Jamie became aware that the Sunday night at the Hellfire Club was rapidly approaching. She would have done anything not to go but realised that short of a broken limb she really had no excuse not to attend. Then salvation came in the form of a severe cold a few days beforehand.

“I can't go there like this,” she said to Frankie. “I'll be coughing and sneezing all over the men. Even with Viagra, that's enough to put anyone off sex with me, but how can I get a message to Paul?”

Frankie hesitated: “I've got a number to ring in case of emergencies,” she said.

“Well please ring it,” said Jamie, so Frankie went off to do that. She came back in a couple of minutes: “They want tto speak to you,” she said. She looked scared.

Jamie picked up the phone and said “Hello”

“I'm told you've got a cold,” said a rough voice at the other end. It certainly wasn't Paul.

“Yes I have,” said Jamie and by good fortune she sneezed at that moment.

“OK, get a doctor's certificate and send it with Frankie and be at the next one,” he said and hung up before Jamie could reply. Jamie told Frankie what had been said and then rang her doctor to get an appointment.

The doctor seemed a bit surprised that anyone would need a medical certificate just for a cold, but nevertheless he gave her one. The day of the orgy arrived and Frankie set about getting ready. She did look amazing when she was dressed up and Jamie told her so to lift her spirits. “Remember, there's only going to be one of two more,” she said.

Jamie went to bed early, hugging a hot water bottle, after dosing herself with aspirin and was soon asleep. She got up about seven o'clock and wandered into the kitchen to make herself a coffee and some toast. It was then that she noticed the door to Frankie's bedroom was open. This was unusual as Jamie expected her to be catching up on sleep and wanting to keep the room quiet. She looked in and saw the bed was made but not slept in. She started to worry. She had no way of contacting the house where the meeting was held.

It was then that she heard the key turn in the front door and Frankie walked in.

“Good heavens! What happened Frankie? You look terrible,” Jamie exclaimed.

“I've been in gaol,” said Frankie. She looked like she was about to faint. Jamie sprang to her feet and guided Frankie to a chair. “Stay there and I'll get you some coffee and you can tell me what happened,” she said.

Nursing the hot cup of coffee, Frankie told her story.

“It was about one o'clock in the morning. I don't know the exact time, you know there's no clock there. Anyway, things were in full swing and suddenly the lights were turned full on and the room was full of policemen. Someone shouted out “Stay where you are!” Well, I ask you; I had one bloke's cock in my mouth and another's in my arse and we literally froze. If it wasn't so serious, I think I would have laughed. Anyway, everyone disentangled themselves and we were led into our rooms to get dressed. Then we were led outside and loaded into the paddy wagons, us girls in one and the men in another, and we were driven down to the local police station.

“They put us into a cell and I suppose the men went into another one since we didn't see them again. It was so cold in our flimsy evening wear, that one of the girls called out and asked for blankets and eventually, someone brought a few and pushed them through the bars. We only had wooden benches to sit on and we all huddled together to try to keep warm. We were there for hours and it was after six o'clock when a big burly sergeant came along and opened the cell door.

“'Alright ladies' he said, 'You're all receiving a caution and you can go home, orders from above. If it was up to me I'd throw the book at you, but it isn't. Go on, get the hell out of here'. I can tell you we didn't have to be told twice. There was a taxi cruising down the street, so we hailed it and asked him to radio for some more, and here I am.”

“That's quite a story,” said Jamie. “Someone must have blown the whistle.”

“It wasn't you was it?” said Frankie.

“Hell, no! If it hadn't been for my cold I'd have been there too. What happened to the men?”

“I've no idea, we didn't see them after they were put in the wagon. I bet it hits the tabloids tomorrow,” said Frankie.

She wasn't wrong; there were screaming headlines on the front page of the next day's papers. One said 'HOUSE OF SIN' in the biggest font they had, and another said 'HELLFIRE MANSION'.

Jamie bought the latter paper. It had a front-page photo of the mansion and another of the girls being loaded into the police wagon. Fortunately, their faces were blurred out, but Jamie recognised Frankie from the gown she had worn. What surprised her about the accompanying article wasn't so much what it said but what it didn't say.

'Police officers acting on a tipoff raided a mansion in Mayfair, London and discovered twenty men and women engaged in intimacy for which money had been exchanged. All the participants were arrested and later bailed. The owner of the premises is expected to be charged with running a brothel.

