Escort Page 2

  Of course I could’ve pursued it after he’d left. I could’ve played it with my damn laptop, if I’d really wanted to carry on. But I’d relegated chess, along with music, socialising, dinners and restaurants and general fun, to the marital phase of my existence.

  Andrew was right. Jess and I had tried hard. Life with Melchior—the first nineteen years of it, anyway—had been no effort at all. We’d been lovers and friends. I didn’t understand my fear of the divorce papers, which now had indeed arrived in hard copy and remained unopened in my desk at home. He wouldn’t be planning to hurt me or ruin me financially. Already he’d divided the proceeds from the sale of our Hampstead house and deposited an exact half into my account, even though he’d earned so much more than I had recently. That was his acknowledgment of all the years before, when I’d supported his studies and his practice. He wasn’t about to make trouble. Like any man with a baby on the way, he’d just want to tie up loose ends. To be free to get married to Sabrina.

  She must be just about ready to pop. I was screwing up her life, not just Melchior’s and mine. I had to pull my finger out. This decision buoyed me up for a few hours, while I packed for a three-day trade convention in Edgware. Andrew, up to his hips in the DigiRev deal, had begged me to go in his place. I’d have plenty of time, in my hotel room in the evenings, to read and sign off on whatever paperwork was needed to cut the ties. Heading out through the door, it struck me that a hotel stay was hardly necessary. Expensive, too, on the company dollar. I could easily have made the commute, living as I was in Andrew’s spare room in Mitcham.

  Well, that was my answer right there. Poor Vicky, stuck with her shipwrecked brother-in-law for more than a year now! Probably worth the hotel bill to Andrew to have me out of the house for a few days. Then, neither of them had ever for one moment been anything other than kind... Maybe Drew just thought the change of scene would do me good.

  Chapter Three

  Whatever Drew’s intentions, he forgot my birthday. It fell on the second day of the con, and all the way through the panels, discussion groups and demos, I kept a low-key lookout for a distracted assistant running my way with a last-minute bottle of champagne, or maybe a taxi pulling up with the man himself inside, mortified at his absentmindedness but ready to take me out to dinner. Sheepishly I asked at the reception desk if there’d been any deliveries, and didn’t let go of hope entirely until I got back to my room and checked behind the door for a card.

  For God’s sake. I thumped down on the bed, minding, kicking myself for the weakness. I was fifty, not five. I thought about phoning him, giving him the torture treatment as he tried to work out why I’d called. No, no, business is fine. The hotel’s fine too. No, there weren’t any problems with the Smith estate blueprints. No, I’m fine, Drew. Really. Then I had a worse idea still, and I chucked my mobile onto the other twin bed before I could go absolutely nuts and call my ex.

  Because all that had to be over. I’d made a bloody fool enough of myself over the last year, calling in at the Hampstead house at least twice as often as necessary to collect the last of my things. Melchior, though stiff with awkwardness, had never objected, and Sabrina had positively welcomed me, offering tea, grilling me on how the bathroom plumbing worked and where to find authentic panes for the conservatory. She’d eyed me cautiously, as if expecting me to burst into a jealous rage and stab her. But I’d only been hungry for a sight of my old world, my home. The visits shattered me, and Drew had begged me not to go there, and once the house was on the market I’d managed to stop

  I surveyed the artexed ceiling. The hotel really was okay, although I’d definitely have partitioned off the balconies so people might actually use them, and I’d have put the service lifts into the core, not off in an annexe, saving the housekeepers endless miles of trolley-pushing trek. I was an easy guest to please. I loved hotels, even tired seventies blocks like this. Living in Melchior’s glittering world, where half a dozen students and highly strung conductors a day would rattle through our house, and storms of music and temper swept up and down the stairs at all hours, a night in a Travelodge honestly felt like a break.

  I’d been playing at being alone. Although Jess and I had done our best, the end had come quickly, and I’d guiltily camped out in my mum and dad’s house for the month it had taken me to meet and move in with Melchior. I was living with Drew now. I’d never had a place of my own, and in my occasional Trust House Forte or Premier Inn—never anything fancier than that, not with Civil Service footing the bill—I’d played house, using up all the complimentary sachets, taking my tea mug back to bed with me in the mornings and self-consciously watching breakfast TV, an activity unheard of in our civilised Hampstead bedroom.

