‘I thought it would be good to meet you, put a face to a name. I was in the area anyway.’

Why do I suddenly feel like I am the one who is being investigated? Yet I would have done the same thing in her position. It’s always helpful to try to connect the dots as and when they arise, even if you don’t know yet which ones connect, or how.

My eyes move back to the girl, who drags self-consciously on a cigarette. Finally, Dana clears her throat and looks cautiously towards Maureen before starting to speak.

‘You know, I wonder why you want to do this,’ she says quickly, her eyes locking onto mine. ‘This world that you are prodding at, it is no joke.’

Maureen looks encouragingly at Dana. ‘Isobel just wants to help …’

Sniffing again, Dana flicks her ash into a glass bowl and my eyes catch her tiny wrists; there is a trail of scars along her arm, red and scabbed over. When she catches me looking, she quickly pulls her sleeve back down and I wonder what Madeleine offers her in return for help.

‘There is a woman who meets girls like us in London. She looks after us.’ Dana spits out the final words. ‘Gordana, that’s her name, I don’t know who she is. All I know is that she lives in a flat in Elephant and Castle. They send the girls to her on the promise of work – as a nanny or a cleaner, or maybe in the hope of studying at college.’

Dana’s gaze moves to her hands, her expression unreadable behind thick layers of mascara. ‘But for girls like us there is not such a job. The day I landed in England, he said I’m going to work as a nanny with children …’

‘Who is he?’ I ask.

‘A man,’ she says, holding my look. ‘I met him in Tirana while I was waitressing at a restaurant. He came in every day for two months and we became friends.’

Dana’s voice grows quieter as she speaks. ‘I was hoping to study and he told me he could help me. He said he had friends in England who ran an agency for nannies and that he could help me get a job.’

When she pauses, Maureen leans across and puts a reassuring hand on Dana’s arm. ‘That was a long time ago now.’ Her voice fades out and she picks up the packet of cigarettes and taps it absent-mindedly against the table.

‘After the day I left Albania I never saw him again.’

I leave what I hope is a respectful amount of silence before I speak again. ‘And when you got here, you were met by this Gordana woman?’