Читать книгу The Make - Jessie Keane - Страница 25
Оглавление‘You are joking,’ said Harry.
‘Nope. Deadly serious, my man,’ said George, handing Harry a sheet of A4 paper that had just been coughed out by the printer beside his small computer station in his shambolic bedroom. ‘Your assignment – should you choose to accept it,’ said George, sending a collusive grin to Alfie, who was sprawled out on the bed watching all this going on, ‘is to escort Ms Melissa Whitehead to a family wedding. She’s a bit of a dog, I grant you, but she needs an escort for this do, if she ain’t going to look like a total lost cause to her nearest and dearest.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Harry, staring at the photo. It wasn’t pretty. ‘If she wants a shag, I’m definitely not going to be up to it.’
‘Unkind, unkind,’ tutted George. ‘And speaking of such delicate matters, you know that cougar, the one you also worried you wouldn’t be able to do the deed for . . .?’
Harry looked up. ‘Who, Jackie?’
‘See, you’re on first-name terms. And, my boy, your face lit up at the very mention of her. I think it’s lurve.’
‘Don’t be a prick,’ said Harry. ‘What she say?’
‘Needs you – and no one else, I might add – you specifically, to escort her to another do.’
‘Oh.’ After the Covent Garden incident, Harry thought she’d never want to see him again. He felt cheered, all of a sudden, and Melissa Whitehead didn’t seem quite so daunting after all.
‘I’m hard at work this Friday night too.’ George glanced at Alfie. ‘You’ll be okay here on your own, won’t you Alf?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’
Harry looked at Alfie. He didn’t understand all this with George and Alfie at all. Alfie was a posh kid and he ought to be at home, not roughing it here with him and George. But he was George’s friend, and Harry had had plenty of his friends bunking over in the past, so he couldn’t complain.
And why should he bother? Life was treating them pretty good right now. The escorting business was paying like a bastard; they were busy and there was cash rolling in wholesale, tax-free. George was ducking out of his job with Lorcan on a pretty regular basis, taking sickies as often as he could, then going off instead to escort and sexually service the lonely and sometimes downright desperate women of London town. Harry had even stopped signing on. They could stick their dole money. He had plenty. Yeah, life was pretty damned good. And he was – a little to his surprise – really looking forward to seeing Jackie Sullivan again.
‘So who’s yours?’ he asked George.
George whipped off another print-out. Looked at the paper.
‘Oh, she looks okay. Pretty little blonde. Sandy Cole.’
