Page 98 of The Way We Are Now

‘Hmm. And he was lovely. Really lovely. Funny, generous, great company. I think I probably fancied myself in love with him. Bit daft really. A bit, you know, Pretty Woman stuff. Having said that, we made sure we girls came over as escorts rather than… You know, unlike in the film. I mean, Julia Roberts was a proper street worker, wasn’t she?’

‘And?’

‘Patrick and I rarely stayed in the Leeds area. He had a place in Sheffield, but a place in London as well.’

‘And you were with him a while?’

‘A couple of months. I guessed Patrick was a made-up name. I mean, the men often had aliases just as we girls did. So, I’d been out for dinner with him a couple of times and then, you know, the inevitable…’

‘A hotel room?’

‘A rented apartment. Hotels are not the most private of places when a bloke is having a secret assignation with a hooker…’

‘A hooker?’ I frowned.

‘Well, what would you call it? If you’re selling your body for sex, if you’re getting some reward whether it be money, fancy restaurants or gifts, there has to be some aspect of prostitution in there. Don’t you think?’

‘Depends if you’re only doing it for material gain.’

‘I really fell for him,’ Sara went on. ‘He was charming, a bit elusive, pretty upmarket…’ She broke off. ‘I never realised he had a dark side to him.’

I leaned forwards over my desk. ‘A dark side? What sort of a dark side, Sara?’

‘He wanted to have… you know… kinky sex, and in strange places.’

‘What sort of strange places?’

‘One evening he said did I fancy a walk to a pub he knew? It was chilly – February time – but I thought it sounded really romantic. He’d brought those little bottles of champagne and a couple of plastic glasses with him in his coat pockets, and we were well wrapped up so we sat on a picnic bench in the dark and drank and talked and kissed… you know. It was all so lovely. Honestly, Anna, he was so plausible, so friendly and even when the walk turned down onto the canal bank, I felt safe. There were still a few people walking down there with their dogs. He said he was really into history and, as my main subject was history, he bet I’d be interested in the old Victorian building he said his family had once owned…’ Sara paused once more. ‘But… but… and… and… I ended up in this disused warehouse with him… to look at Victorian Industrial architecture…’ She broke off, laughing mirthlessly at this, but then, once more, seemed unable to carry on. Eventually she got out, ‘He handcuffed me, was rough with me, turned me round over a wall, dragged my underwear down, didn’t stop when I protested…’

I poured some water from the jug on my desk, passing it to her with the box of tissues.

‘I’m OK,’ she said, sipping at the water. ‘It’s been twenty years and I was a stupid kid. Utterly stupid for both working for an escort agency, as well as going for a walk in the dark with him.’

‘So, do you think Patrick then went on to meet Fliss?’

‘Just before she died, she told me she was meeting someone called Tony.’

‘Tony? Not Patrick?’

Sara nodded. ‘I only saw her briefly, just as she was rushing to a lecture, and she was really happy, really excited about this Tony. I wanted to tell her what had happened to me with Patrick, but I couldn’t get a word in edgeways. You know what she was like when she was excited about something. And anyway, I was ashamed – wanted no one to know what had happened. She said she’d had dinner with this man several times. It was all very hush-hush; she didn’t know his name, she said, apart from calling him Tony… To be honest I got the idea she knew exactly who he was. Fliss was pretty smart… I was trying to tell her what had happened to me, that I was no longer working for the agency, and that she must be careful, but she went off in a hurry, promising to catch up when she could.’

I closed my eyes briefly, felt the tension headache surge.

‘So do you think Patrick and Tony were the same man?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I’m certain they were. I remember Fliss telling me Tony had a favourite French restaurant in Sheffield – Brasserie Blanc, long since gone now I believe – and Patrick took me there once. Patrick knew that the girls working for the escort agency were students, from good homes. He knew that if we went to the police they probably wouldn’t do much. We were selling our bodies – and remember it was only a couple of years after the whole Yorkshire Ripper case, when the police treated the street workers with utter contempt. To a lot of misogynistic officers, the girls got what was coming to them.’

I nodded, knowing some of what she said was true.

‘Look, it’s too late for Fliss now, but I’m here because I want you to help me bring a complaint against him.’

‘On Fliss’s behalf? Twenty years later? Why? And why now?’ I stared. ‘Sara, do you know something about how Fliss died?’

There was a long silence and then she said, ‘Not really, just conjecture.’

‘I’m afraid conjecture, twenty years on, and about a third party won’t hold much sway in a court.’

‘I think she must have been trying to get away from him. Why else would she have been wandering around down by the canal early in the morning?’