In the hall we are given big baggy clothes to put on over our tiny outfits. I’m sent in a car with Ling and the two dark sisters, who hold their bodies like cats under threat from a pack of wild dogs, every sinew straining. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I want to reach out my hands and take theirs, but I’m frozen, and know that nothing I say or do will make that moment disappear. Instead I make sure that Ling gets in the middle so they don’t have to sit beside me. The driver is a skinny young boy who whistles as he drives. We pull up outside a tall house made of red bricks, with three stretched, shiny cars outside, and a neat, clipped garden with roses so perfect they don’t look real. There’s a small watering hole with a statue, its mouth gaping open like a fish, water gushing through. The driver tells Ling and me to get out and continues off down the road with the sisters. A woman in a white uniform answers the door and turns on her heel as if she is disgusted by what she sees. We follow her broad back down a hall with a marble floor and steel rails on the walls.

She brings us to a room with a huge unlit fireplace, tall windows with heavy curtains fully drawn, and oversized couches. There’s a wide TV mounted on the wall that’s playing very loudly. Ling sits directly in front of it, and I watch as the expression on her face empties out. People on the screen are watching other people on the screen as they shout at each other, their faces full of hatred, and the people watching either cheer or boo. I pull my eyes away from the images and the noise, and get up and walk around the room. This place smells of antiseptic and old people. I remember reading Treasure Island to my baba at the end, her freckled hand holding tightly to mine. Her room smelt musty, a mixture of talcum powder and moss, disguised by bleach that used to attack my eyes and make them water. I rub them roughly now. Maybe this is all they want us to do here, yes, maybe we’ll be reading to an old person, a sick person, yes, maybe this is why we are covered up. Yes. I am nodding my head, trying to convince myself, the way Mama used to. The nurse returns and clicks her fingers at us to follow her. We shuffle along a brightly lit hall until we reach a door that’s ajar, and Ling and I are ushered inside.