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Amy took a deep breath. ‘She went missing, a week ago. It’s really important that I find out who else was at that party.’ She had decided not to mention Katherine’s death, sure it would make Mariel slam the door on their conversation quicker than you could say ‘PR disaster’.

Mariel shook her head. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But of course, you must understand that I cannot possibly divulge our client lists – they are strictly confidential! We have a duty to our clientele. Why on earth are you here and not the police? Surely, this is a police matter?’

Amy followed Mariel’s gaze over to a filing cabinet in the corner. Interesting, she thought. Bet the lists are in there. How old-fashioned. Maybe they didn’t keep them on a computer for fear of being hacked.

‘The police aren’t taking Becky’s disappearance seriously because she sent an email saying she was going away. It’s fake, but they haven’t yet accepted that. They will, of course – but I’m aware that every single day counts, if someone has Becky. I have to find her. Please help me!’

Amy’s voice was rising, and she actually reached forward across the desk as if to grasp Mariel’s skinny freckled wrist. The woman snatched her arm away, with an expression of disgust on her face.

Shit, Amy thought. She’s going to think I’m a nutter. ‘Sorry,’ she said, sinking back down again. ‘I’m desperate.’

Mariel stood up. ‘Please, no need to apologize. I’m sure this must be an unbelievably stressful time for you. I do hope your sister is found safely as soon as possible.’

She was like a politician with a nonstick coating, issuing bland platitudes.

‘I’ve got a far better chance of doing that if you would help me,’ Amy said bleakly.

‘I will be happy to help you, Miss …
Coltman
–’ Mariel looked at her name on the application form to remind herself – ‘but you will have to go through the proper channels. I would be obliged to divulge my client lists to the police, but not to anybody else. So I’m afraid that you will have to insist on their help, and the request will have to come from them. If you’re not actually intending to join –’ she looked again at the half-filled-in application – ‘then please excuse me. I need to leave now for my next appointment.’

Amy wondered what the appointment was for – nails, hair or Botox would have been her first guesses. She gritted her teeth. ‘I understand,’ she said, standing up to leave just as Gemma came in with a tray of coffee and biscuits. ‘Thank you for your time. I might just drink my coffee in the reception area, if you don’t mind?’

Mariel pursed her lips at her, but nodded, and Amy took a mug off the tray. The coffee was tepid and bitter, with the grounds still floating on the surface, but Amy sat in reception and sipped at it, trying to work out what to do next. Mariel picked up her cavernous handbag again and breezed out with a little wave at Amy, as though they had just enjoyed a girly lunch today.

Gemma stared shamelessly at Amy. ‘So, did she say you could join then, or what?’

‘She said I could, sure,’ Amy replied nonchalantly. ‘I just need to finish filling in the form.’ She put down her coffee and spent the next few minutes completing the form, all bar the direct-debit mandate. Her mind was whizzing through all the ways she could think of to get Gemma to let her look in that filing cabinet: bribery, violence, appealing to her better nature? Then she had a better idea.

‘I’ll post it back to you,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got my bank card with me, and I don’t know my account number and sort code off by heart for this direct-debit thingy, so I’ll have to look it up when I get home. Is there a loo up here I could use?’

Gemma’s face lit up – at last, some information she felt confident in giving. ‘Out of this door, turn right, up the four stairs to the mini-landing, it’s on there,’ she said.

Amy stuffed the form in her bag and left, with the taste of the unpleasant Nescafé coating her teeth and her heart banging in her chest. She found the toilet and checked that it was unoccupied. Then she went back to the landing and found what she was looking for, mounted on the wall near the lift.

A ‘break glass in case of fire’ alarm.

She paused, looking for cameras, listening for footsteps, but could see and hear none. With one brisk jab of her thumb she broke the glass, and an alarm immediately started screaming. She dashed straight back into the toilet and locked the door. Over the din of the alarm, she heard anxious voices and doors opening, feet pounding past her from the offices on the floors above.

‘Is it a drill? It’s not Wednesday!’

‘Can you smell smoke? I’m sure I can.’

‘Don’t run!’

‘Where’s the assembly point again?’

‘Across the road – come on, hurry!’

