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feeling hopelessly old. It used to be that selling sex was the lowest one could fall, and now this girl, this child, was telling me that it was nothing more than a life-style choice.
    â€˜They love you,’ I repeated, my voice lame.
    â€˜Stop telling me that they love me!’
    The other two girls looked up briefly; the fat businessman was too busy enjoying himself. Susan lowered her voice. ‘I don’t care if they love me! I don’t care! I tried to talk to them, I mean really tried , but they didn’t listen.’
    â€˜Which is why they’re sorry now.’
    â€˜Jesus Christ, you don’t get it, do you? How can I go back? How can I face my parents after this? How can I tell them that I once let a guy pee on me for two hundred pounds?’
    â€˜You don’t. Tell them what you want. They won’t care. All they want is to know is that you’re safe. When your dad came to hire us, we told him that you could be doing anything. We told him that you could be dead, that you could be working in a place like this. You want to know what he said?’
    She nodded.
    â€˜â€œIt doesn’t matter. She’s a good kid, and a smart one. She’ll do what it takes to get by.” Bonnydoon is two hundred miles away. It’s not as if you’re going to be running into people that you’ve met in Glasgow every day of the week. And the guy that paid to. . . you know. . . you think he’s going to tell people what he’s into? You think he’s proud of the fact that he’s such a weirdo that he has to pay someone to be a part of his sick little fantasy?’
    Whatever I said, I felt that I wasn’t going to get through to her. Still, I kept trying. ‘Look, you can sit there and pretend that you’ve been there, done that and bought the fucking T-shirt, but the truth is that you don’t know shit. You might at the time have thought you had a good reason to leave, but you know now that’s a load of crap. You know that your parents love you but, rather than admit that, you have the nerve to sit here and pretend that you’re the one that’s the victim in all this. Can you imagine all the worry and hurt you caused them?
    Can you understand how their lives stopped the minute you went missing?’
    I reached into my wallet and took out a business card and a pen, scrawling my home number onto the back before placing the card on the table in front of her. ‘Look, if you’re scared about facing your parents, call me first and I’ll talk to them for you.’
    She just sat there, shaking her head as if by doing so she could discount everything I had said. I stood up, angry. ‘Fuck it. I said I wasn’t going to tell your parents where you were, but I think I will.
    Because maybe then you’ll see. They’ll keep looking for you. They’ll come down here and ask questions, so unless you decide that you can handle it, then you’re going to have to move on. But wherever you go, they’re going to keep looking because, for whatever reason, they love you and will forgive anything. . . anything . . . you’ve done. You can’t run forever.’

Chapter 2
Friday November 14th, 2008
    2.1
    Take Control: Glasgow operated from a small grey building on Paisley Road that had originally been a doctors’ surgery. Four years ago, a new health centre had been built a couple of hundred yards away, and the doctors had lost no time in decamping to the upgraded facility. Take Control lived up to their name and took control, turning the examination rooms into small offices that were ideal for one-to-one counselling. Everything – the reception area, the private rooms, the coffee bar – was painted in soothing earth tones: harvest browns and spring yellows and forest greens. Pamphlets covered every available surface in the reception area – Coping With Loss, Dealing with Depression, So You Think You Might Be Gay?