Sugar, Baby E-Book

Celine Saintclare

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 448

Beschreibung

THE TIKTOK SENSATION 'The perfect beach read: chaotic, darkly funny and keeps you on your toes' Liv Little for Elle UK 'A bold, daring take on the wild, unconventional world of sugar babies' Harper's Bazaar 'I'm going to be recommending this brilliant book to EVERYBODY. Glamorous, and dark, and hopeful all at once.' Katie Bishop, author of The Girls of Summer 'Smart, sexy and peppered with wit' n.b. Magazine AS SEEN IN... -ELLE: Hottest summer reads of 2023 -HARPER'S BAZAAR: Best unconventional romances of 2023 -GAL-DEM: Best novels of 2023 From the high-rises of Canary Wharf to the turquoise pools of Miami, Sugar, Baby is an intoxicating, darkly funny and shocking debut from an extraordinary new voice in fiction. Agnes Green is turning 21 and her life is heading nowhere. Still living at home with her devoutly religious Caribbean mother in a lifeless suburb, she works as a cleaner by day and spends her nights secretly going to clubs and dating Toby - who loves arthouse film, getting stoned, and ignoring her texts. That is until she meets Emily, the daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model - and a sugar baby. Emily's lifestyle is the escape Agnes has been longing for: tasting menus, private flights to Paris and Miami, rich older men who shower her with compliments and designer gifts. Agnes' new life is beyond her wildest dreams, but it comes at a cost. As she begins to stray further from her mother's holy teachings, she must decide how far she is willing to go to be adored... Everyone's talking about Sugar, Baby . . . 'Absolutely addictive, devastatingly gripping, a triumph' LoveReading 'Beautiful writing, fully fleshed out characters, and darkly funny. Obsessed.' Netgalley review 'Superb . . . an intimate deep-dive into the sugaring lifestyle' Netgalley review 'A rollercoaster of a read! Celine Saintclare is an author to watch out for' Netgalley review 'Glamorous, sexy and fun... I was totally addicted to it!' Netgalley review

Leseprobe

Celine Saintclare is a Buckinghamshire based writer of Caribbean and English descent, born in 1996. She has a degree in Social Anthropology. Sugar, Baby is her first novel.

Follow her on Twitter @CSaintclare

Published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2023 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Celine Saintclare, 2023

The moral right of Celine Saintclare to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

With generous acknowledgement to The Anais Nin Trust and Penguin UK for permission to reprint an extract from Henry and June, Anais Nin. p. 5, Copyright © Penguin Modern Classics, 2001

And with huge thanks to ABG for permission to reprint a line from Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend (‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’) by Jule Styne and Leo Robin Copyright © ST Lyrics

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 83895 817 6

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 83895 818 3

E-book ISBN: 978 1 83895 819 0

Typeset in Minion Pro by Avon DataSet Ltd, Alcester, Warwickshire

Printed in Great Britain

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

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London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For Artie

I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman

– Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

A kiss may be grand

But it won’t pay the rental

– ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’,Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Part One

INGÉNUES

Prologue

The town I live in was voted four times by WeLiveThere.co.uk as The Worst Place to Live in Britain, an admirably big reputation for a relatively small place. Personally, I call it The Wasteland, maybe because the longer I stay here, the more I get the suspicion I’m wasting my life. Just under an hour’s train ride from London, The Wasteland is the sort of town that nobody ever seems to leave and certainly nobody moves to by choice, unless it’s to one of the villages on the leafy outskirts. The villages have high hedges to obscure disagreeable views, and honeysuckle to combat the stench of the river that runs through the middle of town, carrying cigarette butts, condoms like phantom jellyfish and general miscellaneous nastiness along with it. Over there, in the hills, gardeners are hired for the upkeep of newly built Japanese rock gardens, sunken fire-pits and ornamental topiary. Polished black Jaguars take the corners slowly. The majority of my clients live in the villages, including Camilla and her daughter. Emily.

One

Emotional Damage

It’s May, baking hot, lounge around with a freezer Calypso in front of a whirring fan kind of weather, and I have three spacious floors to mop, approximately forty-eight cabinets to dust and a drain to unblock. Outside, Emily is lying topless on the grass like she’s in a sun lotion ad. It is a private garden, I’ll give her that – nothing but green and yellow fields out the back, a host of conifers lined up at the top of the opposite hill – but it feels like a lot for pre-noon on a Wednesday.

Just thinking of being outside without a top on makes me damp, and not in the good way. I feel a bead of sweat prickle at the skin between my shoulder blades, then run down the middle of my spine before it’s absorbed by my knicker elastic. The sun is already pressing in at the windows and this house has a lot of them – by the afternoon it’s going to be stifling, my regulation candy pink overalls soaked through.

In the kitchen, I fill up a plastic mop-bucket with detergent and warm water, hear one of the other cleaners getting the vacuum going in the living room. I can’t see Emily from the kitchen windows, just the corner of the orange-and-white striped beach towel she’s lying on. But I’ve seen her face before in a portrait blown up to A1 size, hanging in a silver frame in the hallway, a close-up of her feline green eyes, full lips, blonde hair thick and curling at her shoulders. And I’ve been inside her bedroom, white linen bed-set and heavy pink drapes, a French antique-style dresser and matching drawers with not much inside them (yes, I’ve looked, I always look – it’s my right to make sure I’m not working for the next Jeffrey Dahmer). Her wardrobe is a whole adjoining room with six shelves of designer handbags: a little black Lady Dior, an emerald green patent-leather Gucci, a quilted Chanel flap bag with heavy gold chain detail, a red Celine, a beige Prada. The first time I came here I ran my lambswool duster over the faces of them all and wondered about the girl who owned them and now she’s here, naked.

