Something had changed. Jana could tell that, though she struggled to identify quite what was different.
The men were less calm, she thought. Less relaxed. There was a new tension in the air. They were arguing with each other in a way they hadn’t before. Back-biting, sniping. She didn’t always understand what it was they were arguing about – sometimes because they talked too fast, or used words she didn’t understand, but often because they seemed to be conducting these disputes almost under their breath, as if they didn’t want to risk anyone overhearing them.
It had started ever since the meeting a day or two before. The meeting where they’d locked themselves away, and she’d known that there was some problem, some issue that they hadn’t known how to deal with. From then on, everything had felt different.
She hadn’t seen the fat one since that day. He wasn’t here all the time, unlike the young one and Jitters, but he usually turned up every couple of days. But there’d been no sign of him since.
She hadn’t seen much of Mr Big either. He wasn’t here all the time, but she’d had the sense that this was his base, that he was the planet around which all the others were just satellites. She’d caught sight of him the previous day, but he’d just been striding out towards his large car, clearly heading off somewhere.
The young one and Jitters had been hanging about as usual, but had seemed much more subdued in their attitudes and behaviour. She’d encountered the young one in one of the corridors upstairs and had braced herself for the usual mix of banter and innuendo. But he’d just walked past her, head down, apparently oblivious to the fact she was even there. Jitters seemed to spend most of his time curled on one of the lounge sofas downstairs, playing some game endlessly on his phone.
She’d tried talking to the other women, to see if any of them had any idea what might have happened. But, as always, none of them wanted to discuss it. Some of them denied having noticed any change. Some of them just ignored her questions, turning away as if Jana was invoking bad fortune even by raising such topics.
It was, perhaps inevitably, the young one who’d finally given her at least an inkling of what might be happening. She’d been in one of the en-suite bedrooms, rubbing away pointlessly at the already clean bath in line with her designated schedule, when he’d appeared at the bedroom doorway. ‘I’m sorry I ignored you earlier, Jana. I mean, I know you don’t understand what I’m saying, but I don’t want you to think I’m rude.’
Though she understood the words, he was right in that, as so often, she had no real idea of what he meant. She was being held here, in what amounted to slavery under subsistence conditions, compelled to carry out meaningless hard manual labour, and he was concerned that he might have appeared rude.
‘I’m sorry, anyway. I was just a bit distracted. I was worrying. There’s a lot to worry about, Jana.’
She continued scrubbing, on her knees by the bath, her back to him. It suddenly occurred to her that, at times, between the jokes and the mockery, he talked to her in the way he might talk to his mother. Perhaps that’s it, she thought. She had no idea of his circumstances, but perhaps he had seized on her as a maternal figure. She had noticed that he talked to her, despite believing she didn’t understand what he was saying, much more than he spoke to any of the other women, even the youngest ones. Perhaps he wanted to talk to her as he might have spoken with his mother, if she were here, but feeling safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t be able to follow what he was saying.
‘We don’t know what’s going on, that’s the trouble,’ he went on. ‘We don’t know who’s doing it, or what they want. It looks as if they’re trying to scare us, get us out of the business. But we don’t know if that’s really what they want, or if there’s some other motive. There’s no message, no words, nothing that gives us any clue. It might all even just be coincidence. We don’t know. But it feels as if there’s someone out there, waiting for us. And we don’t know where they’re going to go or what they’re going to do next.’
She glanced back at him, her face blank. ‘Sir?’
‘This must be how you feel, Jana. Is that right? As if everything’s out of your control, and that you’re just being played with. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You know what that feels like.’
She’d kept her back to him, not wanting to catch his eye, not wanting to give him any clue how much she had understood. Now, though, she couldn’t prevent herself from glancing back momentarily. He had his head down, staring at the worn bedroom carpet.
‘You know what that feels like,’ he said again.