I tell her I’m a woman now and that’s why my papa found a husband for me. He couldn’t have known where I was going, he must have believed it was to a better life. Yes, my papa only wanted the best for me. I am nodding furiously, like Mama sometimes did as she walked around the house talking to herself, trying to convince herself about one of his harebrained ideas. It works – this repetitive upward, downward movement of the head, it fills me with a determined yes, yes, yes. Of course my papa only wanted the best for me. Mama?

‘Are you ok?’ the same girl asks.

I continue to nod. Yes.

‘My boyfriend told me I would be working in a bar as a waitress and the tips would be huge,’ she tells me.

Then other girls start to tell some of their stories, in whispers. Two sisters say it was their mama that sold them. She told them they would be working in a rich lady’s house and they would earn good money, that they could go to school and get good jobs.

‘Did she know?’ one of them asks the other.

Other girls were also told they were going to be waitresses; one of them knew she was going to a place full of men where she thought she would dance for a living. She was not told what she would have to do; she was not told she had to pay off a debt. Neither of the girls who came in the car with me says a word. Can they accept that their boyfriends sold them, like ponies?

The girl who had her head thumped is beginning to bruise around the eye. If we are really worth so much money, then why would they hurt her in this way? The older girl tells us her name is Ana. She wants to know everyone’s favourite colour, and why. Mine is blue because it’s the colour of the sky sometimes, the sea sometimes, and Luca’s eyes, always.

‘Where are we?’ a pale girl with pudgy, childlike hands asks.

‘Italy,’ I say.

‘Where is that?’

‘Not too far from our country by boat. It’s surrounded by the sea, shaped like a boot.’

‘Ah, yes. I remember. Mussolini.’

‘They grow grapes there,’ another girl says.

There is a thud outside the door.

‘Five minutes. Put these on.’ A man throws black pants and bras and belts into the room.