  Somehow I’d lived half a century on Earth without experiencing loneliness. It all looked set to catch up on me now—tonight, here, in this undifferentiated cell with its bland everyman luxuries. I curled up on the bed. I’d started to drink too much in Melchior’s glittering world, so I’d made sure not to bring a bottle in my suitcase, and I knew better than to open the mini-bar in a place like this, twenty quid for a mouse-piss sample of unidentifiable scotch. I could get myself back down to the lounge and mix with the other delegates. I could have a shower and go to bed, but for the love of God, it was only nine PM, the Edgware skies still wide and alight with sunset.

  Shit. This was how it felt to have nothing. A freefall panic entered my guts. I lost a sense of Andrew at home with Vicky and the kids, of my friends, of my mum and dad rocking out their healthy eighties in Torquay. What if all these people—even Melchior, Sabrina and unborn mini-Mel—had vanished, and I’d never see or touch any of them again?

  Looking back, I think I had some kind of panic attack. I’d been pushing aside the impact of divorce for so long that I’d started to think it would never hit, like one of those near-Earth objects in the New Scientist, hurtling by us in a cosmic game of pool. My ongoing failure to read the solicitor’s papers was a shield, stretching across my hemisphere, ready to burn up all incoming horrors to ash.

  But it hadn’t fucking worked. My lungs had gone shallow. I tried to curl up, then in shame at the significance of that I lurched out of the bed and stood up, gasping, the room’s four walls beginning a blurry retreat.

  Somebody knocked at the door. I jolted as if whoever it was had rapped his knuckles off my head, but my chest unlocked and I got a breath. All right. Fine. Quarter past nine at night, only two-point-seven-five hours of my birthday left, but Drew was forgiven. I imagined him at the family dining table, smacking himself on the brow in dismay when he remembered. Shit! It’s George’s sodding birthday! And Vicky, horrified too but more concerned about the kids: Andrew! Language!

  Forgive him? At this rate I’d jump into his arms—if I could reach him. The walls were still running away from me. I made a charge at the one straight ahead and caught up. Took a last-second pause to pull myself together and yanked the door wide.

  A stranger confronted me. Through glittering fog, I made out that he was six foot tall, with a beautiful cap of salt-and-pepper hair. That his eyes were brown, and their warm, flirtatious challenge changed as I watched to concern. I further noted that he was carrying chrysanthemums—favourites of mine, although Melchior dismissed them as common, grandmother’s greenhouse—and that he was, far and away, the most gorgeous guy I had ever seen.

  But he wasn’t my brother. Disappointment seared me. “Sorry,” I managed. “You’ve got the wrong room.”

  “No, I haven’t. Not if you’re George Fenchurch.”

  Even his voice was delicious. He sounded like a BBC newsreader who’d spent a lot of time in the north, long enough for his vowels to broaden and an ordinary, absolute charm to suffuse his every word. “I am,” I said, my own voice scoured and raw. “Who the hell are you?”

  He set down his holdall, put the chrysanthemums into one arm and held out an identity card in a slim leather sheath. A name I couldn’t take in, a photo that just barely did him justice. Across the
top, Silver Fox Escort Services. “I’m your birthday present,” he said. “From your brother Drew.”

  “Bollocks.” I’d had a guilty look at the Silver Fox site while Andrew had been with his clients that day. “He couldn’t possibly afford it.”

  “Well, it’s your fiftieth, isn’t it? He wanted to treat you. Er, George? You don’t look well, if you don’t mind my saying so. What’s wrong?”

