“Let’s try and talk to your friend,” he murmurs.
He slips through the door. I follow close behind. Beneath us is a dark, velvet-lined staircase. We begin to descend. I can hear sounds coming from below, but they’re muted, like they’re coming from underwater. I hear music, I think, and the hum of voices and then a sudden, high-pitched cry that might be male or female.
We have almost reached the bottom of the stairs. I hesitate. I thought I heard something. Another set of footsteps beside our own.
“Stop,” I say. “Did you hear that?”
Theo looks at me questioningly.
“I’m sure I heard footsteps.”
We listen for a couple of moments in silence. Nothing. Then a girl appears at the bottom of the stairs. One of the dancers. Up close she’s so made-up it looks like she’s wearing a mask. She stares at us. For a moment I have the impression that there’s a scared little girl looking out at me behind the thick foundation, fake eyelashes, and glossy red lips.
“We’re looking for a friend,” I say, quickly. “The girl who did that act on the swing? It’s about my brother, Ben. Can you tell her we’re looking for her?”
“You cannot be here,” she hisses. She looks terrified.
“It’s OK,” I say, trying to sound reassuring. “We’re not going to stay for long.”
She hurries past us, up the stairs, without a backward glance. We keep going. At the end of the corridor there’s a door. I put my shoulder against it but there’s no give. I suddenly have a sense of how far underground we are: at least two floors deep. The thought makes it harder to breathe. I try to swallow down my fear.
“I think it’s locked,” I say.
The sounds are louder now. Through the door I hear a kind of groan that sounds almost animal.
I try the handle again. “It’s definitely locked. You have a go—”
But Theo doesn’t answer me.
And I know, before I turn, that there’s someone behind us. Now I see him: the doorman who met us at the entrance, his huge frame filling the corridor, his face in shadow.
Shit.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” he asks, dangerously, quietly, as he begins moving toward us. “What are you doing down here?”
“We got lost,” I say, my voice cracking. “I . . . was looking for the toilets.”
“Vous devez partir,” he says. And then he repeats it in English: “You need to leave. Both of you. Right now.” His voice is still quiet, all the more menacing than if he were shouting. It says, absolutely do not fuck with me.
He takes a hold of my upper arm in one of his huge hands. His grip burns. I try to pull away. He grips tighter. I get the impression he’s not even putting much effort in.
“Hey, hey—that’s not necessary,” Theo says. The doorman doesn’t answer, or let go. Instead he takes hold of Theo’s arm too, in his other hand. And Theo, who up until now I’d thought of as a large guy, looks suddenly like a child, like a puppet, held in his grip.
For a moment the doorman stands stock-still, his head cocked to one side. I look at Theo and he frowns, clearly as confused as I am. Then I hear a tinny murmur and realize that he is listening. Someone is feeding him instructions through an earpiece.
He straightens up. “Please, Madame, Monsieur.” Still that scarily polite tone, even as his hand tightens further around my bicep, burning the skin. “Do not make a scene. You must come with me, now.” And then he is steering us, with more than a little force, along the corridor, back up the first flight of stairs, back into the room with the tables, the stage. Most of the lights have been turned off and it’s completely empty now. No, not completely. Out of the corner of my eye I think I catch sight of a tall figure standing quite still, watching us from the shadowy recesses in one corner. But I don’t manage to get a proper look because now we’re being manhandled up the next flight of steps, up to ground level.
Then the front door is opened and we’re thrust out onto the street, the doorman giving me such a hard shove in the back that I trip and fall forward onto my knees.
The door slams behind us.
Theo, who has managed to keep his balance, puts out a hand and hauls me up. It takes a long time for my heartbeat to return to normal. But as I manage to gain some control over my breathing I realize that though my knees hurt and my arm feels badly bruised, it could have been so much worse. I feel lucky to be back out here gulping freezing lungfuls of air. What if the voice in the doorman’s ear had given different instructions? What might be happening to us now?