Some nights we’re taken to private homes for parties, some nights to bars with hotels upstairs. I’m never sent to a dirty old man’s home – I reckon they know I could bring on a heart attack. We meet many suits and drink much sparkle. I could make a bolt for it, when walking between the taxi and the hotels, but I don’t, controlled as I am now by some other invisible master yanking on my strings. I could run and scream, and get the Guards on to this place, but I can’t seem to do anything. I could tell one of the men who I am, my whole sorry story. Don’t they know who I am? That’s the weirdest thing about this whole gig – I never tell the men anything about myself. In those rooms with those men, I’m not real, ever, and playing a part is the only way to get through. All we have seen of punishment so far is Nico’s whack and my injection, but there’s something else at work here, and it’s coming from both inside and out. These guys are too good at what they do to carelessly risk a public exposure, but I can’t help thinking how come nobody has noticed me in the bars? Am I not a national sensation yet?

Come to think of it, the amount of muck Irina puts on our faces makes us pretty unrecognisable, which, on top of the gear and the curled hair, probably makes me look like someone else entirely. I’ve seen a few glances in Nico’s direction; even with all the daubing and lacquering, she still looks really young. People look, and just as quickly look away.

Most of the trees are bare now, a carpet of dead leaves at their feet, so it must be the tail-end of autumn, a whole school term almost over. I never noticed the length of a season before. The air is crisper outside and the nights are drawing in earlier and earlier, which means our start time is earlier too. We never work in daylight hours.

37. Nico

37

Nico

Although this place is cold, this country’s cold, my body, hands and feet are cold, I’m boiling up inside and feel as if I’m shape-shifting out of sand. Beneath me, the ground is made of scorched dust, time is like desert sand pouring through a crack in my brain. When I close my eyes the heat scalds the back of my eyelids and I fight to keep them open. Papa, you were right after all. He came.