From the Inside Read online

  “Can we go over it again?” Crystal asks.

  I sigh. Are my communication skills really that dire, or is she really just that dim?

  “You are my wingman. Or wingwoman. Your prime objective is to get me talking to him by any means possible. And it’s also just to be here with me so I don’t look like a friendless loser.”

  “Okay. But I’m confused. Are we going to have a threesome or not?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply honestly. “Maybe.”

  The thought of it doesn’t exactly fill me with joy. Neither does it repulse me. A body is just a body. I’m not gay and I don’t think that I’m bisexual. Since Josh died, I have a curious detachment when it comes to sex. It’s similar to the way I feel about my own revamped body, in that, I can objectively appreciate its beauty, but it leaves me indifferent.

  I haven’t always thought this way, but then, I’m not the woman I once was. After losing Josh, and my one true love, my darling little girl, I don’t think that I’ll ever allow myself to be close to anyone ever again.

  I don’t think that I’m capable of it.

  For a second, my daughter’s beautiful little face flits through my mind, but I push it away. I can’t think about her. It kills me.

  “What’s not to get?” I ask, focussing on the matter at hand.

  “I just don’t know how you want me to be around this guy. Do you want me to flirt with him or not? Like, do you want me to hit on him?”

  “No. I just want you to go with the flow. Be intuitive. Can you be intuitive, Crystal?” She looks at me blankly and I’m guessing not. “Look. I want him to have sex with both of us, that would be the optimum outcome. But he may not want that, and it’s not something I’m even going to hint at, not unless I’m one-hundred percent positive that’s what he wants. This is why I need you to start off by playing it subtle. He may just want me, in which case, I need you to make a swift exit. You know that you’re still getting paid, no matter what the outcome. Although, obviously, you get more if you have to have sex. Your prime objective is to help us get talking to him and his group of work colleagues. And remember, you are a PR girl that works in the city, and you used to date my brother, which is how we met.”

  “Do you have a brother?”

  “No.” I’m faintly irritated by the inane question. Like it has any bearing on anything. “Look, Crystal. I just want to look like I’m an ordinary girl, out for a drink with her friend, that’s really the main thing.”

  “So what do you do for a living, in case this guy asks me, you know, seeing as you’re my best friend, and all.”

  It’s a fair point. I don’t actually do anything, not since Josh died. I haven’t needed to. After I sold our three-bedroomed house, reaped the benefit of his life insurance, and emptied out our saving accounts, I was more than comfortably off. Josh was the only child of rich parents, the last of whom – his father – died seven years ago, leaving him his house. We had long since sold that house, pocketing the healthy sum that was left over. I have never known financial hardship.

  “It doesn’t matter what I do, but for argument’s sake, let’s say I work in PR. With you.”

  But you don’t do that, like, really?”

  “No.”

  The fact is, I used to be a social worker, but I can’t see how that’s any of her business. Plus, it might annoy a girl like Crystal, who would view such people as prod-nosed, judgemental arseholes, out to set the law on people like her and ruin lives. That wasn’t true – I used to want to help people. To make a difference. The before me used to give a toss about others.

  “Why PR? Why not say your real job?”

  “Because I’m not comfortable being entirely myself tonight. I’m mostly acting a part, like you are.”

  That’s not entirely the truth, but again, I don’t see why I should discuss this with her. The real reason is I happen to think that it sounds like the perfect man-baiting job. Like, it makes me seem intelligent, but not intimidatingly so. It’s not too dour, badly paid, or mundane a job, yet not too glamorous as to be unbelievable or too dazzling. It makes me the girl-next-door with looks and brains. The very requisites for such a career is friendliness, charm, diplomacy and tact – the very things that I want him to see me as possessing… Or maybe I’m just overanalysing things again. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Crystal drains her drink – again. I look down at mine. I’ve barely touched it.

  “So, what if this guy fancies me and not you?” she asks.

  The thought has occurred to me, and it is, of course, the Worst Possible Outcome. I’m hoping that the chance of this happening is infinitesimally small, given that Crystal is plain and hard beneath the makeup, as well as lacking warmth and wit. I’m seriously hoping that he prefers warm females who are naturally beautiful. Okay, maybe not quite natural, but I’m hardly wearing any makeup, my skin glows, and you would never guess in a million years that I’ve had that bump ironed out of my nose, or that I’ve had some minor tweaks. Plus, my breasts look God-given, even when I’m braless, having opted for a more natural, slightly lower-sitting shape.

  “You just have to make sure that you don’t give him those vibes, unless I say so. I want you to be smiley, friendly, make small talk with him, or any of his colleagues as necessary. You absolutely do not start flirting with him unless I give you the signal.”

  “And this signal, it’s just like, when you invite him back to your place to have a drink with us?”

  “Yes, that’s right. And this is my call, not yours. I might ask him discretely – completely privately – and then say to you, casually, in front of him; so I’ve invited Luke back to have a drink with us. Or, maybe you’ll be a part of that conversation, in which case I will say to Luke, in front of you; do you want to come back with me and Crystal for a drink?”

  I don’t think I could be much clearer. I hope she is getting it.