'Local police commander William Sykes-Forsyth commented that further charges might well be laid. He said that the gathering was named the New Hellfire Club after the infamous club founded by Sir Francis Dashwood in the eighteenth century and frequented by high society rakes.'

There was no mention of the fact that the women involved were not actually women, and since homosexuality between men was illegal at that time, it seemed odd to overlook that. No mention was made of the social status of the men involved, and no names were mentioned either.

What concerned Jamie was the reference to a tipoff. She questioned Frankie closely about whether her medical certificate had been handed to Paul. Frankie assured her that it had.

“I don't want him thinking that I was the one who tipped off the police,” said Jamie. 'That wouldn't be good for my health. By the way, I suppose you weren't paid. I wonder what happened to the money?”

It seemed that was to forever be an unanswered question. Jamie thought she wouldn't be surprised if all the police involved in the raid received a bonus payment they never declared to the tax office.

There was the usual response in the letters published in the papers in the following days, with outrage from some senior clergy and 'concerned mother of five'. Jamie smiled to herself thinking of a senior clergyman she had recognised the one time she had been at the club. Wouldn't his brother clergy have been shocked to learn he was there?

Two days after the original sensational headlines, the story had completely dropped out of the news. Jamie thought that was the end of it, but that was not to be. A couple of weeks later, Jamie and Frankie had just left the club and were walking home, which, you will recall, was against the advice of their friendly club bouncer, Mike. The streets were empty until suddenly two large figures loomed out of the darkness.

“Which one of youse two ladies is Jamie?” one of them growled. Jamie thought she recognised him as the bouncer at the door of the Hellfire Mansion.

“I am,” said Jamie, and felt a cold chill.

The man grunted: “I've gotta message for you from Mr Paul. He doesn't like people who snitch.”

“You mean about the police raid?” said Jamie. “That wasn't me, anyway I was sick. I sent a medical certificate with Frankie. You did give it to Paul didn't you Frankie?”

Even in the dim light, Jamie could see the look on Frankie's face.

“Oh no! You promised me Frankie. What happened?”

Frankie was close to crying: “I meant to give it to him, truly I did, but I was running a bit late and I thought I'd give it to him later. I didn't get to speak to him before the police raid and we had to change.”

Suddenly, Jamie realised that the thug was holding a knife. Its blade glinted in the light from the streetlamp. He ignored what they had been saying and said: “Here comes your message, slag. No-one will want you once I've fixed your pretty face.””

“No!” screamed Frankie and leaped between them. Then she let out a gasp and staggered backwards into Jamie's arms.

“Fuck, Nick! What have you done? Let's get out of here!” shouted the second thug and they turned and ran off.

“Oh Frankie, what has he done to you?” cried Jamie as she gently lowered Frankie to the ground. Frankie was gasping and clutching her stomach. Jamie could see blood oozing from around her fingers.

“Help!” she screamed. “Is there anyone who can help us?”

Heavy footsteps ran towards them – it was Mike!

“Hells bells, what happened here?”

“Mike! Frankie's been stabbed in the stomach. Get an ambulance, please!”

“There's a phone box at the corner. I'll go and ring for one. Keep pressing on her stomach. Try and stop the bleeding.”

Jamie did as Mike ordered. Frankie was staring up at her, her face white: “Am I going to die, Jamie?” she gasped in a faint voice.

“Not if I can help it, Frankie. Mike's getting an ambulance. Just stay with me, alright?”

There was too much of a sense of 'déjà vu' about this, but would there be a different outcome this time? Jamie's tears dripped on Frankie as she pressed hard on her stomach, but Frankie seemed to be drifting away.

Suddenly the red and blue lights of the ambulance illuminated the scene. Jamie stepped back as the two paramedics took over. Mike had arrived back and put his arms around Jamie as she clung to him and cried: “I think she's going to die, Mike”

Mke tried to soothe her: “They're doing all they can for her, Jamie.”

Working by torchlight, the paramedics cut away Jamie's clothing to assess the extent of her injury. They quickly applied bandages and said they were taking her to University College Hospital.

“Tell them she's been there before a few weeks back,” called Jamies, as Frankie was loaded into the back of the ambulance with one of the paramedics, while the other jumped into the driver's seat and the ambulance drove off, lights flashing.

