I think of the doctor, lying on his back in that hotel room blowing smoke rings at the ceiling and saying, ‘It’s illegal nowadays inside’. I imagine a cigarette never tasted so good. These men don’t connect our bodies to real, live, breathing ones, certainly not to any daughters they might have. The icy cold finger pushes its way inside me. This note could be very dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. It could puncture a dream, and everyone knows it is very dangerous to wake a sleeping beast. But still, I hold it there, loosely, just in case.

The car pulls up in a very busy street with bars and restaurants. Sammy makes a thumbs-up sign at me. The fat taxi man gets out and stands by the front door, on his phone. He’s talking urgently to someone.

‘Maybe we should give our notes to the barman?’ she whispers thickly, her tongue immobile, trying to hold the paper in place.

I shake my head. ‘The men who pay for us will see. And the driver,’ I say, gesturing to him on his mobile, ‘sees everything.’

Sammy laughs at my lisping voice. I notice she has two spots of red colour on her cheeks. She has that look that I have seen before, that look she wears when she is about to fling herself head-first into the shallows. It is reckless and it will hurt. I put my hand on her arm to steady her, and as I look into her eyes it’s like falling into two black holes: her pupils have swum into her irises. I wonder how many pills she has swallowed.

‘Be careful,’ I say, all my excitement from earlier having leaked away. She pokes her tongue out at me, touches her nose and crosses her eyes, conjuring Luca. I shiver.

‘Oops,’ she says, as she recovers the piece of paper. My throat narrows. ‘Lighten up, Roomie, tonight is the first night of the rest of our lives. Freedom!’ she whispers, giddy and high on her fantasy.

I speak coldly to try to interrupt her hysteria, carefully sorting through my vocabulary to choose the right words. ‘We must to be careful with who, and if and when, we give these notes.’

She laughs. ‘Yes, Miss School-Marm, what beautiful and precise English you speak.’ Why is this funny?

The driver raps his knuckles against the window and opens the back door. I almost fall out, Sammy clambering after me, and the two of us place our unsteady legs in our thin high heels onto the ground. Sammy stands and sways, drinking in air. I hold on to her as we make ourselves tall, roll our shoulders back and teeter into the bar, where we see the two men smiling at us from under two polished bald heads. I squint and blur my vision, but cannot see a rescuing knight no matter how hard I try.