  “Right,” she says, but I can see that she’s still confused. I mean, for Christ’s sake, this isn’t exactly rocket science here.

  “This is a game, Crystal. You are here to make me look good, to back me up and to help me. I need someone with me, I’d look so sad by myself.”

  The double doors of The King’s Head swing inwards then, bringing with it a rush of the outside world, of city noises carried inside on a petrol-laden breeze.

  He is here.

  “Don’t look,” I gasp at Crystal.

  “Is it him?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  My stomach flips then clenches, my heart racing. There is a light, bubbly feeling in my chest, a tingling that spreads outwards, heating my skin.

  He is here, and the games have started.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Don’t even think of staring,” I whisper urgently to Crystal. She is the one sitting with her back to the entrance of the pub, and her neck is in the process of craning around with her gawping.

  “But I want to see what this guy looks like,” she complains.

  I make a funny, hissing noise through gritted teeth, but she does stop, thankfully, and I continue with my instructions.

  “Just ignore them. Let them get settled. And will you please act natural? Try to look like you’re relaxed and you actually like my company. Why don’t you try laughing here and there when I speak?”

  So she does, and I immediately regret asking, for her rather loud ha ha ha-ing has me positively cringing at its fakeness. Hollywood will most definitely not come knocking for this girl anytime soon.

  “Okay, okay, so let’s forget the laughing, shall we?” I say when she is finished. “Let’s just try and look like we’re having a scintillating conversation. Why don’t you tell me something about your childhood?”

  She looks at me blankly. “Why?”

  I push back the fresh tide of irritation. “It doesn’t have to be that, specifically, just tell me about anything you want. It’s just, I’m doing all the talking here, and I must look like a nag, or a bore.” And it looks like
I’m paying you to sit with me, I silently add.

  “Right. What do you want to know about my childhood?”

  I only just manage to swallow down the groan of sheer frustration. “Anything that you want to tell me, Crystal. Anything at all. How did you get into this line of work? There must be something that you want to talk about. Do you have any hobbies? Any ambitions?”

  I glance over at Luke, who has grabbed a table with his three friends, not five tables away from us, tucked around the side of the bar. Thankfully, I could still see him from where I sat, even if his face is in profile to me. He is such a handsome man – I can see why Tanya fell for him. He is in his late forties, his hair beginning to grey at the temples in the otherwise thick, lustrous, dark brown mane that is perhaps a shade too long for a man who holds such a powerful, corporate position. I suspect that his hair is his secret vanity, which is probably why he can’t resist keeping a little length to it.

  He looks even more like Tom Cruise in the flesh, it surprises me every time I see him. It might be the glittering dark eyes, framed by the full, straight brows that lend his gaze such intensity. Or maybe it is his perfectly shaped, yet somehow cruelly curved mouth. The teeth are also strikingly similar – almost too-large, too straight, but they make his smile devasting, on the rare occasions that he bothers. Safe to say, Luke doesn’t appear to be the smiley type. And, like Tom, his nose is a shade too large, as well as being slightly – almost imperceptibly – bent. Neither is he that tall – five feet nine, tops, but what he lacks in height he makes up for in charisma and sex appeal.

  I barely notice a single thing about the men that he is with – they are all just faceless city suits – one of whom is at the bar, ordering the drinks.

  “I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Crystal is saying, snapping my attention back to her.

  I don’t know either and I don’t care. I just want her to drone on so that I can nod and laugh in all the right places, which gives me time to think, and to discretely watch him as I plan my next move. I can’t do that nearly half as well if I’m the one dominating the conversation.

  “I mean, do you want to hear about how my mum was a drug addict and alcoholic living off state handouts, selling weed and her body to make ends meet, bringing me and my little brother up alone? Do you want to hear how my brother died? That he was knifed by a rival gang when he was just thirteen years old, and that my mum died of kidney failure on my nineteenth birthday? Is that what you want to talk about?”

  No. It wasn’t remotely what I wanted to talk about. And not because I feel bad for her. I don’t. All this talk about death and misery and betrayal churns up my own bad memories. I need to keep focussed, it’s the only thing that has kept me going these past few years. Channelling my sadness into something else, someone else. Into Tanya.

  Because everything is her fault.

  My heart and stomach feel like they’re twisting into one big knot with the weight of my sadness when I think of my daughter. I close my eyes for a second, physically rocked by my grief. I hate thinking about her so much, I just can’t take the pain.

  When I’m fully in control of myself again, I open my eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that you’ve not had it easy. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I just wanted it for us to look like we’re having an interesting, light-hearted conversation, that’s all.”

  Her expression is glazed, unreadable. I don’t know if that’s because she’s upset, or bored, or if there is simply nothing going on in her head.

  “What about you?” she asks.

  “What about me?”

  Instantly, I’m on edge. The last thing that I want to do is discuss my personal life with the prostitute I’ve hired. What am I supposed to say, anyway? That the wife of the man I’m planning to fuck – with or without you also in the bed – had an affair with my husband? After I found out, it drove him to take his own life, and, not long after, I lost my seven-year-old daughter in a tragic accident that was a direct result of my husband’s infidelity?

