‘What was your niece studying in Hong Kong?’ I said, although I felt that I already knew the answer.

‘How to help people,’ he said. ‘She wants to be a nurse.’

36

When her grandmother had slipped into her afternoon sleep, Edie gently took the box of Milk Tray from the bed and settled herself in the small room’s only chair. I made a drinking gesture and Edie gave me the thumbs up. We smiled at each other. I went off to the canteen to get coffee.

White-suited nurses were eating their lunch, their conversation like birdsong. They all wore the same identical white suit but they looked as if they were from every corner of the world. They did not look exhausted or depressed by their work. They seemed energised and happy.

As I paid for the coffee, I felt my spirits sink.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I stared at their happy faces. One of them, Maria from the Philippines who always took such good care of Lil, saw me staring, and smiled back.

They came from Africa. South America. East Asia. They came from where one continent ended and another began. They were Nigerian or Ghanaian, Filipina and Chinese, Albanian and Turkish, Brazilian and Colombian. They spoke in English, even when addressing someone from their own country, but I knew their languages would have been the Ashanti Twi of West Africa, the Mandarin of mainland China, the Portuguese of South America and languages that I had never heard of and would never recognise.

But the white-suited nurses of Golden Years all spoke to each other in English that was getting better every day.

I returned to Lil’s room as if in a dream.

‘What’s wrong, Max?’ Edie said.

‘The staff,’ I said. ‘These nurses.’

‘They’re great, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly aware of my breathing. ‘But they’re all illegal.’

I stared out of the window. In the car park a Bentley had pulled up next to my BMW X5. Doherty, the driver, leaned against the door, smoking a cigarette in his gloved hands.

‘No,’ Edie said. ‘You can’t know that. You can’t be sure.’

She looked anxiously at her grandmother. The old lady moaned in her sleep.

‘I hope I’m wrong,’ I said. ‘But I can feel it in my blood, Edie. Every one of them is illegal. That’s why the women we found were all nurses. Hana Novak and the others in the lorry in Chinatown. Rabia Demir. Keith Li’s niece. They were all nurses. They were coming here to do what they had been trained for. And do it well. And do it better than the locals. I’m sorry, Edie.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘If you’re right, then why did some of them end up working for Madam Theresa? It doesn’t make sense.’