2. Marlowe
CHAPTER 2
Marlowe
S ix months ago, my best friend and part-time fairy godmother, and Tabby’s actual godmother, handed me a brochure whose contents felt more forbidden than that godforsaken apple in the Garden of Eden.
Because that brochure contained hope within its glossy pages.
Hope in the form of non-invasive, laparoscopic heart surgeries by the most experienced paediatric cardiothoracic surgeons in the world.
Hope that can only be a reality for the lucky children whose parents have six figures to drop on the noble cause of making their kids’ medical worries go away, just like that.
I was pissed off when Athena showed it to me, and I was even more pissed off when she offered to pay for the whole shebang with money she’d earned in the hardest way possible up until last month: by having sex with rich, powerful dickheads whenever they wanted a piece of her.
No fucking way. I don’t know how she’s done it all these years, even if she’s a nympho to my nun on the sexuality scale.
Besides, if I let her fix this for me, then I honestly don’t know what would be left of me.
Mum. Carer. Provider.
Those roles consumed the rest of me years ago.
They’re all I am these days, and I’m damn well not going to let anyone else do my job for me.
It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that a friend and fellow escort of hers, Sophia, casually suggested that I do a stint with their agency in order to fund a US-based valve replacement for Tabs.
It was a solution so improbable, so unhinged, and so outrageously pragmatic that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
The women on Seraph’s books are full-service executive assistants who get paid seven figures a year by their bosses for the privilege of fucking them whenever they (their bosses, that is) want.
And while I’m the first to admit that for the past four years the merest thought of my best friend enduring that career has given me hives, the concept of me enduring it, for a few months, anyway, has grown less outlandish the more I let it percolate.
If you remove the following small details—that I haven’t actually had sex since my married music professor seduced me, knocked me up, and dumped me at university, or that my sexy skills would barely warrant someone slipping me fifty quid afterwards, or that Athena is so fiercely protective that she won’t even discuss it with me—then the dilemma I have is so achingly simple that, really, there’s no dilemma at all.
My daughter needs her pulmonary valve replaced yesterday.
And it is technically within my power to take action and fund that replacement in the safest, most expedient, and least invasive way possible.
I say technically , because the chances of Seraph taking me on its books are borderline zero.
Without Athena’s magical powers of persuasion, anyway.
‘ O ver my dead body.’ She takes a sip of the excellent white wine she’s brought along and flicks her perfect, glossy waves over her shoulder.
‘No. Over your goddaughter’s dead body.
’
Even Athena, the chronic under-reactor, flinches at that.
‘That’s unnecessary.
And overly dramatic.
’
‘I’m serious. If you distil this situation to its barest bones, Tabby’s best chance of survival is an operation as soon as possible, especially if it avoids open-heart surgery.
You know it and I know it.
’
We were discharged from the hospital a couple of hours ago, thank God.
It’s only eight o’clock, but Tabby fell asleep after a couple of lullabies, her tiny body exhausted from the day’s events.
She insisted on sleeping in her sleeping bag inside the stunning (and ludicrously expensive) tent she got a few months ago when Athena insisted on playing Father Christmas.
It came from Harrods and isn’t something I could ever, ever have afforded, but Athena suggested that Tabby treat it as her safe space between “battles”.
So tonight, another battle bravely fought and won, my little warrior princess slumbers in her magical refuge.
Athena responded to my text messages like the goddess she is, by showing up at my flat with wine, chocolate, and yummy Whole Foods microwave meals, even though I told her not to and even though she has a huge new job and a disgustingly handsome, disgustingly rich, and disgustingly adoring boss-slash-boyfriend waiting for her to get home and warm up his bed, because that’s the kind of human being she is.
Our deal is that she always brings the wine.
She refuses to drink the “cheap shit” that’s within my budget.
I take her in and marvel, like I always do.
Not only is she stunningly beautiful, with her huge hazel eyes and auburn tresses, but she’s put together in a way I can’t even dream of being.
She’s in some sparkly tweed dress with big diamanté buttons that I suspect is Chanel and she could not look less at home among my IKEA furniture.
