‘The main room is tame,’ I say, and gesture towards a side door. ‘Let’s try the private areas.’ The man couldn’t be more willing, practically jostling me to get on. The first room we go into has a wall of glory holes and Lee makes a face, ushering me back out. ‘I’m not into watching women suck cock if it’s not mine, you know?’
Holding back the urge to insult him violently, we move on. The next room is more of a success. There’s a mock cell with three women inside who are making a big, and frankly overblown, show of trying to get out while a man stands naked, taunting them. I yell to Lee that I need to go find the loo and leave him to it. He barely looks round as I walk away, already striding over to the bars and saying something to one of the women. I give it fifteen minutes, long enough for him to do at least one disgusting thing, but I still prepare to be confronted by the worst when I return. But when I come back to the cell, Lee is gone and there are new people in the room playing sexy prisoners. Pushing down a mild sense of panic, I rush into the next room and find him lying face down on a table where a woman in a balaclava is thrashing him hard with a whip. His jeans are round his ankles, I assume because he didn’t want to take his boots off, and his black shirt is rolled-up around his armpits. The whole effect is so absurd that I almost pity him and have to stifle a laugh. Lee has his head turned towards me but his eyes are closed in total bliss, so I don’t interrupt. I just stand there, slightly detached from the scene in front of me, watching my uncle getting spanked by a woman who looks like she’s just robbed a bank in a budget porn film. Oh Mother, if you could see me now.
Eventually, a few other people come into the room and a subtle tension starts to build. It becomes clear that there’s a queue forming for the bench, and one man makes a small coughing noise to alert Lee to it. Queuing. The one peculiar British sensibility that cannot be disregarded, no matter where you might be. He looks up with a grunt when he realises that the whipping has stopped, and reluctantly rolls off and pulls up his trousers. The man impatiently waiting his turn hops up onto the bed and lies there expectantly. No wipe down between sitters, I notice.
‘Where next?’ Lee asks me, straightening his shirt, grabbing his coat and taking the drink out of my hand. ‘This place is wild, you weren’t wrong. I’ll have to hide those fucking marks from the wife for weeks. Not that she’ll take much notice. Unless it involves curtain fabrics or raising money for suckers, she’s not too interested in anything these days.’
Is that an oblique reference to the death of their son? I’d not mentioned it to Lee of course, and truth be told, I’d almost completely failed to connect this man to Andrew in any way at all since I’d started zoning in on him. If Lara had felt the loss of her child deeply and agonisingly, Lee seems not to have noticed. People grieve in different ways of course, and I could see that these nocturnal escapes might be the way he coped with it all, but looking at him now, it feels unlikely. I suddenly feel a surge of rage at the way Andrew seemed to have been completely wiped out of his father’s life. Completely irrational, given that I was the person who made it happen. But I was not the person who raised him, and even in the brief time I’d known my cousin, I could see what damage his family had wrought.
‘Do you have kids?’ I ask, as we enter a room where a woman is walking across a man’s back wearing dangerously sharp high heels （so many of the rooms were filled with women debasing their male companions）。
‘Private play!’ she barks at us, while continuing to drive her shoe into his buttock. We back out, giggling, and walk on, towards the room I had marked as ours.
‘Nope,’ says Lee, without looking at me. ‘We had two. One died as a baby, poor fucker, and one not so long ago. But he didn’t want anything to do with us. Thought we were evil for having money. Didn’t stop him enjoying it until he didn’t though. Wife hasn’t taken it well, but what can you do but carry on, no matter how it breaks you? She’s used it as an excuse to hide away, and I’ve carried on with life.’
We reach the entrance to ‘our’ room and I pause, not knowing what to say to a man who wrote off his son in just three sentences. Lee and Simon were brothers in every sense.
‘What’s this then? Is this where we really get going?’ he grins, and pushes open the door. That was fucking risky of me. Had he been even 5 per cent less of a monster, he might have been too upset by the question to enjoy the occasion and I’d have lost my chance, probably permanently. Lucky am I, to be dealing with a man capable of discussing his dead son and immediately wanting to carry on seeking his own pleasure. The room is empty, probably only because it was the furthest from the bar. Lee goes to turn on the light, and I see that the stool is still in place. I take a deep breath through my nose and set my bag down on the floor. I put my gloves on, in what I know looks like a commanding way, and speak. ‘This is my room now. You’re going to do what I want, aren’t you?’ He smiles again. ‘Actually, that wasn’t a question. You’re going to do exactly what I want. NOW.’