This place is a home, like the one Mama described when she said I was to be a wife in England. There are soft carpets and electric lights and heaters on the walls, which, when I slide my fingertips over them, are warm to the touch. We’re brought to a kitchen and told to sit and eat. The hole inside of me is crying out to be filled and I eat sandwich after sandwich until my belly is round, while the others look on. I don’t care if there is poison in the sandwiches, which are made from white bread, ham and cheese. There are flowers on the table, not purple and pink roses like Mama said, but pink and white scraggy things, their petals drooping. They smell like a musty dish cloth. A long white light is fixed into the ceiling, which illuminates the face of the woman of the house, who looks like she could be Magda’s sister – the same flecked-green eyes with long eyelashes, the same svelte body, her face moulded from the same hard, shiny stone.

She speaks directly to me in my language. ‘I will show you to your room.’

‘Do you know Magda?’ I say.

She looks blankly at me.

We all stand at once and she gestures with her hand for the other girls to stay, and tells them to use the toilet as they’ll be getting back in the van. There are a few scared sounds of protest, like kittens squealing when they are first handled. I remember Sergiu and Victor rough-handling a wild cat’s litter this way. Their cries fill my ears. I have not really allowed myself to look at these other faces. I follow the woman out of the room, without looking back.

She seems to glide, her feet hovering along the corridor, which has four rooms coming off it, and a staircase leading up to another level. The carpets are soft and bouncy, the same creamy colour as the walls, the lights too bright for anything furtive to happen here.

She pushes open a door and says, ‘Do you understand me?’

I nod. Her accent is familiar. ‘Moldovan?’ I ask.

Her face closes down. The door opens into a bedroom, which is soft and pink. It doesn’t feel like any man has ever set foot in here. There are two beds, both draped in sheets that are hanging over the edges, with fluffed-up pillows and plump, soft quilts. I want to run and dive under the covers and burrow deep and never come out. The room smells of sickly flowers, like a stale scent has been sprayed in the air.

‘The toilet is over there,’ the woman says. I put my hand out and tell her my name is Nicoleta, Nico, although I almost say ‘Natasha’.

I can see her hesitating, wondering whether to tell me her real name.

‘Irina,’ she says.