A time for honesty .....

Good evening and greetings from Inverness where Spandex Susan and I have arrived
having sailed up the A9 belting out some hits from my new "Celine Dion's Greatest Hits" album. Amongst her many talents, Susan is a karaoke queen so we enjoy a joint warble as the mood takes us, caring not a jot for the bemused looks from fellow motorists.

Halloween is almost upon us and the annual search for my little darling's costume gets more difficult with every passing year. It was so easy when she was two and I could stuff her into a pumpkin costume. Everyone thought she was adorable, gave her some sweets that I wouldn't allow her in a blind fit and it was "fait accompli" until the following year. But not this year, oh no.

" I want to be Cheryl Cole."

"Um, she's not very scary though, is she ?"

"Derrr, dead Cheryl Cole obviously."

Right. Why couldn't she be a feckin' witch like every other little girl ? I could have wept. So we set off on yet another shopping trip ( reason number 3,417 why I'm glad I'm an escort ) and at some point along the way we managed to gain another little princess who had been furnished with cash from her grateful ( if not cleverer than I ) parents whose daughter wanted to be a dead cheerleader. Great.

I was browsing the make-up whilst the girls tore the shop apart looking for their elusive costumes when I heard it. It's a sentence I always knew would come up, and I always thought I'd be prepared.

Princess of Other Parents : "I love dressing up, don't you ?"

My little cub : "Oooh, me too. You should see the clothes my Mum has, my Mum is Laura Lee."

After I picked myself up from the shop floor I realised I needed to break up that conversation, and quickly.

"RIGHT, WHO FANCIES MCDONALD'S ?"

Squeals of delight followed and after I had dropped the other little lady off, I sat down with mini-me.

"We need to talk".

There has always been a moral dilemma for me in what I do, in that I love my job but I am acutely aware of the prejudice and stigma that exists and the way children can behave towards each other. For that reason, prior to that moment, I had never told my mini teenager what I do.

On the other hand, I am an activist for sex worker's rights. I advocate the decriminalisation of my job so that in time, society will become more accepting of us as individuals and also as a group. So hiding it from my daughter makes me a hypocrite and hypocrisy doesn't sit well with me, AT ALL.

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of it but suffice to say my daughter now knows -

- that I would never lie to her unless I absolutely had to and it was for her own protection, although she knew that already.

- that I am an escort and I provide companionship for men, ( bear in mind she is still of the opinion that sex is appalling, long may that last. )

- that some people find what I do morally reprehensible and in fact despise me for it.

- that I would never do something which I consider to be morally wrong, ergo my choice of profession.

- that my profession is the reason we had to leave our last home town, so it's not that I'm ashamed of what I do, but it's probably best if we don't blast it around at the next parent-teacher meeting.

In time, and as she gets older, she'll come to understand fully what the term "escort" means. I'll deal with that as it comes. For now, I'm so proud of her I could burst.

“Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.”

LL xx