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I paid the full fee. I apologised, properly this time, with no excuses in it.
“Thank you,” Vivienne said. Her voice was perfectly pleasant and about four degrees above freezing. “Bedroom?”
What followed was, technically, everything I’d paid for. She undressed efficiently. She rolled a condom onto me with one practised movement. She lay back on the bed and let me fuck her, and made the right noises in the right places, and her body was beautiful and warm and I was inside it, and it was the loneliest sex I have ever had in my life.
She didn’t kiss me. I didn’t ask.
When I finished she patted my shoulder, got up, and went to the bathroom. I heard the tap running. When she came back she was dressed.
“Thank you, Graham,” she said at the door. “Good luck with your pitch.”
“Vivienne. I really am sorry.”
She paused and looked at me, and some of the frost went out of her eyes.
“I believe you,” she said. “Next time you book someone, don’t treat her like a supplier. You’ll get a much better product.”
The door clicked shut.
I sat on the end of the bed in the hotel robe and thought about Maureen, and about what she used to say about me and contracts, and for the first time I understood what she meant.
Ending 15 of 16: Strictly Business. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.