The first batch of voices faded, replaced by another batch, presumably workers from the floor above. Amy hoped against hope that Gemma wasn’t so thick as to have stayed put. She had to time this right – if she left it too long, the fire brigade would be here. If she came out too soon she might bump into someone. She forced herself to count to twenty slowly, put her pumps back on and her bag across her shoulders, then opened the toilet door and ran back into the Orchid Blue suite. The door was wide open – good old Gemma.

Amy dived into Mariel’s office and straight across to the filing cabinet, which, thankfully, was also unlocked. The contents were in hanging files in date order, with the party venue also helpfully annotated. Amy silently thanked whoever Gemma’s predecessor had been for being so organized. She snatched
JUNE 2013 HOLLAND PARK
out of the cabinet and frantically flicked through it – it seemed to be the most recent event, and the most local to Becky. Much of its contents was paperwork relating to the hiring of waiters, payment of florists, providers of finger food. For a moment, she thought there wasn’t anything in there about attendees, and then she found it: a heavily annotated printed list of names, mostly ticked off in black pen, some crossed through. In her haste she had to read the list three times before she spotted either Becky’s or Katherine’s name – but then she did. There they were, ticks next to them both.

It was the only concrete evidence she had of Becky’s movements in the past few weeks; with the sight of those few typed symbols on a sheet of paper, something fresh and hopeful leaped in Amy’s throat. Becky had been there, on that date, just four weeks earlier. Someone else on this list might well be the cause of her disappearance.

‘What the HELL are you doing in here, get out, now!’

Amy leaped up, clutching the sheet. Over the din of the alarm she hadn’t even heard the arrival of the burly fireman in full breathing apparatus.

‘I’m sorry,’ she gabbled, ‘I got locked in the loo and then when I finally managed to get out, everyone had gone, and I was just about to when I remembered I had to get this file that I’ve been working on, the boss would kill me if there was a fire and it got destroyed …’

The fireman wagged his heavily gloved finger at her. ‘Don’t you know any of the basic fire-safety rules? Never stop to collect anything, leave the building immediately.’

‘Sorry,’ Amy repeated. ‘It’s my first day here. Is there a real fire, or is it just a drill?’

But the fireman was impatiently waving her out, and she decided it was better not to draw any more attention to herself. As she ran down the stairs, she took out the list to fold it up and put it safely in the pocket of her handbag. Just as she rounded the bend in the stairs to the ground floor, glancing again at the list, she saw something that gave her such a surprise she almost missed her footing and fell the rest of the way – a name she hadn’t spotted before in her haste to find Becky’s and Katherine’s.

‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed.

We fall silent as the black taxi creeps closer to our destination through rush-hour traffic. It takes ages to get there. The venue is a massive private house in Holland Park, cake-icing exterior, wrought-iron railings and black front door with huge brass knocker – it’s a private house, or members’ club, I’m not sure which. I feel utterly intimidated as we climb out of the cab and survey the two large bouncers lurking in the entrance. I smooth my tight skirt down over my thighs and swallow hard. My hand is sweaty from clutching the shiny invitation.

A beautiful hostess with a clipboard, gimlet eyes and wide fake smile meets us inside the front door, and we proffer our invites. ‘Welcome!’ she chirps, already looking over our heads to see if there is anyone more interesting arriving. We give her our names, and she ticks us off. Then she holds out two velvet-covered boxes. ‘Phones, cameras, iPads – all gadgets in this one, ladies, please. Strictly no photography.’ She taps a sign on the wall above her head with a lacquered talon:
ANYONE TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS WILL IMMEDIATELY BE EJECTED. NO EXCEPTIONS
. ‘And take a mask,’ she orders, holding out the second, bigger box.

‘No photography – that’s a relief then.’ I am sounding slightly hysterical as we drop our phones into the box and select masks. Mine is feathery, and Kath’s white and sequinned. We giggle as we put them on. The hostess rolls her eyes, very slightly.

‘Hope they don’t sell our phones on eBay as soon as we’ve gone upstairs,’ Kath mutters as we tip-tap on our stiletto heels up the wide staircase. I’m so nervous that I think I might throw up, and I grab a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. Katherine takes one too. ‘Sip it, don’t gulp,’ she instructs me under her breath. ‘Don’t look so bloody nervous.’

Easy for her to say. The buzz of voices and music gets louder, and I’m reassured that there is the unmistakeable sound of party conversation. I was half expecting it to be all orgy and no chat.

