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I shook my head. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, I was. But I am a whim, you see. They use me once and then they never do again. And it doesn’t matter to them that I am discarded like rubbish. It’s terrible, don’t you think? I’m not big time. Now when I want a job I have to suck a cock.’
‘You don’t need to suck cock, Helena. I’m not big time either and I don’t suck anybody’s cock for a job.’
Her head whirled around angrily. ‘Maybe that’s because you already sucked the right cock.’
I stared at her in shock. Speechless.
Her face changed. She looked horrified. She clapped her hands over her mouth. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.’ Her palms met in front of her mouth in a praying gesture. ‘Please don’t tell Jacques that I said that.’
‘What did you mean by that?’ I asked slowly. My voice was cold and distant.
‘I didn’t mean anything.’ She pointed to the bottle of red wine. ‘I’ve been drinking.’ She laughed. A high unnatural sound. ‘I’m stupid when I am drunk.’
‘I won’t tell Jacques anything if you tell me what you really meant.’
For a while she stared at me, a crafty look in her eyes, as she was wondering what the best way was to wriggle out of the situation she was in. ‘Promise you won’t tell him. He will be so mad with me. Neither of us get enough jobs to pay our bills anymore.’ She looked frightened.
‘I promise not to tell Jacques.’
‘All right. We get paid a lot of money to let you live with us. It’s Jacques’s job to protect you. That’s why he follows you around. And that’s why he keeps all the men away and why he punched that Greek guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
My heart was thudding so hard the blood roared in my ears. ‘Who is paying you to house and protect me?’
‘We don’t know. All we know is every month money appears in our account. It comes from a solicitor’s office. A week before you came to France, Jacques was approached by a solicitor, and asked if he wanted the job of housing and protecting a fellow model. He refused to give Jacques any information at all. The job was simple. We were to offer you housing and act as your protectors, but if we revealed this to anyone, the contract would become null and void and we would no longer get paid. So you cannot go and see that solicitor.’
I sat back and leaned against the back of the couch. Helena was saying something else, but I could not concentrate. I stood up.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
I nodded slowly. ‘I have to go to England.’
‘Please don’t do anything rash.’
‘No, this won’t in any way affect you. I have something important I have to check out.’
*****
I flew back to England and went to see Margaret. She opened the door with a wide smile. ‘Come on in. I was just about to put the kettle on.’
I sat with her at the kitchen table. She poured the tea.
‘Margaret?’ I said.
‘Yes, dear.’ She spooned sugar into her cup and stirred it.
‘It wasn’t by accident that we met on the train, was it?’
Her hands stilled suddenly. Her soft blue eyes fixed on me. She took a deep breath. ‘No.’
‘Does a solicitor pay you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do they still pay you?’
‘Every month.’
‘You were just supposed to house me?’
‘Yes, and help you find your feet.’
‘And the job at the restaurant?’
‘We were told to take you there.’
‘And the modeling job?’
‘I had nothing to do with the modeling job. I just accompanied you there. I was only supposed to house you, show you the ropes, and help you adjust to life in London.’
I took a sip of tea. No wonder I had been left with no money. With money I would have had different choices. In this way my destiny could be mapped out and controlled precisely as he wanted it.
‘Can you give me the name of the solicitor?’
‘Of course. To be honest, Lena, I’m so glad you found out. I hated not telling you. At first I did it for the money, of course, but I’ve grown to love you as if you were my own daughter.’ She reached out a tentative hand. I let her grasp my hand and squeeze. I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t angry. All I wanted was to meet Guy again. If he had gone to so much trouble to see that I was safe, he must care for me. I just wanted to tell him that I loved him.
I took a taxi to the solicitor’s offices. Mr. Rowberry, a young snazzy junior partner, met me.
‘I’m afraid no communication is possible,’ he said. ‘We have strict instructions not to accept letters or messages from you.’
I blinked in surprise. ‘Why?’ I whispered.
