Fishnet (2 page)

Present

I've stopped doing it now, but for a while, maybe three years after you went, I collected cuttings.
The Big Issue
was the best for it, because they have that missing person page; four faces a pop, the images all grainy and scanned in from their mum's ancient photo album. They're maybe red-eyed from the flash and smiling; there's sometimes a Christmas tree in the background, the boys with too much hair gel and a pressed, checked shirt on. Pearl buttons. The kind that snap shut.

It was the photos I went for, because the details were sparse: just height, weight, eye colour, and what they were wearing. Disappeared from her home on [date]. Occasionally a tantalising wee hint of motive: was said to be distressed. Had been suffering from depression.

Pretty blonde children with hair ribbons. Dead-eyed prostitutes.

I had a separate section for the ones they found, the ones whose stories had proper, satisfying endings. In a ditch. Floating up out of the river. In a dumpster. Then the manhunt, then the arrest. There is usually an arrest. Beginning, middle, end. But let me know. Let me see.

It might be that I became a bit ghoulish, just after. At my worst, I used to fantasise that you'd come back one day, just stroll into the kitchen and sit down and say nothing, and that I'd bring something heavy down on your head; a shovel, a frying pan maybe. I remember thinking that there would be an end to it, then, and I'd know.

Like I say, I've stopped doing it now.

About Me…

Meet Sabrina, a stunning 25yr old bombshell whose just packed with class!!!

A successful model and business woman, this elite courtesan loves nothing more than spending time in the company of a gentlemen who knows how to treat a lady.

Her stunning size 8 figure (32D, 25, 34) means she's both slender and curvy and her exotic looks and flowing black locks turn heads wherever she goes. She's a delight to have on your arm and as comfortable at large functions as she is up close and personal!!!

Whether your looking for a brief encounter or a longer date, Sabrina offers a truly sophisticated girlfriend experience!!!

XXX

Hello gentleman. Welcome to my site!

My name is Holly, and I'm
an adorable, petite escort
with a difference.

What you get is the real me.

I'm not merely selling sex; I'm offering you my
soul
.

Please don't trample on it!

The experience I offer is
sensual
and
intimate
; lots of kissing, lots of stroking. I'm
not your clichéd call girl
as you can see from my pictures. I have my own unique take on fashion, and I love
silky, vintage looking lingerie,
soft satin sheets and a gentle kiss. Holly Golightly is my idol: really
I'm just looking for a place like Tiffany's!

Please
come to me clean, and
freshly washed,
as
I promise I will. You can even have a shower at my place first, so we can have a lot of clean fun together! One thing I do not do is
bareback!!!
It's so dirty, please don't ask me. I respect
my body and yours
far too much to do that!

XXX

Hi, I'm Marie. I offer incalls and outcalls in Ayrshire and, with notice, outcalls to city centre hotels.

I'm a tall, slim woman in my early thirties with long, red curly hair. I don't show my face on my site as I value my privacy as much as you do yours, but please be assured I am very attractive.

I'm afraid I'm a fairly vanilla escort, but that doesn't mean the time we spend together will be in any way boring. What I offer is the girlfriend experience: much more like going on a real date than acting out a porn film.

I don't do anal, insist on using condoms for everything, and my rates are not negotiable, so don't waste our time asking. I need payment in cash, in full, up front. Once that's out of the way we can relax and really get to know each other.

XXX

Pretty Paulette, Scottish Escort

I'm a mature lady who is ageing gracefully. I've been a lap dancer and a glamour model and I've kept my curvy, toned figure very well.

In fact, you could call me a bit of a cougar (although please note, I will no longer see anyone under the age of 40, and may actually ask you for ID to prove it if you're lucky enough to look that young!)

I'm a great listener, perfectly at ease in formal settings, and can probably cater to any sort of fantasy you might happen to have, you naughty boy. Why don't you get in touch and we can discuss what's possible?

By the way, discretion is my watchword. Rest assured that no-one but us will ever know what happens behind our closed doors.

XXX

Have you been very, very bad? Would you like to be?

I'm Sonja, a pierced, tattooed Scandinavian blonde who just wants to have fun. I offer a specialist fetish and domme service, as well catering to the kind of guy who likes his girlfriend experience with a bit of an alternative twist! I'm bisexual and love to play with women and men equally: my toybox is packed and I'm bound to have something that satisfies you (wink)!

I currently only offer incalls: my boudoir (and my dungeon) are in the city centre with easy access. I will sometimes go on tour, though, either by myself or with a little playmate – check my touring page to see if I'm coming to a city near you soon!

Scandi Sonja's FAQ

Can I take pictures of you, or film our encounter?

No, you may not.

How come your rates are so expensive?

