“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“We have Woon Leng next door now. If she confesses first, then we’ll let her go, and we’ll keep you here forever. Do you want that?”

“What do you mean? What have we done that we
should confess?”

The voice became grim. “If you’re so determined to play dumb, then we can do this the hard way. I thought you Catholics would know how to confess.”

Unseen hands behind her lifted her from her chair, began to drag her towards the door. She tried to walk, but they were going too fast for her to find her feet. She had to fight the urge to vomit. “Wait,” she cried, aware she sounded pathetic.

Faintly, behind her: “It’s too late, Stella. You’ve had your chance. We’ll have to do things the hard way now.”

•

First they made her take a shower. She was glad to feel clean again. There was only cold water, but that didn’t matter in such warm weather. The hard bar of soap they chucked at her didn’t smell unpleasant. When she got out, there was only a prison uniform, light blue, on a chair. “Can I get my suitcase, please?” she called.

A plump face appeared in the grille. She held the towel in front of herself. “What you want?” demanded the face.

“I’d like to take some clothes from my suitcase, please.” She smiled as ingratiatingly as she felt able, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.

“Your uniform is there. No outside clothes allowed.”

“I meant—underwear.” She felt herself blush.

“No outside clothes allowed,” repeated the face, and banged the grille shut. She got dressed as quickly as she could, pulling the uniform over naked skin. It was made of cheap, shiny material. There were no fastenings, she noticed, only elastic around the waist. The wardress banged on the door. She shuffled out in flimsy plastic slippers, still damp, and they took her to her cell.

It was smaller than she had imagined, a cement cubbyhole with a mattress on the floor and not much else. A toilet with no seat behind a thin partition. It was clean but stained the colour of rust. Tiny slits in the wall let in sunlight—she was silently cheered. A room like the other one, with no natural light, would have been death.

She walked in and heard the door clang shut. A series of grinding sounds told her how many locks there were—as if she could have thought of escaping. She lay down on the floor, letting the tension from her body leach into the cool concrete. The floor was far from clean, but she was too tired to care. Her head ached. She tried to elongate her neck to ease it, and reached her arms and legs out as far as they would go.