I booked an escort for the first time in my life, and the woman who knocked on my door was my little sister’s best friend. We’d shared a lot of burgers at family barbecues. We’d never shared this.
How it works: read, then choose what you do. Only the right choices earn the happy ending.
I’m Ben Hartley, I’m thirty, and I’d been single for fourteen months after Laura, thirty-one, moved to Lisbon with a man who made sourdough professionally. My mates said get back out there. The apps made me want to throw my phone in the canal. So one Friday night, after two beers and a long think, I went to the website of Ivory Rose, a licensed agency in Manchester that everyone at work joked about and nobody admitted using.
I picked a profile called Sienna. Twenty-seven, brunette, face blurred, a bio that said she liked old films and honest men. I booked two hours at my flat in Ancoats, paid the deposit, tidied like my mum was visiting and put the rest of the fee in an envelope on the kitchen counter.
At nine there was a knock.
I opened the door, and the smile on her face fell off like a dropped plate.
Dark curly hair. Gold hoops. A red coat I’d seen a dozen times, hung on the back of my parents’ kitchen chair, at every summer barbecue for the last six years.
Tess Delaney. My little sister Gemma’s best friend since university. Gemma’s twenty-seven too. The girl who once beat me at swingball so hard I needed a plaster.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Oh my God,” I agreed.
We stood there staring at each other on my doormat while the lift pinged somewhere down the hall.
“Ben,” she said faintly. “You’re Ben H.”