So me and the first girl in the telephone queue, we were giggling at each other, and I was holding my see-through bag and she was holding her see-through bag. There was one black eyebrow pencil and one pair of tweezers and three rings of dried pineapple in hers. The first girl saw me looking at her bag and she stopped giggling. What you starin at? she said. I said I did not know. She said, I know what you tinking. You tinking, Now the taxi no come for to pick me up, how far me going to get wid one eyebrow pencil an one tweezer an three pineapple slice? So I told her, Maybe you can use the eyebrow pencil to write a message that says HELP ME, and then you can give the pineapple slices to the first person who does. The girl looked at me like I was crazy in the head and she said to me: Okay darlin, one, I got no paper for to write no message on, two, I no know how to write, I only know how to draw on me eyebrows, an tree, me intend to eat that pineapple meself. And she made her eyes wide and stared at me.

While this was happening, the second girl in the queue, the girl with the lemon-yellow sari and the see-through bag full of yellow, she had become the first girl in the queue, because now she held the telephone receiver in her own hand. She was whispering into it in some language that sounded like butterflies drowning in honey. I tapped the girl on her shoulder, and pulled at her sari, and I said to her: Please, you must try to talk to them in English. The sari girl looked at me, and she stopped talking in her butterfly language. Very slowly and carefully, like she was remembering the words from a dream, she said into the telephone receiver: ENGLAND, YES PLEASE. YES PLEASE THANK YOU, I WANT GO TO ENGLAND.

So the girl in the purple A-line dress, she put her nose right up to the nose of the girl in the lemon-yellow sari, and she tapped her finger on the girl’s forehead and made a sound with her mouth like a broom handle hitting an empty barrel. Bong! Bong! she said to the girl. You already is in England, get it? And she pointed both her index fingers down at the linoleum floor. She said: Dis is England, darlin, ya nuh see it? Right here, yeh? Dis where we at all-reddy.

The girl in the yellow sari went quiet. She just stared back with those green eyes like jelly moons. So the girl in the purple dress, the Jamaican girl, she said, Here, gimme dat, and she grabbed the telephone receiver out of the sari girl’s hand. And she lifted the receiver to her mouth and she said Listen, wait, one minnit please. But then she went quiet and she passed the telephone receiver to me and I listened, and it was just the dial tone. So I turned to the sari girl. You have to dial a number first, I said. You understand? Dial number first, then tell taxi man where you want to go. Okay?

But the girl in the sari, she just narrowed her eyes at me, and pulled her see-through bag of lemon yellow a little closer to her, like maybe I was going to take that away from her the way the other girl had taken the telephone receiver. The girl in the purple dress, she sighed and turned to me. It ain’t no good darlin, she said. De Lord gonna call his chillen home fore dis one calls for a taxi. And she passed the telephone receiver to me. Here, she said. Yu betta try one time.

I pointed to the third girl in the queue, the one with the bag of documents and the blue T-shirt and the Dunlop Green Flash trainers. What about her? I said. This girl is before me in the queue. Yeh, said the girl in the purple dress, but dis ooman ain’t got no mo-tee-VAY-shun. Ain’t dat right darlin? And she stared at the girl with the documents, but the girl with the documents just shrugged and looked down at her Dunlop Green Flash shoes. Ain’t dat de truth, said the girl in the purple dress, and she turned back to me. It’s up to yu, darlin. Yu got to talk us out a here, fore dey change dey mind an lock us all back up.

I looked down at the telephone receiver and it was gray and dirty and I was afraid. I looked back at the girl in the purple dress. Where do you want to go? I said. And she said, Any ends. Excuse me? Anywhere, darlin.

I dialed the taxi number that was written on the phone. A man’s voice came on. He sounded tired. Cab service, he said. The way he said it, it was like he was doing me a big favor just by saying those words.

“Good morning, I would like a taxi please.”

“You want a cab?”

“Yes. Please. A taxicab. For four passengers.”

“Where from?”

“From the Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre, please. In High Easter. It is near Chelmsford.”

“I know where it is. Now you listen to me-”

“Please, it is okay. I know you do not pick up refugees. We are not refugees. We are cleaners. We work in this place.”

“You’re cleaners.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s the truth is it? Because if I had a pound for every bloody immigrant that got in the back of one of my cabs and didn’t know where they wanted to go and started prattling on to my driver in Swahili and tried to pay him in cigarettes, I’d be playing golf at this very moment instead of talking to you.”

“We are cleaners.”

“All right. It’s true you don’t talk like one of them. Where do you want to go?”

I had memorized the address on the United Kingdom Driver’s License in my see-through plastic bag. Andrew O’Rourke, the white man I met on the beach: he lived in Kingston-upon-Thames in the English county of Surrey. I spoke into the telephone.

“ Kingston, please.”

The girl in the purple dress grabbed my arm and hissed at me. No darlin! she said. Anywhere but Jamaica. Dey mens be killin me de minnit I ketch dere, kill me dead. I did not understand why she was scared, but I know now. There is a Kingston in England but there is also a Kingston in Jamaica, where the climate is different. This is another great work you sorcerers have done-even your cities have two tails.

“ Kingston?” said the man on the telephone.

“ Kingston-upon-Thames,” I said.

“That’s bloody miles away isn’t it? That’s over in, what?”

“ Surrey,” I said.

“ Surrey. You are four cleaners from leafy Surrey, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“No. We are cleaners from nearby. But they are sending us on a cleaning job in Surrey.”

“Cash or account then?”

The man sounded so tired.

“What?”

“Will you pay in cash, or is it going on the detention center’s bill?”

“We will pay in cash, mister. We will pay when we get there.”

“You’d better.”

I listened for a minute and then I pressed my hand down on the cradle of the telephone receiver. I dialed another number. This was the telephone number from the business card I carried in my see-through plastic bag. The business card was damaged by water. I could not tell if the last number was an 8 or a 3. I tried an 8, because in my country odd numbers bring bad luck, and that is one thing I had already had enough of.

A man answered the call. He was angry.

“Who is this? It’s bloody six in the morning.”

“Is this Mister Andrew O’Rourke?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

“Can I come to see you, Mister?”

“Who the hell is this?”

“We met on the beach in Nigeria. I remember you very well, Mister O’Rourke. I am in England now. Can I come to see you and Sarah? I do not have anywhere else to go.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then the man coughed, and started to laugh.

“This is a windup, right? Who is this? I’m warning you, I get nutters like you on my case all the time. Leave me alone, or you won’t get away with it. My paper always prosecutes. They’ll have this call traced and find out who you are and have you arrested. You wouldn’t be the first.”

“You don’t believe it is me?”

“Just leave me alone. Understand? I don’t want to hear about it. All that stuff happened a long time ago and it wasn’t my fault.”