‘Sorry,’ I say, a weird yelping laugh escaping from me.

‘Oh, I think I know your ma. Room 522, the other side of the corridor.’

I walk to her door and listen outside; there’s no sound at all so I knock.

‘Come in,’ she says.

When I push the door open I see the same blonde woman from last night lying on the bed in a blue silk nightie.

‘I’m expecting someone. Everything ok?’

‘Are you a mother?’

‘Are you judging me?’

‘No, no, just surprised, is all.’

She shrugs. ‘Have to earn the school books …’

I sense a shadow hovering in the door behind me. The woman’s tone changes to a higher register and she says in a tight, practiced voice. ‘Well, hello … David … is it?’ And then to me, ‘Go on back to your room, love.’

‘What room’s that then?’ a sly voice says.

‘The girl isn’t working,’ she says.

The man walks into the middle of the room, closing over the door behind him. Does he think this is part of the act?

‘I’d like to see you both naked,’ he says, abruptly, so full of entitlement, sounding so much like Doc O’D, that I almost do his bidding. Jeepers, not much foreplay going down here. That thought aggravates the back of my throat, ticklish.

‘I’m sorry, that’s not on the menu.’

His face turns cartoon-angry, like a sullen eight-year-old whose sister won’t play doctors and nurses.

I feel like I’m going to explode with laughter, belch it right out of me. It’s bubbling up and I have to work hard to push it back down.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ the man asks, pointing at me as I swallow and swallow the mounting hysteria, which is making all my limbs shake with the force of it.

‘Sorry ’bout this, but it’s kind of an emergency and we have to go,’ the woman says.

‘I’ll be complaining to management about this,’ he says.

‘I am the manager,’ the woman says. ‘You responded to my advertisement. What exactly is the nature of your complaint?’

‘What kind of a game is this?’ he says.

I gag, not knowing if I’m putting on an act or if the bile rising in me is real.

‘No game. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I have to get this girl home. She’s not well, as you can see. How about you come back in a couple of hours?’

The man’s face suddenly bloats and turns bright red as he goes to grab the woman by the hair. All the air has been sucked from the room; it shrinks and the walls close in. ‘Next time, I just want the young one,’ he says.

The woman nods, playing along now. ‘That’s fine,’ she says.