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Henry went straight to the club, taking Marcus with him. If they were going to redevelop it together, they may as well have one final night there together, enjoying it. And from Henry's point of view, the drunker Marcus was, the more likely he was to keep his word. The deal was sealed in alcohol and honour.

They left their coats in the cloakroom and fixed the masks on their faces. The club was quiet because it was nearly Christmas, and the general clientele obviously felt their conscience more harshly at this time of year, which amused Henry. Why difference did it make what time of year you came down here?

They took a seat at one of the booths and ordered drinks from a waitress that Henry felt was staring at him in a peculiar way. Not that he could be sure of course, her mask covered most of her face. For a while they sat watching the escorts dancing, their bodies curling and twisting, the diamanté of their costumes twinkling like stars, showing the way in the darkness.

When the drinks arrived Marcus stared at his and said, "What will we do with the evidence then? Destroy it?"

Henry pressed the tip of his finger to the rim of his glass and moved it round in a slow circle. "Best not. We might need it someday."

"And your suggestion is?"

"We put it in a private bank. And it can only be removed with consent from both of us. That way you won't be able to betray me." Henry winked.

"Henry -"

"Don't say anything. I don't want to regret bargaining with you." Henry held Marcus' gaze for a moment before glancing out into the room. "Do you want to get a private room?" he asked, as he sipped on his champagne. "I know you aren't a member anymore, but I won't charge you. On the house," he said, raising his glass and chinking it against Marcus'.

"I don't think so. I'm happy just to sit here. Savour the atmosphere." Marcus' nose wrinkled as he raised his glass to his lips, assaulted by the bubbles.

Henry nodded and sat back against the leather of the banquette, watching the way the strobe lighting flickered on Marcus' ugly features. It would hardly be fair to inflict that body on one of the girls tonight, he thought. Henry felt the vibrations of the music through the floor and the seat. This place was alive, vibrant. He would be sorry to see it go, and it pained him, knowing how his father would have despised him for closing it down. So many memories. So many life-changing events had happened here for him. "Do you mind if I take a walk?" he asked.

Marcus nodded and said: "Go ahead."

Henry downed his champagne and slid along the banquette and stood up. The music made him want to dance, but this wasn't quite the place for it. Besides, there was no one here he wanted to dance with and it made him sad to think that Lauren wasn't here. Where was she? Holed in up in some horrid flat in Brixton. He had wanted to give her so much more than that. And tomorrow, he remembered, she was going back to Essex to spend Christmas with her family.

Several of the escorts pawed at him, offering themselves to him as he strolled across the dance area, where the women danced with each other, trying to suck him in, to get him to join them. Henry shook them off, but one in particular was rather more forceful and he found she had hold of his shirt in her hands and was pulling him towards her. He pulled away, but his resistance only incentivised her and she tugged harder, moving closer to him.

Suddenly her hands were everywhere, her mask tickling his neck as she ran her tongue over his skin. And Henry wondered why he should resist. One last time. He was single. He was the Chairman of the club, and this woman, her body flawless, her legs long and her breasts full, was offering herself to him. Why not?

He let her drag him to the side of the room, into a dark niche between the booths that lined the walls. And there she began to fiddle with the buckle on his trousers, easing the buttons apart and sliding her hand inside. Henry gasped as she held him, stroking awkwardly up and down inside his trousers. He closed his eyes hoping to forget everything, hoping to find some release. It was a long time since he had let one of these women touch him. Years. He willed her to kneel and take him in her mouth, pleasure him in complete anonymity.

But the escort released him, and he no longer felt her touch. He could hear voices over the loud music that all but drowned out any other sound, and he opened his eyes. One of the waitresses seemed to be shouting at the escort, whose head was jerking as she spoke, the feathers on her mask flopping ridiculously, back and forth. The moment, thought Henry, was ruined, and he fastened his trousers and made to walk past the two women, but as he did so the waitress, her figure so similar to Lauren's that for a moment he wondered if it were her, grabbed his arm.

