LITMIR.BIZ

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the last one. George had promised him that escorting girls would be straightforward fun with the occasional fuck thrown in: that was the deal and he was happy with it. He didn’t actually want to start liking any of them.

      ‘You got one too?’ Glad of this new diversion, Harry adopted a teasing tone. ‘Likes a bit of rough, does she?’

      ‘Listen, I scrub up,’ said George. ‘Mine’s a banker. Hasn’t got time for boyfriends and so needs an escort to her firm’s pre-Christmas bash.’

      ‘Bet she hasn’t had it in years, poor cow. And you’re just the man to put that right . . .’ Harry squinted at George. ‘Have you been entirely straight with me, bro? Is this job in fact less about eating out at five-star establishments, and more about jumping around between the sheets with desperate women? Is this job in fact going to be more about fucking than finger buffets?’

      ‘Yep,’ said George. All right, he didn’t relish the job like Harry seemed to. In fact, it worried him. Did he have a low sex drive or something? He was never, ever going to discuss it with anyone, that was for sure. Especially not Harry.

      ‘That’s what I like to hear. So who’s mine?’

      George pressed ‘Print’. The machine whirred and a sheet of paper emerged. He handed it to Harry.

      ‘Laura Dixon,’ Harry read aloud. ‘Fashion designer, twenty-eight years old. Oh, and a pic.’

      He looked at the photo. Long, straight-brown hair, a tanned, high-cheekboned face and serious dark eyes. Brunettes, blondes, whatever – he was game for anything.

      ‘Hey, this could turn out to be fun, sensei,’ said Harry.

      ‘Grasshopper, you’re learning,’ said George with a wink.

       Chapter 6

      ‘D’you know, you’ve been great,’ slurred Jemma Houghton, staggering slightly and having to cling to the front of George’s jacket as they left her office party.

      Yeah, I have. Above and beyond the call of duty, thought George.

      Fuck me, could this woman drink. She was pretty – blonde and rake-thin and very sexily turned out in a white mini-dress and little else. She’d told him the drill when they’d been heading over in the cab in which he’d collected her from her posh waterside apartment near Southwark Bridge. He was her new boyfriend, Michael. She’d been pretending she had been dating Michael for months and she wasn’t going to turn up to a works do without him and have to admit that she was a saddo who’d been telling porkies all this time. So he was Michael for this evening, right?

      ‘Right,’ said George.

      ‘And you’re in property. Developing and stuff,’ she’d told him.

      ‘There still money in that?’ he asked, curious. He thought the bottom had dropped out of the property market and buy-to-let was dead. Not that he would ever be troubled by it one way or the other; he doubted he would ever have cash enough to speculate.

      ‘There’s money in anything,’ said Jemma, slipping him a bundle of crisp tenners. She gave him an arch smile and lowered her voice so the driver wouldn’t hear. ‘Even escorting, apparently.’

      And there still was in banking, too; George saw that from the minute they entered the building in Canary Wharf. It was a steel-and-glass cathedral, a soaring, holy tribute to the great god Money. In the office where she worked there were already expensive silver and white Christmas decorations up. It was surreal, it was not yet November, but Jemma said the markets were hectic and they’d had to schedule this party into the nearest available free slot – which was now. Everyone was crowded in, sweating in tropical heat, jiggling along to Christmas songs, necking a lot of booze and loudly congratulating each other on the anticipated size of their forthcoming bonuses.

      George could see he was going to have his hands full with Jemma. She was throwing the drinks back with abandon while he hovered around at the buffet table trying to get some decent food down him – not easy, because it was all poncy bits and pieces: blinis with little piles of red caviar, wraps of Parma ham and melon, goat’s cheese tartlets, one lonely little prawn stuck bog-eyed into a shot glass of spicy sauce. Not his taste at all, but he made the best of it, tucked in and tried not to drink too much, because this was work. It certainly wasn’t pleasure.

      As the evening wore on and the revelry became wilder, he found himself policing Jemma’s behaviour like a maiden aunt. Pretending to be a developer, that was a piece of piss. He knew – vaguely – about RSJs, wet rot and dry lining. He could front it out with the best of them. But Jemma was going to be rat-arsed soon if he didn’t get her to put the brakes on.

      ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’ he asked above the roar of the crowd and the noise of the sound system, when she returned to the drinks table for about the hundredth time. She was already slurring her words and staggering a little. Her white-blonde hair was falling into her eyes and her make-up was caking in the heat.

      ‘Not until I’m wasted,’ she grinned, and slung back another mojito.

      They fell out of the building at just after twelve, along with a load of others who were all shouting and cheering like loonies.

      I’m surrounded by bloody idiots, thought George.

      He hailed a cab. ‘Southwark Bridge, mate,’ he said, and it was at precisely that moment that Jemma threw up all the drinks she’d spent the evening shoving down her throat. Vomit splattered the open back door of the cab and the driver rounded in fury.

      ‘Fuck off, I’m not having her in my cab,’ he said, and he reached back, slammed the door shut, and drove off.

      ‘Fuck that,’ said George.

      ‘Oh Michael you’ve been so good . . .’ Jemma was now telling George, turning a sick-streaked chin up towards him as if inviting a kiss.

      George flinched back, disgusted.

      ‘Show’s over,’ he said angrily. ‘It’s gone twelve and I’m about to turn back into a ruddy pumpkin. I’m George, okay?’ He looked for an orange light in the gloom and was relieved to see one coming near. He hailed the cab and it swerved in to the kerb.

      ‘Southwark Bridge please, pal,’ he said, and hoped that this time Jemma didn’t throw up. He shoved her into the back, and closed the door.

      Jemma started clawing at the window. ‘Aren’t you coming too?’ she mouthed at him.

      ‘No luv. Need a walk,’ he said, and the cab pulled away. Thank Christ for that, he thought.

      If there was one thing he hated, it was the sight of a woman falling-down drunk. His stomach was complaining loudly after an evening of prissy little tartlet jobbies and mineral water. He longed to get some proper food down him, but it was too late to find a chippy. The crowds had departed, and he was alone in the crisp, chilly night air, a heaven full of stars above him and the open road in front. He breathed in deeply, relieved that was over.

      His conscience niggled at him a bit. Maybe he should have seen her home to her door, but he thought bailing out when he did was the safer option. Next thing you knew, she’d be inviting him in for coffee, and he couldn’t have got it up for the skanky mare if his life had depended on it.

      Then he saw another one – a girl in jeans and a pale top, crouched just around the corner of a building in an alley, obviously drunk out of her skull, her arms over her head. He walked on. He’d had a gutful of Jemma and her type for one night. But . . . his footsteps slowed. He could hear the girl crying. She was all alone.

      He stopped walking.

      Stood there, thinking about it.

      Ah, fuck it.

      He started to walk back to ask if she was okay as it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t. And it was then that he wished he’d just kept on walking, because now he

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