He ushers her to the door. I can hear her sob as she leaves the room. Who’d have thought? Good old Luce who never got more than a line in the chorus in the school play, executes a perfectly judged dramatic exit. Claps all round.

My stomach hurts I’m laughing so much and there are tears streaming down my cheeks and the room starts spinning and the lights are flashing and we are dancing, dancing, manically dancing.

‘Hey!’

I can see his face swimming in front of me and I try to smile but I have no control over my body and nothing moves. An alarm goes off and people rush into my room. I can feel my nose grow long and I’m back in that recurring nightmare from when I was a child. ‘Liar, liar, your pants are on fire.’ Mother is standing over me. ‘You know what happens to lying little girls, don’t you? They’re turned to wood and their noses grow long and they get swallowed up by the whale’s mouth and they live inside his belly forever, being eaten up by stomach acid.’ I’m so hot. I’ve been swallowed whole and I’m never getting out.

More hoovers down the throat, more needles probing my eyes, more insides coming up and up. Ok, I get it. No more lying. No more. It stops, and I don’t know what’s left of me. I try to remember my name, my date of birth, address. Nothing. Where am I? Nowhere. Sweet relief. Slate wiped clean. The whale has shit me out of him and I am floating free. I spiral further down into the water’s clean, clear, calm, and it’s beautiful here in the shifting blue. I don’t ever want to come up, but the need to breathe is too strong, so I’m propelled back to the harsh, bright light, and gulp in mouthfuls of dry, cutting air. My eyes fly open and there’s a white roof above me; I turn my head to the right and see that I’m hooked up to a bag of clear liquid that’s dripping its contents inside me. And then, in a rush, I remember: last night, and the man ramming into the coked, bruised, skinny woman, and this time I see in her eyes that it doesn’t hurt any more, nothing hurts any more. And then a flash of me at nine: on my knees, scrubbing a pink spot on the lino on the kitchen floor over and over, Mother standing above me. I had spilt Ribena, which soaked deeper and deeper the more I scrubbed.

17. Nico

17

Nico

‘Where is this place that will pay so much for the girl-child then?’ Petre asks.

I pretend to be asleep, body rigid and angled, at the furthest point on the mattress away from him.