We are shown into a huge room on the first floor, and I look around, trying to take it all in. Everyone is young and beautiful under their masks, and I remember Katherine telling me that you had to send proof of age with the ticket-purchase money, as over-forties were as forbidden as camera phones.

‘No grey chest hair or moobs here,’ Katherine says approvingly. It’s pretty dark in the room, the lighting artfully flattering and subtle. Small groups of people are dotted about, chatting and laughing and looking far more at ease than I feel; a whole variety of expensive perfumes and aftershaves clash in a fragrant cloud in the air above our heads. The only sign that this might not be a normal cocktail party, apart from the masks, is a couple standing by the window kissing; the man has one hand right down inside the girl’s short skirt, and the other is kneading her breast. One of the waiters goes up to them and has a discreet word in the guy’s ear, pointing towards a room off the main area. There is a plaque next to its door reading
PLAYROOM
, and the couple heads towards it, not looking remotely sheepish. I can see the man’s erection making a tent of the front of his trousers that he isn’t even trying to disguise.

‘Can’t wait to get in there!’ says Katherine, her face flushed in the peachy-red light and her eyes sparkling with lust, enhanced by the sequins on her mask.

‘I know, right!’ I agree. I do feel turned on too, but somehow my heart is sinking, and for a moment I really wish I was at home in my onesie and fluffy slippers, watching a DVD. The idea of having sex – in public, with strangers – suddenly seems anathema to me.

‘Why did we think this was a good idea?’ I mutter, trying to sound jokey, but Katherine’s face falls.

‘Oh, come on, Becky, stop being such a bloody prudish killjoy,’ she hisses, and to my surprise she turns and walks away from me, over to where two men and a woman are already mentally undressing one another.

‘Cheers, Kath,’ I say to her retreating back. I lean against the nearest wall, feeling even more self-conscious. A lone man catches my eye and smiles at me. I raise my glass, and he’s over like a shot.

‘Hi,’

‘Hi.’

I’m tongue-tied. He’s very nice-looking but not in the way I usually like – too bland. I like my men to have something quirky about their appearance, and all his features are perfectly proportioned and unremarkable.

‘What do you do?’ he asks, actually leaning one hand against the wall, making a ladder over my head in that ridiculously predatory way men sometimes do. I can’t imagine why they think that endears them to women.

‘I’m a teacher!’ I say, in the same way that I would’ve said, ‘I’m a clown!’ or, ‘I’m an Elvis impersonator!’ ‘What about you?’

‘Male model,’ he says, so smugly that I almost laugh.

There’s a long silence as he scans the room for someone other than me to have sex with. I’m starting to feel actively physically repulsed by all this. Katherine is laughing and gesticulating with her new friends and, as I watch, one of the women leans across and kisses her cheek flirtatiously. My heart sinks. It’s only a matter of time before she vanishes into the Playroom, I can tell. I feel irrationally furious with her. Never again, I think, wondering wistfully if there would be any chance of a partial refund of the hefty amount that’s just been debited from my credit card for annual membership of this exclusive club. Internet dating – fine. Casexual.com – also fine, for when I want a bit of no-strings sex. At least you can choose in advance who you want to get naked with. Those first few hook-up dates were fantastic – really good, naughty fun. I think wistfully back to Jake and his smooth black skin and infectious giggle. Shame he didn’t fancy a repeat performance, it was lovely. Fraser was fun too, even if he was a drug-dealing twat. It was even exciting with Paul, though that was mainly because Kath was there to hold my hand – among other things.

But this? I don’t like this. Despite the posh house, the designer dresses, buff champagne waiters and young, beautiful, well-groomed people, this is still somehow just plain sleazy. I didn’t think I’d feel like this, but I do.

‘Sorry, I’m actually going to go home – headache,’ I say to the male model, to his obvious relief. Ducking under his arm, I head over to Katherine.

‘Can I have a word?’ I whisper in her ear.

‘Is this your friend?’ asks one of the men in the group. He’s short and hirsute, Turkish perhaps, with a big diamond stud in his ear. ‘Come join us, beautiful.’ He reaches out and strokes my hair, but I move my head away impatiently, and Katherine frowns. I take her arm and drag her away.