The Pornographer Diaries

In my limited experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that things usually happen to you when you’re least expecting them. Some days you can get all threaded-up and go down Fanny Fandango’s Discotheque brimming with confidence, dentist-white teeth and immaculately gelled-hair, yet go home at the end of the evening with nothing more than two pieces of chicken and chips. Other days you can go down the supermarket in a six-day-old t-shirt and slippers and end up meeting the woman you’ll spend the rest of your life with. You never can tell. I think it’s God’s way of keeping us on our toes.

Or women’s.

After I left Peter’s office, I spent the next three days drunk. I would’ve spent the Thursday drunk too but the police phoned me in the morning (just before the pubs opened) to ask me if I’d be home that evening. What was I going to say, no? So, I sat around watching telly and working out convincing answers to every possible question. I half-thought about phoning my newly appointed solicitor to have him present but I couldn’t be bothered and figured I’d handle the situation myself. Well, I’d done all right so far.

I just wouldn’t say anything. I’d appear to co-operate but I wouldn’t add anything to what I’d said already.

Just after seven there was a knock at the door and I went down and found WPC Kensington staring back at me.

‘What’s this, CID or something? Where’s your uniform?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I got off duty an hour ago. This is nothing official, I just wanted to ask your advice about something. May I come in?’ she said.

‘Yeah, sure. Come on up.’

WPC Kensington came in and followed me up the communal stairs to my first floor room. She shut the door behind her once inside and came and sat on the sofa next to me.

‘Do you pay a lot for this room?’ she asked.

‘Only in terms of social standing,’ I replied, a well-worn joke of mine that has yet to win a single laugh. ‘You wanted to ask my advice about something?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘Yes, but this is strictly confidential, you understand. You have to give me your word you’ll never tell a soul about this without my permission, my job depends on it,’ she told me. ‘Do I have your word?’

‘Of course, anything you say will be strictly between the two of us.’

I wondered what the hell she was going to say and sensed a little tension in her voice. She’d come across at the station as a stern sort of fish but now here she was apparently nervous.

Hang on a minute. She wasn’t thinking about...

No. That couldn’t be it.

Could it?

‘Well, basically, I’m kind of interested in how you... how I... might go about appearing in one of your magazines. Like I said, you can’t tell anyone because I could lose my job over this, so I just wanted to sound you out first, find out about the procedure. Would I be able to do it anonymously? Not show my face or have to use my real name?’ she asked. It took me a moment or two to gather first, my thoughts, and then my socks, as they’d blown right across the room.