I MADE MY EXCUSES AND LEFT

Tabitha Troughton goes

on the books of an escort agency

PAST THE hotel security, straight to the lift, up to the fourth floor. 'Look confident, like a guest,' they had told me. 'Wear rub- ber heels, so you don't make too much noise. Otherwise they might try to stop you. Some hotels have a morality prob- lem.' That was easy. It was knocking on the hotel-room door which was the chal- lenge. 'Stand back slightly,' they had urged. 'You're his fantasy woman. When he opens the door, that's what he'll expect to see. If you stand back, he'll get the full impact.'

The man who opened the door got the full impact of someone white with nerves, whose opening line 'Hi, I'm Tanya' was more of a croak than a seductive murmur. `Don't be upset if he decides you're not his type,' I'd been told. 'We had one girl in tears about it; but it's not your fault.' My man liked the bashful approach. 'Come in, come in,' he said jovially. 'Sit down.'

He was 50-ish, plumpish, dapper, with thick black eyebrows on a smooth Middle Eastern complexion. Not my type at all; not that it really mattered. 'You're very lovely,' he said. 'Would you like some champagne? I bought it just for you.' He sat next to me on the sofa; the bed, with one sheet invitingly turned down, was behind us. `So, Tanya,' he said, staring at my breasts, 'have you done this before?'

I hadn't, as it happened. It's not every day that a girl gets paid £200 an hour to have sex with a complete stranger. Not £200 for every hour, admittedly; after the first hour the cost would have gone down to £275 for two hours, culminating in the reasonable rate of £800-1,000 for an overnight session. Practically a bargain, compared with the cool million Robert Redford offers Demi Moore for the same thing in Indecent Proposal.

The escort agency that had sent me round to my client's hotel after he had phoned them supplies girls to businessmen for sex. Not for companionship. Sex. I would have received 70 per cent of the fee; the agency takes the rest as commission. Even at non-Hollywood rates, this is very good business indeed. ('We spend over £50,000 a year just on advertising,' the agency's smart female 'executive director' had told me proudly.) The business is, however, illegal. Even if they declared the money as taxable income — `I'd go broke if I did that,' the executive director explained reasonably it is still against the law for agencies to make money out of sex. This doesn't stop them from doing it. What it does mean is that agencies are fiercely self-protective, about as trusting as a maltreated Rottweil- er, and generally as adept at sniffing out intruders. 'I can spot a journalist a mile off,' the agency's boss told me, as I sat about a foot away.from her.

Even discounting their natural wariness, trying to get on to a London escort agen- cy's books is a tiring business. 'Hi, I was wondering if you needed any new escorts?' I said to a down-market agency over the phone. 'How do you look?' 'Er . . fine, I think.' No' (impatiently). 'Are you blonde, brunette, thin, medium, what?' Tottering across London for interviews in exaggerat- edly high heels, sheer tights, tight skirts, low-cut bodices. Trying to look sexy, smart and slightly desperate, all at the same time.

It felt like fancy dress, which in an industry thriving busily on deceit was entirely appropriate. Having a conversa- tion in an escort agency is like playing Call My Bluff without the challenges. 'Hi, my name's Tanya,' I'd say. `I'm an actress.' `Hi, my name's Gemma/Chloe/Louise,' the other girl would reply with equal veracity.

Why the dinosaurs died out. `I've just been travelling in Africa/chucked by my fiance/working as a model.' At another agency, I sat chain-smoking, wait- ing for the woman who ran it and chatting to 'Emma', who had recently come back from India.

Despite having a relatively chic address in Kensington, others higher up in the trade snobbishly describe this agency as `the lower end of the escort market'. You could tell by the velours sofa, the tasselled lampshade, the wine-box on the nasty, black drinks cabinet. Jane, auburn-haired, in her 40s, looking like a harassed secre- tary, finally arrived to interview me. 'You know what this job entails?' she asked cau- tiously.

This is how agencies initially get round the question of sex. 'I don't allow girls to sleep with clients — officially I have to say that,' said Jane. 'But the girls will fill you in when you start.' One of them had already. `They don't like it if you turn a client down,' Emma' had informed me earlier. 'It can be dangerous — there are psychos out there. But if he just wants kinky sex, you can charge extra. A couple of days ago, I had this weirdo who pulled out his own stockings.' We giggled companionably. This agency took me on on the spot. If I now wanted, I could sit in a back room with the other girls and wait for clients, five nights a week, 7 p.m. to 12 p.m., and choose my own nights off. When a client arrives, you parade in front of him with the other girls and, if you're lucky enough to be chosen, take him into another room, dis- cuss rates with him (£150 an hour, £100 if he haggles) and leave with him. If it's not a long job, you come back afterwards and go through the whole thing again. 'There's no wining and dining here at all,' Emma' had explained resignedly. 'You just go back to their hotels or houses.'

The down-market agency never really stood a chance compared with the other one I went to. This was the creme de la creme of escort agencies, one of the several with silly and/or vaguely foreign names which advertise in the Herald Tribune (the shabbier one uses the Yellow Pages). Inter- views were held in a Chelsea hotel, the kind where the marble looks fake even though it isn't, and which is swarming with Arab businessmen and their veiled wives. `Come with your hair and make-up already done,' the prissy voice at the other end of the phone had told me. 'Wear something suitable for the time of day, so no trousers. And ask at reception for me. They'll tell you which room to go to.' The receptionist directed me to room 334 without any noticeable inflexion of sur- prise; I must have been one of the first to be interviewed. By the time girl number 45 had sashayed in (`although probably only 40 per cent or so will turn up,' said the. executive director) even the dopiest hotel employee would have noticed something peculiar. A woman, power-suited, refined accent, early 30s and rather pleasant, was waiting for me. As I started to fill out a form pest physical attributes?' Best per- sonality characteristics?') I discovered to my surprise that my hands were shaking. The other agency's straightforward grubbi- ness had been fine; this apparent respectability was enough to unnerve any- one.