  ***

  I didn’t faint dead away into his arms. I came perilously close, though—he had to drop his flowers in order to hoist me back into the room. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on one of the twin beds. I must have put my hands over my eyes, in what desperate last gesture of self-defence I didn’t know. When I brought them down, the blinding glitter had vanished from the air. The chrysanthemums were upright—floating bronze and orange globes, magnificent—in a vase from which the dusty fake lilies had been evicted. The kettle was on, and the silver fox—my birthday present—was sitting on the twin bed opposite, the phone in his hand. He looked up inquiringly. “Who should I call?” he asked. “Room service, or 999?”

  “What?” I shoved gracelessly up onto one elbow. “Neither. Why?”

  “I was afraid you were having a heart attack. But I think you just need some food.”

  No, I didn’t. I’d been eating with the delegates all day, hadn’t I? When I came to think about it, though, I’d let the various trays go by me untouched. I’d been in a proper, stupid, worked-up state about this damn birthday, and I was glad it was over, all but two-point-five hours of it. All I needed to do was call Andrew, get this bizarre gift of his cancelled and sent back home. “I can’t have you. You’re bloody lovely, I’m sure, but I can’t...”

  “What goes best with a cup of tea and some champagne, do you reckon? Ham-and-cheese toasted or the chicken Kiev and chips?”

  The in-house menu didn’t run to much. Melchior would’ve had a fit. My guts gave a hungry yowl at the idea of toasted cheese, and the silver fox grinned. Distractedly I noticed that he had one slightly crooked tooth. That he was my age at least. If Drew had sent me some kid with flashing orthodonty I’d already have died of embarrassment. “I guess the toasted sarnie,” he said. “We’ll get the chips with it. Now, just so you know the arrangements, your brother’s paid for me outright, all night, and I cover all my own expenses, so this is on me, and—”

  “Stop it,” I grated. “Stop telling me your... details. This isn’t gonna happen. Andrew’s made a mistake.”

  He sat back, cradling the receiver. Christ, did he have to have lovely hands too? “Okay. Well, that happens. Sometimes the client’s married, and a night on the tiles doesn’t suit him, even if he might’ve given his friends the impression it would. Sometimes he’s not gay, or he just doesn’t fancy me.”

  “Oh,” I said helplessly, unstoppably. “I can’t imagine that last one happening at all.”

  We sat and looked at each other. His sweet smile began again. “I tell you what,” he said. “Let’s just start with the room-service sarnies, and we can take it from there.”

  “No. There’ll be no taking anything. You seem like a nice guy, Mr...”

  “Silver, believe it or not. It’s not my agency—just a coincidence. Aaron Silver. My regulars call me Silver, or Sil.”

  Christ. He had regulars. Somewhere there existed men—women, too?—with the means to call up a vision like this whenever they wanted him, not on a once-in-a-lifetime footing like mine...

  What was I thinking? No. Not even once in a lifetime. “You’re not listening to me. You’ve got to go away.”

  In this particular concrete-block hotel, you didn’t speak to someone on the desk to order up your food. You just punched numbers into the phone. Aaron Silver calmly finished doing so, then hung up. “Do you feel like telling me what the problem is? Are you worried about your brother?”

  None of his business. “Of course I am,” I burst out nonetheless. “He must’ve gone nuts. It’s taken him every penny he’s got to keep his architect’s practice up and running, and there’s no way...”

  “He told me all about that. He’d just made a really good deal with a new client, he said, so he could splash out. Is that not true?”

  Oh, my God. That would be Andrew all right—phoning to book an appointment, and regaling whoever answered with every detail of his life and circumstance. “Yes, it’s true. He still shouldn’t have done this.”

  “As in, somebody gives you a present and you say, oh, you shouldn’t have?”

  “Before graciously damn well accepting? No.”

  “What is it, then, George?”

  When he used my first name, a shiver went down my spine. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it because of what I am?”

  I wasn’t even sure what that meant. I was feeling better now, so I got up and went to switch off the kettle, which didn’t have an automatic cut-off and was filling the room with steam. I got two tea bags out of their little plastic tray and put them into mugs on sheer autopilot. “I don’t know what you are. Apart from a guy who won’t take no for an answer.”

  He chuckled. “Not that. My job.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought so, but maybe he was right. “Sounds pathetic, like I’m making excuses or something, but... okay. I haven’t been with anyone like you before.”

