The First Floor Revisited: Autobiography of a High-Class Call Girl

By Rachael Webster

Engaging, charming, yet disturbing true story of a girl who sinks to the very depths of society working on the dangerous London West End high-class call-girl circuit for celebrities and gangsters. She also battles alcoholism and prescription drug dependency, suffering life-threatening injury and tragedy whilst trying to reinvent herself. As featured by Daily Mail, Liverpool Echo, Wigan Post, Chat Magazine, EastEndLife Magazine, Warrington Guardian and Radio City Merseyside.

This second 'Revisited' edition includes previously unpublished material and photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SDS Publishing
• Release date: Mar 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301756735

Book preview

The First Floor Revisited

The True Story of Rachael Webster

Copyright © 2015 by Rachael Webster

Foreword by Steve Stone

'The First Floor' is a thoroughly engaging, charming, yet disturbing true story of a girl who sinks to the very depths of society whilst working on the dangerous high-class call-girl circuit for gangsters and celebrities. She also battles alcoholism and prescription drug dependency, suffering life-threatening injury and tragedy whilst trying to re-invent herself....

The First Floor Revisited

By Rachael Webster

Published by SDS Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Rachael Webster

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people and organisations;

Alcoholics Anonymous

Listening Ear, Liverpool

Crisis Skylight, London

Church Army Women's Hostel, London

Women's and Girls’ Network, London

My three children - love you more than I can say

My mum - thank you for always being my light within the darkness, I miss you ceaselessly

Rosemary

Melanie C

Melanie B

Andrea

Amelia

The Treacy family

David

Darren P

Max

My higher power - thank you for loving me, and making me the person I am today

And last, but not least, Dr Anna Westlake

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Prologue

One: In the Beginning

Two: If Music be the Food of Love

Three: The Gun

Four: The Creek

Five: The South Coast

Six: London Calling

Seven: The Sound of Music

Eight: Baby in the Darkness

Nine: Flirting with Danger

Ten: Running from Monsters

Eleven: The Record Producer

Twelve: Canada Revisited

Thirteen: Squaddie’s Girl

Fourteen: Simon Le Bon

Fifteen: Erotic Dancer

Sixteen: Happy Families

Seventeen: Mother’s Little Helpers

Eighteen: The Final Days

Epilogue and Poem

Prologue

'Dear Father God. Please can I one day save abused children? Can I one day be a singer? Can I one day write something to help people?' Prayers from my bedroom at nighttimes as a seven-year-old child were simple but honest.

I had seen Mammy crying many times over all the suffering she had during her own childhood. One day when I was big, I wanted to do something to save other abused children. And I had often dried my mother’s tears, parenting her, loving her better.

I was blessed to have been born the child of highly intelligent parents. My mother, despite divorcing my birthfather, always instilled into me that I should be an achiever. So this became an early goal in life; to prove to her, to prove to others, to prove to myself that I could actually do something. Yet I was never quite sure what. Moving house many times, my mother battling problems with addiction and never a happy woman, my stepfather always an angry man, and my career plans forever eluding me, I became a teenage runaway. With eighteen schools under my belt from the constant relocating, my life spiralled out of control. And with little in the way of education, I began to make my own way in the world, hanging out with gangsters, drug dealers and call girls, my life nearly ending many times over. But I had always been literate, articulate, and a lover of the human soul. And I still wanted to do something to help children, many of the girls I worked with themselves no more than abused kids.

Each and every girl had a story, and I cherished every story they ever shared with me, vowing to take them to my grave despite writing my own memoirs in later years. Still, there were many times I felt I was fighting dark forces upon my voyages into the underworld and the shadowy side of life.

I wanted to not only push back boundaries, but trampled on many of society’s, as though they simply did not exist. Dancing in playgrounds of the rich, I become little more than a hedonist, who would do virtually anything to gain thrills, money and men; yet underneath it all, I was drowning in a sea of despair. I mixed with celebrities, becoming a high-class call girl earning thousands, but still it was never enough, my existence a real-life movie show, but I was still chasing the dream.

In particular, becoming romantically involved with a high-profile record producer would only serve to break my heart, just as I broke the hearts of many men on my journey. Some may call it poetic justice. However, my liaisons with the elite of society continued throughout, as did my love affair with alcohol.

I lost a lot of friends along the way, living on a permanent knife-edge. Eventually, the death of my mother nearly claimed my life, when a freak reaction caused my brain to swell. It took my near-death to finally save my own life from the abuse, addiction and madness I had lived for more than thirty years.

My mother had said to me many times, 'Sometimes God takes a life, to save a life.' But there are things we are never meant to understand. And perhaps that is but one of them.

The First Floor takes the reader on an up-close and personal journey of how I survived the unthinkable, moulding me into the person I am today; a lover of human life, first, last and always.

Chapter One

In the Beginning

'My mother is dead. She must be!’ She was lying on the floor and her eyes were closed.

There were people all around and it was very dark.

‘Wake up! Wake up!’ I screamed.

A stranger's hands pulled me away from her.

