About a week after they received the eviction notice in the summer, the residents of the brothel gathered in the Aphra Behn to discuss progress. Some of the customers recognized them but pretended not to. The women returned the favor. Other customers recognized them but were unfazed and greeted them as friends.
Tabitha bought a round of drinks. Precious waited patiently for everyone to arrive, for the preliminary gossip to be told and heard, for handbags to be placed on the floor and jackets to be slung over the backs of chairs.
She began, “We are gathered here today.”
“In the sight of god.”
Laughter.
Precious ignored the heckling. “We’re here today to discuss some very important things. We are here to work out how we are going to protect both our homes and our livelihoods. Because both are right now under attack. If we cannot remain here in Soho, what will we do?”
“No fucking pimps. That’s the main point.”
“So it is, Scarlet. Thank you.”
“So far we have sought some legal advice and through the lawyers written some letters to the landlords. But we have also been complying with the changes.”
“Temporarily.”
“Most of us have been paying the increased rent rates in the hope that it’ll be refunded if we win the legal proceedings.”
“But I can’t afford it anymore. I’m not making enough money to get by. I may as well go get myself a job in Tesco,” says Young Scarlet.
There was a murmur of assent.
“What would you have to offer Tesco?” another woman asked. “A blow-job counter?”
There was more laughter.
The woman continued, “Pick up your eggs and bacon and go round the back of the pasta aisle for a quickie.”
More laughter.
Another woman joined in. “You’d be all right with the cold meats section, eh? Salami specialist, eh, eh?”
This prompted less laughter.
“Anyway,” interrupted Precious. “We need to have a rethink. We all agree that we can no longer afford the rates, and none of us want a protracted legal battle.”
“Too right,” said another woman.
“So what’s to be done?”
There was silence. The women all looked around at each other but nobody spoke.
Then one woman said, “I’ve got a john who’s an MP. I could ask him what to do.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What?”
“Love, I don’t think he’s going to want to get involved, do you?”
She shrugged.
“What, raise the issue in Parliament? ’Ere, your honors, my hooker’s in a bit of bother, let’s get the army in.”
“Maybe. Not the army, but something.”
“Are you joking? No, love, we’re on our own. It’s not a glamorous cause. We’re hardly going to get Bob Geldof and Bono fighting our corner.”
“Look, stop,” said Precious. “Let’s be serious for just a minute.”
“Sorry, Precious.”
“Sorry, Precious.”
“I had a think. And also, I was sort of approached by someone—a journalist. A photojournalist, really. And she wants to do a piece about us. Why our job is better than what other women have, and that. And she wanted to print it in a big newspaper. I don’t know, I guess because she’ll be on our side, it might do us some favors. She reckons her piece about rogue landlords in Glasgow made a bunch of them back off. It might be all we need.”
“I don’t know, Precious.”
“Yeah, and I don’t really want to be in the paper, to be honest. Not all my family know what I’m doing over here in London.”
“No, of course. I said that to this woman—Mona is her name—and she said she expected that, and was happy for us to have our faces concealed. And that the photos would be really good. Tasteful, but also capture us as our true selves.”
“Might actually be good for business. Free advertising.”
“Well, possibly,” said Precious. “Look, I’m not saying I’m totally behind it, but I think it’s an option we could explore.”
There were some murmurs of agreement and murmurs of dissent, but in the end what all the other women did agree on was that if Precious thought it was a good idea then she should do it.
The photographer is going to come along to the protest today. This is another reason why Precious is anxious. She and the others will be wearing masks—for their safety as much as anything else—but she is still nervous about having her photo taken and put in the public domain. The photographer is going to come up to the flat and talk to her and Tabitha, and take some photos of where they live. Precious wants to show people that they’re no different from anyone else.
Precious arrives at the flat. There’s a back entrance for personal use, so the women don’t have to go through the front door and bump into customers. It is accessed through the alley the local restaurants use to store their bins. When the chefs forget to lock the lids at night, tramps and foxes fish through the black plastic bags looking for leftover food. The result is messy. A box of a dozen eggs has been dropped, and split yolks and whites have created a network of sticky fjords. There are cabbage leaves and potato peelings. A couple of snails are crawling over the rim of one of the large containers and wasps are swarming around a discarded lemon tart.
Precious pushes open the back door, which should, by rights, be a fire escape. It is heavy and blue. Someone has scrawled their initials on it in black marker, and someone else has crossed them out and added their own. Inside, there is a dark vestibule and a damp flight of concrete stairs with a rusted iron bannister fitted to the wall with iron pegs. Precious takes the first flight of stairs two at a time, then slows
