I n a parking bay on a deserted industrial estate in Lyon, Karen, in her late 40s, sat in the passenger seat of her second-hand Ford Transit van wearing only black underwear.
It was 7. She lit a pink lantern on the dashboard. Soon, a steady flow of cars was circling the car park β Mercedes, jeeps, old bangers β their drivers slowing to peer at the women in corsets sitting alone in a dozen parked, white vans, arms folded, candlelight flickering across their faces. I'll say, 'What, for all that petrol you've wasted?
A silver car slowed. A year-old agreed to sex for 40 euros. Karen climbed into the back of the van, which she had decorated with a bed, a heater, purple curtains and a chest of drawers. Three minutes later the man walked out into the night. Karen laid out a clean sheet of paper-towel on the bed, spruced her blond hair. Most of the evening was spent sitting waiting. Then in 15 minutes, three clients paid for sex, including a Spanish man in his 20s in designer clothes. Each took less than five minutes.
She had made her daily quota of cash needed to pay her bills. A former secretary from the southern naval city of Toulon, three times married, with two daughters, Karen first started selling sex in the s: a brief stint on the street near a Lyon station, working mainly in clients' cars, "which is very uncomfortable".
She quit and got married, but in , divorced and with a young child she suddenly needed to "put food on the table". She returned to sex-work, first in a hostess bar, then meeting clients at her home via a newspaper small-ad.
