At the far end of the room, Hessa saw one of the supervisors stop by a machine, grab a pair of indigo jeans and fling them to the floor. A woman cowered and the supervisor slapped her, very hard, straight across the face.

None of the other women around her reacted. The woman bowed her head, just for a moment. Then she reached out, and picked up two more pieces of denim. Pick. Whirr. Pickwhirr.

‘What is on the floor above us?’ Hessa smiled so sweetly. ‘I have never worked in such a big factory before.’

This man was bored today, she could see. Tomorrow she would disappear into the crowd, bent for ever over her sewing machine. But today . . . He gestured to the stairs.

It was the same on the next floor, and the next. On the fourth floor, they were cutting material, the grey pinstripe stretched tight. Hessa thought of the red taffeta skirt, a piece of silk tucked into its petticoats.

‘Where do they go, these clothes?’

‘All around the world’ – a showman wave. ‘Germany, England, France, Australia.’

Hessa thought of these clothes, first sprayed with formaldehyde, for mildew and moths. Unpacked, with pursed lips, at their destination. Steam-cleaned quickly, and rammed on hangers, in those long bargain rows.

Here you are, darling.

I don’t liiiike it, Mummy.

Chucked in a corner, and forgotten. And a year later, gosh, this is far too small. Landfill.

They climbed the stairs. All the floors were open-plan, clattering with racket as the bright sunlight streamed through.

‘Thank you,’ said Hessa, at the end. ‘I will come back tomorrow, sir, to start my work.’

Hessa fled out of the factory, and down the hot dusty streets to where Casey was waiting. She scrambled into the tuk-tuk without words.

They were half a mile away before she could speak. ‘It’s not there,’ she said precisely. ‘Not there.’

‘Are you sure?’ Casey forced her face to stay calm.

‘Every floor is the same,’ said Hessa. ‘They’re huge open-plan rectangles. There isn’t space for any other women to be held in there. And Romida would have mentioned the noise. It is like the roar of a dragon.’

Hessa pushed the grille open as the tuk-tuk moved off again, gasping for air.

‘Could you see who they were producing for?’ Casey asked.

‘No,’ Hessa admitted. ‘I couldn’t get close enough. I don’t know if those blue silk messages could have been sent from there either. There was no way to tell.’

She looked apologetic, sheepish.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Casey. ‘You’ve got the footage.’

The tuk-tuk purred on.

‘I suppose Romida might not have been grabbed by Greystone’s lot anyway,’ said Casey. ‘She could be part of a different operation altogether.’

‘Romida is not there,’ said Hessa. ‘None of them are. I am quite sure of it.’