She’s also the singularly most fearsome and most impressive individual I’ve ever, ever met.
I couldn’t ask for a better person to have in my corner.
‘I agree,’ she says in response to my assessment of Tabs’s health status.
‘And we both know this goes away tomorrow if you let me pay for it.’
‘Categorically not.’ I don’t need to expand on my argument.
She knows my views. I’m not taking money she’s earned in such a brutal way.
Especially not as she’s just taken a hefty pay cut.
She’s no longer her boss, Gabe’s EA with benefits but his official girlfriend and the new CEO of his multi-billion-pound foundation.
The Audacity Foundation.
She told me he named it after her, his audacious girlfriend.
I can’t even.
With Athena, you have to be direct.
It’s what she values and understands.
So I set down my delicious box of sesame salmon and I lean forward so I can look her in the eye.
‘Babes. I appreciate your offer more than you will ever, ever know. But it has to be me. If I have the option to save my own daughter, then I have to do it. Do you understand?’
She nods once, matter-of-factly, displeasure written all over her face.
‘In theory, I could do this. Right? I mean, I have an MBA and I’m hopefully not entirely unfuckable.
’ It’s been so long since I’ve put myself out there that I can’t quite be sure on that front, but men are pretty basic creatures, aren’t they?
Hopefully one of them will find the clueless born-again virgin vibe hot.
And while Athena’s friend Sophia told me that Seraph usually hires candidates with MBAs from the top schools—the Whartons and INSEADs and Sorbonnes of this world—the Open University one that I completed remotely while working for the Royal Academy gives me the only three letters I need after my name to make me technically eligible.
Technically.
She snorts at that.
‘You’re one of the most exquisite creatures I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and those dirty bastards would be queuing around the block for you.
But that’s not the issue, and you know it.
’
I scrunch up my face as I pick up my salmon and wild rice.
‘You could refresh me on how to give a blow job. We could put condoms on courgettes and practise.’ I wasn’t half bad at blow jobs, back in the day.
Joe, my professor and Tabby’s biological father, was always beside himself when I used my mouth on him.
Surely it’s just like riding a bike?
‘Stop being disingenuous. Of course you could handle a blow job. They’re not exactly rocket science.
The issue is that you’ve been celibate for most of your adult life, and you’re making a case for becoming a whore and letting a random guy for whom you have no feelings do whatever the fuck he wants to your body, day after day after day.
’
She glares at me, and a wave of nausea swirls through my stomach.
I set the salmon down next to me again.
‘When they’re paying out this kind of money, they don’t fuck around.
You think they’re going to pay out close to a hundred grand a month to kiss you and play with your tits every now and again?
Whoever hires you will work you hard as fuck, and you are not cut out for it.
It would be entirely too overwhelming for your nervous system.
I can’t even imagine the toll it would take on your mental health.
What good will it do Tabby if her sole caregiver has a nervous breakdown because she’s so traumatised?
’
I stare at her in horror.
Her tone is cold, and her words have their desired effect because I know she’s right.
When it comes to a normal, healthy sex life, I haven’t even been playing in the paddling pool in recent years.
What I’m proposing would be the equivalent of cliff-diving into treacherous, shark-filled waters.
I’d be so out of my depth it would be laughable if it weren’t so utterly terrifying.
Except that I’m all out of options, and if prostituting myself is the sole remaining solution left to me, then I’m sure as hell going to take it.
And every time I have to put out, I’ll close my eyes and think of my daughter’s right ventricle pumping lots and lots of juicy blood into her little lungs to get beautifully oxygenated.
‘I understand what you’re saying,’ I tell my best friend.
‘But you’re the smartest person I know and the most practical.
This has to happen. For God’s sake, tell me how we do it in the least painful way possible.
’
There’s silence as we glare at each other, and I see the moment she accepts that I’m not backing down.
Her breath leaves her body with a loud, defeated whoosh, and she stands.
She’s still in sky-high ivory-coloured heels and glossy nude stockings, and it strikes me that I’d have to seriously up my work attire game from the floaty, cheap sundresses I’ve favoured while working at the Royal Academy.
