‘How many further instalments are there?’

‘Flfffmfff.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Five, right? Five.’

‘So you actually owe him three thousand pounds.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Shit, Jon-Jon …’

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘Where are you going to get three grand from?’

‘I don’t know.’ He says it with a rising cadence, as if it’s a question, as if he’s throwing the ball back into my court.

‘I don’t suppose your parents …’

He looks at me with disgust. Jonathan does not get on with his parents.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘What else can I do? I’m going to have to work.’

At last – the message has got through. ‘Great. I’m sure you can find a job easily enough. In a shop or a bar. Perhaps not a bar, but, you know, somewhere.’

‘I don’t mean a job, stupid. I mean … work.’

‘I don’t …’ I say, but then suddenly I do. ‘Oh no. You’re not.’

‘I am. I’ve already got my commercial profile up.’

‘You’re going on the game.’

‘Fuck off. You make it sound like I’m standing around Piccadilly Circus waiting for some fat old businessman to come and pick me up.’

‘Well? Aren’t you?’

‘It’s not like that any more.’

I haven’t got the heart to say it, but if Jonathan is going to work as a prostitute, his clientele is going to come from the lower end of the food chain. Compared to the gorgeous, chiselled Brazilians who populate the back pages of magazines and the commercial areas of networking sites, Jonathan is, shall we say, an acquired taste.

‘It’s going to take you quite a while to clear three thousand pounds profit, Jonathan.’

‘Rubbish. I’ll do it in a week. Five jobs a day, a hundred quid a go, that’s five hundred quid a day, three thousand in six days.’

‘And on the seventh day he rested.’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘Have you considered whether you can actually do it five times a day?’

‘I won’t have to do much. Just get the money and then get them off.’

‘And do you think there’s sufficient … demand?’

‘Course there is, with the pictures I posted. They’ll be queuing at the door.’

‘Are the pictures actually of you?’

‘Very funny,’ says Jonathan, but he doesn’t look me in the eye.

‘And do you think you’re really cut out for the work?’ In some ways, it’s the only job he is cut out for. Jonathan would have made a great kept boy, in the old tradition, if only he’d been a bit better looking. He could have shopped and sulked in a rented penthouse, waiting for Daddy to call.

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Jonathan, listen to me. Do you have any idea what prostitution is really like?’

‘It’ll be a laugh, it’ll be fabulous.’

‘Fat old men with skin complaints and dirty arses.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘How are you going to get it up for them?’

‘I’ll get by with a little help from my friends,’ he says, tapping the side of his nose.