‘Well, for starters why is all this necessary, is this going on my police permanent record, is it going to go onto some public computer record that will come back to haunt me ten years down the track?’
She could sense my fear and seemed to genuinely soften. ‘No, not at all, Annika, we will put all this information on to a card, not a computer, and it will be locked in a filing cabinet for our eyes only. We need to know who you are so that if we get any complaints about drugs or theft we can come down and speak to you. It works both ways. If you have a client who’s bothering you, you can call us and, providing that you have stayed out of trouble, we can come to your aid.’
In theory it sounded all above board but I felt that there were things she was keeping from me and I most certainly wasn’t buying the whole ‘no computer record’ story but what was I to do?
‘Annika, it is our job to protect the community, if a Rolex watch goes missing while a client is with you then we need to know who to come after. But if you turn up missing we want to know whether it’s a sex crime that we are looking for. Anyway, without you giving us all the details we require you will not be able to work in this city. We check the papers regularly and if any phone numbers turn up that aren’t registered, or names and addresses, we will come down on them like a ton of bricks.’
She had me in a corner so I reluctantly answered all her questions honestly even down to how much I was planning on charging. When all the questions were asked and answered out came the Polaroid camera for a quick snap, which she attached to my card. She then turned the card over to me to verify all the details and sign. It was then that I noticed that she had spelt my name incorrectly, but I didn’t say a thing—I saw it as a small grace.
She gave me her card and invited me to contact her if I ever had any trouble. As I stood to leave, I noticed that the men in the room were eyeing me again. I felt like they were trying to memorise my face, as if they fully expected to see me again under far more serious circumstances.
Even ten minutes after leaving the station I felt dirty and shamed. But I did feel somewhat official. I could now work without any reprisals.
30
Settling in to Perth Life
I arranged a party for Poppy to introduce us to her kindy classmates. Over fifty people showed up and had a great time. From then on I was invited to dinners regularly. Poppy was inundated with sleep-over offers, and it seemed that everyone had a friend who was recently separated.
In my heart I pined for Ben. A day didn’t go by without a silent prayer for him to recover from his grief and delusion. I had had no contact from him but I still kept him up to date with letters every month.
I never liked dating. I felt that I lied enough during the day to do it all weekend as well. To avoid lying, I just didn’t date. I craved a time when I could own my own business that Poppy could come and visit me in. I longed for a time when I could hand out business cards with a real occupation embossed on it. But apart from these few inconveniences I was happy with my lot. My life was great. I could afford things that I had previously only dreamed of having. Poppy was taking tennis lessons, as well as piano. We went for holidays together. And to top it off, if I went to a bar I didn’t have to talk to anyone in return for drinks—I bought my own.
In less than a year I bought an apartment. Or I should say, the bank helped me to buy an apartment. If you were a sex worker, Perth was the city for you. Men came from all over Australia and even the world to work here in the mines, be it off-shore oil drilling or up north in the mineral sector. As a result there were just not enough women to go around. And let’s face it, who wanted to date a guy who does a roster of six weeks away and one or two weeks home? So there are a lot of single, lonely, horny men in Perth with a lot of disposable income.
This was where I came in.
One-third of my income was derived from fly-in fly-out miners, and another third from businessmen based in Perth but working in occupations that feed into the mining industry in some way.