"I need to talk to you," she said.

"Ignore her," said the escort, trying to push the waitress off.

"Just back off, alright," said the waitress, her tone threatening as she shoved the escort away. The long-limbed whore toppled on her heels and jogged backwards a few steps to stay upright.

"You can't tell me what to do -"

Henry realised there was about to be a scene. These two women were not going to get along nicely, and he didn't want to attract attention. "Ladies, please. I'm sure we can sort this out -"

"I have something important to tell you. You're going to want to hear it. Tell her to fuck off," said the waitress, nodding towards the escort.

Henry, intrigued by what the waitress was suggesting, leant towards the escort. "Can you give me a minute? I'll come and find you later." He smiled, hoping that would ease the tension and waited until the escort moved off.

"I don't have much time," said the waitress, handing him a glass of champagne from her tray. "But I think you deserve to know, even though I promised I wouldn't tell," said Alexis.

"Tell what?"

"I don't even know why I'm bothering, you're clearly just a creep like all the others," she said, shrugging.

"I don't think you should be throwing insults like that in here."

"So report me." Alexis snorted. "You slept with a waitress here, right?"

"What?"

"In room forty-nine. There was some fuss about it. Do you remember?"

Henry debated whether he should admit to it, and finally nodded. "Yes."

"Well, she's pregnant."

Henry blinked, dumfounded. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he just stared, open-mouthed.

"Don't you care?"

"I -"

"Oh I don't give a shit whether or not you care, I just thought you should know because she's going to get rid of it. If I were you, I would want to know. If you don't care, you can just pretend this never happened. Enjoy your evening."

Henry watched as the PVC-suited waitress shimmied through the thinning crowds, his chest tight. Lauren, pregnant? With his child? He struck his forehead with an open palm, attempting to jerk his mind into action. Every rational thought seemed to disintegrate: all he knew was that he had to find her. He had to make things right.

In a moment of reckless abandon he ripped the mask from his face, feeling it heavy on his skin, claustrophobic, and began to jog through the club towards the cloakroom, pushing past the waitress who had delivered Lauren's message. She yelped as he pushed her off balance and turned to stare at him, but he hardly cared at all. In that moment, nothing mattered but getting to Lauren.

How utterly foolish he had been to think that he could live without her. The realisation flushed through his system with an unexpected force, only serving to speed up his movements. He threw down his mask and grabbed his coat, flinging it round his shoulders.

He paused only once, to relay the message to Vera that she should give her staff notice that the club would be closing.

*

Lauren rolled over and checked her bedside clock. Midnight. She closed her eyes, but they felt sore and swollen from crying. She had to admit it; she was still in love with Henry, and the fact that he had hurt her so much made it worse. The wound was still raw and deep, and her humiliation extreme. She never wanted to see him again, and yet she couldn't deny how she felt. Even the merest thought of him seemed to roll about her insides, ripping flesh and drawing blood.

She wiped her eyes on the duvet, pulling it up around her face. How could she get rid of his child? Their child? How could she extinguish the life of a child that hadn't even had a chance to take its first breath? Perhaps Alexis was right. Perhaps it had happened for a reason. Perhaps the baby was meant to exist, to live. But the thought terrified her. She felt too young, too inexperienced and too poor to raise a child alone.

The buzzer suddenly rang, and in the darkness Lauren was momentarily disoriented. Was it their buzzer? Alexis wouldn't be home until morning, and Gloria was working night shifts. Who would ring the bell at midnight on a Tuesday night?

Whoever it was was impatient, ringing the buzzer and releasing it and then ringing again. Or holding it down for extended periods of time. The noise would surely wake the neighbours.

Lauren threw back the covers, padded her feet into her slippers and pulled on her huge cashmere jumper: the one with the holes in the sleeves that she slept in when it was cold. Without turning on any lights, she crept through the flat and into the sitting room, where the bay window looked out over the street. She pressed her hands to the glass and peered out. There was a taxi down below, with its light turned off and the indicator flashing. The buzzer kept ringing, but from this angle Lauren couldn't see who was in the doorway.

