Fishnet by Kirstin Innes Page B

made it to the train station was a threat. I’d shrunk my muscles in on myself, tense up and wait the train out, those agonising seventeen minutes counting down in yellow computer font on the screen. It was a fright when the recorded monotone began, in an itchy burst of static:
    The train now approaching
Platform two
Is the
Seven
Twenty-three
To
Helensburgh
    The car hadn’t followed me.
    I took my bag and coat off at the door, put my shoes in their place on the rack, began the sort of comforting bustle that helps the brain short-circuit back to home mode. Mum nodded at me from the sofa, began to gather her things, retreat back to the flatdownstairs.
    â€˜She’s asleep?’
    â€˜Like a light. About half an hour ago.’
    â€˜Great. Thanks. She wasn’t any trouble?’
    â€˜No, no.’
    She made her way to the door. I heard it close. Beth was pouting in her sleep. I propped her door a little more ajar and moved to the computer, without really thinking. You want to know a thing, you type it into a white, blinking space.
    prostitute scotland
    And now the clock says 02:14. I’m probably going to be late for work tomorrow again. I take my clothes off and the mirror looks at me, red eyes, faded cotton pants around its ankles, and I’m not sure what I was supposed to do with that, so I go to bed.
    Do you remember the first time?
    Early forties. Thin, short, unhemmed like his edges had been gnawed. Something feral about him, but not bad looking. Not really.
    I’d thought he would be ugly. Old and fat and ugly. I’d thought about fucking someone repulsive, fantasised about rolled lolloping flab that’d shake as he shagged, kept my fingers and brain in place on the transaction, the power, tried to train myself into it.
    Old skin touching me.
    Instead, just this little vulpine man, smell of dead smoke off him. His mouth was dry, smacked as he opened it to say hi, white flecks in the corners.
    I said hi back, and he let me in.
    Just two of us in a room, a very ordinary hotel room. ‘I’m Jimmy,’ he said. Irish.
    â€˜RXXX,’ I said. (That was the name I used, when I was starting out.)
    â€˜Yeah – I guessed.’
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜So.’
    â€˜So.’
    That’s when I realised it was my job to break through this. My job, this, to ease him out of the nerves, to take his hand through it. Maybe it was his first time too.
    All I had to do was smile at him, and say, in that voice like it was a normal thing to say:
    â€˜So. Shall we discuss services?’
    And I smiled at the end, a little bit, like we both knew how awful a thing it was, to have to ask, to have to reduce it down to money.
    â€˜Just the basics, please. Just the hour.’
    The words flat, no expression.
    He handed me an envelope without me having to ask.
    It probably wasn’t his first time.
    My phone rang, before I could check the amount.
    â€˜I’ll just need to –’
    â€˜Of course,’ he said again.
    No, not his first time.
    â€˜So?’ she said, down the line.
    And I thought, well, I’m not sure. It was something you were supposed to know, by instinct, she’d said.
    Well, my instincts weren’t telling me to run, but they weren’t telling me anything at all. I was just in a room with this expressionless man, and he was skinny.
    â€˜I’m here, and it’s fine,’ I said.
    â€˜Okay. I’ve got the hotel on speed dial anyway,’ she said. ‘Two rings as soon as the hour’s up. And good luck, my honey.’
    If my instincts had been telling me anything, the code was ‘I’m here, and he’s really lovely.’
    We both stood there in the silence again, and I remembered that this was also part of my job.
    â€˜Give me two seconds,’ I said, taking a step towards the bathroom, ‘while I go and change into something, eh –’
    â€˜Just do it here,’ he said, gesturing to a space