Gina and Sylvester had been unbelievably kind. True to his word, Sylvester set the doormen to work, emptying out the room on the second floor. Until now it had acted as a junk room for old files and assorted bits of crap, broken chairs and old light fittings from the club down below. Now it was cleared out, repainted, and Gina made the arrangements for Claire’s few thrift-shop possessions to be moved over from her Brooklyn place and installed. Within a month, the room was homely and habitable.

When Sylvester had spoken the word ‘baby’ to Claire, she had felt her whole being twist in anguish. Now at night she lay in bed over the club and looked down at the mound of her belly and thought, You bastard thing, I hate you!

She was carrying a child.

Those awful scum had done this to her, put this dreadful thing inside her. A tumour would have been better. An end to it all. But this wasn’t an end, this was a whole new beginning, and the thought of that destroyed her.

‘It’ll all work out,’ Gina told her. ‘You’re not the first unmarried mother in the world. And you’re among friends here.’

Claire nodded in agreement, but secretly she seethed. How the fuck could Gina know what she’d been through, all that she’d suffered? Gina had a marriage to a good man, and two daughters. She hadn’t been raped. She would retire and live a happy life with her family. But what did Claire have?

Nothing.

Nothing except this thing that was invading her body, sapping her strength.

And now it kicked.

Claire lay in the darkness and felt the thing kick inside her. She caught her breath. Remembered them. The child, the thing, would look like them. Dark. Repulsive. She turned on to her side, buried her face in the pillow and sobbed.

A tumour would have been better.

Better by far.

She was sitting at her desk one day, checking invoices, when she was aware – quite suddenly – of warm wetness underneath her. Surprised, she half-rose from her seat and looked at it. Then she reached out an unsteady hand and touched it: yes, wet. Suddenly she felt a deep, gnawing pain in her back and then something worse, like a giant hand clutching at her middle and squeezing hard.

‘Jesus!’ She gripped the desk as it went on and on.

Finally, it subsided. Trembling, Claire made her way around her desk and over to the door. Without calling for Sylvester, who was in the next office, she went up the stairs alone and into her room on the second floor. The next contraction hit her hard and she stumbled over to the bed, face creased in pain, and lay down there, clawing at the mattress, flooded with horror at what was happening to her.