“Oh Mike, what am I going to do?” cried Jamie.

“Let's walk back to the club. We'll ring the police and you can have a cup of coffee while you wait for them.”

Donny was still at the club about to lock up when the two arrived. He took one look at Jamie's blood-stained dress and said: “What the hell's happened?”

Mike said: “Two thugs stabbed Frankie and she's been taken to hospital.”

“They were going to stab me and Frankie jumped in front of me,” cried Jamie.

“Is this all about that Hellfire business?” said Donny.

“Yes. They thought I snitched on them, but I didn't,” said Jamie.

Donny picked up the phone: “I'm calling the local police,” he said. “They know me and I know them. You can tell them everything. Don't hold anything back.”

Two policemen arrived ten minutes later and they and Donny greeted each other by their first names. Then they were introduced to Jamie, who told them the whole story.

“The man who stabbed Frankie was called Nick by the other one. He didn't mean to stab her, he was going to cut my face, but she jumped in front of me,” said Jamie.

The two policemen looked at each other at the mention of Nick's name, but said nothing. One said to Jamie: “You'll have to come down to the station to make a statement. I'll show you some pictures too. Maybe you can pick him out.”

“Can I ring the hospital first to find out what's happened to Frankie?” said Jamie. The two police officers nodded, and Donny rang the hospital number and gave Jamie privacy while she made the call in case it was bad news.

The hospital Casualty Department said that Frankie had been taken straight to the operating theatre and was expected to be there for a couple of hours at least.

As Jamie was driven to the police station to look through a book of 'mugshots', she had plenty of time to consider the implications of identifying Nick and his accomplice and decided it just wasn't worth it. While Nick deserved to be punished for what he intended to do to her and what he had done to Frankie, even if it was an accident, if it came to a trial there could be really bad consequences. Inevitably it would be revealed that she and Frankie weren't 'real' women and Lewy's nightclub might also be dragged into it. The tabloids would have a field day, without the restraints which they seemed to have been under over the 'Hellfire Club' incident. She just couldn't allow that to happen to her friends at the club.

Looking through the books of pictures, Jamie thought that she had never seen so many ugly mugs in her life. She saw Nick's picture and his accomplice, but passed over them and pretended to concentrate on another picture entirely. Finally she gave up and said she didn't recognise anyone in the books.

“Are you sure you don't recognise anyone?” said one of the policemen.

“Well it was dark and it all happened so quickly,” said Jamie

The policeman looked hard at her, but what could he do? Jamie was sure she had made the right decision, she wanted to put the whole event behind her. If she had identified Nick, perhaps someone else would have been sent after her. The thought of those rich and powerful people who could arrange an assault or worse without any consequences to themselves really scared her. Anyway, if that was Nick's chosen lifestyle, he'd probably get arrested for some other crime.

Frankie didn't die, although it was a close thing. She was given six pints of blood and ended up with no spleen and a large abdominal scar. She had been very lucky. She stayed in hospital for four weeks before she was allowed to return to the flat after the doctors realised that there would be no-one there to look after her most evenings until very late. She had been estranged from her family for many years and resisted Jamie's suggestion that she contact them and tell them what had happened.

Jamie actually proved to be a good nurse and really looked after her all the time that she wasn't at work. Donny was very kind and let Jamie go home immediately after she sang in the last show. Frankie returned to work at the club two weeks after she was discharged from the hospital, but strictly only to sing.

Jamie finally retrieved her doctor's certificate and carried it with her for several months in case there were any more nasty encounters, but nothing happened. Was that her reward for not 'fingering' Nick? She would never know.

Jamie never saw any report of the person, presumably Paul, who was being charged with running a brothel, and if found guilty, what happened to him. Ironically, the only time she ever saw his face again, and incidentally learned his real name, was some years later when he appeared with his wife and daughter walking into the Palace to receive a knighthood for services to the arts. How ironic was that?

It may well have occurred to the reader that if the owner of the Hellfire Club could be charged with keeping a brothel, what about Donny at Lewy's nightclub? Yes, he could have been, but Donny kept up a very cordial relationship going with the local constabulary, who took the view that they already had enough real crime to keep them busy and didn't need to bother themselves with what consenting adults did in private whether or not they were the same sex.

To be continued

Next time: A wedding invitation