As if money could make up for this feeling. This beaten-down, hollow shell of a body.

The stripping, that’s fine. It’s a job, like any other. Never routine or dull, and on the quiet nights she has fun with the girls. There are a few, of course, who do it to support their coke habit, but most are normal women, from all walks of life. Some supporting a family, others wanting to be dancers and this is the only way they know how. And she likes the hustle, the attitude. Thrusting her boobs into some guy’s face, pretending she likes them to get tips. Private dances, two and a half minutes in her underwear, thirty seconds naked? She can do that, no problem.

But working for the escort agency, working for Frankie? Frankie is one of the good ones, that’s true, but it’s a low bar to start with.

She picks up her cigarettes and lights another. She takes a long breath in and blows the smoke out in a graceful plume, and her thoughts move to Robin Butler.

She’s found she’s been thinking about him more over the past few days. She regretted it the moment she stole that notebook, and now he’s come round to her house, shouting and swearing. But he didn’t arrest her. She meant what she said to him. She’d looked at him, asleep on his sofa, drugged into oblivion, at his long eyelashes, stubble across his jaw, and she’d slowly run a finger across his face. She’d traced the line of his cheekbone, then down his neck to his collar.

And then she’d kissed him. Gently, hardly more than a peck on the lips. And he hadn’t stirred.

Normally she has an apathy towards men that mostly veers to hatred. But Robin seems different. That haunted frown. Words that seem on the edge of his lips, reluctant to say them out loud.

And what would she say to him? Hey, I’m a hooker and a stripper and I drugged you, but would you fancy going out one evening? It’s bullshit, and she knows it.

She liked Jonathan, on that one occasion she met him, and was shocked when he died. It didn’t seem right, what they said about the circumstances of his death, and she wanted to help Robin find out what had happened. But she felt torn, between the loyalties to her sister and the truth she’d told Robin.

Her phone rings next to her, and she looks at the screen, then mutes it and turns it over. It continues to vibrate, then stops. After a second, it starts again. She doesn’t want to answer it. She’s had enough of her sister’s crap. Her life had hardly been perfect before she bumped into Amy again, but now it’s a hundred times worse.