Chapter Three
The thirty year old man is in a Men’s Club in Covent Garden. Important men visit the house of fun; some unlikely and others that would shock you. Jack visits most of the days and asks for their new recruit Ai-mu, fresh from China before joining in an orgy. Then Ai-mu would get up and leave and service others. Today he is tired, but after injecting heroin a calming energy takes over, even though he feels sick. He looks like warmed death; hanging off a chair dribbling from a corner of his mouth. One of the whores removes his Audemars Piguet watch and scuttles away with it without him noticing.
It’s been a year since parchment.com crashed. He looks emaciated and smutty; with a blank expression, sunken eyes and a fixed smile. One of the good looking ladies has black spots forming around the base of her nose and on her arms. She also has dry flaky skin but it’s covered with thick layers of foundation. Other women walk away from their clients like old women; sore between the legs and red faced at the end of a nights’ shift that would start again in a matter of hours. Some would laugh and others would sob; others simply had enough. Jack was always the last to wake from his drug-induced world hours later, searching aimlessly for Katarina until he realised the night was now morning, and Katarina was now Vika. He was usually the last to go home to his cold and empty apartment.
Chapter Four
He starts eText.com another online company. This helped him to narrowly escape arrest for debt by a formidable group of East End bailiffs. Grace Madison, the girl he rejected had wired him some of her savings. The only contact they had since he first left. She moved to London to work for a fashion designer making hats for the élite. She confronted Jack to reason with him about his precarious spending and womanising. They argue and shout on the street and a small boy steals his wallet. Jack sees the boy but doesn’t have the energy to run after him. Grace realises he has a problem, but he says the problem is her interference. Jack gets into his Mercedes and drives off to a Saint David’s Day party invite. He leaves Grace standing in the icy rain, with no money for the bus or a taxi. Lightening fills the sky as Grace turns shaking her head, and sobbing.