“You all right?”

Albert was staring at me. I blinked.

“Yes. Thank you mister.”

“Daydreaming, were you?”

“Yes sir.”

Albert shook his head and laughed.

“Honestly, you young people. Heads in the clouds.”

He unlocked the long building and let us in. Inside there were two rows of beds, one row on each long wall. The beds were made of metal and they were painted dark green. There were clean white mattresses on the beds, and pillows without pillowcases. The floor was concrete painted gray, and it was shining and swept. The sunlight came down in thick stripes from the skylights. There were long loops of chain hanging down. They stretched right up into the roof, which was the height of five men at the center of the building. Albert showed us how to pull on one side of each chain loop to open the skylight, and on the other side of the chain to close it. He showed us the cubicles at the end of the building where we could take a shower or use the toilet. Then he winked at us.

“There you go, ladies. The accommodation ain’t up to ’otel standard, I’ll grant you, but then show me the ’otel where you can get twenty Polish girls sharing your room and the management don’t even bat an eyelid. You should see some of the things our harvesters get up to after lights-out. I’m telling you, I should chuck in the livestock work and make a film.”

Albert was laughing but the four of us girls, we stood there just looking back at him. I did not understand why he was talking about films. In my village, each year when the rains stopped, the men went to the town and they brought back a projector and a diesel generator, and they tied a rope between two trees, and we watched a film on a white sheet that they hung from the rope. There was no sound with the film, only the rumble of the generator and the shrieking of the creatures in the jungle. This is how we learned about your world. The only film we had was called Top Gun and we watched it five times. I remember the first time we saw it, the boys in my village were excited because they thought it was going to be a film about a gun, but it was not a film about a gun. It was a film about a man who had to travel everywhere very fast, sometimes on a motorbike and sometimes in an aeroplane that he flew himself, and sometimes upside down. We discussed this, the children in my village, and we decided two things: one, that the film should really be called The Man Who Was in a Great Hurry and two, that the moral of the film was that he should get up earlier so that he would not have to rush to fit everything into his day, instead of lying in bed with the woman with blond hair that we called The Stay-in-Bed Woman. That was the only film I had ever seen, so I did not understand when Albert said he should make a film. He did not look like he could fly an aeroplane upside down. In fact I had noticed how Mr. Ayres did not even let him drive his blue tractor. Albert saw us girls staring back at him, and he shook his head.

“Oh, never mind,” he said. “Look, there’s blankets and towels and what ’ave you in them cupboards over there. I daresay Mrs. Ayres will be down later with some food for you. I’ll see you ladies around the farm, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The four of us girls, we stood in the center of the building and we watched Albert as he walked out between the two lines of beds. He was still laughing to himself when he walked out into the daylight. Yevette looked at the rest of us and she tapped her finger on the side of her head.

“Nivver mind im. De white mens is all crazy.”

She sat down on the edge of the nearest bed and she took a dried pineapple slice out of her see-through plastic bag and she started to chew on it. I sat down next to her, while the sari girl took the girl with no name down the room a little way to lie down because she was still crying.

Albert had left the door open, and a few hens came in and began to look for food under the beds. The girl with no name screamed when she saw the hens coming into the building, and she pulled her knees close to her chest and held a pillow in front of her. She sat there with her wide eyes poking out over the top of the pillow, and her Dunlop Green Flash trainers sticking out underneath it.

“Re-LAX, darlin. Dey int gonna hurt yu, dey is only chickens, yu nah see it?”

Yevette sighed.

“Here we go again, huh Lil Bug?”

“Yes. Here we go again.”

“Dat girl in a bad way, huh?”

I looked over at the girl with no name. She was staring at Yevette and making the sign of the cross.

“Yes,” I said.

“Mebbe dis is de hardest part, now dey is lettin us out. In dat detention center dey was always tellin yu, do dis, do dat. No time to tink. But now dey all ovva sudden gone quiet, no? Dat dangerous, me tellin yu. Let all de bad memory come back.”

“You think that is why she is crying?”

“Me know it, darlin. We all gotta mind our heads now, truth.”

I shrugged and pulled my knees up to my chin.

“What do we do now, Yevette?”

“No idea, darlin. Yu ask me, dis gonna be our nummer one problem in dis country. Where me come from, we ain’t got no peace but we got a thousand rumors. Yu always got a whisper where yu can go for dis or dat. But here we got de opposite problem, Bug. We got peace but we ain’t got no in-fo-MAY-shun, you know what I’m sayin?”

I looked Yevette in the eyes.

“What is going on, Yevette? What is this trick you have done? How come they let us out of that place without papers?”

Yevette sighed.

“Me did a favor for one of dem immigration men, all right? He make a few changes on de computer, jus put a tick in de right box, yu know, an-POW!-up come de names for release. Yu, me an dem two other girls. Dem detention officers don’t be askin no questions. Dey jus see de names come up on dere computer screen dis morning and-BAM!-dey take yu from your room and dey show you de door. Dey don’t care if yore caseworker be dere to pick yu up or not. Dey too busy peekin at de titty-swingers in de newspaper, truth. So here we is. Free and ee-zee.”

“Except we don’t have papers.”

“Yeah. But I ain’t afraid.”

“I am afraid.”

“Don be.”

Yevette squeezed my hand and I smiled.

“Dat’s me girl.”

I looked around the room. The sari girl and the girl with no name, they were six beds farther along. I leaned in close to Yevette and I whispered to her.

“Do you know anyone in this country?”

“Sure, darlin. Williyam Shakespeare, Lady Diana, Battle of Britten. Me know dem all. Learned de names for me Citizenship Exam. Yu can test me.”

“No. I mean, do you know where you will go if we can get out of here?”

“Sure darlin. I got pipple in London. Got de half of Jamaica livin down on Cole Harbour Lane. Probly bitchin on how much dey vexed by all de Nye-Jirrians livin nex door. How bout yu? Yu got famly dere?”

I showed her the United Kingdom Driver’s License from my see-through plastic bag. It was a small plastic card with Andrew O’Rourke’s photo on it. Yevette held it up to look at it.

“What ting is dis?”

“It is a driving license. It has the man’s address on it. I am going to visit him.”

Yevette held the photo card close and stared at it. Then she held it far from her eyes and squinted down her nose at it. Then she looked up close again. She blinked.

“Dis is a white man, Lil Bug.”

“I know that.”

“Okay, okay, jus checkin. Jus establishin whether yu blind or stupid.”

I smiled but Yevette did not.

“We should stick together, darlin. Why yu no come to London wid me? For sure we gonna find some of your pipple down dere.”

“But I will not know them, Yevette. I will not know I can trust them.”

“What, and yu trust dis man?”

“I met him once.”

“Scuse me, Bug, but dis man don’t look like yo type.”