Extracts
The House at Number 10
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Extract from The House at Number 10

Introduction to the Side Room

He was taking an age to come.
Sophie could move her legs and hips, did move them, knees balanced on the large bed, propped up at one corner with a wedge of newspaper. But he was taking an age to come.
She had her back to him. It was a hot night. There was a fan in a corner, but it was still hot - a close, sticky heat, unusual for Canberra. Soon they would have airconditioning in all the rooms. Sophie could hear voices, faintly, through the wall between the room she was in and the next, not loud enough to hear what was being said. She wondered if the renovations would make the walls thicker.
The balance and position - it was important to get these right. Sophie felt her thigh muscles tighten as she knelt symmetrically on the bed, hands wide for balance, fingers splayed, arms straight but not stiff. Locked elbows made it harder to change position. She could move better with the spring, the possibility of give still there, in joints as well as muscles.
It had taken a while to find the best position, and then manoevre into, or insist on it. It was a matter of small professional pride to Sophie that she'd done so. The one she favoured was known as doggy. She had at first found the word and what it conjured up distasteful, but talking to Kirsten, listening to Kirsten, was making her think differently.
She liked to face the wall and closed curtains of the side room, but not to be too close to them. This, also, was important.
The walls and ceiling needed painting. Watermarks from years of leaks travelled down and out across them. In the glow from the lamp, on the table by the bed, these marks sprang towards her. She stared at their lines and colours, some dark, some faded almost into disappearing. She moulded them into shapes that she could recognise, liking the way their contours altered with the evening.
He came at last and pulled away. Sophie felt her buttocks shrink, not quite able to believe in their good fortune. He was panting, his breath slowing. Sometimes they overdid themselves, especially on summer nights. Once Kirsten, in a fit of rage, had thrown water over one and soaked the bed. Marshall had been furious.
Sophie knew her face was blank. Sometimes clients, when she turned to face them, willing them to get up off the bed, get dressed, had a look of apology, sometimes they even apologised in words, and this she could not bear. The ones who became quickly, simply self-sufficient, wanting nothing more from her ever now the agreed exchange had been completed - these ones Sophie recognised, though she did not respect them. They answered her desire for clean lines of division, endings that were neat.
She took the condom from the client and dropped it in a small metal bin, plastic-lined, beside the bed. She stood up, reached for her sarong, and wished him goodnight.
It was not yet ten-thirty. Quickly and efficiently, Sophie knotted her sarong under her left armpit, shut the side room door behind her, and walked to the kitchen at the back of the house. In a little while, she would return to change the sheets and tidy the room, but she'd earnt a few minutes relaxation first.
Relieved to find the kitchen empty, she opened the oven door of an old, but carefully cleaned stove, and deposited the money from the sweaty client in a wooden box that already held a satisfying pile of notes. Then she fetched a glass of water from the fridge and settled herself into an armchair that faced large windows, looking out onto a quite Canberra night.

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