Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set by Chris Cleave Page B

more easily again.
It is okay,
I thought.
We have passed them, and of course there wasn’t any trouble. How foolish I was to be scared.
Then thetractor noise stopped. Somewhere nearby a bird sang, in the sudden silence.
    “Wait,” said a man’s voice.
    I whispered to Yevette,
Keep walking.
    “WAIT!”
    Yevette stopped. I tried to go past her but she held on to my arm.
    “Be
sirrius,
darlin. Where yu gonna run to?”
    I stopped. I was so scared, I was struggling to breathe. The other girls looked the same. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear again.
    “Please. Let us turn around and go back up the hill. These people do not like us, can’t you see?”
    The tractor man got down from his cab. The other man, the one who was tying up the gates, he came and joined the first man. They stood in the road, between us and the detention center. The tractor driver was wearing a green jacket and a cap. He stood with his hands in his pockets. The man who had been tying the gates—the man in the blue overalls—he was very big. The tractor driver only came up to his chest. He was so tall that the trousers of his overalls ended higher than his socks, and he was very fat too. There was a wide pink roll of fat under his neck, and the fat bulged out in the gaps between the bottom of his overalls and the top of his socks. He was wearing a woolen hat pulled down tight. He took a packet of tobacco out of his pocket, and he made a cigarette without taking his eyes off us girls. He had not shaved, and his nose was swollen and red. His eyes were red too. He lit his cigarette, and blew out the smoke, and spat on the ground. When he spoke, his fat wobbled.
    “You escaped, ave you, my children?”
    The tractor driver laughed.
    “Don’t mind Small Albert,” he said.
    We girls looked at the ground. Me and Yevette, we were in front, and the girl with the yellow sari and the girl with no name stood behind us. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear.
    “Please. Let us turn around and go. These people will not help us, can’t you see?”
    “They cannot hurt us. We are in England now. It is not like it was where we came from.”
    “Please, let’s just
go.
”
    I watched her hopping from one foot to the other foot in her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. I did not know whether to run or to stay.
    “But ave you?” said the tall fat man. “Escaped?”
    I shook my head.
    “No mister. We have been released. We are official refugees.”
    “You got proof of that, I suppose?”
    “Our papers are held by our caseworkers,” said the girl with no name.
    The tall fat man looked all around us. He looked up and down the road. He stretched up to look over the hedge into the next field.
    “I don’t see no caseworkers,” he said.
    “Call them if you do not believe us,” said the girl with no name. “Call the Border and Immigration Agency. Tell them to check their files. They will tell you we are legal.”
    She looked in her plastic bag full of documents until she found the paper she wanted.
    “Here,” she said. “The number is here. Call it, and you will see.”
    “No. Please. Don’t do dat,” said Yevette.
    The girl with no name stared at her.
    “What is the problem?” she said. “They released us, didn’t they?”
    Yevette gripped her hands together.
    “It ain’t dat simple,” she whispered.
    The girl with no name stared at Yevette. There was fury in her eyes.
    “What have you done?”
she said.
    “What me had to do,” said Yevette.
    At first the girl with no name looked angry and then she wasconfused and then, slowly, I could see the terror come into her eyes. Yevette reached out her hands to her.
    “Sorry, darlin. I wish it weren’t dis way.”
    The girl pushed Yevette’s hands away.
    The tractor driver took a step forward, and looked at us, and sighed.
    “I reckon it’s bloody typical, Small Albert, I really do.”
    He looked at me with sadness and I felt my stomach twisting.
    “You ladies are in a very