When I wake, my tongue is twice its normal size, the ground is moving beneath me, and my eyelids are heavy and can’t open fully. I wonder if the Sandman came. I lie in the dark and try to calm myself, count backwards, imagine the dog is lying beside me, protecting me. I reach out to touch her tummy and my fingers brush against a warm human body. It stirs and shouts in its sleep – a female voice, one of the girls from the car. There is a low humming noise, a vibration, movement, but not like in the car, here everything is rolling and swaying. I need to go to the toilet so I swing my legs to the side of the bed and stand. The room is so narrow I can reach out and touch both walls with my fingertips, hitting against cold plastic – no slimy moss here. On the bed I can make out two bodies, breathing jerkily.

I grope along the wall towards the door and push against it, feeling for a handle, but can’t find anything, so I press against the door with my shoulder, and then I knock, timidly at first, so as not to wake the other girls, and then as the need to get to the toilet becomes unbearable, I start to bang on the door loudly with my fists, shouting, ‘Hello, anybody there?’ There are whispers first, then mumbles, then, as the other girls slowly adjust to the dark and narrow space, they too begin to shout.

The door falls in and there behind it is Magda, her long hair framed in a halo of light. ‘Shut up,’ she hisses, ‘just shut up if you know what’s good for you.’

My chest is heaving and I fall out the door against her. She holds me still as I try to calm my breathing and the other girls’ screams still to a stifled sobbing. ‘I need the toilet.’ She points to a bucket in the corner of the room and I shake my head so hard it feels as though my brain hits against the side of my skull.

The woman puts her hand on my arm and says, ‘Ok, little one, it’s ok, come with me and we’ll find a toilet.’ She closes the door behind us and I can hear the latch click.

The other girls shout louder, and Magda speaks through a crack. ‘Don’t make another sound.’ The girls fall silent immediately.

Her voice changes register as she speaks to me, softer, almost like a mama would to her child. ‘They’ll be ok, they have each other.’ There are small circular windows along the corridor, peep-holes to a dark night sky. Magda points through the glass. ‘There’s the sea. You said you wanted to see the sea. Well, we are on it.’