I ascend the grand staircase, bucket in one hand, mop-handle in the other.

First, I mop the master bedroom which belongs to Emily’s mother, Camilla, until the dark hardwood is slick with water like the glaze on a chocolate cake.

Camilla is a white-haired, Toast-clad version of Emily, another six feet of sinewy limbs and implausibly good bone structure. She has the skin of a woman who holidays frequently, freckled with sun spots and crêpey in the folds of her décolletage. She has a lot of chunky metallic jewellery and something of a patronizing expression – you can’t tell if she’s looking at you like that because she’s misplaced her glasses or because she just thinks you’re really, really stupid. She’s the type to tell you all about her safari in Kenya and her skiing trip to Val Thorens with unnecessary detail, little slips that betray her lack of awareness. ‘The villagers were so pleased to see us, of course they live in such terrible poverty, it really means so much to be given the opportunity to share their culture.’ That kind of thing.

Emily’s still out there in the sun, resting bitch face behind gold-framed sunglasses, her tanned skin shiny from the lotion and gleaming in the sunlight. Her body is perfectly sculpted, two round breasts with nipples that both point upward, toes painted white. For a minute I try to search her taut, blemishless skin for a flaw, squinting at her through the window. Then she reaches for her bottle of suncream, feeling for it, stark white against the rich, watered green of the grass, and shatters the stillness. My heart pounds. I suddenly feel like a pervert and shift slightly out of view, but I keep watching her, sitting up and rubbing lotion onto her outstretched legs, her spine protruding slightly. This is the part of the ad where a voiceover would play. SPECIALLY FORMULATED FOR 24 HOURS OF HYDRATION. A close-up of the expensive, translucent, probably coconut-scented cream melting into her skin.

The vacuuming has stopped, there’s just the birdsong and the crickets now. A bumblebee bumps around the cracked window for a few seconds before giving up on trying to get in.

I close Camilla’s door behind me. Leaving my mop bucket in the hallway, I get a feather duster out of the airing cupboard and climb the second flight of stairs to Emily’s room, head straight for the wardrobe. A whole room of its own, six metres in length, racks of gowns and mini-dresses and silk slips hung beautifully along the whole perimeter. Rows of colour-coded jumpers folded up and stacked according to cut and shade, enough to fill a boutique. A revolving cabinet, six feet tall and filled with lush velvet bags and gleaming once-worn shoes. Each compartment is tantalizingly lit so that its contents glow behind the glass.

Taking this in, I have the sudden urge to destroy something, to violate this girl in some way. To exact a little revenge. Putting my feather duster down, I open the top drawer of a large cabinet and find it filled with lingerie, carefully categorized with grey felt dividers – tulle, cotton, silk and satin, knickers rolled into rosettes, corresponding bras. A sky-blue suspender belt embroidered with daisies, which I put in my pocket.

I catch my reflection in her ornamental mirror. It has a black leaf design, a stem curling around the frame and crossing the centre. I run a finger along it and its velvet feel surprises me. My face is fragmented by the design, carved into pieces: a hooded eye, iris almost black, chin with a dimple in the middle of it.

At my eye level there’s half a lipstick mark pressed onto the surface. It’s faint, as though someone was admiring their reflection so closely that for a second they found themselves kissing the glass.

From out of the window I can see she’s gone, leaving her towel twisted up on the grass. I shove the evidence down into the depths of my overall pocket, close the cabinet drawer, feel the sweat prickling at the back of my neck. Maybe she just got a little thirsty, maybe she was set upon by an army of fire ants.

‘Oh, hey’ – she’s standing in the doorway, taller than I imagined and twice as beautiful up close. Her make-up-free face is glowing with perspiration and the early stages of a rosy tan. She’s not naked, thank Jesus, but wears a cream babydoll dress, short and flared, showing off the full length of her legs, a silver anklet on her left ankle. I suddenly feel transparent, as though the suspender belt is flashing through the side of my overalls.

‘I can leave,’ I offer, reaching for the duster.

‘You’re all right.’ And she just breezes in, smelling like clean sweat and rose perfume. She opens the cabinet where the loungewear is kept, starts lowering the zip on the back of her dress. I turn away and back into the main bedroom, feeling stupid for still being here.

‘That’s better,’ she says a minute later, emerging from the wardrobe in pink velour trousers and a matching top. ‘One of the cleaners?’

‘Yes, but this is just a part-time sort of thing,’ I tell her. ‘It helps fund my passion.’

‘What’s your passion?’ Clients love this sort of chitchat, asking me polite questions. It makes them feel good about themselves.

‘Taxidermy.’

Her green eyes widen. ‘Stuffing dead animals?’

Here we go again. I swear I can’t help it. Every time I feel backed into a corner, my mouth starts spouting bullshit before my mind can put a stop to it. ‘Yeah. I’m working on this little scene right now, a Thorny Dragon lizard sitting and smoking a pipe in his study. I’m saving up to have his little suit made – tiny buttons, you’d be amazed how much it costs.’ I look around at her wardrobe then add, ‘Well, maybe not.’

Her phone vibrates in her hand and she scrutinizes its contents from a distance, holding her phone at arm’s length as if she doesn’t want whoever it is to be able to get at her.

‘Men,’ she says, giving me a knowing look, and I smile like I understand her, even though I know just looking at her that I never will. I was the only Black girl in my year at school. The only one. I know I still have damage from the whole blonde-is-better, Abercrombie-&-Fitch propaganda I was subjected to as a teenager, but anyone can see that Emily is the Dreamgirl, the beautiful blonde protagonist of every American teen film I watched growing up.

She leans over her windowsill and rests her forearms on the ledge. I get the feeling she wants me to stay and talk, and I oblige her because it’s too boiling to do any more work.

