I had never known Jonny so reasonable. He started speaking almost like a rational, socially aware human being. “Now listen to me, Liv, my love. What are you going to do with yourself back there? Have you got work there, have you got a place to live? Nope. I can get you good well-paid work, not bad hours, and no questions asked about permits and NI number and all that shit.” The unpleasant idea came to me that what he meant was prostitution. I dismissed it because I thought I was too inexperienced to know about these things but now, looking back, I’m pretty sure I was right. Jonny the cat burglar, Jonny the mugger, and now Jonny the pimp. “I’ve got a place to live. It’s not grand. To be perfectly honest with you, it’s a dump. But I’ll change all that. I’ll buy a place, a nice little flat in a nice neighborhood. How does that grab you?”

If only it had been Wim talking. We who knew could read that in her face. It was a much prettier face by then. Love and nights with Wim must have done that. The red blotchiness was gone, her nose was no longer pink, the cold sores to which she’d been prey even in summer had disappeared. She washed her hair every day and it was golden and glossy. Never cut, allowed to grow, it was even longer than mine. My grandmother used to say that teenage girls had what she called “puppy fat” that melted away when they got older. I don’t know if this is true but Liv, in spite of taking no exercise and eating and drinking quite a lot, had become slimmer in these past weeks. She was very nearly beautiful. Jonny looked at her with hungry eyes.

“I am thinking about it,” she said. Her English too had improved a lot. “I will think about it,” she corrected herself. “You ask me again—next month. No, next week. How is that?”