And so, as one of them gave her a coldly amused look, Louise ran past them, and out onto the road. A terrifyingly empty road.

She’d expected to find people out here, but it was drizzling now, and nobody seemed to be out in it. She looked frantically for some kind of shop that might be open, but all she could see were estate agents and dry-cleaners, their lights off and shutters down.

What’s wrong with this place? Why didn’t you stay at fucking home, Louise?

She saw an alleyway to her left, and she scuttled into it. She could at least be out of sight while she called for a cab. She ducked behind a large blue wheelie bin that stood against the near wall of the club. God, it was cold. She wasn’t dressed for this. The overhang from the roof above was so small that it barely kept any of the rain off her, and the wind kept picking it up and hurling it around.

She reached for her phone, and then felt her heart drop. A terrible, lurching fall.

Her phone was still in her jacket pocket, all neatly folded up on the padded bench of their booth.

Fuck. She wanted to hit something. Herself. The bin. Anything. What the fuck were you thinking, Louise?

But she had to stay quiet and think. She had to get herself out of this mess.

Could she just go back into the club? She might be able to find a group of people to protect her.

But she remembered all of the men and women in there, how drunk they were already. Would they even stop him if he came and dragged her away to somewhere quiet? Some part of the club that only he knew about?

There were voices somewhere on the road, and she froze, trying to catch what they were saying. But whatever had been said had been over too quickly for her to understand.

And then she heard footsteps, and she knew that the bouncers had told him where she’d gone. She’d been too close to them when she ducked down the alley. Of course she had been. She’d done everything wrong.

And while she stayed absolutely still, hoping that he might somehow walk past her without seeing, or turn round and go back to the club, she started to talk to her husband again in her head. She imagined writing to him, safe and warm in their house. She imagined getting out of here and surviving somehow, and she promised herself that she was going to write it all down. All of it.

I’m going to see you again, Niall, she thought.

The footsteps were painfully close. He was walking past the bin. There was no way he could fail to see her now.