Because I'm a highly skilled professional who knows her own value. You want Sonja – and believe me, many do – you pay Sonja rates.

I'd love to tie you up/handcuff you/share you with a friend.

That's simply not going to happen. I'm a strong woman with a big personality and a brown belt in Judo. I'm much more likely to be the one doing the handcuffing. I don't do submissive, so don't ask.

Will you have a threesome with me and my girlfriend?

Yes, but I'll need to speak to both of you on the phone at least two days in advance to make sure that we're all happy with the plan.

I don't like using condoms! They itch/spoil things/are too small for me!

Oh no! Poor you! Looks like we won't be spending any time together, then.

XXX

Looking for an escort with a difference? Well, hello there. I'm a brunette with a brain, and I get off on showing off.

Want to make an appointment to see me?
Click here.

I offer incalls to a discreet address in the city centre, and outcalls to major hotels within the local area. I'm happy to work with men, women, or couples, and I'm also an experienced domme. (Before booking please check my rates, and list of services offered,
here
. If something's not on the list, I don't do it, so don't ask. Condoms, like my rates, are non-negotiable.)

Need a little more convincing? Links to some of the utterly lovely things former clients have said about me on review sites
can be found here.

If you'd rather we took things slowly, why not subscribe to
my pay-per-view gallery,
regularly updated with saucy pics of me at play. I'll occasionally take suggestions (from subscribers), so if you'd like to see me wearing/trying something…

I tend to post free taster pics
in my blog,
too, where you will also find my thoughts on sex, work, and sex work. One thing you need to know about me: I'm a very outspoken activist for sex workers' rights, and while I'm interested in having a good debate, comments that cross the line will be deleted with extreme prejudice!

And why am I an escort with a difference? Well, the sort of experience I offer is all about making a connection. Remember, my little pervs, the brain is the biggest sex organ.

One

Village

There was one other hen party in the only nightclub in town – The Fusion, it was called. A couple of boys at the bar, a few lone men prowling the circumference, scanning for the weakest ones in the herd, and that was all. A solitary puff of smoke leaking out of one corner to camouflage the mostly empty dancefloor.

‘And that was the luverly a-Destiny's a-Child with a-
Boooooty
licious!'

It was one of those places where they talk over the music, where the DJ croons in sleazy, transatlantic Scots. We dispersed variously to find seats, to check makeup in the mirror, to hit the bar and line up two rows of fourteen shots of lurid liquid, whooping, coughing as it caught the backs of our throats, chemical on our tongues. We were wearing the sashes over our regulation pink tonight, like beauty queens,
HEATHERZ HENZ
. Down the hatch, girls, someone might say if they were feeling particularly enthusiastic, and they were, and it was Samira this time.

Claire trailed behind us, features submerged under layers of powder and foundation that the other henz had forced on her after a few drinks at the cottage.

‘C'mon honey, you'd look so much better with a wee bit lippy. We'll give you a makeover.'

She'd clucked out a protest, but they'd closed in round her wielding the old lanolin smell of their makeup bags.

The borrowed pink and silver vest top was stretched to bursting over Claire's wide, flat torso, tucked into her own black school-style trousers and hiking boots. Claire had a dodgy knee, sometimes, from years of athletics. She'd taken the makeup but
refused to wear heels. My aching idiot feet admired her for that.

‘And now it's time for Brenda's hens to get on the dance floor for The Slosh! Come on girls. Let. Me. See. You.
Moooove
.'

That last a throaty purr, so close to the microphone that you could hear the catarrh in his gullet. The other hen party squealed and roared and clattered on strappy sandals to the dance floor. It's always older women who do the Slosh. Sort of thing I can imagine my Mum getting up to at a wedding or something, red faced, kicking off her shoes and clutching on to my aunty Linda. They looked genuinely happy, all of them beaming with it, helping each other into lines, folding each other's outhanging bra straps back into their huge sparkly tops.

‘Alright
ladieeeez
, get ready to Slosh it up!'

They were counting, faces stern with concentration as the country tune wheedled its way out, and you could see them all mouthing the way they'd been taught it, years back:
one-two-three-kick-back-two-three-clap-right-two-three-heel!-back-two-three-under-TURN-TURN-TURN-and-one-two-three-

I finished my chaser quickly and made a decision to get very drunk indeed. Someone tapped my arm, pressed gently, two fingers. I tried to shake it off, as you do in nightclubs, but it continued. I turned round; it was one of the older men, the prowlers.

He raised a glance at me.

‘How you doing, darlin. Missed seeing you around the while, eh?'

His hot nicotine breath on my face.

I shook myself free and moved quickly back to where women were.

