Irina stares at him blankly.
I think his delicacy might have been lost in translation.
“Do they pay for sex?” I ask, lowering my voice to a murmur—wanting to show we have her back. “That’s what he means.”
Again she glances at the windows, out at the dark street. She’s practically hovering in her seat, looking like she’s ready to leg it at any moment.
“Do you want more money?” I prompt. I kind of want her to ask for more. I’m sure Theo can afford it.
She nods, quickly.
I nudge Theo. “Go on then.”
A little reluctantly he pulls another couple of notes out of his pocket, slides them across the table to her. Then, almost like she’s reading from some sort of script, she says: “No. It is illegal in this country. To pay.”
“Oh.” Theo and I look at each other. I think we must both be thinking the same thing. In that case, then what . . . ?
But she hasn’t finished. “They don’t buy that. It’s clever. They buy wine. They spend big money on wine.” She spreads her hands to demonstrate this. “There’s a code. If they ask for a ‘younger’ vintage that’s the kind of girl they want. If they ask for one of the ‘special’ vintages it means they’d like . . . extras. And we do everything they want us to. We do whatever they ask. We’re theirs for the night. They choose the girl—or girls—they want, and they go to special room with a lock on the door. Or we go somewhere with them. Hotel, apartment—”
“Ah,” Theo says, grimacing.
“The girls at the club. We don’t have family. We don’t have money. Some have run from home. Some—many—are illegal.” She sits forward. “They have our passports, too.”
“So you can’t leave the country,” I say, turning to Theo. “That’s fucking dark.”
“I can’t go back there anyway,” she says, suddenly, fiercely. “To Serbia. It wasn’t—it wasn’t a good situation back home.” She adds, defensively: “But I never thought—I never thought that would be where I’d end up, a place like that. They know we won’t go to the police. One of the clients, some girls say he is police. Important police. Other places get shut down all the time. But not that place.”
“Can you actually prove that?” Theo asks, sitting forward.
At this, she checks over her shoulder and lowers her voice. Then she nods. “I took some photos. Of the one they say is police.”
“You’ve got photos?” Theo leans forward, eagerly.
“They take our phones. But when I started speaking to Ben he gave me a camera. I was going to give this to your brother.” A hesitation. Her eyes dart between us and the window. “More money,” she says.
Both of us turn to Theo, wait as he finds some more cash and puts it on the table between us.
She fumbles her hand into the pocket of her jacket, then takes it back out, fist clenched, knuckles showing white. Very carefully, like she’s handling something explosive, she places a memory card on the table and pushes it toward me. “They’re not such good photos. I had to be so careful. But I think it’s enough.”
“Here,” Theo says, reaching out a hand.
“No,” Irina says, looking at me. “Not him. You.”
“Thank you.” I take it, slide it into my own jacket pocket. “I’m sorry,” I say, because it seems suddenly important to say it. “I’m sorry this has happened to you.”
She shrugs, hunches into herself. “Maybe it’s better than other things. You know? At least you’re not going to end up murdered at the end of an alley or in the Bois de Boulogne, or raped in some guy’s car. We have more control. And sometimes they buy us presents, to make us feel good. Some of the girls get nice clothes, jewelry. Some go on dates, become girlfriends. Everybody’s happy.”
Except she looks anything but happy.
“There’s even a story—” She leans closer, lowers her voice.
“What?” Theo asks.
“That the owner’s wife came from there.”
I stare at her. “What, from the club?”
“Yes. That she was one of the girls. So I guess it worked out OK for some.”
I’m trying to process this. Sophie Meunier? The diamond earrings, the silk shirts, the icy stare, the penthouse apartment, the whole vibe of being better than everyone else . . . she was one of them? A sex worker?
“But it’s not rich husbands for everyone. Some guys—they refuse to wear anything. Or they take it off when you’re not looking. Some girls get, you know . . . sick.”
“You mean STIs?” I ask.
“Yes.” And then in a small voice: “I caught something.” She makes a face, a grimace of disgust and embarrassment. “After that, I knew I had to leave. And some girls get pregnant. It happens, you know? There’s a story too, about a girl a long, long time ago—maybe it’s just a rumor. But they say she got pregnant and wanted to keep it, or maybe it was too late to do something . . . anyway, when she went into—” She mimes doubling over with pain.
“Labor?”
“Yes. When that happened she came to the club; she had no other place to go. When you’re illegal, you’re scared to go to hospital. She had the baby in the club. But they said it was a bad birth. Too much blood. They took her body away, no one ever knows she existed. No problem. Because she wasn’t official.”
Jesus Christ. “And you told all this to Ben?” I ask her.
“Yes. He said he would make sure I was safe. Help me out. A new start. I speak English. I’m clever. I want a normal job. Waitressing, something like that. Because—” Her voice wavers. She puts up a hand to her eyes. I see the shine of tears. She swipes at them with the heel of her hand, almost angrily, like she doesn’t have time for crying. “It’s not what I came to this country for. I came for a new life.”
And even though I never cry I feel my own eyes pricking. I hear her. Every woman deserves that. The chance of a new life.
Mimi
Fourth floor
I sit here on my bed, staring into the darkness of his apartment, remembering. On his laptop, three nights ago, I read about a place with a locked room. About what happened in that room. About the women. The men.
About how it was—is—connected to this place. To this family.
I felt sick to my stomach. It couldn’t be right, what he’d written. But there were names. There was detail. So much horrible detail. And Papa—
No. It couldn’t be true. I refused to believe it. It had to be lies—
And then I saw my own name, like I had in his notebook, when it had been so exciting. Only now it filled me with fear. Somehow I was connected to that place, too. There were horrible things my older stepbrother had said. I had always thought they were just random insults. Now I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think I could bring myself to read it, but I knew I had to.