‘No thank you,’ I say, as politely as I can.

She spits some cola down her silky cream blouse. ‘Lovely manners, young lady, but Petre here paid a lot for you, and you’ll have to work to pay him back. You do understand that, don’t you?’

I nod. ‘I’m very good at cleaning and sweeping.’

‘That’s boring,’ she says. ‘I’ll teach you to do other work, where you’ll earn much more money and get to look like me.’

The other girls seem happy about this and discuss what colour lipstick they would like to wear and how they would like to style their hair. I wonder what their boyfriends told them they were going to do. I swirl the drink in my hand, the ice clinking against the sides of the glass, tiny bubbles floating upwards. Maybe I should go the toilet and climb out the window, but where would I go? The fizzy syrup is delicious and cool against the sides of my throat. I start to feel sleepy, and worry I might fall into the well again. Gripping onto the sides of the table, I hear Magda say, ‘It’s ok, girls, it’s just time for a nap. You’ve a long journey ahead of you.’

12. Sammy

12

Sammy

After a bad night tossing and turning in my cupboard (the wet cotton-wool balls I stuck in my ears to drown out the noise kept falling out each time I moved, and the dreams of Prickles and the Machine pierced me each time I fell into sleep for even a millisecond), I get up and get out. I need air and a juice. In the landing outside there is a girl in glasses and a baseball cap. So: not so paranoid after all.

‘Cool pad.’

God, she’s persistent, I have to hand it to her. She pushes on past me into my room.

‘Where’s the window?’ she asks.

‘There isn’t one.’

‘Oh.’

The two of us face each other.

‘Nice sheets,’ she says. ‘What a spread.’ She takes in the mess of ‘delicacies’ jumbled about on the covers. ‘From your fridge?’

No shit, Sherlock. The labels are still on them. I can see she approves of my act of defiance. I’m not in the mood to bring Mother into this conversation though, so I ask, ‘How the hell did you find me?’

‘Not so hard, really, I just called Brian.’

I wonder how she got his number. He probably thought she was hitting on him.

‘He took me here once,’ I say.