‘You’ve got a lot of bags,’ I say, gesturing towards the wardrobe.

She smiles then, slowly, unsheathes her smile like a weapon, her teeth dazzlingly white. ‘Presents, mostly.’

‘From who?’

She shrugs.

‘Your parents?’

‘No.’

‘Who, then?’

But she doesn’t say anything, just winks at me before turning back towards the window.

Two

Abercrombie Bitch

My best friend, Jess, is getting ready in front of her makeup-dirtied wardrobe mirror. From the Polaroids stuck around the frame, dozens of faces watch her as she stands in a corset top and knickers and considers what to do with her hair. Some are overexposed by light and heat, nothing more than sunspots floating on the tops of shoulders, but in most of them I can make out the glitter paint and bucket hats of Glastonbury and Coachella festivals past. There is Xanthe, her flatmate from first-year halls, wetsuited on the beach at Newquay and posing suggestively with a kayak paddle. The netball girls on their European tour, drinking cocktails from three-litre barrels at a foam party in Malaga. I cringe when I see them now, after everything that happened in Year 13.

Jess and I don’t have much in common. She has always been a go-getter, team player, teacher’s favourite, whereas I’ve had about three friends in my whole life put together. I guess that’s the reason we met – she was the new girl at school, just moved towns from Clacton-on-Sea, and the only empty chair in form room was next to me. ‘I like your butterfly clip,’ she told me. It was actually a death’s head moth that I had pressed and laminated with the library machine, but I smiled and told her it was from Claire’s Accessories. She wrote her name on her exercise book in green glitter-gel pen. She had scented erasers and a set of pastel-coloured highlighters.

We’re getting ready to go out for my birthday. Well, Jess is getting ready. I put on my face hours ago and am currently lying on her bed holding my phone above me at a perilous angle to disguise the fact that I’m messaging Toby, who Jess thinks is a useless stoner.

While she zips up her jeans, our eyes meet in the mirror. ‘When was the last time you took some pictures?’ she asks coyly. Caging me in.

‘If you want to get anywhere taking pictures you’ve got to show them to people – and I don’t know any.’ I pop a tab of gum and chew with deliberate casualness. Then I use the same hand to slick back some of the baby hairs which have emerged out of my high bun, now fraying at my temples like bits of tassel at the edge of a rug.

‘God. What I wouldn’t give for a bit of volume like you, Ag.’ Jess has plugged her curlers in at the socket and is flicking her ginger hair around in the mirror. She does that sometimes – goes on autopilot, her mouth forming half a sentence before changing topics. She’s well-meaning, just has a poor attention span.

‘This hair ain’t for the faint-hearted, darling,’ I say, being generous because I’m relieved by the change of subject.

Jess is always pleasantly surprised by my changing hairstyles. She assumes it’s like a magician’s trick, oblivious to the long hours it takes to finesse my braids or put in my weave. She gets frustrated if she has to spend more than fifteen minutes on hair styling.

Her brow furrowed with concentration, she begins to wrap strands of hair around the heated tongs, then unfurls each curl with a tentative pat like it’s something precious.

‘But surely it’s worth it if it’s what you really want to do?’ She’s back on the Help Agnes Find Her True Purpose mission. Ever since I crashed out of Sixth Form in spectacular fashion, with nothing but a smattering of failed exam results and a bad case of anxiety to my name, Jess has been worried about me. When she and everyone else around me moved on, leaving for universities and apprenticeships, I started working for a cleaning company, and Jess’s concern escalated to embarrassment – which she’s now converted into this coy little life-coach act. ‘I mean, is there anything you love more than photography?’

‘Um . . . fucking?’

Jess turns around and waves the tongs at me. ‘Don’t make me use these,’ she threatens.

‘Look, I know what you’re saying.’ I sit up, readjusting my crop top which has ridden up to show the underside of my left tit. ‘I need to stop cleaning houses, love myself, manifest my dreams. But cleaning isn’t so bad.’

Jess rolls her eyes.

‘Rude,’ I say. ‘I’m a highly employable professional, I’ll have you know. We’ve got, let me see . . .’ I start to count on my fingers. ‘Attention to detail. Discretion. Exquisite client care, delivered with intimacy and understanding.’ Jess is snorting now, but it’s true. Nobody knows their clients better than I do. I’ve dusted stray hairs from their pillowcases with the back of my hand, wiped dried flecks of toothpaste from their bathroom mirrors, emptied their bins of scarlet tampons and shredded condom wrappers.

‘Listen, Jess,’ I say, getting off the bed to join her in the mirror. ‘It’s my birthday. I don’t want to be serious, I just want to get off my face and enjoy myself. Can we do that? Please?’

My arm is around her shoulders, my face pressed up against hers. She’s softening, I can tell. ‘You look gorgeous,’ I say, and kiss her cheek. She smells, as always, like Pantene shampoo. ‘Just make sure you shake those curls out or they’ll confiscate your ID, Shirley Temple.’

She pushes me away. ‘The cocktail?’ She has those cold hands that thin girls often do. She’s an icy constellation of knobbly red knuckles and knees.

‘The child actress, you airhead.’

‘Hmm. You’re not still talking to Toby, are you?’

‘No.’ I sit down and scroll intently through TikTok, because Jess is one of the few people who can usually tell when I’m lying.

Well, it’s a half-lie. Talking requires a level of involvement on both sides. My recent WhatsApp chat with Toby is a single, uninterrupted column of messages with blue ticks.

‘Why do you ask?’ I mumble, not looking up from my phone.

‘Well, the retro film reference for one. And I was just thinking he might be out tonight. Mightn’t he?’

