‘I don’t remember that.’

‘We didn’t think you’d get over it. As we weren’t allowed to touch one another, nobody could pick you up and cuddle you or try and comfort you, or even make you eat. We thought you were going to die, but, very slowly, you began to move again. You sidled up to the food at mealtimes and swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then, naturally, we got into the habit of never going over our few memories in front of you, we thought it would be bad for you. And, gradually, we wearied of talking about them among ourselves. It didn’t help. Asking the same questions, in the same way, for years—you eventually tire of it.’

‘And you live like this, with your vegetables, with no prospects?’

‘Only death,’ she snapped. ‘We can’t commit suicide, but we will still die. We just have to wait.’

I’d never thought about our situation so clearly. In my stories, there were always things happening: in my life, nothing would ever happen. I realised that she was right and that the secrets of love were none of my business. Perhaps they’d pretended to know more than me because they knew nothing of the essential. I suspected that the men hadn’t complied like the women: but since I would never encounter a man, what did this difference matter? It was the girls in another era who had to be prepared for their wedding night, I told myself.

That day seemed very short, and I put that down to the intensity of my thinking. When the lights were dimmed, we had to lay out the forty mattresses on which we slept. There wasn’t enough room, they were almost touching, and every morning we piled them up three or four high so we could move around and sit on them. I stretched out and tried to pick up the thread of my story, but was unable to, my mind was blank and there was an overwhelming feeling of grief in my breast.

‘Close your eyes,’ my neighbour said. ‘Don’t let them see you’re not asleep.’

It was Frances, one of the younger women, one of those who’d never laughed at me.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t you notice anything? Anyone would think you’d just arrived from another planet. They won’t allow us not to sleep. If they see your eyes open they call you over to the bars and make you take a pill.’

‘Call? But they never talk to us!’

‘Oh yes they do! With their whips!’

I understood what she meant. It was very rare for a woman to disobey: but when it happened, the whip cracked beside her, until she did as she was told. They were merciless, and handled their whips with the utmost precision: they could crack it twenty times in a row by someone’s ear, and if the woman it was intended for resisted, there was always another who gave in. When Alice, whom they’d forced to eat, tried to strangle herself with her dress twisted into a rope, Claudia had relented and rushed to undo the knot and halt the appalling threat of death, always promised, never given. I closed my eyes.