Anonymous - Belle do jour:Diary of an unlikely call girl

The bell rang again and First-Name Father disappeared almost instantly. This time it was a tiny woman dressed head to toe in clothes from the shop. By which I mean she resembled a bruise-colored meringue. She and the girl started complaining loudly about the low temperature inside and the stroppy little cow disappeared to demand her sire do something about it. I was fairly impressed, actually-at that age I believe my spoken repertoire did not extend past “I don’t know” and “Go away.”

“Is someone helping you?” the woman asked me. I’m not terribly tall, but must have stood a full head above this miniature Morticia who, from the layers of black corsetry and full-skirtedness, looked distinctly like the New Romantics after an unfortunate accident in a wallpaper factory. About fifty years ago.

“I’m just browsing, thank you.”

Morticia hung at my elbow while I politely fingered brocade coats and crinolined skirts. They might have been attractive as well, with about a stone less of velvet ribbon each. “Your window dressing is very nice,“ I said, hoping a spot of talking would drive her off. “I often come down this road on the way to work but have not been in before.”

“Where do you work?” she asked.

Think fast, girl. “The V amp;A,” I said.

“The what?”

“The Victoria and Albert.” She didn’t look less puzzled. How could she not know the costume museum? Odd for one so blatantly overdressed. “The V amp;A Museum.”

“Oh, the museum,” she said, as if humoring me. Cripes, lady, I thought. It’s only round the corner.

“Are these-um-your designs?” I ventured.

“Yes,” she said flatly, and turned her head to hurl abuse at her daughter. The shop was still disagreeably cold for them. I wondered if she wasn’t anemic and almost suggested a restorative session of basking on a hot rock.

“Lovely,” I rasped.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked, impatient. I had been looking at a delicate and not absurdly overjeweled pair of butterfly earrings, but opted against on principle. Morticia herded me toward the door.

“No, thank you,” I said as she held the bolt of the lock open and whisked me back into the warm air. Traumatized by the experience, I promptly went and dropped sixty quid on bright glass earrings at a shop over the road. dimanche, le 21 mars

I want so very little out of life, really. All a girl asks for is

• a haircut that looks the same regardless of wind speed or direction

• to be smiled back at, by people I smile at

• shoes that make you look taller, and look nice, and can be used for actual walking

• for only disabled people to park in disabled spots

• instant mastery of all things kitchen-related

• a bit of sunshine now and then

• a worldwide ban on polyphonic ringtones

• a worldwide ban on phones which give you no options save a polyphonic ringtone

• a cessation of all suffering, backdated to the beginning of time lundi, le 22 mars

A4 and I met for lunch at a Polish restaurant. It had come highly recommended as an antidote to the self-conscious bitter-leaf trattorias and uber-kosher bagel purveyors of North London. I always feel too skeptical for one and too secular for the other. Inside, the restaurant was dour, decorated in heavy seventies earth tones, bad repros of Polish historical battles, and a layer of grease that might well have been imported from the kitchens of my childhood. The food could have been straight from my mother’s stove: beetroot borscht with cream and vegetables; fried potato latkes with applesauce and sour cream. The waitresses, too, were authentically heavy and dour in their tight-pulled blonde pigtails and gray aprons tied round rolling middles. When they acknowledged a customer at all, it was with the same language of grunts that I’d encountered in restaurants on trips to northeastern Europe. Everything-everything-was fried and came with a side of cabbage. I was smitten.

Our table sat next to the window. We looked out at the busy sidewalk and lunchtime traffic: businessmen munching chips, people crowding into queues at the bank and chemist, a cheap Chinese eatery overflowing with students. Inside the restaurant, though, it was a world apart, shielded from the modern noise outside with no more than the creaking strains of a mechanical dumbwaiter as background music.

We were amused to hear a woman at the next table struggling to make sense of the menu. This was not fare for the calorie- nor image-conscious (I myself had taken the precaution of skipping breakfast). Whilst waiting on her main course, she flagged down one of the slow-moving waitresses. “Do you do cappuccino?” she asked. A4 and I stifled snorting laughs. The pink-cheeked waitress furrowed her brow. “Cappuccino?” the woman asked again. She mimed steaming milk through a machine. “You know-schhh schh, schhh schh?” The waitress shook her head and walked away. A4 and I were almost crying from stifled laughter.

I went to look at the desserts in the case. An apple strudel, swathed in layers of pastry, dusted with sugar. Dense-looking tarts. As I returned to my seat a gentleman swiped at my midsection.

I looked down at the table. Four fellows in suits, middle-aged, having a business lunch. Did I know this man? I wondered. I couldn’t place the face. Former client?

“Er, bring us a basket of bread, would you,” he demanded.

I laughed, a short sharp bark. “Sorry-I don’t work here,” I said and walked off. How odd. mardi, le 23 mars

I am a cheap date.

At several hundred an hour, this is a rich claim to be making. But it is the truth. Considering the economics of sex-in which a man is prepared to invest some time, and a bit of money toward gifts and entertainments, in order to coax a woman into bed-I am assured by clients that the cost of a call girl is on par with the price of picking up a woman on a business trip. And she’s not likely to come round and cook your rabbit later.

But I don’t mean at work, where the judgment of whether my services are worth the money would doubtless involve a level of math I am not capable of. I am a cheap date in real life.

On paper it sounds great. Woman arranges her own transportation, buys her own pint and perhaps a few for you, and should there be a resulting relationship, is not terribly fussed about receiving gifts, holidays abroad, or other trinkets of your affection aside from the affection itself. If you go away together, she’ll contribute her share; if you fail to book a restaurant on one of several major milestones, she will smile and say she prefers staying in. She does not arbitrarily demand shiny things in pale-blue Tiffany boxes-if she sees something she likes, she’ll buy it, and if you do make an extra effort, she will of course be grateful. But does not take it for granted.

I’m a high-maintenance plot, but hire my own groundskeepers, as it were.

It has taken some time to conclude this is not what men are attracted to. They enjoy the chase, don’t they, the idea that a woman’s value is reflected in the effort you spend to win a smile or a kiss. Even if she turns out to be rubbish in bed, by the time you have pried her iron-banded thighs apart with weekend breaks in Sardinia and a shiny carbon chip on a ring, you’ll be so grateful to be there at all that it will not matter.

I reckon this means people would tend to be worse in bed than their ancestors, the need to win a mate with lingual talent being bred out of the population (N.B.: not scientifically proven). It might also mean that women with doe eyes, slightly turned-in toes, and a skill for simpering should predominate.

Film noir gave us a term for the low-maintenance cheap-date type of woman, as personified by Ingrid Bergman and the other cool blondes. They were, in the gruff parlance, Class Acts. A Class Act does not bombard you with whimpering phone calls to the effect of why are you out with your mates watching the footie when you could be choosing sisal floor mats with me? A Class Act does not take a split badly, or if she does, does so without so much as a peep. A Class Act is the silhouette disappearing into the night that you will no doubt remember-but will never talk to again.