Their stern looks told me our conversation was over. The phone rang and Ellen spoke briefly into the receiver. They looked grim but offered to drive me back to work and I accepted. I got out of the car and waited for them to get out so we could walk in together but Ellen, who was at the wheel, drove off at breakneck speed, the rear wheels spraying gravel. My stomach was doing somersaults and I put it down to the fact that I would probably be seeking new employment tomorrow.
I didn’t understand what was going on but tried to push what had happened out of my mind as I walked into the house. Upon entering I noticed that the girls had been kind enough to save me a client. I looked at this man alone in the waiting room in his dark suit and white shirt and in my perkiest voice said, ‘Hi, I’m Summer, what’s your name?’
‘Constable M, now, what’s your real name?’
Having already been prepped for such an event, I knew not to carry any ID in my handbag.
‘Abigail Winters,’ I replied, giving him a bogus address and date of birth.
‘Mind if I inspect your bag, Abby? You don’t have any prohibited drugs do you?’
Knowing I had nothing in my bag, I gave it to him along with one of my best smiles. I was home and hosed, stupid pig. In my mind I was laughing at him, but not for very long.
He rummaged in the bag and found a letter from Ben, addressed to Annika Cleeve at my address. Inside he’d written: ‘Sweet Sixteen, my darling Annika.’
The constable took me by the arm and escorted me outside. Tears started to well in my eyes.
‘Annika, I know you’re a good girl, get out of this now. There is some serious shit going down over the next few months. Don’t trust your bosses. It’s no coincidence Peg and Ellen aren’t here. Someone as young, talented and beautiful as you can do better than this.’
Constable M surprised me with his kindness and his apparent knowledge of me. They must have been watching me for quite some time, both inside and outside of work. I wanted to give him the biggest hug, but I simply thanked him and promised that I would heed his warning.
It was 1987 and the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption was underway.
Over the next few weeks, Constable M and I got to be great chums. He told me that police were going to start knocking down all the parlours because of the inquiry. Names were going to start entering newspapers.
Occasionally, suited-up gentlemen would turn up on my doorstep and with a wink of their eye, I would let them in. Their only questions were ‘Staying out of trouble, Summer?’ or ‘Seen Peg and Ellen lately?’ M was trying to help me financially in his own little way, by referring clients onto me. He never admitted it was he who was the anonymous contact, but occasionally a shiny badge could be seen in the client’s pockets.
Clients could be so funny – they liked to believe they weren’t screwing around, they were simply helping a poor wayward girl. They saw the formality of handing over the cash as similar to an uncle at Christmas time, with his nondescript envelope laden with money. As he hands it over, he says, ‘Put this to good use now, darling.’ Clients loved to believe if it wasn’t for them the poor wretch would probably be living on the streets. They needed to believe, even in only a small way, that the girl was doing it for the sheer love of sex, and the money is a bonus. That without the cash, the girl would still be enamoured by the client’s power and virility.
If I had to pay for sex I would feel a tad useless, but most clients feel empowered by the transaction.
***
Eventually I took M’s advice and moved to Brisbane. I stayed with some people from Gala Records. They weren’t offering me permanent work, just the odd film clip here and there and some back-up dancing, so I quickly fell into the old game. Because of the Fitzgerald Inquiry we weren’t allowed to say that we were having sex with the clients, we had to advertise as massage parlours.
I had never worked in the city before. The city girls didn’t appreciate new girls, not to mention young new girls. There just wasn’t enough work to go around anymore, so no one needed the competition, and they made their opinions known in no uncertain terms. I was not used to hostility, I was used to camaraderie. Paranoia was denser in the air than cheap perfume. It was farcical – we were sitting in a waiting room dressed to the nines, stiletto heels, sexy lingerie, make-up done to perfection and the piece de resistance, long nails painted every colour of the rainbow, all in order to provide massage therapy. If one girl in the mix performed any other service and was discovered, she was going to be the undoing of us all. We were warned that if news ever got out that this ‘massage parlour’ offered sexual services, we would all be busted.