Midnight Dancer

Beaty is a beautiful, sensual hostess who lives for the thrills of today and doesn’t think about tomorrow. At the upmarket London club, Baron’s, she is adrift in a twilight world where prostitution, drugs and death are a game for anyone prepared to pay the ultimate price. Beaty dreams of a better life for her and her 10-year-old son, Billy. But Beaty only sees her boy at weekends. Beaty’s estranged ex-husband Jack was awarded custody of Billy because of Beaty’s job. As a consequence, Beaty had sunk into a life of drugs. She would have died had it not been for Alex, her boyfriend at the time. Alex was unstable and Beaty had liked the danger. But although Alex is no longer in Beaty’s life, she enjoys her job at the club and doesn’t know how else to make money. One night Emory Cole, a technician at Baron’s, notices Beaty as if for the first time. He can’t take his eyes off her. Beaty and Emory begin a relationship and Beaty finds herself falling for the man who will stop at nothing to take her over the edge of ecstasy. Emory offers to take Beaty away from her life as a whore and asks her to move in with him so he can take care of her. When Beaty sees how well her lover and son get on, she considers Emory’s offer. She wants a better future for her and Billy – could Emory provide that for her? But soon the past catches up as ghosts from both Beaty’s and Emory’s past appear. Max, an unsavoury associate of Emory’s, whom Beaty takes an immediate dislike to, turns up looking for a favour. And things are complicated further when Alex turns up and attempts to worm his way into their lives ... But could these dangerous men hold the key to giving Beaty, Emory and Billy a better life? And at what cost? This book was previously published as Hussy by Rosemary Kingsland. “Dazzling... an esoteric, yet sensational, novel...” – Evening Standard “Makes the dark side intense and yet strangely beautiful... the life and times of a 'Sixties nightclub hostess (in other words, a tart) shows she is a fighter, a survivor. If she earns her living in a precarious way it's to support her young son. In the end, she finds a way to escape London gangsters and start a new life...” – Cosmopolitan “As fizzy as the champagne ordered by the dancers for their customers in a smart yet tawdry nightclub... a sensational read.” – The Express “The bitter-sweet lives of the hostesses who sell themselves night after night in the shabby world of London's nightlife. Erotic, dark, yet sparkling....' Daily Mail Annie Ayre was born in the middle of a thunderstorm in the Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir, to a family of travelling actors. When she was twelve, her parents died on a frozen train during a blizzard in Russia. Nobody thought to tell Annie that she was an orphan. Forgotten for years, she remained at school until the nuns traced her paternal grandparents, writing that it was time she left school; they must claim her. Finally shipped home to Scotland, she was welcomed, but it was obvious from the crumbling ruin they lived in that the family was broke. She got work as a junior on a local newspaper and developed her early career in that field.