For Your Own Protection(45)

Matt wanted to ask a thousand questions, but let her continue.

‘I didn’t plan for it. I was at university in Sheffield, studying psychology, when one of my classmates asked me to do them a favour. They’d been seeing a guy since first year, captain of the rugby team. But there were these rumours that he was sleeping with other girls. We got chatting over coffee one afternoon, and she asked me if I’d test out his resolve. I said no at first, but then I decided to help her out. I thought it might be fun, and it was, to be honest.’

‘So you proved he was being unfaithful?’

‘Yes. It was pretty easy. I seduced him on the dance floor during one of the athletics union club nights. The girlfriend dumped him the next day.’

‘So he knew he’d been set up?’

‘No. She never told him why. He begged her not to leave him. But she told him he’d started to bore her. She really knew how to hit him where it hurt – right in his ego.’ Natalie smiled at the thought. ‘That’s when I realised how satisfying it was, helping people in that way. So I started to investigate, and I found out there were agencies who employed people to do what I’d done. It got me some extra money for that last year at university.’

‘Seems like a strange way for a student to earn extra money.’

‘You think? Haven’t you heard what some students get up to these days to pay the bills? The escort business, and worse,’ she said. ‘There’s a big market out there for pretty university girls. I see my job as a way for women to take back control. After university, I moved to London and it became my full-time occupation.’

Matt wondered what Natalie really thought of him, a man who had cheated on his long-term partner. ‘So the man in the pub . . .’

Her jaw tightened. ‘Two years ago, his wife got in contact with the agency I was working for, said she suspected he’d been having affairs for years. He was a salesman, travelled a lot. Turns out his wife was right. They almost invariably are – most women know when their man’s being unfaithful. They come to people like me partly in the hope that I might prove them wrong, but it never really works like that.’

‘That guy, he was pretty bitter. He found out about you, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. His wife told him everything. And unfortunately, he tracked me down.’

‘He told me.’

She grimaced at the thought. ‘I mentioned during one of our meetings about shopping at the local Waitrose. It was a slip, really. He found me and accosted me in one of the aisles. Bawled at me. Thankfully that was the last I saw of him. I changed where I shopped, and I was more careful from then on. I’d learnt a hard lesson.’

‘Does it not worry you that you’re putting yourself in danger?’

‘I never saw it like that. Well, not until recently,’ she added cryptically.

‘His wife left him with nothing.’

She shrugged. ‘He deserved it. Brought it on himself.’

‘Everyone can make a mistake.’

She turned to him. ‘Multiple affairs over years isn’t a mistake, it’s a conscious choice – an intentional decision to deceive the one who loves and trusts you. I do my job to help those who are being deceived.’

‘And what about with me? You said what you’ve been doing, it’s for my own protection. What did you mean?’

Natalie glanced around, eyeing those passing by. ‘Normally I stick to the same type of job. From the very beginning, I’ve always been commissioned by a woman through an agency, and the task has pretty much been standard. I’ve been very careful not to stray from what I know, what I’m comfortable with. With you it’s different.’

‘In what way?’

‘First of all, the job isn’t through an agency. It’s for a friend of a friend. And secondly, it wasn’t about you being faithful or not.’

‘Go on . . .’

Another glance around. ‘I was told to get close to you, and stay close to you. But my job is – was – to look out for you, to make sure if I saw anything unusual, to report it back.’

‘Anything unusual?’

‘People following you, any suspicious activity, things like that.’

‘People following me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why would people be following me?’

‘I don’t know.’

Matt shook his head. ‘Who asked you to do this?’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t say.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘I never reveal the identities of my clients. These people trust me.’

‘I thought you might be a stalker.’

‘I’m afraid I wasn’t as good at staying out of sight as I’d have liked. Like I said, this isn’t my usual line of work.’

Matt thought some more. ‘The person who asked you to do this, they didn’t give you any indication of why I might need protecting?’

‘No. I was told as much as I needed to know,’ she explained. ‘To be honest, I don’t know the identity of the person who paid for me to do this. They went through my friend as an intermediary. But as I said, even if I did know, I couldn’t tell you.’

‘Then why are you even telling me this? Why not just walk away?’