Faith - Lesley Pearse [132]
Yet however sick she felt at being conned by him, she wasn’t going to let these other women know.
The sick feeling grew ever stronger as the photo shoot began. The photographer, a middle-aged man called Don, had none of the charm and diplomacy she’d grown used to with Ed in Livingston. He was curt and crude, using the most vile language, without even a trace of humour to lighten the proceedings.
The first series of pictures he took were of Katy, wearing only a white suspender belt and stockings, and he had her lying on the bed masturbating.
‘Hold yer fanny lips open more,’ he barked at her. ‘This ain’t for a parish magazine. And look like you’re getting off on it, for fuck’s sake. Lick yer lips and act like you’re horny.’
Laura could hardly bear to look. She was blushing with embarrassment, and she didn’t know how Katy could manage to look so relaxed and even happy to do it.
Next he got Julie, who was wearing a black leather G-string and a peephole bra, on the bed with Katy to simulate lesbian acts. Laura cringed as Julie had to stick out her tongue at Katy’s vagina as she was photographed from the rear, kneeling, bottom up in the air.
‘Just think of it as a giggle,’ Anne whispered to her as Don instructed Katy to sit up and Julie to kneel beside her, pull aside her G-string and masturbate against one of Katy’s nipples. ‘None of it’s real, it’s just an act. We go down the pub later and laugh about it. The good things about Don are that he’s quick and he knows what he wants. He don’t try and come on to any of us either, Katy reckons he ain’t got a cock.’
In the two hours Laura watched, she saw virtually every permutation of what a woman could do sexually, alone, with a partner, or all three together. At times she found it hideous, other times erotic, yet as Julie had said, it was amusing too. She heard the women’s whispered jokes to one another, she felt their affection for one another, and admiration at their ability to act so well compensated for her embarrassment.
Finally it was over. Don packed away his camera, stowed his rolls of film in a bag and unplugged the lighting.
‘Think you can do it?’ he called out to Laura.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, feeling that she could easily throttle Robbie.
‘If you aren’t here on Friday morning sharp on ten-thirty I’ll use someone else. If you come, you’ll be working with Katy. Get yerself a black basque and fishnet stockings, I’ve got an idea for a touch of dominatrix to break you in gently. I’ll bring the whip.’
Once dressed, with much of their heavy makeup removed, Katy, Julie and Anne all looked refreshingly ordinary, no different from any of the mothers Laura chatted to at the school gates.
They went to a pub nearby, and over a drink and sandwiches they asked Laura if she intended to come on Friday.
‘If I don’t, what will happen?’ she asked.
‘Robbie will drop you,’ Katy said with a shrug. ‘Don’t kid yourself he cares, he don’t care about no one but hisself. You ain’t in love with him, are you?’
‘No, certainly not.’ Laura laughed and told them how she met him and that she’d lost Stuart because of him.
All three women nodded in sympathy. ‘He done the same to all of us,’ Katy said. ‘I was a fashion model, but I got pregnant and that put paid to that. I was working as a stripper when I met Robbie, he did the same with me as you, got me to do the glamour stuff, then once I’d got a new flat, got used to having money, he said it was this or nothin’. Julie was a croupier at the Glasgow casino, she got sacked because she was suspected of fiddling. Robbie jumped in then. The same thing happened to her too.’
‘You mean he actually looks for women who are down on their luck?’ Laura exclaimed.
Anne smirked. ‘You got it in one! My old man left me and the three kids and the bailiffs came to repossess stuff that was on the never-never. One of the bailiffs felt sorry enough for me to