‘Getting you in would be the first hurdle,’ she muses aloud, strumming her fingers on the top of my TV.
‘But I could speak to Camille and try to pave the way. She won’t like it, but if I assure her that you can handle it, I suspect she’ll do it as a favour to me.
’
Camille runs the Seraph team and is responsible for the hiring.
From everything Athena’s told me about her over the years, she sounds both fair and sensible.
I nod. ‘Okay. Good. I suppose you’ll have to tell her about Tabs, but I wouldn’t want any of the guys knowing.
’
‘Agreed. No offence, but a single mum wouldn’t be top of their list for an easy-fuck assistant.
We could get away without disclosing that on any of your materials.
Right, the best way to do this would be to set up a prospective employer before you even go in to interview with Camille.
That way, it saves you from unnecessary photos and things.
’
I freeze. ‘What photos?’
‘Everyone on their books has a portfolio.’ I can tell by her delivery that she’s choosing her words carefully.
‘There are photos that the guys can look at before they ask you to interview. Facial portraits, full body, clothed and unclothed. They do a seated open-legged one as standard so the guys can see what they’re getting.
’
I can’t help it.
My face floods with heat.
Oh my fucking God, this is horrific.
I’m sure my horror is written all over my face, but I can’t openly freak out at the first hurdle.
If the prospect of being photographed nude is too much for me, I’ll never make it in this job.
That said, the last guy I trusted enough to see me naked for any extended period was Joe—the man who promised me the world but disappeared when I needed him most.
Athena, of course, doesn’t miss a thing.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ she groans.
‘This is a total non-starter, honestly.’
‘No, go on. Please. I promise you I can handle it.’
She sighs heavily.
‘I hate to say this, because Camille is a friend and I’d hate to shaft her, but in theory we could get you employed for just a few months and then you can quit once Tabby’s had her op and you’ve put some money aside for private follow-up care.
Once someone interviews you and wants to take things forward to the audition stage, he has to fork out twenty- five grand before he fucks you.
Then you get around a hundred grand sign-on bonus.
’
A hundred grand.
A hundred grand.
Don’t focus on the word audition .
Don’t think for a second about what that might entail.
Getting yourself worked up is unhelpful right now.
Just focus on the operation.
On what it costs and what you need to earn before you run for the hills.
‘Okay,’ I say shakily.
‘That sounds good.’
‘Nothing about this is good. The key is to find you someone who’s horny enough to fork out for a Seraph EA but decent enough to treat you with respect.
Let me see, let me see.
Fuck .’
She whirls around, wineglass in hand, her mouth open and her expression triumphant.
‘I think I’ve got someone.
’
‘Who?’ I ask with trepidation, because if she has a man in mind, that means that this outrageous plan is gathering mass and may actually become something real as opposed to a crazy scheme hatched from the mind of a desperate mother.
‘Remember Gabe’s brother Brendan?
’
Brendan.
I met him at an exhibition at the Royal Academy a few months ago, the first night I met Gabe.
Stupidly attractive.
The kind of guy who looks like he has a different woman in his bed every night.
Swagger for days, or so you’d think…
But he was extremely weird with me that night.
All stuttering and awkward.
It made me feel so uncomfortable, in fact, that I excused myself soon after and went back to schmoozing our patrons.
‘Yeah?’ I say cautiously.
‘He was so into you that night. He was completely tongue-tied—I’ve never seen him like that since.
And he’s asked about you a few times, but he’s a total fuckboy.
’ She takes a few steps towards me and cocks her head, surveying me thoughtfully.
‘He’s still got a massive bee in his bonnet about the fact that his brother, who used to be a priest , hooked himself up with a Seraph EA and he was totally oblivious to the entire concept.
It really pissed him off.
’
She sucks the inside of her cheek before continuing.
‘How about I have a little chat with our Brendan? He may be a player, but he’s a good guy at heart.
I bet he’d jump at the chance to have someone like you at his beck and call.
‘And, most importantly, I know where he lives, so if he hurts you, I can get to him and hurt him .’