I tried to run back to her. I love her. I need her! 'Wake up, Mammy! Wake up, wake up!’

But the stranger did not listen to my cries. ‘Your mother is just drunk, Rachael. She'll be okay.’

But I believed that she had gone to a place from which there is no return.

I was three years old. This is my first memory.

And so here began my story, sometime during 1975. My fear of the darkness, my fear of my mother's death, but I was always just an ordinary girl, who lived in an extraordinary world. Yet I have enjoyed a very full life and met some amazing people along the way. And if you have the patience to carry on reading, I shall try to explain.

My mother was beautiful. All mothers are beautiful, but mine was especially so. With long dark hair that cascaded down her back, and a figure that turned many a man's head, she was the centre of my universe. She was extremely intelligent with an endless vocabulary, and never failed to make an impression upon those who met her, in one way or another. People either loved her or hated her, it was simple. And it had been like that ever since the dawn of my earliest memories would allow me to travel. She had a string of qualifications as long as your arm, and had won medals for singing as a child. She had even fired a bazooka, having fought in the Six-Day Israeli war.Here are some old photos of my earliest days with her;

Outside our Manchester bedsit.

In Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester.

On a day out, somewhere.

I was born a seventies child, my mother playing Scott McKenzie’s ‘If You're Going to San Francisco’ over and over, upon the old music centre that lay on the sideboard. She danced around the living room, her long flower-power skirts swaying as she went. And no matter what, she would always wear her makeup. She would say to my own children in years to come; ‘Even if you don't have a single penny in your pocket, you should never let anyone know that.’ She had always been a very proud woman.

But she had an incredibly difficult life. Born in March 1946 in Dundee, Scotland, to a woman who had been unable to care for her, Mammy was adopted, and went on to tell me many times of the horrors of her childhood with her adoptive mother. Forced to wear the same shoes from age nine until 13, her feet were deformed, something she had always been ashamed of. And at nine years of age, she had been stabbed in the shoulder with a broken cup by that very same adoptive mother, something which affected her whole life. And after the death of her adoptive mother, my mother had witnessed the murder of her sister Mary, before finally heading to Canada, all alone in the world, but determined to make something of her life. She had trained as a nurse.

In the sixties, she went on to meet my father Andrew in Canada, whom she married. He later became a textile technologist for NASA. And five years later, I was born on the 15th February 1972 as Rachael Sarah Levine. My mother chose a Jewish name for me, as she had followed Judaism for some time before I was born.

I was just six weeks old when my father walked out. His reasons I have never quite known, and some things are better left unsaid, although my mother always called him a womaniser. And so Mammy and I were alone, yet together in the world, now living in Crumpsall, Manchester in a small top-floor flat, my mother nursing at Crumpsall General Hospital, her dear friend Chloe caring for me when she was at work.

In later life, my mother often told me how she struggled during that time, and would sometimes steal an egg or two from the fridge at work, just to be able to feed me. One time, she had found two discarded apple pies at the back of Kendalls department store, the boxes a little dented, but other than that perfect. She had waited until no one was looking and then scooped them up into the tray beneath the pram. Those apple pies fed us for a couple of days. Apparently, my father had come to visit a couple of times, but he spent most of his time working abroad.

When I was one, my mother met Mike, and in February 1974, my baby sister Lara was born. I loved her dearly. Mike was of Chinese origin. With her shock of black hair and almond shaped eyes, I inherently felt a need to protect Lara, and from the moment she came into this world, she became my soul mate. Nobody would ever hurt that baby for as long as I was around.

I would often go downstairs, long after the rest of the family were asleep, and play on my own in the darkness, tipping out crayons and putting them back into a tin, one by one. One night, my mother stirred and went to check Lara, to discover to her horror that the baby was missing from her crib. She heard my little voice from downstairs. ‘One for dolly, one for baby, one for dolly.’ And there I was, happy as Larry, having somehow managed to carry Lara all the way downstairs. I had propped her up on the sofa in between two dolls, and was feeding her spoonfuls of water.

Back then, I had no idea that my mother was also battling a problem with alcohol, and at times, prescription drugs too. She was just 'Mammy' to me; drunk, sober or otherwise. Her favourite sayings were, ‘Come on, get with the programme!’ or ‘Let's get this show on the road,’ always giving an assertive clap of her hands.

Once a year, a travelling fairground would come to town and set up camp, about a mile or so from where we lived. And as a three-year-old child, I was particularly taken with the red wooden train that circled in loops on a track, bells jingling, whistles blowing. I managed to slip away from my mother and Mike. They became frantic when they realised I was missing, eventually finding me an hour or so later, going round and round on the train. But they had already sparked a police search.

‘Don't shout at her!’ began our neighbour. ‘You should just be glad to have her back safely!’ My mother agreed, but the very next day, I once more managed to escape, toddling almost to the fairground, when I was accosted by a local newsagent who knew my mother. Again, the police had been called.

My mother could be very obstinate, and when the neighbours tried to intervene, she put up a hand to silence them, saying, ‘Don't tell her off? You have to be kidding! The lot of you can mind your own damned business!’ She slammed the front door, locked me safely behind it with a smack on the rear, and I was sent to bed after a bath. That was the last time I ever pulled the fairground stunt.