Toby’s reverent awe for Woody Allen and his insistence that Annie Hall is the Best Film Ever Made hardly qualifies him as a cinephile. I have always been obsessed with Old Hollywood and went through a phase of illegally streaming every single Marilyn film ever made during quiet shifts at work, propping up my phone against the bathroom tap to use it as a screen.

‘Does that matter?’

Our eyes meet in the mirror again, hers narrow and searching, mine wide and innocent.

‘Ag!’ she squeals.

‘What?’

‘You’re sleeping with him!’

‘I . . .’ I bury my face in her pillow. ‘I’m ashamed, truly.’

Something soft makes contact with the back of my head. It’s Biffy, a bear with a pink satin bonnet that Jess swears she will never throw away, and has now chucked at me.

‘What is wrong with you, Agnes?’

‘Everything.’ I roll onto my back and look up at the ceiling, arms outstretched, palms upturned. ‘The dick is tragically good, Jess. Why is it the worse the guy, the better the dick?’

‘I can’t even talk to you about this.’ She takes a deep breath and continues with her curling.

I don’t tell her I’ve texted Toby to tell him we’re going to town (Going out with Jess tonight, Wasteland central!), in the hopes that he shows up to wish me a happy birthday. I’ve been dropping hints for weeks but as of yet nothing’s materialized.

‘Now how do I look?’ Jess asks.

Her red hair is coiled up around her face like springy telephone wire.

‘Like the best poodle at Crufts.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘Blue-ribbon winner.’

She rolls her eyes then leans forward and rakes through her newly formed curls with her fingertips. The spirals loosen and lengthen into shiny waves.

‘Better?’

‘Better.’

‘Right,’ she says, clapping her hands. Her boots are ready and waiting by the door next to my battered Converse. ‘Now down your drink, you’re too sober.’

We are venturing by local cab into the rotting heart of The Wasteland. It harbours diverse local attractions such as Poundlands, Costcutters, betting shops, and the Three Butts, a pub outside which an old man once made the Nazi salute at me. The river that courses through its heart carries a sour, sulphuric smell.

Our taxi drives down Jury Road, passing Tasty Garden (an okay Chinese), Bengal Blue (a sub-par curry house), a garage lot filled with a sea of old Fords and Peugeots in varying states of decay, some with flaky green algae set into the roofing. The yellow light from the street lamps sparkles off the enamel on Jess’s teeth and the highlighter on her browbone. As we pull up by an underpass, a homeless man watches us from the dark hollow under the bridge.

We downed shots of Tequila Rose in the last five minutes before the taxi got here, and as I swing my feet out of the vehicle I realize that I’m approximately one strong drink away from being wasted. Jess walks with purpose, like a girl scout, and I trail her past the Three Butts, down the cobbled main road with the big building that’s been empty since Woolworths closed down. Our destination is a bar called, unimaginatively, the Joint. It is the only watering hole in town where we don’t risk running into a member of the English Defence League or being enlisted into an impromptu line dance. It is the kind of place which plays a cycle of Cascada, Abba and Rizzle Kicks, has two-for-one deals on a drink called Purple Rain and pushes the tables to one side so people can dance after 11 p.m. It reeks of old upholstery soaked in cider, a smell I actually find comforting now. The one regular is an old man with a scraggly grey beard down to his stomach who sits at a fruit machine and shouts at it, absorbed in his own world, oblivious to the growing crowds.

It’s a Saturday which means the Joint is packed tonight. Jess and I dance pushed up against each other in the middle of the floor. I keep looking around, hoping to see Toby’s gap-toothed smile or shaggy brown hair lit up by the disco lights, but no such luck. I check my phone again.

‘Stop doing that,’ says Jess. ‘Don’t worry about that tonight.’

‘But, Jess . . .’

‘Fuck him!’ she says. ‘He doesn’t deserve you.’ I try not to wince at this phrase, drained of all meaning by the sheer number of times I’ve heard Jess say it to me over the last six months, and allow a quick nod.

‘Let’s dance.’

Jess looks pretty tonight. Prettier than me. Curled hair, false lashes, lips overlined with brown pencil. Her cheekbones are dusted with white glittery highlighter, a tiny silver star sticker under her left eye like a cosmic beauty mark. She gets talking to a couple of men – surprisingly decent, they both have all their hair and a full set of front teeth – tells them it’s my birthday and they disappear in the fog of the disco before returning with a tray of cheap shots in fluorescent green plastic shot-glasses. They’re all different flavours like ‘Birthday Cake’ and ‘Cherry Bomb’ and they taste like children’s medicine.

My feet start to feel light in my sandals, even though I know the straps are cutting grooves. The bass of the music rattles my ribcage. I realize with a sudden, satisfied feeling that I’m drunk.

‘You like to dance, huh?’

I turn to see who’s speaking to me. A Lacoste polo tee done up to the top button, sweat-slicked hair lying flat along his forehead.

‘Reminds me of bein’ a kid,’ he slurs, gesturing round at the sticky floor, the jittery neon strobes. His pupils are wide black holes.

‘What? Were you part of the circus or something?’ I reply, casting an eye over the undulating crowd.

He laughs, whisky breath. ‘No, I mean the music, the dancing . . .’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say flatly. ‘I had a fire-and-brimstone, vengeance-and-Bible-verses kind of childhood. No secular music allowed. No pubs. Just church.’ Then I quickly swivel round before he can look at me like I’m crazy.

I find Jess dancing with the man who bought the shots, their hips locked together as they grind to ‘Waiting all Night’ by Rudimental. That last shot I took is pulsing through my system.

‘I need to go to the loo,’ I yell into Jess’s ear.

