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When you’re illegal, you’re scared to go to hospital. She had a baby in the club. But it was a bad birth. Too much blood. They took her body away, no one ever knows she existed. No problem. Because she wasn’t official.
Jess is horrified to learn about the difficult lives of the women working at La Petite Mort when she and Theo interview Irina, a young dancer and sex worker who had previously met with Ben during his investigations of the club. Irina notes that some women, such as Sophie, are relatively lucky, receiving valuable gifts from clients and even sometimes marrying a wealthy man. Others, she notes, are not so fortunate, obtaining diseases in the course of their work. One woman, she reveals, died at the club after giving birth there. Though this is not stated directly, it is heavily implied that this woman was Elira, the daughter of the Concierge, who went to Paris to start a new life but quickly found herself working at the club due to limited opportunities as an immigrant.
The club, Jess learns, primarily employs illegal immigrants who are desperate to find work and reluctant to seek legal counsel due to their precarious situation. These women are particularly vulnerable given the threat of deportation, a fact which the club takes advantage of. Elira was scared to go to the hospital because she would likely be required to give her legal name, which might jeopardize her ability to stay in France. Unable to receive proper medical care, Elira gave birth in the club and died due to complications during delivery, a fate that might have been avoided if she had been able to access the necessary medical resources. After her death, Irina notes, her body was quietly removed, and all evidence of her existence was erased. Women such as Elira are treated as if they are disposable, her death a mere inconvenience to the club’s owners.
I think of the gratitude that I’d felt to Jacques in the beginning [...] I didn't realize at the time how cheaply I had been bought. I didn’t free myself when I married my husband, as I’d thought. I didn’t elevate myself. I did the exact opposite. I married my pimp: I chained myself to him for life.
After it is revealed that Mimi murdered Jacques to protect Ben, Sophie experiences a mix of emotions. Though she is scared for her daughter and immediately puts in motion a plan to protect her, she also expresses admiration for her. Mimi, she notes, did what she should have done long ago in murdering the cruel and abusive Jacques. Reflecting on her marriage, Sophie says that she initially felt grateful towards Jacques, whom she regarded as her savior. As an illegal immigrant and sex worker, she previously lived a highly precarious life with little security. Marriage to Jacques seemed at first like liberation from her difficulties and a chance to begin a better and more stable life.
Jacque’s death, however, sparks a realization in Sophie. Her marriage to Jacques was merely an extension of her old life, as she was still in some way selling herself to him, allowing Jacques to mold her into a new person and control every aspect of her life in exchange for his money. Sophie’s loveless, transactional marriage, the novel implies, was not so different to prostitution, even if it was more socially acceptable.
"My dad was a copper, actually. A real f***** hero to everyone else. Except he made my mom's life hell. But no one would believe me when I told them about it: how he treated her, how he hit her [...] And then...and then one day it got too much from my mum."
When Jess finds Ben, deeply injured but still alive, in the old maid’s quarters at the top of the building, she demands that Sophie let the two of them leave. Scared that they will report her daughter for the murder of Jacques, Sophie refuses, prompting Jess to promise not to go to the police. Though Sophie is skeptical of this claim, Jess explains that she is distrustful of the police for a surprising reason: her own father was a police officer. Because he was good at his job, Jess’ father was considered to be a good man and afforded a good deal of trust and respect in their community. Behind closed doors, however, her father was an abusive and violent man, who mistreated and abused her mother. When Jess attempted to tell others about her father’s abusive behavior, nobody believed her.
Ultimately, she blames her father for her mother’s death, arguing that his abuse reached such a degree that her mother sought death as a relief from her suffering. For this reason, she places little trust in the police, and indeed, throughout the course of the novel, the police offer no help to women in need. When her predatory boss exposed himself to her in Brighton, she took things into her own hands, not putting her faith in the police to seek justice on her behalf. When she arrives in Paris and finds that Ben has disappeared, she is reluctant to go to the police as she fears that she will have to give them her name, which might lead to her arrest for retaliating against her boss. In the course of the novel, her distrust of the police is affirmed. The police commissioner, a family friend of the Meuniers, is a patron of La Petite Mort, hypocritically breaking the law by paying for sexual services. Further, he abuses his power to protect the interests of the club, attempting to arrest Jess and Theo under false charges in order to put an end to their investigations. In the novel, then, the corrupt police are presented as not only unable to help vulnerable women, but unwilling
