Free Still Standing: The Savage Years by Paul O'Grady

up towards the light in a manner I imagined looked glamorously cinematic.
    To my surprise and, if I’m honest, horror, a car that had been crawling past at a snail’s pace suddenly pulled up alongside me.
    ‘You looking for business then?’ the driver asked briskly, leaning out of the open window as if he were ordering a Big Mac and fries at a drive-in McDonald’s.
    One of the girls who had been sitting on the wall behind me rushed forward to negotiate on my behalf.
    ‘Five quid for a blow job,’ she said, much amused.
    ‘Five quid!’ I protested in a voice that could be heard in Sheffield. I was only out here on a dare, only pretending to be a hooker, only playing, and certainly had no intention of jumping in a car with what might turn out to be a deranged serial killer for five quid or five thousand. ‘Five quid,’ I said again, open-mouthed with disbelief, not a good idea when a hooker is negotiating the price of oral sex on your behalf.
    ‘Here, you’re not a woman, you’re a bloke,’ the punter exclaimed, the penny suddenly dropping. ‘Not that I mind, like. ’Op in, we’ll park up Alice Street.’
    ‘I’m sorry, the shop’s closed,’ I snapped, mustering whatwas left of my dignity and turning on my wobbly heels to head back to the relative safety of the club.
    ‘Hang on, luv, I’ll go the whole way for fifteen,’ I could hear the girl saying. ‘Are you on for it or what then?’
    They drove off together. I made a mental note of the registration, just in case her body was found on waste ground the next day, but by the time I got back to the club I’d forgotten it.
    Thankfully the girl’s punter didn’t turn out to be the Ripper as within fifteen minutes she was back in the club and stood at the bar enjoying a hard-earned half of lager. I asked her, with a maniac going around killing women, if she wasn’t scared each time she got into a car with a strange man.
    ‘Course I am,’ she said. ‘We all are, but I’ve got rent to pay and a baby to feed so I haven’t got much choice. I reckon I risk me life each night more times than a lion tamer in a circus.’ She studied the bar top for a moment, absently drawing a figure of eight with her finger in a pool of spilled beer. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You’re thinking, what a way to earn a living.’
    ‘No I’m not,’ I protested, as I wasn’t and besides I could ask myself the same question.
    ‘Well, that’s all it is, a livin’, and speaking of which standing here won’t get the baby fed.’ She sighed and draining what was left in her glass she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and was off.
    ‘See ya,’ she said as she strolled up the stairs and out on to the Lane again.
    We stayed at Diamonds’ flat that night. He set about making a curry as soon as we got in and we demolished it, sitting up till dawn chewing the cud and drinking brandy.
    Hush was forever making costumes, and where he went so did his Singer sewing machine. ‘I’ve seen some fabulous fabric in the market, dirt cheap. We’ll take twenty quid out of tonight’s fee and I’ll get it in the morning’ became a familiar cry.
    We were off to work a club in Denmark for a month and Hush was insistent that we ‘needed new’. Almost every afternoon the floor of the flat vibrated violently to the sound of the sewing machine while I sat on the sofa making tassels and watching Farmhouse Kitchen on Yorkshire TV with Henry chattering away and dancing a little jig on my head.
    To Hush’s frustration his industrious endeavours came to an abrupt halt when, just like a lot of the mills around us, production shut down, although in our case it was because the electricity was cut off. As well as the current bill there were some steep arrears from a previously unpaid bill that Phil had inherited when he took over the flat, and as we couldn’t come up with the astronomical sum of three hundred pounds Yorkshire Electricity