She nods though I don’t think she can hear me. It has not escaped Jess’s notice that she is my only friend these days, apart from my sister Marlena, and although she tactfully ignores this topic in conversation, I think it gives her leave to take my presence for granted.

Of course, she doesn’t know about Emily. And I intend to keep it that way.

Ignoring the girls snorting keys next to the hand dryer, I fall into a cubicle, hit the green phone icon next to Toby’s name and press my mobile to my ear.

‘What?’ he growls. I’m not deterred by this blunt opening. Toby is efficient with words, his text messages to me a continuous cycle of the phrases Yh, Wat time? and Ok x. In person, I always think he sounds a bit like a gruff old man, although he is twenty-three, handsome in a washed-out kind of way, sandy-haired and grey-eyed and lanky in football shorts.

‘Toby, it’s my birthday,’ I say.

‘Happy birthday, Ag. But listen, you can’t be buzzing me like this. We’ve talked about it.’

The fact that this is an unusually high volume of sentences for Toby to utter in one go gives me confidence to pursue my mission. ‘I know I’m drunk, but hear me out.’

‘Ag, I—’

‘I think I have feelings for you.’

‘—don’t want a relationship right now.’

My confession was muffled by his voice, thank Jesus, but the fact that he didn’t hear me pour out my guts in real time is a paltry consolation.

‘Look, Ag, we’ve been through this.’ His voice softens. ‘Just chill out so we can keep having fun, all right? Peace and love.’

The line goes dead. Before I can even register what’s happening, let alone the fact that I have just been told to chill out by a man who sources his weed on a Reddit forum, a torrent of vomit is wrenched out of me and slops orange and chunky into the toilet bowl. I crouch down on the filthy floor with the piss and the splashes of vomit. My bare legs are coated in bodily fluids and fragments of discarded tissue. More vomit. I pluck a wodge of toilet roll and wipe my mouth with a shaky fist. Happy fucking birthday to me.

I hear a group of girls come into the toilets, three or four maybe. There’s the click of a phone-camera shutter, and I imagine them gathered around the mirrors, staring down their reflections and snapping pouty selfies.

‘She looks a right state,’ says one of the girls. Her voice is kind of familiar.

‘Imagine spending your twenty-first birthday here.’ I think I hear that next part, but I also know I’m prone to paranoia when wasted, to hearing voices and thinking everyone is talking about me. One of the many after-effects of my wild ride through secondary education. I try to push back the inevitable thought spiral the way my CBT counsellor taught me when I was thirteen, and actually succeed for a few seconds – until I hear my best friend’s name. Spoken loud and clear.

‘Poor Jess, doing charity work.’

The bathroom swells with house music as they leave, their voices quickly fading to nothing. I turn the cubicle lock and stand by the sinks. I am sobered, overcome by a dark anxious feeling that stoppers my insides like thick tar and makes me feel as though I can’t breathe. I use water and napkins to wipe the sticky stuff off my legs and dab some cool water on my forehead. They’re right, I do look a mess. My liquid liner has run down my cheeks, turned to grey, and I’m sweatier than the Lacoste polo creep from earlier.

‘. . . it must be in here.’ The door swings open and Izzy Collins comes through it. I knew I recognized her voice. Abercrombie bitch. ‘Oh.’ Her mouth opens and shuts like she’s an electrocuted goldfish.

In the sweepstakes of public humiliation, overhearing a bygone it-girl from Year 13 bitching about you is mid-level. Having them realize you have been eavesdropping is off the charts. For a second, I worry that maybe neither of us will move or say a word and we’ll be trapped in this horrifically awkward moment for eternity. But then she wishes me ‘Happy birthday’ in a clipped voice, flushes bright red and leaves.

The lipstick she’s come back for is left sitting by the basin in its pretty gold case. I take off the lid and appraise its colour, then slick it onto my lips before putting it into my handbag.

Three

Fire and Sulphur

I wake up in my own bed the morning after with a desert-dry mouth and an EDM beat drop thrumming on repeat in my ears. I have no recollection of how I got here. The last text message on my phone is from Jess.

03:36 am: Couldn’t find u to say goodbye! Guessing you had to get home before your Mum woke up. HAPPY BIRTHDAY text me when you get home xxxx

Constance and the church ladies are already in the living room casting out demons. I can tell from the murmuring, eerie chorus drifting up through my floorboards. Of course. There is no respite from the weekly prayer meeting.

I allow myself a few seconds of self-pity, gaze mournfully at the moth which has fluttered in and settled on the ceiling lamp. Resistance is futile, I think, then drag myself out of bed and into a top with a virginal collar, a floral midi-skirt that wafts primly at my calves. I splash some cold water on my face and scrape away the fossilized remains of last night’s make-up.

Downstairs, soft gospel music plays on the kitchen stereo. I put the kettle on and lean against the countertop, focusing all my attention on trying not to be sick in my mouth. It’s difficult because our house is hotter than a kebab truck in summer months, thanks to criminally small windows and a high concentration of neighbouring homes. It’s a red-brick semi in an estate near The Wasteland’s High Street, which Constance bought off a scheme for council-home occupants in the nineties. The front door opens directly onto the living room, accessed exclusively from the inside of the house by walking through the kitchen, which opens through a third door onto the staircase, leading up to our bedrooms and the bath. This odd structure gives the house the feeling of a tiny carpeted labyrinth, and means there is no discreet way to sneak out late at night except via the glazed window in the side of the kitchen. I have perfected the art of scrambling on my hands and knees over the gas stove without making a sound, nudging the latch open with my toe, making sure not to knock over the cactus pot and guardian angel statue on the sill, and dropping silently onto the asphalt patch outside.

