I tell him the address of the B&B, before I realise I shouldn’t have.

‘So, working already?’

I pretend to look surprised. Of course he knows about that place.

He considers his next sentence carefully, weighing up whether to pursue this line of inquiry. ‘You still at school?’

‘No.’ I take out Mother’s Visa, wondering whether to risk it. ‘This is good for another few hours, I reckon.’

He shakes his head. ‘Pick what you like. We’ll put it on your tab. And if that place gets too much for you, here’s my card. Don’t go wasting your wares on idiots like Tommy here, and don’t go putting out in that shithole you’re staying in.’

What is it about me that men like him know?

He looks me up and down. ‘I could get you some new threads too someday.’

The tremors in my leg have passed into my stomach, which is jumping about like a scalded monkey. I saw that once in a vid: asshole trainers in India, or somewhere like that, making the poor little buggers walk on burning coals. Dance, Monkey, Dance.

I need to be cool here. ‘Thanks for the booze, Mister.’

‘Any time, you know that.’

I can see Tommy with his ear pushed up against the wall. I wonder what he makes of the exchange; I bet he wished he had pushed it the other day now. She’s an easy-breezy target. I walk away, all fake ‘I couldn’t give a shit about any of it’. Funny how the more you pretend not to feel something, the more that pretending becomes real. I could walk this way after a session behind the bicycle sheds. I really could.

9. Nico

9

Nico

Papa goes to Mama, takes her head in his hands and kisses her softly on the forehead. ‘She’s my daughter too, you must trust me. This man can give her a better life.’ Mama collapses against him. ‘I’ve asked him to pay for you to go to school, Nico.’

I hear his words and try to tell myself they are true. Mama scrubs the tears from her face. ‘But where? Where will she go to school?’

‘In England,’ Papa says, and Mama drops to the ground like a stone. Papa looks at me helplessly, as if to say: this is all your fault. And then he leaves.