Claire nodded her head, smiled sweetly. Everyone knew about the Playboy clubs. Sylvester was the owner of this place and she already had him pegged as an oddball. He was fiftyish, skinny and clumsy – he’d just greeted her, then knocked the stapler clean off the desk. He was a plain man, narrow-shouldered, all bones and sharp angles. Nothing she would have expected in a club owner. His hair was a thin fluff of pale brown, and his face was long and solemn, enlivened by nice brown eyes.

Sylvester straightened and replaced the stapler on the desk. ‘See, they got these fabulous girls in there. Bunny Girls. All kitted out in coloured corsets with bunny tails and ears. These are classy women. Not waitresses. Well, they are waitresses I guess, but a step up from that, you see? There’s all sorts of rules and regulations the girls have to follow: they have to do the Bunny greeting, the Bunny stance, the High Carry, the Bunny crouch and the Bunny perch, and most important there’s the Bunny dip. You know what that is?’

Claire shook her head, still smiling sweetly, wondering where the hell all this was heading. All she knew was she needed this job. Badly. She felt constantly sick. Really sick, like maybe she was dying, but she tried to look interested in what he was saying.

‘No matter. It’s a way of presenting clients with their drinks, it’s elegant. You hold a tray of drinks in one hand, and you dip backwards to place a coaster on the table. You dip back again to place the drink on there. Got it?’

Claire nodded. She didn’t care what she did. Why should she? The only thing that mattered was the pay, and that was good. She only hoped her health was going to hold out for a while. Her sudden lack of vigour alarmed her. With such strong gypsy genes, very little real illness had ever troubled her. But now, for the first time, she knew what it was like to feel sick, and weak. And she hated it.

Gypsy genes.

She still missed the campsite, and her family, and Josh. Longed for the still nights of the English countryside, the simple pleasures of cooking fresh-caught rabbit over an open fire, of chatting to her sister. She thought of her wedding dress, how proud she had felt to wear it, how much she had been looking forward to becoming Josh’s wife.

All gone now.

All in the past.

‘Otherwise you do it from the front and your hooters fall out in the client’s face, and that would not be good, you got it?’

Claire gazed at him. She’d drifted off. ‘Sorry. What?’

‘Hooters,’ said Sylvester.

‘Got it,’ said Claire. Hooters?