cat on top of the garages — beyond a clapboard fence there’s a twenty-foot-high shock of pampas grass. On the fourth day she curtseys the way he likes her to and says, I’m so sorry, sir, but I’ve run out of Domestos to do the lavvy and it’s a bit mucky in there. . He panics and runs out of the flat, forgetting the mortice. — Wandering barefoot down the road, Genie sees nets twitching and marvels at this: the maid’s uniform, which served its purpose perfectly well back in the flat, now seems. . like nothing at all. She marvels — and she understands this: from Berkhamsted to Cambridge, clip-clopping. . round annaround the country with Benjie, then back to Berko again — now back to Cambridge. All the time chucking down booze, sniffing up sulphate, slobbering on cock, sucking up beef-buggered-up — always getting stuff inside me