The Passenger

by Daniel Hurst

  I glance around at a few of the other couples at the adjacent tables and wonder if any of them realise that this date is not as it seems. But nobody is looking at us, and anybody who does will probably just assume from our nervous body language that we are on a first date and not in the early stages of a professional business transaction. I wonder if anybody else in this bar tonight is here for the same reasons as Greg and I.

  Is anybody else here as desperate as we are?

  While I have no idea why Greg seems to think that the only way to get a woman to go on a date with him involves forking out a large chunk of cash, my desperation stems from my worrying lack of money. I’ve been struggling to build myself back up ever since Johnny cleared out my bank account. I still have my office job in London, but with how little I have left over from that wage at the end of the month, it’s taking an awfully long time for me to get my balance looking healthy again.

  It wouldn’t be such a problem if I at least enjoyed my day job and could tolerate the commute, but I can’t. I hate every single second of it, and I’ve had enough. My dream of being a writer hasn’t left me, but every day that goes by without me pursuing it leaves me feeling like it is less likely to ever happen.

  So here I am entering the world of escorting in order to make as much money as I can in as short a time as possible so I can leave my nine-to-five life behind and finally do what I want to do. That means having to now work several evenings after I’ve already done a full day in the office. This is my first time escorting, and while I’m uncomfortable so far, I can’t afford to screw this up. Without the extra cash from this job, I will never get to achieve my goals.

  I’m just about to ask Greg about his favourite holiday destinations, which was one of the topics that was suggested to me by the agency to make conversation, when I feel the buzzing on my leg. I look down and see my phone vibrating. Somebody is calling me.

  It’s Louise.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, picking up my phone. ‘I have an urgent call, and I really have to take this. Is that okay? We can make the time back up at the end. I promise.’

  Greg graciously allows me to leave the table, and I rush towards the doors with my phone in my hand, wondering why my daughter is calling me now. If it was anybody else, then I wouldn’t have bothered picking up, but Louise never calls me unless she needs something, so I’d better see what it is.

  I step out on the street and wait until the glass doors have closed behind me before I accept the call because I want to make sure that the sounds of the busy bar are trapped inside. I told Louise I was going to be working late at the office, so I can hardly answer the phone to the sound of chinking glasses and boisterous laughter.

  ‘Hey! Is everything okay?’ I ask.

  ‘Where are you?’ comes the gruff reply from the other end of the line.

  ‘I’m working late. I told you I would be.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She obviously wasn’t listening when I told her. That’s my daughter.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing. I’m just starving, and there’s nothing in to eat.’

  ‘There’s plenty in,’ I reply, but then I’m suddenly not so sure about that. It has been five days since I did a food shop. That’s a lot of time for a ravenous teenager to raid the cupboards.

  ‘There isn’t. I’m starving,’ Louise moans.

  ‘Well, you’re a big girl. I’m sure you can find something,’ I tell her, moving quickly away from the door to the wine bar as a young couple leave and allow all the noise inside to temporarily escape.

  ‘Can I use your card to get a takeaway?’ Louise asks.

  ‘No, I told you we can’t afford it. You will have to eat what’s in the flat.’

  ‘But I just told you there’s nothing in the flat!’

  I grip the phone tightly as I feel my blood pressure rising. Why must my daughter always be so difficult? There is probably food in the flat. It might not be exciting, but there will be something to eat. I refuse to believe that we are out of everything. What Louise means when she says there is nothing in is that she is too lazy to cook anything for herself. Instead, she’d rather I just get her a takeaway. But I’ve told her no more. It’s a waste of money, and it all adds up. The more I splurge on things like that, the less likely it is that I will ever get to quit my job, and the more likely it is that I’ll have to do the kind of work I’m doing tonight instead.

  ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘You’re not having a takeaway.’

  ‘Pleeeeaassse.’

  The easy thing to do would be to give in and just give her my card details so she can order one. But it’s been a long time since I did the easy thing.

  ‘No. Eat what’s in the flat. I’ll be home by ten.’

  Then I hang up and head back into the bar. I don’t feel bad for saying no to my daughter because it is the right thing to do. The fact she is calling me again as I make my way back to the table in the corner only stiffens my resolve. We’re probably going to have a massive argument when I get back home later tonight because of this, but so be it. If she had any idea how hard I was actually working to earn my money, then maybe she would be more understanding. But she doesn’t because Louise doesn’t understand anything about hard work and earning money. She just thinks it grows on trees. Well, it doesn’t. I really wish it did. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to be sitting down at this table again and asking Greg if he’s enjoying the expensive bottle of wine he just paid for.

  23

  AMANDA

  ‘An escort? You? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t see it.’

  I have just finished telling the man opposite me about my extracurricular activities to earn more cash, but I can already see it was a mistake. I was hoping that my confession would garner a little sympathy for me and show him that I’m more than just some office drone who has saved up a portion of her wages over the years. Rather, I am a hard-working mother determined to do anything to better my life. But he just keeps laughing at me.

