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Dark red, you know the one, like blood. I forget the name. Anyway, he wants that on your toes. Light-pink manicure — fresh, innocent. So what’s next? Underwear, yes. He wants you in La Perla, off-white. Corsetry. Nothing whorish.”

Lauren [not her real name], 31, is mimicking her madam, putting on a breathy Parisian accent. “He’s a nice guy, veeery discreet. Remember: act like you know him. Packing, let’s see: a cocktail dress — black — whips, lube...”

She laughs, returning to her own voice, which has a faint Scandinavian lilt. “And that was my life for 10 years. I was a high-class hooker. Call me a courtesan, call girl, escort, whatever. Basically I was a hooker. Just very well paid.” She looks at her ring, an enormous pear-shaped diamond. “Very well paid.”

There is an enduring fascination with illicit sex in high places. Perhaps it’s the access to some of the world’s richest, most powerful men, the secrets, the scandal, and, of course, the sexual prowess of these girls, which is riveting to us all.

Hollywood sirens like Marilyn Monroe (who made pornographic films in her early career) and Joan Crawford (who worked in a strip club) reportedly sold sex too. And there was a media scramble to unmask the blogging call girl Belle de Jour (eventually revealed as Dr Brooke Magnanti), who was trading sex while studying for a PhD. She took her alluring nom de plume from the French novel of 1928, made into a film with Catherine Deneuve in 1967.

On condition of anonymity (“I don’t want my legs broken”), Lauren has agreed to talk about her life as a high-class prostitute. She earned £20,000 a night at her peak and £40,000 for a weekend.

“No one earns that money now,” she says. “Prices have gone down in the last five years. Changing times. My clients were on the Forbes list. Men who owned private islands, who were huge in property, international industry and oil. I’ve had dinner with royalty and major politicians. If you knew who! These clients were powerful, powerful men.’

Aristocrats? “No. They don’t pay. It’s new money. Having a hooker for them is nothing — like having butter on their bread. Sometimes their wives knew and turned a blind eye, sometimes they didn’t know.”

We are drinking tea in Lauren’s house in Chelsea. She lives with her husband, who was not a client — “I got lucky” — and who disapproves of her talking about her past.

She says her look — extraordinary pale hair, gas-blue eyes, peachy skin — was “the look everyone wanted. They don’t want skinny models, they want a little bit of ...” she plumps her neat cleavage ... “but nothing fake. No fake boobs, nails or eyelashes.”

Like others girls in her earnings bracket, Lauren is clever. She speaks Swedish, French and English. She used to read the Financial Times and The Economist to stay abreast of world events, as well as fashion magazines.

‘These clients want someone who can hold a conversation at a cocktail party or dinner — as well as everything else.”

Lauren says there are two major madams in London now, and they supply girls all over Europe and to the US. One is English — “big woman. Looks like a frog”. Lauren’s was French — “in her fifties, very elegant”.

She lives in north-west London and has dominated the industry for 20 years. She has “the best girls. They are seriously beautiful”.

How does her madam recruit? “She has people who work like model scouts, trawling clubs and bars and parties. And girls find her. Mostly they are models, strippers or dancers. Or students. They are smart and pretty. There are young actresses too. Sometimes recognisable faces.”

Lauren’s madam worked with a man who was “friendly with all the top model agencies. He’d pretend to be a Saudi prince and sleep with models. Then he’d tell them they could earn £10,000 a night and they’d say, ‘Oh really? Here’s my number’.”

At other times, he might proposition a pretty girl by offering large amounts of money for sex. “Ninety-nine per cent of the time she’ll tell him where to go. But the seed is planted. Next time she sees him, she might say, ‘Okay, tell me more’.”

Her madam would ask this same male friend to “test out” new girls. “He would report back and say, ‘She did this, she did that, she was good. I’d put her in the top bracket’. Or he’d say, ‘She’s a bit mediocre, so she might be a £1,000-a-night job as opposed to a £10,000’. There’s also a place in Paris she sends top girls to learn about sex — all the tricks. Paris is unbelievable for that stuff.”

