The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

it turned out I didn’t have to do much dirty talk after all.
    mardi, le 5 octobre
    The Canadian at work, Erin, has a friend in another department, Mira, a moon-faced Asian girl. At least I think Mira’s in a different department. You wouldn’t know for certain, seeing as she’s always hovering around Erin’s desk.
    They talk. And talk. And talk some more. Their conversations aren’t unbearable as such, just endlessly banal. It’s not even a month and already I know more about celebrity breast implants than a sub-editor at Heat.
    The other topic of conversation is Erin’s fiancé back in Vancouver. I use ‘conversation’ in its loosest sense here since, as a soon-to-be-married woman of the world at twenty-four, Erin typically uses the opportunity to unfurl her wisdom on the relatively inexperienced twenty-three-year-old Mira.
    ‘It’s such a struggle being apart,’ Erin moans theatrically. One key element of making friends with women is casting everything that happens in the most tragic light possible. ‘Long-distance relationships are so difficult, you wouldn’t even know,’ she sighs.
    Oh, boo hoo, I think. Like you two are the first ever to live apart. Bitter about Dr C? Me? Surely not.
    ‘We have to rely on the phone for everything now – I mean everything.’ Erin lowers her voice a notch. ‘Even the sex.’
    And I bet he’ll dump you over the phone, too, I think.
    ‘Wow,’ Mira sighs, which encourages Erin to go on about what a romance it is and how this experience has confirmed for her that it’s meant to be. She swigs deeply from her ever-present water bottle. It’s the sort you only ever see Canadians or archaeologists carrying around, sipping from on an hourly basis as if the conditions of a modern city are approximate to those of the Mojave. I’ve been to India, Mauritius and Colombia; you can bet that anyone you see there carrying a Nalgene bottle will be either on a dig or from Vancouver.
    ‘The adversity is going to make us a stronger couple in the end, I can say that,’ Erin says. When did everyone start conversing in therapy-speak? I wonder whether it’s possible to go blind from rolling my eyes so much.
    I don’t know if it’s the accent or this girl specifically, but Erin’s voice has a foghorn-like quality that cuts through everything else. She took a conference call and I swear I had to almost jam my fist down the other ear to keep the honking out.
    Mira doesn’t contribute much. She lives with her parents, and is trying to get them to buy her a flat. If she’s ever been in love before it will have been with a baby-pink iPod or a fluffy kitten. She’s like a wobbly satellite to Erin’s sun.
    Erin’s launching into an in-depth rehash of last night’s phone call from her boyfriend when I put the phone down. I turn round in my chair. ‘Umm, I’m very sorry, but I’m sort of struggling through something here. Would you two mind keeping the noise level down a wee bit?’
    From the looks on their faces you would have thought I’d slapped them each with a rotten herring. ‘Yeah, ooookayyyy,’ Erin says. ‘Whatever.’
    ‘I’m sorry, I thought you said to speak up if I needed anything.’
    ‘And?’ Erin says, arching her brow. ‘Did you need something?’
    ‘Just wanted to say that it’s a little distracting, is all. Maybe you could go talk in Mira’s office.’
    ‘Well, yeah, but you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.’
    I mumble something about being terribly sorry and turn back to my desk, blushing madly. Why does it feel like being at school all over again? It’s a long, long time since I’ve been in the company of women.
    mercredi, le 6 octobre
    Am keeping a bag in my desk for after-work appointments, of which I hope there will be very few. Checked the website from home – not from work, don’t want to raise any suspicion in the IT department – and the manager seems to have kept to her promise and altered my profile.
    As in, the pictures are so