For 18 years, Niamh has secretly paid her bills and supported her child from her earnings as a Fitzwilliam Square prostitute in Dublin. It's an intricate job of constantly inventing stories about where she goes at night and fabricating sources for her income.
"A double life," she explains. A single mother in her mid-40s, she lives in a spruce, well-furnished home. The snug interior is in contrast to the bleak, graffiti-sprawled surroundings of the working-class Dublin suburb where she lives.
Niamh (not her real name) heads for the Square on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights dressed in a deep-cut top, a mini skirt, high boots and a leather jacket. Her weekly pay reflects the number of hours she works, the weather and business.
"Money is always exchanged first and business comes later," she says. Niamh's business means either intercourse or oral sex.
"All the girls I know use condoms," she says, adding that it is unusual to hear of cases of STDs. The years have shaped a pragmatic attitude to her job. The only visible source of stress is the threat of exposure. She is at pains to protect her teenager and family from finding out.
"People think they would know a prostitute a mile away in their community. They would have the Bet Lynch look with fishnet tights and brassy blonde hair," she says, mildly amused. "When you get home, life is normal. You forget about it."
Sliding a cigarette out of a 10-pack, Niamh says she has been lucky as she has only once been seriously injured by a client. "I go on instinct. If I don't like the look of them, I don't go near them," she says emphatically. "I wouldn't touch anyone who's drunk. They can become aggressive."
Unlike many others, she didn't slip into prostitution through friends or poverty. In search of a deposit for a flat she couldn't afford, Niamh made a hard-nosed decision. "I knew nobody working at it. I knew the area and I knew what they did. I got dressed up one night and went down."
Niamh, who has attended the EHB clinic every two months since it opened, says that she knows 70 to 80 per cent of the prostitutes working around the Grand Canal area. A small number are junkies. Accompanied by their heroin-addicted boyfriends, who act as pimps, they create problems for the others, she says. "They often threaten clients with syringes and rob them." Aggrieved clients can "come back the next night, get the wrong girl and punch the lights out of her," she explains, her words piercing balloons of smoke. Assaults and robberies by pimps and prostitutes go unreported as the men are too worried about wives and careers, Niamh adds. "Years ago it was safer. You didn't find 15 and 16-year-olds or heroin addicts on the streets."