She waited a while longer. Surely the person would tire of ringing the bell sometime soon. Her breath was steaming up the glass and she wiped it clean with her sleeve. On the street below a man in a dark coat stepped back from the front door, walking backwards across the pavement, staring up at the windows. Lauren gasped and backed away.

Henry.

But what was he doing here, of all places, in the middle of the night. How did he know where she was staying? She watched as he spoke to the driver of the taxi, but she didn't want to stand too close to the window anymore. Had he seen her?

The buzzer started going again, the noise piercing the midnight silence. Lauren, tempted to ignore him and leave him out in the cold, but also desperate to stop the noise, ran to the door and picked up the intercom receiver.

"What do you want?"

"Lauren?" His voice was familiar and, had the sound been a weapon, it would have pierced her heart straight through.

"What do you want, Henry?"

"I need to talk to you."

"The meter on your taxi is still running. Clearly you weren't planning on talking long. It can't be that important. Why don't you just talk from down there?"

"Oh come on," he said, huffing. "The meter's only running because I didn't know whether you were in or not. And it's absolutely freezing out here. Let me in and I'll send him away."

"Why would I let you in?" Lauren waited, enduring a silence that was too long. She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line.

"I know you're pregnant."

Lauren nearly dropped the receiver. She was going to ask how he could possibly know that, but before the question reached her lips, she knew the answer. "You went to the club?"

"Yes. Let me in." The seconds ticked by as Lauren said nothing. "Please."

Lauren sighed and slumped against the wall, replacing the receiver but pressing her thumb to the button that unlocked the front door. Her head felt light; she was exhausted, both from lack of sleep and from weeping into her pillow. She hoped she wouldn't look like she had been crying.

She could hear Henry's footsteps coming up the stairs, quickly. He must have been running. What was she doing? Why was she letting him up here? Her heart began beating rapidly; although it was only a few days since she had seen him it felt like a million years. He seemed like a stranger to her now; but in spite of all the doubt and resentment she felt towards him, there still remained a part of her that thrilled at the thought that Henry Banville was about to walk through her front door. She dropped a hand to her stomach and rested it there.

She opened the door before he knocked, and his head snapped up as she did so, his clenched fist raised, poised to rap on the wood between them. Lauren gripped the door handle tighter than necessary, and watched as Henry pressed his raised hand to the doorframe as though for balance.

Lauren waited for him to speak, but he did nothing but stare at her and after a few seconds she moved out of the way and held the door open for him to pass her. He brought with him a coldness, a freshness, as though winter had clung to his coat and sneaked inside with him. It reminded Lauren of the way her father used when he came home from work late on dark nights in the run up to Christmas.

Henry had taken several steps into the flat, his body seeming too large for the space, and now turned back to face her.

"My god," he said finally, running a hand through his hair. "Weren't you going to tell me?"

Lauren pulled her shoulders in letting the oversized jumper fall loosely down her chest. "No."

"Why not?"

"Do you need to ask that? I don't want to be bound to a man like you for the rest of my life. And I can't raise a child alone."

"But this is a life we're talking about. A person. This isn't like," he fanned the air with one hand, "having a wart removed."

Lauren almost felt her face begin to smile at the comparison he made but instead she frowned and said, "I'm not thinking of it like that. I'm trying to be practical. I'm too young. Too poor. And I don't want to be beholden to you. And I wouldn't want my child to be either."

"You wouldn't be. I wouldn't expect anything from you if you didn't want. I would give you everything. You know that."

Lauren paused to look at him, the earnest expression on his face, the desperation in his stance, his body language. He looked as though he were reining himself in, trying not to reach out and touch her. "But it's my life too. This would be like giving that up to raise the child of a man who treated me unforgivably."

Henry lowered his eyes under the ferocity of her gaze. Lauren meant every word, and she wanted him to know it. "You never let me explain," he said, hardly daring to look at her, his dark hair falling over his eyes. He looked pained, tortured.

