The icy-cold finger of fear pushes its way deep into my belly. As I try to stand, he crashes through the threshold of our room. Before I have time to react, he pushes me back down on the bed, clamps me with one hand on my chest and says, ‘Over in no time, now lie back on the bed and open your legs.’ I see the dog’s sore neck, and allow my body to go limp. My head turns sideways, and I look out the window where a heavy cloud bank is building in the swirling sky, invading the blue of moments before.

‘Bend your knees.’

My legs move of their own accord. The man puts something cold and metal inside me, pushing through all the locked doors. He is fast, efficient. ‘Good girl. Here, take these,’ and he throws a packet of tiny white pills on the bed.

I feel rather than see Sammy’s presence in the doorway, static buzzing from her direction. I’m afraid she’s going to say something stupid, and he’s going to hit her or put a needle in her arm, but she’s frozen, and he smiles and bows to us before he walks out.

Her body is crackling, her unspoken anger ringing loudly in the air.

I pull my pyjama bottoms back up. Neither of us moves or speaks for some moments, then her voice bursts through. ‘Fuck. I’m surprised they haven’t branded us with a hot iron.’

Her words place unwanted images in my mind, and as I reach out for the glass of cool, cloudy apples, I imagine a hot poker with a number imprinting the skin on my forearm. I can smell the skin burning. Sammy’s hand is shaking as she hands me the juice.

I drink long and deep, the cool liquid soothing. Sammy sits beside me and puts a bag of green ice to the place where I was hit.

‘Green Giant,’ she sings. ‘They’re peas,’ she says, trying to lighten the mood, although there is no part of her that is laughing. I’m burning up inside. We both sit for some time listening to the breeze outside that taps against the window, looking to be let in.

Then a figure appears at the door, as if conjured by the wind. ‘Dinner is ready.’

I look at Irina’s mouth, which is again as thin as a slit.

‘You must eat.’ She turns and floats away.

‘Think that means we’re both cleared for work tonight,’ Sammy says.

Is it almost that time already?

‘Can’t believe she’s letting you go to work looking like that. Won’t there be questions asked?’

What do the men care about a bump on my head? I think of the girl with the black eye and know that nothing will stop this, except one of Magda’s pills.