When we get to the top of the queue there’s a woman with lots of paint on her face. Her lips are drawn to seem bigger than they are, making me think of a sad clown I once saw in a raggedy travelling circus in our village. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after thinking of the brown bear with the balding fur locked in a tiny cage. I shake my head to try to stop this sadness climbing back inside me. The woman doesn’t look at us, but takes the suitcases and puts a sticker on them and sends them on a moving belt.

She says something to Magda, who nods and gestures at us to follow her. Igor breathes out into my face as we leave, his breath smelling of stale alcohol. He stands for a moment, looking lost, his body coiled, ready to pounce.

Magda leads us to another line of people who shuffle slowly around corners, speaking loud and fast, clack-clacking, and then we climb aboard a moving staircase made of silver. I grip the plastic sides of the climbing stairs, my body lifted higher and higher, while my feet in my too-tight shoes are trying to get a grip on the unsteady ground. I trip over the lip when the movement stops and the level floor rises to meet us. Magda reaches out to steady me, Igor sniggers. Metal machines wink at us at the top, and Magda puts her handbag on a belt and Igor puts his mobile phone, which moves through the tunnel with cameras. We are waved under an archway, where men and women in blue uniforms with badges on their chests and plastic gloves on their hands stand waiting at the other side. As Magda goes through a loud beeping starts and she is made to stand with her legs apart as a woman runs a black device all over her body. I am scared they are going to take her into a room and make her undress, although the woman waves her on, then turns and motions at me to walk through the same arch. My heart is so loud in my ears I mistake it for the machine’s beeps, and I’m sure the woman can hear. She studies me for longer than anyone else. Igor is staring and pacing at the other end. As soon as I’m let go, Magda collects her handbag, Igor puts his phone back in his pocket and he grabs hold of me by the arm.

They walk towards a screen with the times of the airplane departures and letters that form words of places I don’t recognise. The letters blur and slide off the screen, although not before I see the name Londra forming. London.

‘This way,’ Igor says.

We walk down a long, brightly lit corridor and there are shops on either side, shops that sell hats, swimming clothes, scarves, sandwiches, chocolate, crisps, cola.