The car is at the back entrance to my school and I wonder if Miss Iliescu is inside – can anybody see me with my new husband and my new dress? I stick my chest out like Luca does, before he has to get into the barrel, hoping to simulate whatever feelings he generates to get him through the dark tumbling. It’s easier to breathe with my ribs jutting forward, a space to draw breath into, and I play that game of holding air inside for ten, then twenty, then thirty, forty seconds. The need to let go is too great, and I don’t get anywhere near my personal best of sixty-one.

The blinds are pulled down, covering the windows in school so no light can get through, like eyelids sewn shut. I’ve never seen the tiny concrete building empty before, and it’s weird, sad somehow: an abandoned bomb shelter. A familiar smell of sweaty feet and musty chalk leaks through the bunker-like walls. Do memories play tricks, tantalising the senses? Already this place is playing out like the past, all of it witnessed as if from a distant point.

The engine of the car is idling and I see a figure in the driving seat. The walls of my heart thicken in an attempt to protect myself from this future. Now. The car is a metallic blue, rusted, with the back left door hanging off its hinges. As we draw nearer the figure in the front reveals itself to be a woman. The man sits in beside her, gesturing for me to climb in the back through the half-open door. The seats are plastic, my thighs sticking to them.

The woman half turns her head, her glossy black hair falling over one eye, and introduces herself as Petre’s wife. How many wives does one man need?

‘Hungry?’ the woman asks as she turns the key in the ignition, revving the engine, not waiting for an answer. I look at her in the chipped windscreen mirror and see only her painted lips, cherry-red and shining. I want to ask where we’re going but no sound will form through my cracked lips. I long to lie down at the edge of the well and scoop the cold clear water into my parched mouth. Sometimes, if I feel the longing deep enough, I can make it happen. I open my mouth and draw the liquid in, swallowing long deep mouthfuls. The car starts to move and I close my eyes, not wanting to see the familiar slip by.

‘Tired?’ the woman says.

I nod, not opening my eyes, letting the thrum of the engine vibrate in my body – a new experience, my first time in a car.

When my eyes flicker open they meet the woman’s, who is staring at me in the rear-view mirror.

‘I’m Magda by the way.’