She enters through and finds a narrow corridor with the room she is looking for visible at the end. A woman falls out of the doorway, laughing wildly while cursing. Harriet, startled, steps aside to let her pass. The woman does not even notice, let alone thank her.

She finds three more women inside the small, stinking room. She puts a hand to her nose in a vain attempt to cover the smell of excrement. A girl leans over a basin, seemingly oblivious to the odour, examining a spot on her chin in a cracked mirror that hangs on the wall. The other two are giggling, bent over a table, heads almost touching. One of them sits back and stares up at Harriet, wide-eyed, revealing a small silver box from which the other is drawing white powder in her fingertips and pushing it up her nostrils. She is sniffing noisily.

‘You want some?’ The girl at the mirror asks, seeing Harriet’s fascinated stare.

‘No. Thank you. I came to find…’ She closes her mouth. She has only ever read of it, but she is almost certain that the two women are taking cocaine.

‘It’s there.’ One of the giggling women nods to a wooden door. Harriet pushes open the door. The stench is so strong that she gags, but there is nowhere else, and she is desperate.

By the time she has finished, the two women have gone, leaving only the creature with the spotty chin guarding the box. Harriet eyes it.

‘You sure you don’t want any? It’ll perk you up. You look like you need it.’

‘Quite sure. Thank you.’

She rushes out of the room without washing her hands.

The musicians are playing again when she reaches the dancefloor. The music is louder now. The men at the bar have disappeared, their glasses abandoned on the counter, yet to be cleared away. The whole place is filled with noise, smoke and alcohol. Harriet’s head starts to throb with the pulse of the drum’s beat and the shriek of the clarinet. She thinks that she might be about to be sick.

The languid young man from the cloakroom is suddenly in front of her. He is holding her coat and her new hat.

‘Mr Lazenby sent me to look for you.’ He is in a state of agitation. ‘I couldn’t find you. Thought I’d lost you. You must leave, he says. Now.’

‘I was about to leave,’ she shouts over the noise of the music, trying to move past him. ‘I want to go home.’

He grasps her arm. ‘Not that way. Out the back. Quickly.’

She is escorted to a door across the dancefloor. He pushes it open to reveal another narrow corridor.

‘What’s happening?’ Harriet pushes her arms into the sleeves of the coat he has held open for her. ‘Why are we going this way?’