IT was exactly 10pm; she’d never dare be late.

Rachael Webster approached the door of another London property immaculately dressed in her designer clothes, lacy underwear, stockings and hair extensions - her heart pounding in her chest.

With her one hand, perfectly manicured with Chanel nail varnish, she knocked on the stranger’s door. Her other hand wrapped itself around a bottle of CS gas she always clung to for reassurance.

“My heart would be in my mouth as I approached the door. You would just never know what to expect or who would be behind it. There was the hellish fear this encounter may well be the last, the same fear that had been with me since the very beginning.

“I’d just think please God let me see my daughter again, hold her, smell her hair and feel the softness of her skin against me”, she said.

From the moment the door creaked open she’d be transformed into her alter ego Sam and was promptly handed £1,000 cash to spend the night with her latest client.

But as she removed her pricey designer clothes, her body was so covered in bruises even the fake tan would not cover them.

“I might have looked the part on the outside but under the designer clothes I’d be covered in bruises inside my arms, inside my legs. They’d be a reminder of what I was doing.”

It was the reminder that far from the glamorous scenes played out in the hit Billie Piper series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, life as a high-class escort in London’s West End for celebrities and gangsters was extremely brutal.

She said: “I earned thousands but I spent the money as quickly as I earned it - most working girls do. I’d spend it to get over what I’d done because I knew it was dirty money.”

Rachael, a former pupil at Regents Park Community School in Southampton, has bravely ‘outed’ her secret life in a tell-all book Autobiography of a Former High-Class Call Girl: The First Floor.

Originally from Liverpool, single mum-of-three Rachael went to London after responding to an advert for escorts in a magazine out of desperation.

The brunette began a double life working for an agency where she developed a number of regular clients each night.

She once had to lie to her flat mates that she worked as a private detective when they quizzed her about her strange working hours even buying a pair of trainers and a Dictaphone to corroborate the story. In her 15 year career Rachael landed a job as a hostess at a renowned gentleman’s club in the West End rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous.

“I remember I thought I’d made it. It was the pinnacle for a call girl to work there. The girls would look like we’d come straight out of Milan fashion week, you had to act a lady at all times.

“We’d entertain wealthy clients including footballers, actors, lawyers, judges, but could only approach them if they called us over. We got commission if they bought expensive bottles of champagne. Once I was called over to a celebrity who was surrounded by six girls like birds on a perch. He handed me £200 for talking to him for 10 minutes.

“At the end of the evening a waiter would discreetly whisper to us “have you got the case?”.

Case meant taking a client back to a hotel or apartment where we would come to our own business arrangements. Like on Secret Diary of a Call Girl there’s a glamorous side to it and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was addictive and could be empowering. I soon became a guest at some of London’s most exclusive hotels: Claridges, The Park Lane Hotel, The Ritz. I’d be good at detaching myself from the relationships. I was an incredible actress playing different personalities for different clients.

“Some would just want to pretend to be in a relationship - others would have weird fetishes.

“It was without a doubt exhilarating but there was a very different side to it and often you’d feel like a commodity rather than a person.

“Sometimes at night the homes of the wealthy and the elite and rooms in the grandest hotels became little more than castles of depravity and the monsters would have white powdery noses.

"Even that was never enough to stop me.

”I showed fear once and one guy demanded his money back and wouldn’t let me out of his hotel room. Another guy threatened to pour petrol over me and set me on fire. Another guy threatened to blow my brains out with a pistol.

“I desperately tried to get out many times. I’m one of the lucky ones who did get out more or less intact but it was only thanks to my mum.”

Her mum Lyn Butchart lost her battle with an aggressive cancer forcing Rachael to quit her double life.

But devastated by the loss of her mum and best friend, who knew all her secrets, Rachael suffered a brain swelling so severe it almost claimed her life.

Her life became so desperate she found herself turning to alcohol as she had previously while on the call girl circuit, became homeless and was left with nowhere to turn.

However she said she was saved by charity Crisis Skylight who supported her and enlisted her onto a creative writing course where she penned her autobiography. She said: “When mum died I didn’t want to live. I couldn’t see a life beyond her life. My book has saved me. It gave me a focus and got me back on my feet.”

Now Rachael, 41, has a flat in Whitechapel and hopes to instil hope into young women that there is life beyond prostitution.

She said: “I sunk to the depths of society working on the dangerous call girl circuit. I battled alcoholism and prescription drug dependency and pulled myself through a tragedy and homelessness. I have to admit I have trodden many darkened pathways but it took a close encounter with death to finally save my life.

“I hope my story might make people think twice about entering the industry and it might even save someone’s life. I hope my mum is smiling down from heaven and can finally be proud of me.”

  •  Crisis Skylight is an award-winning and dynamic education, training and employment centre for homeless and vulnerably housed people.

It offers practical and creative workshops in an accessible and inspiring environment together with formal learning opportunities that lead to qualifications and can help people to find work.

For more information see: crisis.org.uk