Josh & Miguel

More than one person had described Josh as aggressively handsome in the 10 or so years since he left university, and instinctively the people who heard that description knew what was meant by it. A tall blonde guy from the north of England, he had two basic outfits: jeans and a cable knit jumper for cold days, and sportswear for the entire rest of the year. All his trainers were white and filthy. His body was indeed as muscular and impressive as its description suggested but it was a trained muscularity, awkward and inelegant - earned through a fastidious devotion to working out and eating chicken McNuggets afterwards. He frowned while biting his nails. Furthermore, Josh, like his name, was famously monosyllabic - whether he was genuinely tongue tied or just uninterested in conversation was never quite clear, but the combination of moody and untalkative had made him popular among a particular subsection of the older gay community, the sort who preferred to do all the talking themselves.

If Josh was on an 'English Angel of the North,' a knight in shining sportswear, then Miguel was both his opposite and his compliment. Portuguese by origin and French by upbringing, no one was quite sure how he'd ended up working behind a bar in Clapham. He was softly spoken but verbose in several languages and despite never setting foot in a gym he had, in the words of an elderly barrister, the sort of legs that inspired poetry. Daily he would charm customers using his innate knowledge of how to blush when appropriate, how to bat his long eyelashes and lower his seductive brown eyes where necessary, and when to mention his mother if he thought the client was Catholic.

The two young men, both in what they considered to be their prime, were almost inseparable and made an extraordinary pairing, yet it surprised no one who knew them when it was revealed that they were among the most popular employees of an exclusive escort agency which ran out of a discreet office on the Walworth Road.