We pull up outside a bar with a swinging neon sign outside, like in one of those sawdust and spit places in the cowboy films. The sign creaks in the windless night, as if disturbed by ghosts. We don’t have a bar like this in our village, but I imagine Sergiu, Victor and Papa would come, if there was one. The five of us go inside and it’s dark and dusty, wet stains on the concrete floor and walls. Loud music is pumping into the beer-soaked air, and half-dressed women are dancing around silver sticks stuck into the ground. Some of them are wearing only underwear, and some of them have no tops on. I look away. I’ve never seen a woman naked before. Mama taught me it’s rude to stare so I look down at my dust-flecked shoes.

Magda asks if we’d like Coca Cola and chips. I nod. I’ve never had either, but have seen them on the TV in Maria’s house. Everyone in America wears lots of make-up and very little clothes and drinks Coca Cola and eats chips. I feel like I’m on the flickering screen, caught in the TV box. My eyes can’t focus properly in the gloom and anyway, they’re not sure what they’re seeing, like the game of Trickery the boys used to play when I was little, blindfolding me and making me stick my finger into disgusting things, and then eat them. The other girls have gone very quiet.

‘Would you like to do that?’ the man asks, gesturing to the women dancing. ‘It’s better than working in a factory, or cleaning tables, no?’

I rub my eyes, which feel like they’re being attacked by stinging flies. I can’t dance. I’m the worst dancer in the village. Everyone knows that.

‘I can’t dance,’ I tell him. ‘No rhythm.’

The taller girl bursts out laughing, clapping her hands.

The man looks at them both. ‘Can you dance?’

The same girl laughs harshly as her friend tells her how happy Ivan would be to see her dance.

‘Go on, show us how it’s done,’ the man says, before leaving to go to the bar.

Magda takes the laughing girl by the hands and moves her hips in time to the music, twirling her around in circles. ‘Very good.’

I can see the girl is pleased and she takes her friend’s hands and they dance together. Magda starts to take off her blouse. ‘Copy me,’ she says to the girls.

They both stop; my cheeks are flaming.

The man returns with the black fizzing drinks in long clinking glasses. ‘Put your clothes on, plenty of time for that later,’ he says to his wife, who puts her blouse back on and sits with us at the table.

‘I’ll teach you to dance, little one,’ she says to me.