"What's to explain? You aren't trustworthy."

"I did it for you," he said. Lauren's mouth released an exhalation which spoke her disbelief clearer than any words. "For Christ's sake, I'll do anything you want. I'll -"

"What? What will you do?"

"I'll close the club."

Lauren bit her lip. "You will?"

"Yes. Just let me explain. I want you to know what happened. Why I did what I did."

Lauren flinched at the thought of hearing him try and explain why he was sleeping with someone else whilst professing his love for her. It would be like watching the autopsy of someone not quite dead. "It won't make any difference. I don't want you in my life, and I don't want your child either."

Henry sank onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. "Me I can understand. But not the child. I'll raise it. I'll care for it. You'll never have to see it if you don't want to." He sighed and looked up at her. "You'll never have to see me either, if you don't want to." Lauren noticed his jaw tense and relax in rhythm, as though he were chewing on some particularly grisly piece of meat.

"You want me to bear your child and then walk away? Just like that?"

"Isn't that what you're doing anyway? And this way you won't have blood on your hands."

His last comment made Lauren rage like a pool of oil with a lit match thrown into the it. "How dare you come here and accuse me like that?" She felt her body begin to tremble. "How dare you pass judgment on me? The audacity -"

Henry stood up and within seconds he had stepped towards her, his hands on her shoulders. She could hear him speaking her name, but she struggled against him, her limbs flailing against the solidity of his chest.

"Get off me, let go," she said, her eyes tightly closed as he pulled her toward him.

"I'm begging you, Lauren, please." The tone of his voice had changed and she opened her eyes and looked at him, ceasing to fight his strength. His hands slid down her arms to take her hands in his. "Don't do this. I love you. Please, let me talk."

His eyes were full of such tenderness and the feel of his skin on hers so intoxicating that Lauren held her breath. She wanted to stay strong, not to give in to the undeniable physical attraction that she felt for him, despite every rational fibre in her body battling against it. "Let go of me," she repeated, her voice low and deliberately slow.

She felt his fingers curl away from hers, and as he stepped away the familiar ache of loss set up, ensnaring her heart, preventing it from beating as it should.

"Can I explain?" he said, his arms limp at his sides.

She closed her eyes and tossed her head once. "Go ahead."

*

Henry's feet were frozen solid; not even walking for miles had kept them warm. The snow had finally stopped falling, and it was so early that it lay undisturbed, a pure blanket concealing the tarmac of the roads, the street lights casting a sheen of orange glitter on the surface. He kept his head low, his chin tucked into his scarf, his hands in his pockets.

How he had wanted to touch Lauren, to kiss her. Being near her and yet unable to touch her was the most painful torture. And no matter how long they had talk, he remained clueless as to how she felt about him, or how she wanted to proceed.

Her words had been hard, definite and unyielding. She wanted nothing to do with him. And yet every so often he had raised his eyes to hers and seen something there, and when their eyes met it was as though he witness a union of their very souls. And then she would turn her head and flick her hair, and he would be thrown once again into uncertainty.

But she hadn't thrown him out. She had listened to his explanation. In silence she had absorbed the information he gave her about Annabel, the excuses he had made as to why he had done it. And all she had really said was that he should have told her, over and over. That he should have told her from the very beginning, as soon as he had discovered the CCTV footage was lost. Then they could have dealt with it together. Then, and only then, might there have been a chance. But that his actions, his choices, had driven a wedge between them, so wide and thick, that it could never be broken down.

There had been tears in her eyes when she had said it. When she had told him she could never forgive him. And it had take every ounce of his willpower to stay his own tears.

Henry shook his gloved hands free of his pockets and took the steps of Marcus' House almost in one stride and pressed the bell. It was barely past five in the morning and Marcus, if he had returned from the club, was probably sleeping. But Henry couldn't even contemplate sleeping; every nerve in his body buzzed with energy and his thoughts flew through his mind so fast that he felt as though more than one person inhabited his body.

The door peeled slowly open and Marcus'

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