‘You should look frightened, my dear, because Stephen is livid. I opened me big trap, didn’t I? But as I said to him, I didn’t realise I was doing anything wrong. You looked the part and acted the part. Now you’re going to get in a lot of shit, and it’s my job to keep an eye on you until he arrives. So let’s get one thing straight, shall we? If you attempt to leave I’ll break your fucking legs, and that’s no idle threat. I am quite capable of doing it. That was my forte in the girlie houses in Bangkok. I was a head girl with a difference, you see. To me they’re all scum.’

‘What happened to all your talk earlier, then? About how you look after the kiddies?’

Candy looked shocked.

‘But I do. That’s the point, see? I do look after them, but they’re all the same, love. In these countries you find out what life is really all about. Now in Bangkok I worked with the teenagers. Fucking pain in the arse most of them. But, you see, I’m quite partial to girls myself. Not kids, never. But the older girls are always willing to lighten their burden. They’re clever, shrewd. We’re not talking kids like the ones back home. The children out here are born fucking old. They adapt to their lives, they’re pliable, don’t cry that much either. I used to find that weird at first. But not any more. It’s like I said earlier, they were never kids in our sense of the word.

‘In some of these villages the seven year olds have been working on the tea plantations since two or three. They do a full day’s collar. In Thailand they work the paddy-fields or making baskets. They’re not kids. Not in their minds. We’ve got mothers and fathers queueing up to sell their kids to us, accept it as a part of life. That’s the difference, see? Once you get over your Englishness and start looking on it all from their point of view, you find life becomes a lot easier.’

Donna looked down at the floor. ‘My husband would have nothing to do with anything like this, I know that better than you. When he finds out there will be murder done here.’

Candy laughed gently and lit a cheroot. ‘Your precious husband was out in Thailand a few years ago, love. I supplied him with thirteen and fourteen year olds. He liked the three-headed blow job best.’

She watched Donna’s look of shock and disgust and smiled sadly.