‘He does not want to hear from you,’ he said softly. I think he felt sorry for me.
‘Can you tell me anything at all about Guy? Is he well?’
He shook his head regretfully. ‘I’m afraid I have no authority to discuss your benefactor’s affairs at all.’
I stood up.
‘Can I buy you dinner?’ he blurted out suddenly.
I stared at him. For a flying second it crossed my mind to sit down to dinner with him and try to persuade him to reveal something that would lead me to Guy. And then I looked into his hopeful brown eyes and I shook my head and walked out of the offices.
I felt distraught. There must be a way for me to find him.
It was a beautiful day and a girl wearing a red skirt and a tube top caught my eye. She had a beautiful tattoo of an angel across her chest. Its wings—delicate and incredibly detailed—flowed along her collarbones. Amazing really. She had become a walking canvas. She passed me by and I stood watching her back. She had had a devil tattooed onto it. I watched his snarling face curiously. And then it struck me. That’s it. Before she could disappear into the crowd I ran after her.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
She stopped and looked at me suspiciously, as if I was about to ask her for money.
I smiled and pointed to her chest. ‘Can you tell me where you got your tattoo, please? It’s very beautiful.’
She smiled back. ‘I got this done in Earl’s Court. In a place called Galway City. The artist is called Handsome Mike.’
The taxi dropped me across the street from Galway City. It was a pretty dismal place. A man with purple hair pushed opened the door and entered. I walked across the street and stood at the shop window. It was full of photographs of inked skin. Despite the shabby exterior of his shop, Handsome Mike’s work was undeniably delicate and extraordinarily beautiful.
There were pearl necklaces, insects, crosses, devils with horns, mermaids, and a peacock. I stood gazing at the peacock. It was beautifully drawn and colored. There was no doubt Handsome Mike was the person for the job I had in mind.
I opened the door and went inside. It was as dingy inside as it had been outside. Hard to imagine that such a consummate artist worked his magic from here. The man with the purple hair was nowhere to be seen. There were pictures of tattoo motifs all over the walls. The buzzing sound of a tattooing machine stopped and a man wearing a white baseball cap and black rubber gloves came out from a blue door.
‘Hello, love,’ he greeted.
‘Are you Handsome Mike?’
‘That I am,’ he said, utterly unfazed by the contradiction. Mike was balding, big-nosed, bearded, and more than a little overweight.
‘Good. Can you draw me a custom tattoo?’
‘Of course. But I don’t do traditional; only realism.’
‘That’s perfect. I want a tattoo of a hawk embracing a seagull. I want the seagull to offer her throat so there is no mistaking her love for the hawk.’
‘Yeah sure. Come back tomorrow morning. Say ten o’clock?’
*****
That night I dreamt I was lost in a maze. The maze opened out to a large cold bedroom in a castle. Guy was lying on a bed in his prosthetic mask and
dying. Through his mask his eyes were pleading and his lips were calling out to me, ‘Come back. Come back to me.’
I woke up and my skin was like ice. I was terrified of losing Guy the way I had lost my brother. I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee, drank it, and waited for the dawn to slip into the sky.
*****
Even before ten a.m. I was already loitering outside Handsome Mike’s place. At ten sharp I entered his shop. He had done the drawing. It was divine. Absolutely incredible.
‘I love it,’ I said.
‘Great. Where do you want it?’
‘On my back,’ I said, and, turning around, pointed to the area just above my shoulder blades.
He laid me on a bed beside a window. There was a strong lamp overhead. The process took just over an hour. Some bits hurt more than others, but it was bearable. And in the end he held a mirror up to it, and it was exactly as it had been on the paper. The hawk was much bigger than the seagull and it held it within the circle of its wings protectively and lovingly. And the seagull had her throat bared. My left eye twitched. Ready. I was ready.
*****
The interviewer pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled at me. She looked rather pleased with herself. ‘Ready when you are,’ she said brightly.