Heather came tottering over. We'd dressed her in a white basque and pink fishnet stockings tonight, veil, tiara and a pink garter to hang her L-plates off. The men were watching her from their corners, watching her wobble and shake. She grabbed Samira and me, one under each arm. The bitter smell of her perfume and sweat.

‘Mah oldest friends, and I love yis!' she screamed, her
accent thickening, as Samira kissed her back. ‘And listen Fiona, listen,ˆAh know we're not seeing that much of you these days, but it's always the fuckin three of us, isn't it? Three whatsit, muskahounds!'

She leaned heavy on my shoulder to take the weight off her heels, curled a lip at the Sloshers.

‘God, would you look at the state of them.'

‘Come on, Hedge,' Samira said. ‘They're loving it.'

‘I hope when I'm that age I've got the decency to stay out of nightclubs, eh!'

Two younger guys, pressed into dun-coloured shirts, had come in and a couple of the henz had already begun the signalling process: smile, look away, giggle to each other, look back, stomachs sucked right in.

Kelly, the one with the darkest tan and the French-polished nails, the skinniest, tapped Heather on the shoulder, took a breath in as she prepared to shout. ‘We're gonny do a showcase of our own, wee wifey. No point in paying for dancing classes if we can't show off, eh?'

The Slosh hugged and clapped itself off the floor as music began to warp into something darker, squelchier, doomy hip hop pending and henz in heelz took over, three of them dragging a protesting Heather to her place at the centre. Kelly led the way with a prefect's wagging finger, assembling us in two loose rows, just like Cherry, the ‘seduction tutor' with the tight smile, had taught us earlier. The bassline began to seep into our hips as the DJ slurred something over the intro. We all held two hands out at arm's length, gripped invisible poles, thrust our feet apart and ground like we were born to it. Some of the girls were giggling and snorting and checking each other – Heather kept turning her head and smirking at anyone who would look at her – but on the whole we were deadly serious, Claire most of all, her mouth ticking over the beat count as it went, as the song bent and raunched away and we splayed our legs wider, stuck our bums out-out-right-out and hip, and hip. Certainly, ladies, we
had the room. The Sloshers tutted and turned their heads away across the generation gap, easy smiles gone.

Hip hip, thrust thrust, shimmy-six-seven-eight, titty-titty pump-left, pump-right thrust thrust hip hip.

I could feel it coming through the music, the fat electronic fart of the music, its meaty beeps. It began to make sense to my body, to bend my knees and rock my pelvis on the beat, to stick my arse out back on a count of four and shake, and thrust, and titty-titty. All of us, moving as one. Like a tribe. The girls grew cockier, a couple of the ones with hair extensions flicking them from side to side – Andrea's hair got caught in my lip-gloss and I didn't care, I blew her a kiss – carving movements out of the stale air, all for the two, only two acceptable boys at the bar. Hiphip thrust-thrust titty-titty. Body on autopilot.

Then I tuned into the words the DJ was grunting along with the rapper.

‘Take it, take take it, baby. You're my ho, you're my ho, and I'll pimp you real good. Oh yeah, real good.'

You're my ho.

I was mid-thrust when my stomach went. I made it off the dance floor in time, so none of them saw me, but most of it still ended up on the toilet corridor carpet, silky, bile-green coils that glowed faintly in the strip lighting.

‘You're my ho, you're my ho, take it ho, take it ho. Real good. Real good.'

I'd vomited so hard that I'd made myself cry great fat smudges of mascara, dripping down onto the cheap burnished metal trough that deputised for sinks here. The toilets were designed for female friendship in 1999; two pans to a cubicle, no lids. I suppose that made it harder to do drugs on. I heard three songs morph into different sets of beats while I was in there, carefully washing my face, scouring off every streak, squinting at myself in the crappy tin mirror, and starting again. None of my group came in to check I was okay, although I did get a motherly hug off a Slosher,
gin on her breath and a smothering floral scent as she pulled my face in to her big soft bosom, rocked me, told me aw, darlin, it'll be alright. You'll be alright. We've all been there, eh?

I don't think we have.

Three henz and Heather were still on the floor when I resurfaced, repeating the invisible pole dance endlessly for a room that had moved on, to a song where a robot's voice had an orgasm:
ooh-ooh-ooh-OOHYEAH
. The others were clustered around the bar, around those boys in boxy shirts who seemed to have bred four more boxy friends. Samira was there, holding herself apart, stately, and of course attracting far more attention than the rest of the pack together.

The man who'd caught my sleeve materialised out of the darkness in front of me again.

‘So, you not remember your old friends, eh doll? You too good for us now, eh?'

I made for the bar.

He followed.

‘Aye, well we remember you, though, darlin. We all remember you round here.'

He laughed. It wasn't an unpleasant laugh, but it ended in the long slow hack of a life-and-death smoker.