Our next house was kept immaculately; a three-bedroom semi in Leigh, Lancashire. There was a place for everything, and everything had to be in its place. The aroma of Lemi Shine filled the air. Lara and I were always spotlessly turned out. Mammy hand-made some of our clothes, she was a very skilled self-styled seamstress. Our hair was tightly plaited with matching bands and ribbons.

Sundays were church days. And as much as our mother loved us, she was super-strict. Whatever she said went; no ifs, buts or maybes. Lara and I were only ever allowed to play with one toy at a time, as Mammy loathed untidiness. Not many liked to cross her. To the outside world, she fitted in most of the time, yet on the inside, she was always something of a different story.

There was a huge cupboard under the stairs, where Mammy kept the Hoover and some of our toys. She bought me a hardback book about sea creatures, with a hologram of a goldfish with a gigantic bulbous black eye on the cover. It really gave me the creeps, the way it stared at me from the page, so one day I threw it as far back into the cupboard as I could. Thank God I never saw it again.

Mike was a very angry man, and he and my mother would often argue. Frequently, we would end up in one women's refuge or another, sometimes late at night, wearing coats thrown over our pyjamas, Mammy hurriedly ushering us into waiting taxis. Sometimes she would have a black eye, other times she would cry pitifully. ‘Shhh,’ I would console her. ‘Don't cry, Mammy. It's alright. I'll look after you.’ I would hug her tightly, willing myself to be big, so that I could think of the right words to stop her tears. But I never could. She would scribble endless words, on endless pieces of paper, as I silently looked on from beneath unfamiliar blankets, in an unfamiliar room. And to this day, I have often wondered what she wrote about. They were memoirs perhaps, or letters of desperation to long-lost friends. Whatever the case, she took the words with her when she passed away. There are some things we were never meant to know.

When I was five, I started at the local Catholic school, my favourite time always being the school assembly. We would sing hymns, and the Headmistress would tell us about God and the Bible.

One afternoon, she called my mother and said, ‘Rachael is a highly intelligent child, but she keeps contradicting me during assembly. Could you please ask her not to do so?’

And after a dressing-down from Mammy, I never did it again. Regardless, I had a very analytical mind, and was always asking questions, siphoning information from grownups, and asking people, ‘Why?’ I have no doubt that it drove my poor mother insane at times. She would often tell others how I was going to become a doctor, which in fact was something I had once dreamt of doing; saving lives, helping others. But whatever I did, I had an inherent love of people, animals, and human life itself.

We had regular power cuts, left with no electricity for hours on end, tiptoeing about in virtual darkness beneath the shadows of candlelight, or gathering around paraffin lamps we had borrowed from the neighbours. And despite the complaining of the adults, I always found the power cuts somewhat exciting, being one of the few times we would get to play with the children in the neighbours’ houses, or they would play in ours.

One spring morning, my mother awoke, startled by my yells outside. ‘Come on, everybody,’ I screamed, ‘it is party time!’ She looked out of the window with bated breath, and spotted me on the front lawn, her best towels laid out, surrounded by some local children. Balancing on a kitchen chair, I had helped myself to her expensive wine glasses, filling them with water. I had even gone to the lengths of making some rather interesting cheese sandwiches. It goes without saying that my mother soon put paid to that little gathering.

Mrs. Mitchell, an active pensioner who lived a couple of miles from us, would sometimes babysit in the evenings. She always wore a green headscarf, and I was intrigued by the amount of creases she had in her cheeks. She dearly loved Lara and me, and would greet us with the biggest hugs. ‘How are my favourite girls?’ she would ask us, sitting both of us on her knee. Because I could never pronounce her name, I would call her 'Mitchie-Mitchie'.

She would bring us homemade fudge and other sweets. One night, there was thunder and lightning, and Lara was afraid. Mitchie taught us to sing, ‘Go away thunder, go away lightning,’ as we skipped up and down the living room. And sure enough, just like magic, that scary old thunder and lightning vanished shortly afterwards.

Sometimes, Lara and I would tie our dressing gowns around our waists, let our long hair out of plaits, and dance around to Kate Bush's, 'Wuthering Heights'. Mitchie or our mother would applaud and encourage us as we did, evoking fond memories even today.

In 1979, I became seven, and we moved to a large old stone terraced house in a small village named Haslingden, somewhere out near the Yorkshire moors.

Our house boasted 15 rooms, with flats and a cellar beneath them. It sounded something of a dream house, but was actually more of a nightmare. Winter seemed to linger most of the year round, and we would often get snowed in. Each room boasted a solitary light bulb that sat in silent woe, in some small way bringing a glimmer of hope to the once-esteemed place. Condensation crawled down the walls, splintered and chipping slivers of paint on the naked windows. Cockroaches had made the cellar their kingdom, lining the old steep stairs that led to the coal shed. Old wrought-iron fireplaces adorned the centre of each and every room, where once families had gathered round, whilst telling tales of old. But now most of the wrought-iron companions