The 11 p.m. curfew is just one of Constance’s extensive list of rules – no make-up, no missing curfew, no going to a boy’s house or having a boy over, ‘holy’ relationships only, no alcohol or drugs, no tattoos or piercings, and no fucking fun under any circumstances.

As the saying goes, strict parents make sneaky kids. I once had a massive lovebite above my collarbone and told Constance it was a bruise I got helping Yemi Oluwawe’s son down from a tree. Every time I pop the morning-after pill, I get assaulted by pain and nausea for two weeks thanks to my useless gut, and have to come up with a new creative alibi. Last time it was bad tuna mayo from the train station café – a little light retching and a scoop of John West in brine flushed down the toilet and she’s none the wiser. Jess’s parents have begrudgingly agreed to lie for me on more than one occasion.

I really thought things would ease up when I was fourteen, or seventeen, but at the grand adult age of twenty-one I’m an expert-level escape artist who can do a full face of make-up in the back of a taxi and perform six different sex positions in a Volkswagen Polo.

At least Constance has the sleep schedule of a Benedictine monk. I rely, in desperate times, on the assurance for the most part that she’s in bed by ten. If I’d arrived home after my birthday night out and seen the light on in the hall, I’d have legged it back to Jess’s and texted Constance saying we fell asleep watching Netflix. Exhausting? I know.

The kettle burps out steam as the red light at the base flicks off. I make a black coffee, gingerly edging around the fruit cake with blue icing and silver balls that Marlena made for my birthday – naturally, my sensible and studious sister is at the library. But before I can make my bid for freedom up the stairs, Constance wordlessly opens the living-room door in a kaftan and stretches out her arm for me to join the prayer group. She looks like Nefertiti, with the kind of face that begs to be photographed. I can smell the coconut and hibiscus of her hair product as she draws me inside. Her curly auburn hair is drenched in sunlight, becoming a halo, and she coaxes me into the prayer circle. If other women are yardsticks who we measure ourselves against, my own personal metric system started with my mother.

‘Did you have a good time with Jessica?’

‘Yes.’ No.

‘That’s nice.’

Constance is the woman whose beauty, humility and piety I never had a hope of living up to. She’s closer to the source than the rest of us, you see, a mortal angel. If she ever found out what I get up to she’d double over and throw up on the kitchen tiles, then take the little souvenir vial of holy water down from the shelf in the living room and douse me with it. Her face is as beautiful as it is bare, and earnest as a slate roof tile. High regal cheekbones, deepset almond eyes with hazel flecks in the iris. When she fixes her gaze on you it’s hard to look away. I notice it all the time in supermarket cashiers and cleaning clients. There’s something a bit unjust in having a mother that much more beautiful than you, unnatural even.

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death. I can feel her breath on my face as she prays, now fervently uttering phrases in the strange, rambling language of tongues.

In the corner of the living room is a big burgundy sofa that’s older than me, which Constance keeps covered up with a thick crocheted blanket to hide its thinning arms and sagging seats. I slump on it, watching the women sway with eyes clamped shut and arms outstretched to summon the Holy Ghost. Uko in her virtuous pastel cardigan, Phyllis with her stiff grey coiffure and Constance’s auburn ’fro catching the light. They are the three staples of my childhood, iconic and stoic as saints – the only father figure I grew up with was the Big Man himself and frankly, he’s yet to make an appearance.

I make the obligatory stab at praying – Dear God, please save me from this hangover and please, please, please let Toby text me back. I still feel heavy and sour, as if my stomach is pooling with battery acid. My head is empty except for the cursed, echoing vibration of the bass drop from the Joint.

Four

Test Rabbit

Toby’s seeing someone else. I find out in the usual way: open Snapchat, check his story (like always), hear a girl’s voice, replay it, replay it again, go to her page and check the comments on her pictures, find Toby’s name and the trail of smiley-heart eyes he’s left there, stay up until sunrise comparing myself to her FaceApped pictures and wake up with my teeth grinding and repetitive strain in my thumbs.

At work, I think about him. When I flick cobwebs, when I squirt bleach around the inside of a toilet bowl, when I scrub polish into the crevices of an ornate mirror frame with a toothbrush. My romantic yearning isn’t dampened by the smell of disinfectant – if anything it’s ignited – and I’m haunted by questions like, How will I know I’m alive without Toby to witness me? How will I know I exist without Toby to touch me? And crucially, who’s going to eat me out now? These are not the questions a woman should be asking herself after her six-month situationship realizes she’s catching feelings and dips out. I know. I should be inserting a rose quartz yoni egg into my vagina and reciting self-love affirmations in the mirror. But the fact is that without Toby, I’m living in a monotonous hellscape with no adrenaline to balance out the tedium of my everyday tasks.

Even Jess is gone now, departed on a two-month holiday to Thailand with her uni friends before the autumn term, leaving me to fester in The Wasteland for the rest of the summer. I was invited, of course, but both of us knew it was just a formality. I couldn’t even afford the plane ticket. It adds an extra sting knowing that Olive will be there too – one of the girls from Gladwell Secondary. She begrudgingly tolerated me at school because of my association with Jess but I always sensed the condescension in her voice on the few occasions she deigned to address me directly. Now, she studies international relations at the same uni as Jess – so in a few years’ time when this country sends their foreign news correspondents to Libya or Syria, amongst them will be a first-class cunt called Olive.

Friendless and bored, I do the one thing available to me to fill up my time and ensure my continued survival. I book all the cleaning shifts I can get, pull on my candy pink-striped overalls and catch the bus (Dayrider return ticket) to the northern boundary of town. To Emily.

*

Emily is sitting in the kitchen on her laptop when I arrive, dressed in tiny black jersey shorts and a cerise sports bra with sparkly trimming and ruching at the breastbone. She looks like an off-duty Victoria’s Secret model on her way to Pilates in 2011. A pink Agent Provocateur parcel is on the floor beside her, its black ribbon intact.

