He suddenly became aware that his phone was ringing from another room. With a great effort, he hauled his muscular frame out of bed and sauntered through to the lounge where he found his phone next to the fish tank. The lionfish seemed uninterested in him today; their amber and beige striped tentacles waved nonchalantly at him from the other side of the plastic castle Sarah had bought for him last year. The newest addition, Hemingway, was particularly aloof.

‘Well good morning to you too,’ he grunted at them.

His phone had stopped ringing but there was a message:

‘Charlie, it’s me,’ said Jessica’s recorded voice. ‘We never agreed a time so I’ll come over to yours at seven. I’ll assume that’s fine unless I hear otherwise from you.’

He hung up and found himself in a state of unrest. He had acted rashly by inviting her over, but he was prone to ill-conceived impulses. Having said that, he hadn’t expected for one minute that she would accept. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. He sat down on the sofa heavily and closed his eyes. He tried to think about what he would say to her, what he shouldn’t say to her – but there she was, hijacking his thoughts, her flawless body straddling him on her bed. With a smile, she unhooked the top of her silk dressing gown from her shoulders and unpeeled it as she began to writhe on top of him, her soft moaning as melodic as the dulcet pan pipe music he had awoken to.

And Elinor Fox’s pink bra didn’t feature once.

*

Georgie Someday occasionally regretted living with a professional escort.

That was what Li called herself – a professional escort. Georgie appreciated the importance of labelling but, whatever you called it, it was still sex for money in her book. Li could make an easy living working for herself if she wanted to, but she was more than happy to hand over a percentage of what she earned to her pimp, a mysterious woman whom Georgie had never met named Mrs White. In return, Li’s clients were carefully selected for her – mainly married-middle-class men with big incomes and little risk.

Today was one of those days. Georgie had been up most of the night – first spending an hour reading every article she could find on the web written by Elinor Fox (of which there weren’t many) and then reading everything she could about the Free People’s Army. Finally, the early hours were spent with a very thick volume of Keats, and Wagner on repeat.

Another night with the light on. Georgie hated the dark.