Bright Young Things by Scarlett Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

thrusting, that pelvic floor muscle thing. For the second hour she planned an exhibition. For the last (and it was like being rubbed with sandpaper) she recited William Blake’s ‘London’ in her head, over and over again.
    So now he’s crying. Why the hell is he crying? She’s the one who should be crying, for God’s sake. But she’s actually too tired to care. When she asks if she can stay for the night, David accepts, and then clings to her all night. All in all, Emily isn’t a very good prostitute. She’s kissed, she’s stayed the night and she didn’t even insist on a condom.
The Bill
hadn’t prepared her for all these details.
    In the morning David mumbles something about the hotel bill already being covered by his credit card, and then leaves. Emily dozes until about ten and then sits up in bed and orders breakfast and a newspaper. The curtains are already open. (Did he do that? How quaint.) The sun is intense, falling on her face as she lights a cigarette and reviews her night. On the bedside table is the money. She counts it and finds two hundred and ten pounds. A tip. How generous. But her bravado is melting away in the sunlight. Somehow, what she’s done doesn’t seem so funny any more.
    Her stomach churns. What the hell is she doing here? With no friends to laugh with and no irony to find, the situation just seems tragic. She was a child, then an art student, and now she’s a hooker. All in the space of what seems like five minutes. Emily tries to find the rewind button, but she can’t. The one thing she forgot last night was that the difference between just having sex and charging for it is that charging for it makes you a prostitute.
    Of course, last night it was a laugh being an escort. Emily’s always been the rebellious one (ask anyone at college) and the thought that someone at the party might find out . . . It had been kind of thrilling. But now? How can she defend what she’s done? She fucked a stranger for two hundred quid. She thinks back to the last thing she bought for that amount. A pair of
sunglasses
. Jesus. She’s fucked a man for a pair of sunglasses. No heroin habit, no kids, no debts. Those are reasons to become a prostitute. But for a pair of sunglasses?
    Emily needs a holiday. She wants to go far away for a very long time.
    Breakfast arrives in about fifteen minutes. Emily discards it, gagging on the smell of hotel bacon and eggs, suddenly not hungry. She pours a cup of coffee and opens the
Guardian Weekend
. Reading some news (well, Julie Burchill, the Style section and Dulcie Domum) puts her experience in perspective a little. In fact, with the smallest of smiles on her face, Emily realises she’s learnt something from the experience. It’s time to find a real job.

Paul
     
    Paul’s been on the Internet for seventy-two hours and is beginning to develop eye strain. He’s already fucked up the company that fired him, what . . . seventy-four hours ago? Yeah. Wednesday morning, that was when he cleared his desk. He’s already undone the whole accounts system, changed everyone’s passwords and deleted 16,000 e-mails from the company’s server. That took up the first twenty-four hours. Since then he’s been planning something big.
    In the gaps (waiting for text to load, waiting to crack a password, whatever), he’s gone for twenty-three pisses, had five pizzas delivered, had Internet sex with a girl called Vicky, and thought a lot about the number 23. It’s no accident that he’s been for twenty-three pisses. No accident that he’s had five pizzas. Two plus three equals five. Two and three. Always the number 23. Rebecca was twenty-three.
    Rebecca, in an indirect way, was the one who got Paul fired. Her and Daniel, of course. Paul’s never met Rebecca, but he tried to help her, once. It was one Friday in May when she rang up the support line and got Paul.
    ‘My e-mail’s fucked,’ she said.
    He cleared his throat. ‘And?’
    ‘And can you fix it?’
    Her voice