‘Lingerie,’ says Emily without looking up, ‘is the fakest gift on the planet. It’s just a polite way for men to say they want to see you without your clothes on.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say with a sigh, ‘no one’s ever bought me any.’

I’m happy to see her. She intrigues me. I’d like to part her perfect skull down the middle, click it open like a clutch-purse, poke around inside the soft wet pink of her brain.

Emily looks up from her silver-grey MacBook and squints at me.

‘You look . . . terrible,’ she says, ‘like you haven’t slept in a week.’

‘Strange,’ I say, not missing a beat. ‘I’ve been sleeping like a baby.’

Emily stirs Manuka honey into her green tea and tells me she wants to have ‘a quick chat’ before I start my shift. The formality of this request puts me on edge – has she noticed the suspenders missing from her drawer? Her face is more mischievous than angry, so I figure I’m probably okay. I am supposed to be doing the cupboards right now but I’ve stopped to give her my full attention, holding the lambswool duster across my chest like a bouquet. Emily is probably used to being attended to in this way, because she looks exactly like Margot Robbie’s character in Wolf of Wall Street. She has definitely perfected YouTube hair tutorials with names like Easy French Twist Updo and Six Instagram Baddie Hairstyles You Need to Try; every time we meet, her blonde mane is pinned and tied into a new structure. Today it’s Pam Anderson-esque with a wispy fringe, teased up at the crown and then messily piled on top of her head and pinned in place. It’s not something the average civilian can pull off. It’s definitely not a hairstyle that you ever see in The Wasteland.

Emily’s a city girl to the bone, you can tell. She probably gets the train down here for the occasional weekend – delicately avoiding The Wasteland’s high street, heading straight for the hills – to sleep off a hangover and make the most of her mum’s Sky subscription and cupboard full of expensive herbal teas. Then when it’s Sunday afternoon and she’s sufficiently detoxed her insides, she rattles straight back into the hot core of London.

Sipping her tea while wincing at its heat, Emily tells me she’s writing an e-book and she wants to publish it anonymously. It’s going to be called 10 Easy Ways to Get a Man to Do Anything You Want. She has experience in this area, she says.

Emily started out just modelling, a job which she still does part-time. Male celebrities would meet her at events and then find her on Instagram or start contacting her agency to get a date with her, in increasing numbers. One afternoon in a low-lit bar in Richmond-on-Thames, a Bafta award-winning actor (his name kept anonymous by Emily for privacy) kissed her goodbye on the cheek and then put a white envelope in her hands, thanking her for the beautiful afternoon. It contained a large amount of cash and his phone number. She realized, then, that there was only the tiniest side-shuffle between posing for fashion lines and posing during a three-hour date.

‘If a man’s got money I can get it out of him,’ she says. ‘It’s easy once you learn how. I could show you how to make a career out of lunches and champagne, Agnes.’ She looks up at me from whatever she’s been scrutinizing on the laptop screen, a flash of uncertainty in the form of an arched eyebrow. ‘I mean, if you want. It’s just . . . I was thinking, it might be good to test out some theories before I publish them, to make sure it all works.’

‘So you want me to be like your guinea pig or something?’ I say, stroking the feathers on the duster while trying to decide whether the proposition is flattering or demeaning.

‘Not a guinea pig,’ she says. ‘Something cuter like . . . a rabbit. They have rabbits in test labs, right?’

‘You don’t have any friends who’d want to be your test rabbits?’

‘My friends have already been involved in this shit for years,’ she says. She’s watching me and her eyes are doing something strange, dilating on demand, and her voice is lower, softer. ‘So what do you think? Ready to make some real money, Agnes?’

‘What makes you think I’d be any good at it? I can barely get a text back.’

‘Well,’ she explains, looking me up and down, ‘you’re a pretty girl, the right age, well-spoken. A blank canvas.’ I don’t know if I like the sound of that last bit. ‘And you’re a critical thinker,’ she continues. ‘Trust me. Being irresistible is easy when you know how.’

I put the feather duster down and lean with my elbows on the kitchen island, because the thing about Emily is, resisting her feels like spiting yourself.

*

First, she impresses upon me the importance of concealing my identity when meeting a stranger for the first time. ‘You might meet a real creep and want to disappear. Keep your name a secret and vanish into the blue, easy-peasy.’

She lists a range of other tactics: order the second-most expensive thing on the menu to show you’ve got good taste but you’re not out to take the piss, always negotiate an allowance before the end of the date, wear perfume with lavender, vanilla and pumpkin essence because these supposedly stimulate blood flow to the penis so the man associates your presence with arousal. Wear red, use sparkly eyedrops, lower your voice and talk at half the usual speed so they watch your mouth and lean in to hear you.

And then the golden rule: discretion is queen, but cash is king. If he has a nice time, ask for more money. If he wants you to dress up, ask for more money. If he wants to see you at short notice, ask for more money.

Another point Emily is very clear on. She is not an escort, not a prostitute, not a call girl. She is simply a participant in a mutually beneficial relationship.

‘“Sugar baby” is probably the closest term,’ she tells me, yawning and inspecting the nails on her left hand, ‘but I don’t like labels. It’s better to think of it all as a business. We’ve got youth and good looks and they’re commodities in demand, so we provide a streamlined service. Everybody wins.’ She’s matter-of-fact now, more monotone, less coaxing. ‘Think you could handle that?’

I’m not sure if it’s my week of cleaning and double prayer group with Uko and Phyllis making me feel desperate, or the fact that Emily’s signature scent – a syrupy rose, like Turkish delight – makes it impossible to think straight, but I am seriously considering it.

