A sulky little man with flowers in his hair appears beside Becky and leads Marshall off across the room. Everyone in the circle follows behind like bridesmaids, entranced, including Aisha and the agent, until only Becky and Harry are left, stunned in the aftermath, staring around like it’s the morning at a rave. Harry wants to reach for her hand and take it and see what happens. But there is no part of her that would actually allow her to do that, and so she drains her glass in a fast gulp and reaches for another from the smiling tray-bearer who appears beside her.
‘Interesting man,’ Becky says, following Marshall and his disciples with her eyes.
Harry watches the top of Marshall’s head as he sashays across the room. ‘I was interested,’ she says, ‘definitely.’ Becky hears the familiar accent of home: south-east London’s curving vowels and glottal stops. ‘You in the band?’
‘No, I’m a dancer. I was in the video.’
Harry is impressed. Looks at Becky with wide eyes. ‘A dancer, yeah? What kind of stuff?’
‘All kinds.’ She brushes over it.
‘You in a company or something?’
Becky looks at Harry strangely. ‘No. Not at the moment. Just videos and telly stuff.’
‘You enjoy it?’ Harry watches her face. Some lonely distant thing behind the smile.
Becky nods. ‘Yeah, it’s really cool. ’ She heaves a deep sigh. One hand goes up to her hairline, strokes her forehead a couple of times and drops back down again. ‘What about you?’ Becky drinks, watches Harry over the top of her glass. ‘You work with these lot then?’
They look around at all the cackling crotch-hungry monsters. Throwing their heads back.
‘Yeah.’ Harry nods. ‘I’m in recruitment, I work with a couple of guys from the record label.’
‘Lucky you.’ Her sarcasm is well practised. It lives deep in the tissue of her language.
Harry also knows the code. ‘Yes,’ she says wearily, ‘lucky me.’
A fat hand lands on Harry’s shoulder and pulses there, leech-like. ‘Harry!’ a man says. ‘Lovely to see you, sweetheart.’
Harry looks round. ‘Julian,’ she says, and an awkward silence descends on the three of them. Julian grins into it, begins to guide Harry away towards the corner of the room, Harry looks from Julian to Becky and digs her feet in, pulls him back. Stands her ground.
Julian, confused, smiles at Harry and lifts his hand. ‘Harry?’
‘It’s OK,’ Harry says, mouth dry. ‘She’s a friend.’
Becky feels pride swimming through her, pausing at the shallow end to shake its hair and flex its muscles.
Harry, allowing herself a rare departure from routine, looks briefly around her as she takes four chunky wraps from the pouch attached to the inside of her waistband and, in one subtle movement, presses them into the fat-handed man’s palm. So swift it is almost invisible. They shake hands. Vigorous. Friendly. The cash in Julian’s palm is transferred to Harry’s pouch. The man sends his froggy eyes over Harry’s body, and then over Becky’s. Harry’s heart is thumping hard as marching troops.
Becky watches the exchange like it’s a piece of immersive theatre. Wondering what she is meant to be discerning from it.
‘Friend of Harry’s?’ Julian asks her, his bloated face bobbing.
‘Yeah,’ Becky says, looking away from him.
‘Lovely, just lovely. What a picture.’ He grins. Flashbulb wink. He nods enthusiastically. Sniffing and swallowing and jerking his face around. His voice is a bellow. As if he has never known shyness. He roars. ‘AND AND AND AND HOW ARE YOU, HARRY? HOW’S THINGS? YOU LOOK WELL, DON’T YOU? yOU LOOK VERY WELL.’ He looks her up and down, sniffing loudly, huge darting eyes, lips moving faster than the words they’re trying to say, brain pulsating almost visibly through his skull.
Harry smiles patiently at him, talks slowly. ‘I’m fine, thanks, Julian. Getting by, you know. Getting on.’
‘Oh that’s great to hear, that’s great.’ He spits as he talks, brittle flecks explode from his Ss. ‘OK, well. My drink’s getting cold.’ He forces two stabs of laughter out of his gullet and then waves, winks and staggers fatly away.
‘Bye,’ says Becky in a monotone, watching him walk off. She looks at Harry, who swallows nervously. Julian’s back is bustling noisily towards the toilets.
Harry feels Becky’s eyes on her, glances up, then away.
‘Your name’s Harry?’ Becky asks her.
‘Uh huh.’ Sirens howl in Harry’s ears. Why did she just do that? She looks around for Leon: no sign of him. She raises a hand to her temple, pushes her thumb in.
‘As in, Harriet?’
‘Nope.’ Harry shakes her head, smiling at the woman, in spite of herself. ‘As in Harry.’
‘Fair enough.’ Becky watches her closely, like a child with a caught beetle. ‘You smoke, Harry?’ she asks.
‘Yep.’ Harry holds the back of her neck, leans into her hand.
‘Wanna go for one?’
They walk towards the smoking patio, out through the double doors at the back of the room. The air’s cold. The city’s twinkling all over the place. Becky lights a cigarette. Breathes in. Loves blowing smoke into cold night air. Takes another puff but it doesn’t feel the same.
‘You don’t look like a drug dealer,’ she says simply, a smile at the corner of her mouth.
Harry’s eyes pop at the words. She rubs her jaw and laughs a quick breathy laugh. She leans in closer and speaks low, checking around her. She speaks nonchalantly. Acts natural, but her palms are damp and her legs are shaking. ‘What do drug dealers look like?’
‘You know what I mean.’
They sit close together on a concrete bench next to a large flowerpot. There’s a tall heating lamp above them and every five or six minutes it turns itself off and then someone has to lean over them to press the switch again. Hardly a private place. Harry notices all the groups of people laughing loudly at each other; she can hear them talking, she wonders if they can hear her.
‘Is it a tough job then? For a woman, I mean?’
Harry decides that they can’t hear her. She feels judders of electricity in her face and hands.
‘No more than any other job.’ She looks at the end of her cigarette. ‘No tougher than being a dancer.’
‘How long you been doing it?’ Harry screws her face up in discomfort. Becky pushes her leg. ‘What?!’ she says. ‘I’m not the fuckin’ police!’
Harry takes a puff, holds it in, blows it out. ‘Ages,’ she says. ‘All my life, pretty much.’
‘How’d you get into it?’
Harry taps her feet a few times, leans back. In all the years of showing up at parties like this, she has never locked eyes with a woman and sat down and discussed the ins and outs of her trade. Never. Not once. Usually, she turns up when she’s needed, does what she has to do and then she leaves without speaking to anyone. Invited by clients, she walks in smiling, makes her trades and then it’s off to the next one. Sometimes she stays longer, if the client is somebody she likes. But she never tells strangers what she does. Why did she just give Julian the chop like that, standing next to this woman? Her heart is swaying like a pendulum. She feels someone looking over. She lifts her eyes and finds Leon staring with his eyes narrowed. She waves him away with a shake of her head. He watches her, puzzled. She looks away from him pointedly, and when she looks back to where he was standing she sees with some relief that he’s not there any more.