Watching You Read Free

widening waist, freckles across his nose and cheeks. Headphones are hooked over his neck and the cord dangles between his knees.
    Marnie glances at the exterior door. Quinn doesn’t like to be kept waiting.
    “I’ve bought some new music,” Trevor says. “Would you like to hear it?”
    “I don’t have time right now.”
    “Maybe later.”
    Marnie is at the door. “Maybe.”
    “Have a good night,” he shouts.
    “You, too.”
    She feels guilty. Trevor is always asking her to listen to his music or watch a DVD. She sometimes borrows his computer to send emails or look up information, but doesn’t linger. Trevor is the caretaker who looks after the gardens and general maintenance. He’s also what Daniel used to call “a drainer”: someone who sucks the energy from a room. Other people are “heaters” because they give warmth and make you feel energized and happy around them.
    Quinn crushes a cigarette beneath a polished black brogue. He doesn’t open the door for Marnie. Instead he slips behind the steering wheel and guns the engine. Sullen. Silent. Marnie’s stomach rumbles emptily. The booker at the agency told her not to eat before working because it would make her feel bloated.
    Reaching Harrow Road, Quinn weaves aggressively through the traffic.
    “I told you seven o’clock sharp.”
    “Elijah has a cold.”
    “Not my problem.”
    Marnie knows three things about Quinn. He has a Geordie accent, he keeps a tire-iron in the door pocket next to his seat, and he works for Patrick Hennessy. This is only Marnie’s third night. Each time she has felt her stomach churning and her palms grow damp.
    “Is he a regular?”
    “A newbie.”
    “Has he been vetted?”
    “Of course.”
    Marnie’s best friend Penny had told her to ask questions like this. Penny had experience. After university, she worked as an escort in between modelling assignments because the latter couldn’t cover her credit card bills or fund her taste in designer clothes. Marnie was shocked at the time. She asked Penny what the difference was between being an escort and a prostitute.
    “About four hundred pounds an hour,” Penny replied, making it sound so obvious.
    Marnie pulls down the sun visor and checks her make-up in the mirror. Is this my life now, she wonders? Opening my legs for money. Making small talk with rich businessmen, pretending to be dazzled by their charm and wit. Paying back Patrick Hennessy one trick at a time. It’s not what she expected or imagined, not when she was Zoe’s age, or when she married Daniel, or when she lost him so suddenly. When she was seventeen she was going to be a journalist, writing feature stories for Tatler or Vogue . She settled for a job in advertizing and was a junior copywriter. Loved it. Fell pregnant. Left.
    Not in her worst nightmares did she imagine working for an escort agency. And no matter how often she told herself that it wasn’t for ever, just a few more weeks, just until she gets the insurance money, it didn’t stop the butterflies doing power dives in her stomach.
    Only two people knew—Penny and Professor O’Loughlin, the psychologist that Marnie has been seeing. The rest of her friends and family think she has a new job, working as a part-time manager at an upmarket restaurant. And when these same friends drag out clichéd analogies of “whoring themselves” in their corporate jobs, Marnie just nods and commiserates and thinks, “you wankers.”
    The car pulls up on The Aldwych opposite Bush House. A hotel doorman crosses the footpath and opens Marnie’s door. She holds up two fingers, wanting him to wait. The doorman retreats, glancing at her legs, his eyes drawn upwards from her ankles to the edge of her dress.
    Quinn makes a call.
    “Hello, sir, just confirming that Marnella will be with you shortly…sorry for the delay…Room 304…Cash up front…Five hundred for the hour…Yes, sir, have a nice evening.”
    Marnie checks herself again, running her fingers