‘There's precious few as talented as you around these days.'

I turned round. He wasn't so old, really, quite possibly still in his forties, although the drink had taken its toll, etched its years into his face.

‘Oh aye. No forgetting you, hen.'

I looked straight at him.

‘I'm so sorry,' I said, over the music. ‘I really think you must have confused me with someone else.'

XXX

That morning. Before.

Claire had done the dishes. Her martyrdom vibrated through
the cottage, nipped heads, interfered with hangovers.

‘Sit down petal, you did them yesterday,' someone muttered with no concern at all.

She'd done them yesterday, after she'd marshalled us back to the cottage from the pub, handed Samira a notepad and had her count up the orders.

‘Right. Fifteen fish suppers. Now, can everyone give me six pounds fifty? I'm not going all the way down there without the correct money. Not when I've paid for petrol.'

Being the only driver made her important. After she'd gone, we'd sat quietly.

‘Claire's very organised,' we said, not wanting to offend Heather.

‘Efficient. She's very efficient.'

‘Yes. She's a do-er.'

We hate her. We hate her. We hate her. It pulsed beneath the weekend, the only thing uniting a disparate assortment of colleagues, sisters, college and school friends, stronger glue than the perkily-fonted regalia we'd all had to pay twenty quid for. The HEATHERZ bit had dripped off the t-shirts into the loch after the canoeing session on Friday, when we'd also discovered that they went see-through when wet. We all squealed and tried to cover our breasts with our arms, as the fat-necked teenagers who were supposed to be instructing us leered.

Canoeing. Cocktail-making. A screeching platoon of accountants forcing garters up the legs of an L-plate-draped someone I used to know. The pink furry handcuffs from a pound shop, the chocolate penises, these two people I went to school with and now email every few months.

Heather was brassy at school, shouting, rolling about. She attracted attention. It made her a target, because she wouldn't just settle down and accept her place in the grand scheme of things. Samira and I, neither of us having to learn to keep our heads down as we'd never put them up in the first place, would watch her careen about with anxious eyes, till the knocks came.
She came out the other side quieter, took the first place at the first university that would accept her, and continued to settle. When she got engaged to Ross, who is nice, but nothing, we wondered again, Samira, me, if she was just settling. It seemed very young to be settling. Maybe this is really all she wants, Heather. A hen weekend in a Highland village, cycling in the rain. A strapless white dress, two bridesmaids, a chance to get on the property ladder. First kid before she's thirty.

Heather will have invited Claire to her hen party because it's what you do, it's how you behave to your fiancé's sister, because she's basically decent, good, and doesn't hate people just because they're efficient. Do-ers. Heather will have invited me to her hen party out of long-fused loyalty. Because I held her hair back in pub toilets, because I dumped Andy Oliver for her when we were fifteen. Because we've kept in touch, just. Because these tiny past connections mean things to her.

Claire clanked china.

‘I'm going to go for a walk,' I said.

‘Don't be too long,' she buzzed, from the sink. ‘The bike ride's booked at half eleven: twelve miles, which will probably take us up until two seeing as some people are feeling a little dozy this morning! We have to get the bikes back at half past, so.'

The terrifying cheer of a Brownie leader.

‘It's going to be FUN,' she said.

It was Claire's idea to come to this village, this grey-brown holiday camp for outdoors enthusiasts, pivoting on one small street of theme bars and sports equipment hire shops. Heather had been dithering. Prague? Paris? and Claire had said, look, my friend has a house that she rents out up there. It sleeps ten. I'll book it. In doing so, the organisation for the whole weekend became hers. She quickmarched us round the supermarket, and set up a production line for cocktails. She supervised.

It was Claire's idea to come here. She didn't know.

I phoned home, and Dad picked up. The nerves of him, still, after six years, on answering. Just in case. Just in case. Always twice.

‘Hello, hello?'

‘Me. Is she there?'

‘Fiona. Yes, yes. Yes. I'll just get her. Yes.'

The noise of that house in the background. The noise of absence not even blocked out by the blaring colours of cartoons.

‘Bethan? BETH! It's your. It's the phone. It's. Mummy.'

She came to the phone and breathed into it for a second. She's always shy with phones at first.

‘Hi Mummy,' almost whispered.

Flash and fanfare, for my girl.

‘Hello, my darling! How are you feeling this morning? How's your tummy?'

‘It's fine today. Well, there was a little bit of it that was sore when I woke up but then I had some cornflakes and it all went away and Granddad said it was probably just hunger, so I was being silly!'

‘So it isn't bothering you? It isn't hurting? Are you able to run around and play?'

‘Yes! I've got Barbie today and we're watching the princess film and then we're going to make boiled eggs for lunch and dip the shoulgers!'