  “An escort?” He leaned back and took up an easy slouch against the headboard. For the first time he looked like the job description, and I shivered again. “Some guys would call me a rent-boy. A whore. Is that the problem?”

  “Bloody hell, no.” I had my Guardian-reader’s enlightened view of sex-workers. “I mean, I know it’s a dangerous trade—for women, especially. I know it’s not properly regulated, and... and I think it should be, to be honest.” I crushed one of the tea bags so hard against the side of the mug that it burst. Shit. I’d have that one. Least I could do was offer my rent-boy a decent cup of tea. “I know you get exposed to all kinds of things, and there’s not much legal protection. I think that’s wrong.”

  I must have misheard him. A faint, barely audible, bless you, George? “You’re right in general,” he said more clearly. “It is dangerous—much more so for women. But suppose the whore’s a guy, and he can take care of himself, enjoys his work and makes a fortune doing it?”

  Why the hell was he asking me? I handed him his mug at arm’s length, sat down cautiously opposite him. “Well—that’s nice for him, in that case, I suppose.”

  “Then your problem’s with the names.”

  I was about to deny that too. Not naturally the most open-minded of men, I’d worked hard, until the language and behaviour of Melchior’s crowd had barely caused me to bat an eyelid. But he was right. “Yes,” I said with sudden fervour. “Don’t call yourself a whore.”

  “Well, it’s a horrible thing to call a woman, but—”

  “It’s a horrible thing to call anyone.”

  “Can you think of a good one for someone in my trade? Good and accurate, I mean—not escort, as if we’re going to walk arm-in-arm to some gentleman’s club and have dinner and a slow waltz together. Prostitute’s highly pejorative. Sex-worker’s fine, though it sounds a bit... well, industrial, like I’ve come to unblock your pipes. Rent-boy doesn’t really work for somebody in his fifties, and—”

  “Okay, okay.” I waved him to silence. He was going to make me laugh if I wasn’t careful, and I didn’t want that. “I take your point. But there’s a big difference between—I dunno, struggling to find a term for something, and deliberately choosing the worst one you can.”

  Gently, holding my gaze, he put the toe of one exquisite leather shoe to the heel of the other. I was about to beg him—order him—not to take his shoes off, because he wasn’t damn well staying. Then I realised he just wanted to put his feet up on the bed. I approved of people who took off their shoes to do that, even on three-star bedlinen. “All right, George,” he said delicately. “For the purposes of this evening, we won’t call me a whore.” H
e took a sip of his tea, not for a second taking his eyes off mine. “Unless you change your mind later.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You’d be surprised how some of my clients do, in the heat of the moment. You whore, Silver. You whore.”

  Oh. What the hell hit me? Next day, every day for about a fortnight after, I would stop at some point, stare at myself in a mirror, and silently demand what the blazing fuck had leapt up in me, between one heartbeat and the next.

  Because I fell on him. Not, thank God, tangled laces or sudden vertigo, though either of those things would have saved my scarlet reflected face. The silver fox stared at me—half-growled, half-purred those dreadful words—and I pushed up off the bed, knocked my tea over with one foot, and fell on him, like a lion on a bloody antelope. His empty mug went flying and the air left his lungs in a whoosh. He burst into startled laughter and caught me, flipped me over in the narrow bed so he was on top. Just barely saved me from tumbling out the other side. “Wow,” he gasped, pinning me. “I’ve got you. It’s all right.”

  “It’s bloody not!” I writhed, but all that did was ram my hard-on up against his. “What am I doing?”

  “Unwrapping your present, looks like.” He grinned down at me. “I didn’t think you would.”

  I did want to unwrap him. My heart was pounding so hard from my predatory leap that I could hardly start the job. Tie or zip? I wanted to kiss his tanned, corded neck almost as much as I wanted his cock in my hand. God, he’s big. And he really wants me. I flashed back to our conversation—not five minutes ago, sitting calmly knee-to-knee on the twin beds!—about women in his trade, who for all the dangers could fake it. He couldn’t.