‘Should I trust anyone we work with?’ said James, throwing his cigarette to the ground.
‘No, probably not.’
‘But I can trust you, right?’
Rachel turned to look up at him. Her eyes were steady and loyal. They were, he realised, also surprisingly pretty – a gentle light brown, with good-humoured flecks and long eyelashes that curled upwards like her black hair.
‘Oh yes. That’s all right. You can trust me.’
12
15 March
Boroughs should take an evidence-based approach to managing the night-time economy.
– The London Plan, Section 4.37
There was no denying it, he was making tremendous progress. It was less than two months since that wretched night in that wretched restaurant, since he’d met Felix and surrendered to his counsel, and now, here he was – in a sex club in Soho. It was a testament to the advice of his mentor, but also to his own determination and strength of will. Above all, it was a testament to the power of planning.
As part of this, he was getting much better at the worrying-about-money thing. It was just as well: if you were going to fret about spending money in a place like this, then you might as well just leave now and take the night bus home. He had already bought a small round of unremarkable drinks that had cost over twenty pounds, and he knew there was every chance that Felix would order a cocktail next time. But he was starting to be more courageous about it. He was learning to rationalise personal consumption on a different, more sophisticated, non-rational basis.
It was important not to be churlish about money for, with characteristic generosity and skill, Felix had designed an entire evening for them. And it was Felix, of course, who had suggested it in the first place. He had been quite right, of course, James should have done this years ago. It was yet another rite of passage that he’d somehow failed to complete in his twenties, and was still well worth doing now. True, London was no longer one of the world’s premier capitals of the sex industry, there was far too much Asian competition, but it was still a world city with open markets, high-income residents and a steady flow of immigrants in need of employment. And it still had Soho, which James had first heard alarming stories about from sixth formers while revising for his GCSEs in the library at South Leicester Grammar School, but which, in all those years of living in London, he had never investigated any further.
But here he was at last and, actually, he had done more than just go to a sex club. He had in fact joined one. That, as Felix and Carl had explained, was how these places generally worked. So James now, and again at some cost, had a lifetime membership to the Black Kitten on Poland Street. He even had a black plastic card with his name printed on it in gold letters. It hadn’t taken very long to arrange – an almost pretty woman had efficiently typed his details into a laptop computer, taken his photograph with a digital camera and produced a card for him then and there on a desktop printer. A cloakroom attendant who looked like he was dying from tuberculosis but had wonderful manners had taken their coats, and then gently pointed them down a wide flight of red-carpeted stairs.
But downstairs, after all that, it hardly felt like a sex club at all. For one thing, and this was an obvious giveaway, there were other women there. Well-dressed professional women who had, presumably, paid to be there. In fact, he wouldn’t have been completely surprised to bump into Alice. Something else he hadn’t been expecting was that the room was well lit, and James was looking at the audience carefully – he was starting to pay more attention to them than to the girls on the stage. Not that they would have minded – the kinds of people who came to this place were sufficiently attractive that they actually wanted to be seen by other people. They weren’t on their own or in suspicious little huddles; they weren’t, and he could see this might be a problem, pornographers.
Meanwhile, the woman onstage wasn’t really undressing at all – to all intents and purposes she was doing a piece of contemporary dance. The music was difficult to process, without an obvious melody or rhythm. People were clapping appreciatively, but not for anything that was remotely arousing or even enjoyable: they seemed to be applauding her for acts of technical difficulty and creative interpretation. It was very much like something funded by the Arts Council. Her costume was a particular source of dismay – a disorientating drama of velvet stockings, peacock feathers, multi-coloured hair clips, silk scarves and hooped bracelets. It was difficult to be sure what was really going on, but James was convinced that she was actually wearing more clothes by the end than when she’d started.