‘Don’t worry about them. They are older than you and they have each other,’ she says, again.

The rocking and swelling is soothing, and the smell of clean comforts me.

‘I won’t be long,’ she says as she closes the door behind her and turns a key.

I lie still, holding my breath, hoping to go under.

When she returns later that night Petre is with her. He bangs into the room loudly and suddenly it’s plunged into piercing brightness.

‘Shhhh, you’ll wake her,’ Magda says.

‘What’s she doing in here?’

She tells him that I was very sick and could have choked and died. ‘You don’t want that after all the money you paid, do you?’

Petre goes silent for a moment. ‘And the other two?’

‘I guess I’d better go check on them.’

No, don’t leave me here, with him. I curl up into a ball and screw my eyes shut. I can feel him sit on the edge of the bed. He reaches out to touch me, when I hear Magda’s voice at the door. ‘Don’t, she’s not ready yet. I’ll teach her and make sure she’s ready.’

He laughs and calls her a ‘lesbian’. When Magda leaves, Petre pulls the covers away from me and lifts my dress above my head. He sits and looks at me, pushes my knees out of the way, reaches out to touch a breast, grunts, then falls silent, before getting up to go to the bathroom. I can hear the water falling. I’m lying with the dress pulled above my head, too scared to move in case he knows I’m awake, and I do not want to be awake.

When Magda comes back into the room, she pulls the dress down and covers me with the sheets, then gets in beside me and lies on her back. ‘God help you, little one, if you were mine I wouldn’t have let you go with a stranger.’

I wonder if the same thing happened to her. I can smell cigarette smoke. Petre returns, and I screw my eyes tighter. Soon there is a creaking sound from the bed, which moves beneath me. After, I can hear snoring and think back to the same sounds coming from Papa.