We cantered through the usual ques- tions: `You know what it entails?' Yes.' `You haven't done this sort of job before?' `No.' We lied to each other for a bit, and then I left, convinced I had made a total idiot of myself. Apparently they found this endearing. Or at least their clients would.

`I've got this guy you'd be perfect for,' the executive director gushed over the phone two days later. She mentioned someone from an Arab ruling family whose name I recognised. 'He'll pay between £1,000 and £20,000. He's coming over for Ascot, he's very rich, and he's attracted to ladies who are non-pros. We'd take you there, and introduce you to him, of course.'

`Gosh,' I enthused, 'it sounds amazing. Twenty thousand.' It did. 'But I really need to start work now. Is there anyone else in the meantime?' The executive director admitted that there might be. If I wanted to come to an office in Chelsea with a selection of evening wear and day wear, I could have my final interview and briefing.

It turned out to be more of a flat than an office, with stripped floorboards, large rugs and a black cat purring in a corner. I sat on a striped sofa with Julie, a fresh- faced girl in her early 20s who was already working for other agencies. We exchanged the sort of vaguely embarrassed looks that you do when you know the other person is prepared to sleep with men for money. Apart from that, it could have been the start of a respectably dull dinner-party.

She had been in the business for only a week and a half and she had already kitted out herself with a mobile phone and new designer jacket. 'Not bad, hey?' Some girls do start off having a day job and just doing this in the evenings,' Emma' from the other agency had said. She'd shrugged. `But most of them eventually end up giv- ing up their day jobs.' She and Julie were funny, attractive, intelligent, and looked no more exploited than the average staff journalist. They seemed to be making the best of what was, after you got over the small problem of having sex with just about anybody, not the worst job in the world.

Certainly not if the executive director was to be believed. Now in hippy chick gear, with the hint of a brogue creeping into her voice, she was oozing enthusiasm. Not that she slept with clients, of course; she had to run the place. She even made the contract sound fun. It was a frighten- ing document, which laid out everything from the 'ladylike' behaviour expected to a system of penalty points and fines for being late for a client, being rude to a client and giving your personal phone number to a client (£200 for that one).

`It's really all just to protect you — and us,' she explained. In the background, the phones had started ringing. `Yes, we have an international model, Katrina, available tonight,' her assistant was purring down the phone. 'Hello? Yes, there's Zara; she's an international business student who models in her spare time.'

The clients turned out to be 'interna- tional businessmen', who, if we played our cards right, might not only take us out to dinner after sex, but fall in love with us as well. 'One of our girls is with the 34th rich- est man in the world now,' said the execu- tive director. `So you never know.'

`We don't really attract anyone dodgy,' she added. 'But if you do have a problem, `It's a hospitality box!' just make some excuse — tell him it's your first time and you can't go through with it.' Hardly guaranteed to stop a psychotic in his tracks, but she seemed fairly sanguine about it. On the subject of police and reporters, she was more serious. 'If any- one's asking you a lot of questions, just leave. Never say what you're charging them for,' she warned. 'Our security system is very good, though, and the police don't bother with agencies like us because we're not into drugs. So don't worry.'

We were told not to wear too much per- fume — 'A lot of these men are going back to their wives and they don't want to smell of someone else's perfume' — and to wear lacy underwear — 'M & S do a nice range.' `I think you should get your hair cut,' the executive director said, looking thoughtful- ly at me. 'I'll book you in with Nicky Clarke — the one who cut Fergie's hair. Don't worry, he won't know where you're from.'

I never got to Nicky Clarke's salon. The phone rang at my friend's flat the following evening. The agency gave me the name of my first client, his credit card details (Get the money first'), his hotel and his room number. I had 40 minutes to get there. `If I'm not out in half an hour,' I told the boys who had volunteered to wait outside the hotel, 'come in and get me.' I was starting to sound like a character in a bad spy novel. Inside the hotel room, the dialogue, if anything, got worse.

`So, it's your first time?' my client mur- mured, as we sat sipping champagne — I'd refused the joint he had offered me. 'You get some funny girls in this business. Hard girls, girls who won't look at you.' He moved closer. 'You won't like this,' I said, not looking at him. 'But I can't go through with it.'

There was a pause. My client looked faintly stunned. 'You're just too nice,' I improvised wildly. 'I thought it was going to be, well, more mechanical.'

`So, you'd prefer it if I ordered you to go and lie on the bed and take your clothes off, would you?'

`Not at all,' I replied truthfully. There was another pause; this was sounding posi- tively Pinteresque, albeit with more dra- matic tension.

`Well,' he said, 'it's entirely your preroga- tive. If you don't feel you can go through with it, you shouldn't. It's not a good busi- ness to be in if you feel like that.' He then offered to sign my credit card slip anyway — `So you don't get into trouble with the agency' — and when I refused asked if I wanted him to give me some cash. 'The agency will never know, and it might help you out.' Completely thrown by this unex- pected change of script, I refused that too. `I'd just like to wish you the best of luck in whatever you decide to do,' he said, as we exchanged a chaste kiss at the door. Client with a heart of gold bids farewell to reformed good-time girl. Cue music, hapPY endings for everyone — except for the agency.