Working helped her stop thinking about the thing that was slowly killing her. Bad things had happened to her and this was the culmination of all that badness. She was on her way out. She was dying, thousands of miles from all that she had known, all that she had ever cared about. She would never see Josh again.

Then one day Sylvester called her into his office again.

Oh Jesus, thought Claire, sitting down, expecting to be fired, expecting disaster.

‘You OK?’ asked Sylvester, his eyes on her face.

‘Fine, fine,’ said Claire. ‘Problem?’

‘No, not at all.’ Again he was shuffling papers, looking awkward. This time he managed not to drop anything, though. ‘Listen. There’s a room upstairs, you know that, right? We keep a stack of the old files up there.’

‘Yes. Sure I know.’ Where was this going?

‘We could clear it out. It’d be better for you to be here, on the spot, rather than schlepping in from Brooklyn day in day out. You could move in. Would you like that?’

Claire stared at him. She thought of her apartment in that shitty rundown old building across town, where she had to pull the furniture across the door to feel safe at night. And even then, she didn’t.

‘Yeah,’ she said, wondering why he would do that for her. ‘I would like that. But . . . Gina doesn’t live in.’

‘She has family. You don’t though – right?’

Claire shook her head. Not only that, her visa had lapsed and now she was an illegal.

‘Better for me to have you on the spot,’ he said. ‘If I have a query, I can get hold of you straight away. You know I’m thinking of expansion. Another club like this one, just across town. So I’m busy, and I need someone here, someone reliable.’

‘OK,’ said Claire. The journey to and from work was exhausting for her. So to live over the club would be wonderful, so much easier.

Sylvester beamed with pleasure. ‘That’s good. I’ll get the boys up there tomorrow, we’ll make it nice for you.’

Claire looked at him in wonderment. ‘You’ve been so kind,’ she said.

‘Hey, we got to all help each other, ain’t we?’ His eyes lowered to her swollen belly. ‘You poor kid. Father’s long gone, I guess?’

‘What?’ Claire stared at him, yanking her cardigan over the tell-tale bulge of her illness.

‘The father.’

‘The what?’ Claire was clutching at her stomach. At the tumour. At this mound of death.

Sylvester held up his hands in a soothing gesture. ‘Hey, I’m not judging anybody, don’t think that. Well, I would judge the father for sure, the rotten bastard clearing off and leaving you like this. So come on, honey, tell me – when is the baby due?’

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