  ‘So that’s how you saved up so much money. People paid to go on a date with you,’ he says, shaking his head in amusement. ‘Are there really that many desperate men in the world?’

  ‘They weren’t desperate. They were just lonely,’ I correct him.

  ‘Whatever. I can’t get over the fact that you were an escort.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Aren’t escorts supposed to be all glamorous?’

  I’d be more offended by the statement if it hadn’t come after all the threats to me and my daughter. Instead, my level of hate for this man can’t get any higher than it already is right now.

  ‘I had a disguise,’ I tell him, referring to the blonde wig I used to put on.

  ‘Well, it must have been a bloody good one because I still can’t see it working, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I tell him, and this time it’s my turn to stubbornly cross my arms.

  ‘Did you, you know…’ he says suggestively.

  ‘No, I did not,’ I reply firmly, knowing exactly what he is referring to.

  He takes a moment to enjoy the hatred coming at him across the table before shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Okay, I admit it. You were right. There is more to you than meets the eye,’ he says with an appreciative nod of the head. ‘But that doesn’t change anything. So you made your money as an escort. So what? That money is still going to be mine by the time we get to Brighton.’

  I watch him check the time on his watch again as I feel the train slowing as we make our approach to the next station. Several passengers take out their headphones, close their newspapers or put away their phones and go through the tedious routine of gathering up their belongings in preparation to disembark.

  I watch a couple of them, including an elderly woman in a business suit who moves slowly and looks exhausted. She looks to be in her mid-sixties. Retirement age. She should be enjoying herself at her age, not clinging on to the back of her seat for balance as t
he train sways while she attempts to reach her coat in the overhead storage area. I wonder why she is still commuting. The obvious answer is that she still needs the money, but she looks old enough to be drawing a pension. Unless of course, she is one of the unfortunate ones who got screwed by the government when they changed the age of entitlement. There is a woman in my office who suffered the same fate. She could have retired at sixty, but she has fallen into the group that must work until they are sixty-five now through no fault of her own. She isn’t happy about it, and she isn’t the only one. There have been petitions, protests, and plenty of pleading with the powers that be about allowing those unlucky workers who had the goalposts moved on them to retire earlier, but they have all gone unheard. Keep working. There’s no escape.

  Not yet.

  I notice the woman is struggling to remove her coat from the overhead space. It seems to have been trapped beneath a heavy briefcase, and I’m just about to offer my help when my tormentor offers his instead.

  ‘Let me get that for you.’

  He gets up from his seat and lends his assistance to the passenger, lifting up the briefcase and allowing the woman to pull her coat out more easily. I’m surprised to see the show of chivalry from the man who is currently trying to extort money out of me, as well as being dismayed to see that he has kept his phone in his hand as he does it.

  ‘Thank you,’ the woman says as she pulls on her coat as he retakes his seat.

  ‘No problem at all,’ he says with a wide smile that I would just love to wipe off his face.

  Then the woman turns to me before she departs. ‘You’ve got yourself a good one there,’ she says, beaming at us both before shuffling away towards the doors and out onto the platform.

  I didn’t get a chance to correct her and tell her that I’m not actually with this man, nor is he as gentlemanly as he appears, but she is gone, disappearing with everybody else who disembarked at the same time.

  The train is much quieter now, and most of the seats are available as the doors close, and we set off again on the penultimate part of the journey. I don’t need him to tell me that we are now only eighteen minutes from Brighton.

  As the train passes along the platform, I notice that the large grin on his face is still there. He seems rather proud of himself for what he has just done.

  ‘See. I’m not all bad.’

  ‘I guess that was your one good deed for the day,’ I reply sarcastically.

  ‘No. There is still plenty of time for one more. I can give your daughter the gift of life. You only have to say the magic words. Or rather, the magic numbers.’

  He holds up his phone again to remind me that all of this could potentially be over with a simple call to his partner, but that’s not what I’m thinking about right now. I’m thinking about if I have any chance of grabbing that phone from his hand and running down the carriage before he can catch up with me.

  Probably not.

  Why would that work when everything else has gone wrong for me?

  ‘So you really didn’t sleep with any of those men?’ he asks me suddenly.

  ‘I told you I didn’t.’

  ‘Not even one? A favourite client perhaps? There must have been at least one guy you actually liked.’

  I shake my head to tell him that I did not sleep with any of the men who paid me for a date. But I did have a favourite client once upon a time. We went on several dates together, and he was a pleasant and charming man.

  That was until he turned out to be exactly like the rest of the men in my life.

  24

  AMANDA

  ONE MONTH EARLIER

  Another night. Another wine bar. But this date is different.

  This is going to be my last one.

  I’m already seated at the table, and I was actually a few minutes early tonight, which tells me that the nerves I felt when I first started doing this work six months ago have dissipated somewhat. There have still been awkward dates for sure, and there are still plenty of times when I feel like my client is going to tell me this was a mistake and demand a refund, but those have mostly been replaced now by the sense that I am doing a decent job.