  No. I could never say this out loud. Not to anyone, ever. Period. And especially not to this girl.

  “So, what’s the story with you and this guy? I’ve been asked to do some pretty strange stuff in my time, but nothing like this.”

  I don’t know whether to laugh or feel insulted. Instead, I feel nothing. Am I really so strange? I wonder. It’s true, I don’t interact with people all that much anymore, but for a hooker to call me strange is not something that I ever expected to hear in my lifetime.

  “You’re an escort, aren’t you? Well, you’re escorting me. What’s so strange about that? Besides, it’s complicated.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting that. Is this a revenge thing, or some kind of honey-trap? Or is it just your way of ensnaring a guy?”

  “It’s probably better you don’t know.” Please, just back off, I think.

  I glance over at him. I know I shouldn’t, that I need to play it cool, but I can’t help myself.

  And, to my horror, he’s looking right back at me. My breath hitches in my throat and my heart hammers so hard and fast I fear that it might leap right on out of my chest and land with a wet smack on the tabletop, still beating so that it looks like a flapping, dying fish on the deck of a fishing boat.

  There is a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, and it sends chills through me – the good kind of chills.

  I’ve never known, up until this moment, if it was my subterfuge that made my heart pound whenever I was near him, rather than any genuine attraction. I didn’t know if my obsession with wanting to hurt his wife was confused in my mind with an obsession with him.

  But now I know. I want the man, and I am shocked at the intensity of my desire. I drop my gaze first, feeling the way my cheeks are flaming.

  “You’ve gone bright red,” Crystal says.

  I clear my throat, reaching for my drink with a suddenly trembling hand. “I’m just…” I pause, not sure what to say. Not even sure what it is that I’m feeling. “I guess I’m just nervous.”

  I am sitting sideways to the table facing the bar, my head twisted in Crystal’s direction. Every impulse in me is screaming at me to turn around and look at him again, to see if he is looking at me, but I resist. Crystal, who is sitting with her back to the entrance, is facing Luke.

  “He’s looking at you.”

  “For God’s sake,” I say with a smile that feels tight and unnatural on my lips. “Don’t make it so obvious.”

  “He’s totally into you, I can tell,” she laughs.

  For a second, I experience a surge of warmth towards her, and I’m not sure why, or where this sudden feeling of female comradery has come from. I experience a fleeting flashback – a memory of what it was like to be a teenager, when the best part about falling in love with a guy was telling your best friend about it. I was never like that again in my twenties – I could count my female friends on one hand. Josh was my world, I invested everything I was into him.

  And then he broke me.

  This alien feeling of warmth quickly passes. I’m no teenager, Crystal is a prostitute and I’m not innocent. I am a heartless bitch out to destroy a woman’s life. An eye for an eye. It’s just the way that things have to be.

  I hazard another glance in his direction. Sure enough, he is watching me. He is sitting at the head of the oblong table that is lower than mine and Crystal’s table, with proper chairs surrounding it, rather than stools. Two be-suited men sit to his left, one to his right.

  Luke’s companions occasionally roar with laughter – I catch drifts of it over the background music, clattering glasses and low hum of voices, but Luke doesn’t seem to be joining in. Neither is he as animated as his friends, whose hand gestures are expansive, while Luke sits there perfectly still and composed. He seems far more interested in me.

  I have only glanced at him this time for a split-second, but it feels endless with the intensity of his gaze upon me.

  “Crystal? Can you disappear for ten minute
s or so? Go out for a fag, or something? And when you come back in, if he’s come over, can you be all apologetic and say you have to make a phone call?”

  She goes to slide off her stool. “Sure. Whatever.”

  “And also,” I say quickly, to stop her disappearing before I have finished, “if things go a certain way, I’m not going to need your services anymore, and if this happens, we’re going to need a code.”

  “A certain way? As in, you go home with him alone?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And what do you mean, a code? Like, we’re CIA agents or something now?”

  “Yes,” I say gravely. “Just like that. If I need you to leave, I’m going to start talking about Maria. I will ask you, all of a sudden, if Maria has been in touch with you about our meal for next Saturday. You will say no, and I shall say that she’s changed her booking and wants you to call her.”

  “Who’s Maria?”

  This time, I really can’t stop my eyes from rolling. “She’s nobody. It’s our code.”

  “Yes. Right. Of course.”

  “Now, do you think that you can disappear for ten minutes. Have a fag. Go to the toilet. Whatever.” I don’t care.

  “Right,” she says again, sliding off the stool and grabbing her handbag – a blatant Chanel knockoff that I think I’ve seen for sale on a dodgy stall at Whitechapel market.

  She slinks away, exaggerating the sway of her hips in a way that irritates me, because what if it is her shapely backside in the pinstripe skirt that Luke is watching? I don’t think he is looking though, because I can feel his eyes on me.

  Ignoring him, I reel in my slouchy leather shoulder-bag by its long strap which is slung over my knee. Reaching inside for my phone, I place it on the table before me and start to press its buttons. The screen is just a blur before my eyes as I flick through nothing-in-particular, my heart hammering painfully hard against my sternum.