Shameless by Paul Burston Read Free Book Online Page A

self-doubt. For every minute she spent on the phone to her mother, Caroline could feel the years of grooming and self-improvement slipping away. By the end of a typical conversation, she was no longer a successful account executive who, despite having left school with virtually no qualifications, had studied hard and long to learn everything she needed to know about the world of advertising. She was a shy fifteen-year-old with a weight problem and a room full of books for comfort. And the worst part of all was knowing that her mother had a sideboard full of photographs to prove it. That was why parents never threw old school photos away. It had nothing to do with sentimentality. It was just another means of ensuring that you didn’t get ideas above your station, another way of keeping you in your place.
    Just then an assistant appeared, advising her that Tony would be with her shortly. Caroline nodded as he picked up her empty coffee cup. He hovered meaningfully for a moment before asking whether madam would be requiring anything else in the way of refreshment. Recognizing this as her cue to pay a quick visit to the private room at the back, Caroline smiled and confirmed that a little of the usual wouldn’t go amiss. Damn her mother. Damn Graham. She was about to spend two hundred pounds of her hard-earned cash in a conscious effort to make herself more attractive, and nothing and nobody was going to spoil the experience. She stood up and followed the assistant to the back of the salon, reaching into her purse for her silver-plated cocaine straw as she went.
    By the time Tony was running his expert fingers through her long blond tresses, Caroline was feeling much happier.
    John was bored. He had spent the best part of the afternoon on-line, checking out the various gay chat rooms, and so far he hadn’t met anyone who took his fancy. Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. About half an hour ago, he’d had a fairly steamy conversation with someone by the name of “HotFitGuy,” who listed his hobbies as “computers, gym and sex with HOT, FIT and GOOD-LOOKING guys.” His on-screen profile contained a personal quote that suggested that, in addition to simply fancying himself, he also fancied himself as a bit of a philosopher—“If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, why don’t we get together and waste ourselves? And above all, aim to be the best. Second place is the first loser.” John was quite taken by this, but unfortunately the profile omitted to mention a few important details. Only after a prolonged exchange did it finally emerge that “HotFitGuy” wasn’t quite as hot or as fit as he made out. In fact, he was pushing forty, balding and appeared to have spent the past twenty years pumping up his pectorals in order to distract attention from his expanding midriff.
    Then there was “HornyStud.” His profile said that he was twenty-seven years old, six feet tall with brown eyes and dark hair, a thirty-two-inch waist, a forty-inch chest, sixteen-inch biceps and a seven-inch uncut cock. It listed his hobbies as “sex, men and more sex” and his occupation as “something manual.” It also contained a personal quote that read, “A Hard Man Is Nice to Find.” What it neglected to mention was that he was Asian. In fact, it was only when they swapped photos that this became apparent.
    To say that John was disappointed would be an understatement. He hadn’t felt so let down since the day he discovered that the smooth, firm buttocks the new, gym-fit Robbie Williams was happy to expose on the cover of
Vogue
weren’t entirely his own work but had been touched up by someone in the art department. Of course John knew that on-screen profiles weren’t always entirely reliable and that people were prone to exaggerate. As he had soon discovered the first time he visited a gay chat room, there were lies, damned lies and chat-room statistics. It wasn’t a coincidence that almost everyone in the chat