  I’m friendly and polite. I’m a capable conversationalist. And I look reasonably good, as a quick check on my reflection in the mirror behind the bar confirms.

  I’ve even got used to the blonde wig on my head.

  I possess all the things I need to be a good escort and satisfy my clients. Of course, there have been a few of them who wanted more than a nice chat over a couple of drinks and tried to tempt me back to various hotel rooms with offers of even more money. But I always turned them down. There’s a fine line between what I do and what a prostitute does. I make sure I stay on the right side of it.

  Besides, it’s not as if I’m desperate for money these days. Since I began this unorthodox way of earning cash, I’ve managed to accrue quite the nest egg. I’m not rich by any means. I never have been, and I doubt I ever will be, well, not unless my book actually gets published, but that would require me to finish it first. But for the first time in my life, I’m no longer just getting by. I actually have proper savings now and much more than the five grand I had when my ex-boyfriend took it from my account. I have almost £20,000, a big chunk of it gained in the line of work that I am engaging in this evening, and all of it currently kept locked away in the small safe back at my flat.

  The reason for the safe is because of my distrust of the bank after the way they treated me in the wake of Johnny cleaning out my account. They took no responsibility for allowing him to transfer the funds and blamed the whole thing on me for not being more careful with who saw my personal details. I went into the bank on several occasions and demanded better answers from them, but I left after a massive argument every single time. Ever since then, I decided that I would not trust anybody else with my money.

  I work hard to make it.

  I’m going to work even harder to keep it.

  With that in mind, I purchased a small safe online and stored it in the bottom of my wardrobe, using it to deposit the part of my wages I withdraw from the cash machine each month. That was my backup plan in case anything ever happened with the bank again, but when I started escorting, it became a great way of keeping all my extra money off the books.

  The agency offered to pay me in cash, and I gratefully accepted. No tax means higher profits, and it hasn’t taken long to start filling up that safe with stacks of fifty-pound notes. My goal was to reach £20,000 before I quit my job, and after the payment from tonight’s date, I will have made it. Tomorrow, I will walk into my office and hand in my one month’s notice, and then the countdown will begin to the day when I will become a full-time writer.

  I’m hoping I’ll never have to go back to work, but if I do, it’s good to know that this opportunity exists in the escorting world. I wouldn’t say I enjoy it, but it’s far easier than an eight-hour grind in the office. Drink some wine. Laugh at some bad jokes. Get paid.

  If it weren’t for my love of writing, I’d probably just be an escort forever.

  Or at least until I was no longer pretty enough to get clients.

  I check the time on my phone, which I still position on my leg underneath the table during dates so I can discreetly keep an eye on how long is left. As I do, I notice that my date for this evening is running late. That is very unusual for any client, let alone this particular one. Not many people are late to an appointment for which they are paying by the hour, and especially not at these prices. But a quick glance around the bar tells me that my date is still not here.

  Oh well, I’ll just wait.

  I scroll through my phone to pass the time and notice a social media update from my daughter as I do. She is asking her followers for the best places to visit in Asia. She is obviously still determined to go backpacking, I see.

  I notice that she has already received several comments, most of which are telling her to visit Bali and some beach called Pandawa. It certainly s
ounds exotic and much more so than the place where I took Louise for her last holiday.

  We went to Clacton-on-Sea.

  There weren’t many backpackers there.

  I’m tempted to write a snarky comment asking her if she has found a job to fund this Asia trip, but I decide it’s best not to. I get into enough arguments with my daughter when it’s just the two of us. There’s no point starting one in full view of everybody on social media.

  I lock my phone again and return it to its usual place on my leg before taking a sip from the glass of water that the waiter kindly poured for me when I sat down. As I do, I think about my daughter and wonder if I am being too harsh on her. I told her that I wouldn’t be giving her the money to go travelling and that she would have to get a job to save up for it if she was really serious about it. Of course, Louise didn’t like that and told me that I should give her the money as a present for finishing school last year. I told her that I couldn’t afford it, but she disagreed. I wondered how she could do that, but then she told me she knew about my safe.

  Apparently, she had seen it in the bottom of my wardrobe when she had sneaked in there to borrow one of my tops the day before. The sight of it seemed to confirm to her that I was sitting on a small fortune. I tried to pretend that there was nothing in the safe except for my passport and a few important banking documents, but Louise didn’t buy it. I might have raised a stubborn and argumentative child, but I didn’t raise a fool. She told me she knew there was money in there, and my face gave away the fact that it was true.

  I tried to explain to her that the incident with Johnny had left me distrustful of the bank, so the safe had seemed like a good idea. I told her that I had been given a pay rise at work and been saving hard over the last few months, which she seemed to buy as a cover story, sparing me having to tell her the truth that her mother had been going on dates with wealthy men four nights a week. But her knowledge of the cash only made her more determined that I should give her some money.