My day at the beach has been awful. I’m still here. The sun is still blazing hot. And I still want to die. The night is what I’m waiting for. I’m looking forward to seeing Lorna later. My plan is to prepare my own hit myself. Then I can overdo the heroin and overdose. That’s my plan. I just need to think of a way to convince Lorna to allow me to do it. The last, and the only, two times we’ve used together, she’s been the one to do it. She’s the one who scores. So, she holds the smack. She asks me for the spoon. Then she does the mixing and the drawing up into the needles. If I can keep hold of the spoon and ask her for the smack, she might give it to me. That might work.

All day I’ve looked out for Mickey and I haven’t seen him once. I’d thought last night he’d come to the Radisson Hotel especially to see me. But after giving the matter more thought, I realised it would’ve been coincidence. He didn’t know where I was staying. He must’ve just been passing by and happened to see me outside. “Beautiful,” he called me. He probably calls all the girls “beautiful”, just like I call everyone “love”. Doesn’t mean I love them. Doesn’t mean he thinks I’m beautiful. How could I have let myself dream like that? It only ends in disappointment.

My skin is so sore after scouring it this morning. I had to remove all traces of Gaslighting Greg from my body. And I had to do it with nearly boiling water and shower gel on a rough sponge. It feels like I’ve taken layers off. I probably shouldn’t be in the sun now. Not when I’ve thinned my skin like this. It’s red and blotchy. That doesn’t always happen to my skin after a job. It must be because Greg’s the first punter I’ve seen in the last few months. I wasn’t as desensitised as I usually am to that dirty, invaded feeling. I had to scrub for about an hour before I felt like he’d been erased from my body. Probably best Mickey’s not here. I don’t want him to see me looking like this.

Screaming children and shouting parents have ruined the sleep I’d planned to have on the beach today. They’re still bloody at it. They’re doing my fucking head in. And there’s babies crying. They make me want to cry too, cry for my babies. Nearly all the working girls I know have dead babies. Some terminated, some stillborn. We all seem to have them. Just like we all seem to have been abused when we were children. I wonder if Lorna has dead baby too. I might ask her tonight.

I think of the wrinkly lady in her red bikini. “This is the life,” she said the other day. No, this isn’t the life. This isn’t the life I’d hoped for. This isn’t what I wanted to be when I was growing up. I wanted to be a princess. I thought I could be a princess. I remember a teacher in primary school, Mrs Matthews, telling me I could be anything I wanted. The babysitters used to say the same as well, “As long as you’re a good girl, we’ll make sure you’re a princess or whatever it is you want to be. Don’t tell because we have the power to make anything happen. Remember, we can make people disappear too.”

Tears well in my eyes. I feel their hotness roll down my cheeks, past the corners of my mouth, then onto my chin. I’m not making a sound. I’m good at keeping quiet. There’s people around me. I don’t want them to see me cry. I move so that I’m lying on my stomach. Now my face is hidden in my Betty Boop towel. I wish my mum was here. I’m too young not to have a mum. Maybe if I’d have told her what was happening, she’d still be here for me. I should have told. Why didn’t I tell?

“You were too scared,” says a little voice inside my head.

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” I reply.

“You’ll be okay. You can end it later when you see Lorna.”

“Yes I can. Thank you. I will.”