that greeted her wasn’t about her father.
‘ PLAYBOY HEIR IN SEX SCANDAL OVERDOSE! ’
Lola’s legs gave way under her. She sank down to the cobbled pavement, one of her Jimmy Choos twisting and snapping off a heel as she collapsed. But Lola was far, far beyond realising that
her last pair of shoes had just broken. She was staring at the photograph on the cover of the Evening Standard , which showed someone being carried on a stretcher out of the nastiest-looking
council estate staircase Lola could imagine. His face was blurred, but the golden sweep of hair over his forehead was horribly familiar.
Lola realised why Jean-Marc’s phone was going straight to voice-mail.
‘ STEEL HEIR JEAN-MARC VAN DER VEER OVERDOSES IN TRANSSEXUAL LOVE PAD! ’ the cover screamed. ‘ FIANCE OF “IT” GIRL LOLA CAUGHT WITH TRANNY
LOVER! ’
And just then, from the main street, a woman came running into the mews, her face lighting up as she spotted Lola.
‘Lola!’ she yelled. ‘Caroline Francis from the Sun ! Am I the first to catch you? What are your feelings about Jean-Marc’s overdose? Had you heard? Did you know he
was seeing a transsexual prostitute?’
Raisin-Face grabbed Lola’s arm and dragged her up.
‘Run!’ she said. ‘Come on, run !’
And so, hopping grotesquely from a four-inch heel to a flat foot, her head feeling as if it were about to explode, her only refuge the house of a woman she didn’t even know, Lola
Fitzgerald ran from the home that wasn’t hers any more, pursued by a Sun reporter yelling unbelievable allegations about her fiancé.
They barely made it back to Raisin-Face’s house in time. She literally slammed the door in the eager face of Caroline-Francis-from-the- Sun, and turned to Lola, completely unable to
disguise both her excitement at being in the middle of such a juicy tabloid story, and her joy at Lola’s humiliation.
‘ So! ’ she said, her over-stretched face trying so hard to move that it looked as if it might pop at any moment. ‘ Did you know about the transsexual
prostitute?’
Lola did the only thing left to her. She burst into a flood of hysterical tears. And then she fainted.
Chapter 2
E vie was halfway up her pole and contemplating what to do next. She hung there, head down, her ponytail a pale line of hair pointing towards the
ground. Her ankles were wrapped tightly around the pole, her knees clamped one on either side in a double-lock that ensured she wasn’t going anywhere.
Hmm. She tried a Caterpillar, holding onto the pole with both hands and levering herself up, rubbing her upper body along the pole so her bottom rose up suggestively, repeating it in a long slow
sexy loop of movement that she knew would send anyone viewing it into an instant wash of desire, watching her taut buttocks lift closer and closer to her crimson stack-heeled shoes, then descend as
the front of her body caressed the pole. After a couple of Caterpillars she checked her lock and changed her grip and pushed herself up and away from the pole into a Swan, gripping for dear life
with her legs, using her considerable abdominal strength to hold her in a deep arch, arms out to either side, breasts pushed forward like a figurehead on a boat.
It felt good, but it was a little too gymnastic to be sexy. Evie crossed her arms in front of her chest. Was that better? No, too coy, a bit like a statue on a tombstone. . . She lifted her arms
again and played with her hair, flicking it lightly, swaying her upper body fractionally from side to side, and knew she had the move now. Sexy mermaid. Cool. She could always sense it as soon as a
move worked, as soon as it connected with her crotch, like someone pulling lightly on her G-string. Instantly she felt sexy, as if a hundred male eyes were on her and fifty men were breathing fast
and deep, watching her play with her hair and twist her body into shapes that made their palms sweat and the blood rush to their groins.
Jesus, her ankles
Barbara Corcoran, Bruce Littlefield