The job that Emily is describing is not so different from mine, after all. Attention to detail. Discretion. Exquisite client care. The difference is that I’m an unknown entity to my clients. I walk their grand houses like a nameless ghost. Backstage, you know? What Emily is suggesting sounds like a performance.

Of course, there is another difference.

Escort. Prostitute. Call girl. What do these three terms have in common? I’m not a prude, obviously, but the idea of a blurred line between sex and business is kind of making me freak out.

‘Would I have to . . . ?’

‘There are all kinds of arrangements,’ Emily says. ‘Some guys literally just want a dinner date. Someone charming to listen to their conspiracy theories about 9/11 and make them feel clever for introducing you to Nick Cave’s deep cuts.’

She raises an eyebrow. I can feel my face getting hotter.

‘Okay, that’s some. But what about the others?’ I blurt out in a single breath.

‘Oh, darling.’

As if on cue, I hear a soft clinking, and Camilla comes wafting into the room. Her love of metallic jewellery means you often hear her before you see her.

‘Hello, Agnes,’ she says, both her stern tone and her unimpressed expression making me rethink my slouch over the kitchen counter. ‘I hope this one isn’t keeping you from your work.’

Emily touches her hand lightly to my forearm. ‘Agnes, Mum is throwing a party on Saturday. You should come.’

‘Oh, what a lovely idea,’ Camilla says evenly. ‘Do come, Agnes. And you must bring your mother too.’

Constance is the regular cleaner at this house – Camilla adores her – but she can’t do Wednesdays anymore because she’s helping at the United Pentecostals soup kitchen or something so I’m covering for her.

We work together, Mum and I. She signed me up at Mrs Finch’s cleaning agency when it became apparent I couldn’t hold a retail job down. I think she wanted to keep an eye on me. Every immigrant parent’s worst nightmare, but she didn’t make me feel bad about it. Just gave me a speech about how careful we need to be in our clients’ homes, how some things can never be properly clean again once they’ve gotten dirty, some things can never be fixed once they’ve been broken. I trailed her like a little pink shadow in my uniform.

By the time I’ve mumbled something about not wanting to intrude, Camilla’s already halfway out the door again.

The way Emily is watching me now is like I’m a little project of hers, her chin resting on her hand as she looks me up and down, eyes glowing with mischief.

‘We can chat more on Saturday,’ she says, ‘but I have so many things to teach you.’

‘Like what?’ I’m trying not to show how excited I am. Be cool, Agnes, don’t smile like a fucking idiot.

Emily opens up her laptop screen and turns it round on the tabletop so I can see a title typed out in capitals:

CREATING YOUR CHARACTER

*

I’m staring at the phosphorescent stars pasted on my bedroom ceiling, Emily’s words from earlier today running through my mind on repeat.

Trust me, being irresistible is easy when you know how.

I can imagine an upgraded version of myself, teeth whiter, salon-waxed, dressed head to toe in designer. No more scrubbing toilets, just rolling around in my black Rolls-Royce to beauty appointments, brunches and cocktail parties – in London. Everything paid for by a fleet of men who throw money at me just for being gorgeous. God, that sounds too good to be true. And there’s a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach warning me that it probably is.

There are all kinds of arrangements.

I’d have to keep it from Constance, of course, another secret. And I suppose there might be a bit of moral resistance that I’d have to dramatically overcome. Some sleazy banker would take me for dinner then back to his hotel room where he’d hold out a wad of cash and ask for a sexual favour, I’d say no, we’d go back and forth in a charade of manners, notes stacking up until it became absurd to refuse and at last I’d do the deed. Then I’d emerge like Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries, two plain-Jane photographs of myself parting to reveal a high-fashion vamp, a premium creature of the night.

I’m surprised to find that thinking about it turns me on. Thinking about myself as someone confident, utterly shameless, and impossible to resist. I push everything off my bed – plush animals, decorative pillows – peel my thong off and drop it over the edge of the bed where it falls on top of my cherished Helmut Newton photobook.

I see God then, literally – I look up at the ceiling and see Jesus, white and blue robes, golden halo, floating above me shaking his head in disgust. He extends his arm, index finger pointing downwards, and I feel the lake of sulphur beneath me, the bottom of the mattress burning away. Sigh. He always shows up when it’s inappropriate.

The thing about being raised in a strict religious household is that no matter how hard you resist it, a part of you will always see things as split into two. Good versus evil. Pure versus impure. Madonna versus whore. You’re not a saint so you must be a demon.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? I’ve had so many Bible verses recited at me over the years that my mind just spits them out at the most inconvenient times.

When I need to summon enough arousal to compete with the guilt, it helps to think about Toby, which is really fucking annoying but needs must. So I focus hard, channelling a particular memory where he removed my pink overalls, pulled my underwear to the side and started to eat me with his fingers stroking at the inside of me. You know, the upwards motion thing that everyone knows about but hardly any guys can be bothered to do? And if they press down on your lower stomach with the other hand at the same time it makes you . . .

That’s better.

*

Toby is on top of me, he’s stripped me naked and now he wants me to beg. I love it when you’re fucking a guy and his face gets all primal and he doesn’t even really look like himself. I never liked polite sex, lovemaking. Is it too much to ask to be out of my skin and feel like an animal? Toby always understood this. Some people do and some people don’t, it has to come from inside.

‘I don’t think you really want me to fuck you,’ he says, teasing me with the tip of his cock.

He pushes half an inch inside me and then pulls out. I’m so wet it’s not even funny.

Fuck it. I start begging. Please, Toby. I reach out and grab him, hold on to the backs of his thigh and pull him into me.

He grips my throat while he fucks me, and then when I’m done he eats me until I come again.