What became of us

bring herself to. She picked up the remote and pointed it at the CD player.
    When Bat out of Hell had first appeared she had played it so often her mother had said she would wear it out. Then there had been a gap of almost twenty years when she hadn’t listened to it at all, she couldn’t think why not. The previous Christmas, she had fallen on a CD of Meat Loaf’s Greatest Hits in a promotional bin in a service station with the same pleasure as you have when you recognize an old boyfriend and can’t immediately remember why you ever split up. ‘Heaven Can Wait’ was one of those smoochy songs she never understood the words to but sang along anyway, knowing from the dramatic harmonies that it must be meaningful.
    Feeling suddenly clear-headed and creative, Annie picked up the office chair she had sat in while Maurice did her make-up and tried to carry it back into her office. A sound like a strip of wax being ripped from a depilated leg alerted her too late to the fact that she had trodden on her dress.
    Annie thought of the cheque for two hundred pounds she had left at the costumier’s as a deposit, briefly entertained the notion of tearing the rest of the dress from her body, but decided that it would be too sad a parody of the way she had imagined ending the evening. But she could not work out how else she was going to get it off without help. The hoop made it impossible to sit on the chair. Defeated by the logistics of her environment, and suddenly exhausted, Annie sank sideways onto the sofa in her office, and after a few moments the cathartic singalong with Meat Loaf changed to heavy snores.

Chapter 6

    The club closed at three in the morning. Most Fridays there was a Perudo game in the top bar that started around midnight. Sometimes the men would ask Manon to join in; others, they would wave her away like an unlucky talisman. It depended on who was playing and how much they had had to drink. Often the challenge of beating her would prove too much for them to resist. Tonight she did not want to play.
    The incongruous wheat and tissue paper bouquet lay on the floor next to a laptop in a nylon Prada bag that someone had forgotten to pick up. She wondered whether it would offend Frank more if she left the bouquet, or if she took it without saying goodbye to him. She decided to leave it and let him think she had forgotten it. Flaky was a word he often used to describe her. She wanted to slip away unnoticed, but Cosmo saw her draping the last two uncollected jackets over her counter.
    ‘Frank was asking for you,’ he told her.
    ‘I’ve got to be up early...’
    He gave her a long look, a curious mixture of respect and disapproval, which made her think that he probably knew she was Frank’s mistress.
    ‘See you tomorrow, then?’
    ‘Evening off. I swapped with Kitty.’
    ‘Course you did. Monday then. Take care.’
    For a second, his hard eyes softened and his look sent a shiver of alarm through her body. She had seen it many times before on men’s faces. She had always assumed that Cosmo was gay, asexual, or simply too professional to notice her in that way. Perhaps he had sensed that something about her tonight was different. She picked up her Boots carrier bag and scuttled off down the stairs.
    It had been a hot day, but a breeze had cleared the skies and the night air puckered her skin beneath the flimsy cotton dress. Most of the Friday evening crowds had gone home, but the all-night cafes were still busy, and groups of people stood on the pavements licking ice-cream cones. Others crowded round minicab booths clamouring to be driven in unmarked, unlicensed cars, by drivers who could barely speak English. She liked the buzzy cosmopolitan feeling the streets of London had at this time of night.
    Manon walked across Cambridge Circus and along the darkened stretch of Shaftesbury Avenue where it was suddenly quiet. Apart from the occasional scream of a distant police siren, the only sound was the squeak and flap of the flat Moroccan slippers she was wearing. She found herself wondering whether if someone were to chase her she would be able to outrun them in these sandals, and her chest tightened with unease. A black cab roared past. She tried to breathe through the rush of anxiety, wondering why she was frightened walking through the familiar, empty streets.
    Back at the flat, she wrapped her head in a towel and took a bath, lying swaddled in the warm water until the light outside the window turned