Are the girls nervous? She laughs. “You can’t have nerves! These girls are tough. And there’s a numbness — it’s work. We don’t care about clients.”

Today, many of the girls are from Russia or Eastern Europe, she says, but others are from “all over — America, Brazil, South Africa, the Far East”.

The madam has around 100 girls on her books. “The very least you’ll be paying is £1,000 a night — those are the get-’em-in, get-’em-out service girls.” They’re booked for events like weekend shoots, or to sit in a nightclub making some sleazy guy look good. The mid-range are the majority — £5,000 a night upwards. Most of the mid-range guys aren’t mega-mega — they’re wealthy-banker league.”

Girls are sent “to etiquette classes, to learn how to sit, eat, which knife, fork, which glass for the white, for the red. It can’t be obvious to the other dinner guests that she’s a prostitute”.

She tells of a girl from a fabulous background who fell in love with a client. “He left his wife and three children for her.” Do many girls marry out of the game? “Not as many as you’d think,” she says. “It’s not Pretty Woman. But then again, a lot of society women started out this way.”

So what makes a £10,000–£20,000 girl? “Looks and training. We were professionals. We’d need to be funny, a laugh, party all night. Or cool and clever, discreet and well-mannered. You could never be fazed by power or money — or what you were asked to do.”

She says the top girls are “healthy”. “They go to the gym. They don’t do drugs, smoke or drink. Sometimes you’re up all night, so you need to look after yourself.”

The top 10 are “champion racehorses”. Others are “more hard-wearing”. “An absolutely stunning girl might not be so bright, or her English isn’t good. She’ll go to Arab clients. They want a beautiful girl they can lock in a room and bang, bang, bang.” She pauses. “But they pay well.”

Does that mean other clients treat girls well? “Yes, but...” She takes a deep breath. “A lot of these guys are seriously f***ed up. Their wives don’t do what they want. No woman in her sane mind would do half of it.”

She remembers being put in “an exceptionally expensive outfit so that the client could urinate on it”. One European royal “who has hookers all the time” is so rough that Lauren’s madam refuses to send her best girls. A famous film director offered to make Lauren famous “if I didn’t use a condom”. She refused.

“One guy — you definitely know his name — wanted to be a baby girl dressed as a ballerina. We had to smack him and put things up his bum.”

In addition to her fees (which were paid to the madam — “no money changes hands with the girl”), clients would take her shopping. “Getting jewellery is key. That’s an investment. The girls are big savers — they don’t spend their own money. If they start young — 18 is a good age — and do 10 to 12 years of hard work, they’re made.”

Retirement age is usually 28, “latest 30. They need to earn enough to put away for their future”. Lauren invested in property.

She says there’s an upper echelon of exclusive prostitutes who charge a premium for their celebrity. Lauren cites six, including a former Victoria’s Secret model who charged £25,000 an hour.

Through Lauren I meet Anna [not her real name], 24, who is still working as a prostitute. She wears Isabel Marant and Chanel. She’s braless under her white T-shirt but it doesn’t look tarty. She’s the kind of girl you might see hoicking her modelling portfolio around Paris.

She remembers the “cheap fake-fur coat” she was wearing when she stepped off the plane five years ago from Russia. Her modelling career failed because “there were a million girls like me at the agency. I couldn’t earn proper money”.

Anna refuses to discuss her madam but says she was introduced by another model. She’s been taken to Wimbledon, the Serpentine Party, Ibiza, Monaco and the Frieze Art Fair. Most of her clients are financiers — “hedge funders, CEOs, rich businessmen. I can make £5,000 a night. Sometimes £10,000 or £15,000 for a weekend.”

Clients want “everyone to think they’re going out with a model”.

“They don’t want you to dress like a hooker. You need to look natural. Don’t dress like their wives,” she smiles. “Although most of their wives try to dress like us.”

I ask Anna how she sees her future. “Maybe I’ll marry a rich man,” she says. “If not, I’ll start my own business.” Does she think she’ll ever fall in love? Have children? Have a normal life? “Maybe. I hope.” She shrugs. “It’s hard to think about it. Right now, I just want to make money.”

The full version of this article appears in February’s Tatler, out now.