The young one and Mouse had returned after an hour or so, and had joined Stick and Mr Big in what Jana now thought of as the meeting room. They’d left the door half open as if they no longer cared about being overheard.
She knew what was happening now, or she thought she did.
They were moving on. She’d seen it before, though she’d assumed that wasn’t how things worked here. Things seemed more permanent here. Things might change, but she’d expected them to change slowly.
But now she could almost taste the urge to move on, as potent as if this was some nomadic tribe off to seek new pastures. That was why they had cleared out all the goods in the shed. This place would just be an empty shell, perhaps retaining only the furnishings to recall its former life.
The only question was what they were going to do with the women. Were they planning to take them? If so, to where and to what fate?
Or were they planning just to leave them here? She had heard the word ‘‘police’’ earlier, and she had felt her stomach tighten with fear. She had no right to be here. If the police were to come, they would take her to – what? Imprisonment? Deportation? A return to the place she had come from, or, more likely, somewhere even worse?
She couldn’t face any of that. She had looked around at the other women, and even tried to talk to one or two of them, but as ever they had rebuffed her attempts. They didn’t want to know. They wanted to pretend nothing was happening. They probably smelt it in the air as strongly as she did, but they would never admit it to themselves. There was nothing they could do anyway. All they could do was wait. Wait, accept and suffer. That had been their lives for as long as most of them could remember.
A few of the younger ones might have hope of something better. But Jana knew their youth simply meant there were more ways for them to suffer. They had always been destined for something worse than this, she thought. It had always been only a matter of time.
Jana knew that she could face no more. She wasn’t old, not really. But she felt as if she had already lived for ever and had seen far too much. She needed no more.
Most of the other women had hidden themselves away in the kitchen. They knew as well as Jana did that the men no longer cared what they were doing. They had never really cared. It had all been a matter of control. Keeping them under their thumb. Keeping them too exhausted to think of anything else.
Jana stayed in the lounge, within earshot of the meeting room. She wanted to know how much time they had. She wasn’t even sure why she cared anymore, now that she had made up her mind.
This is partly about control too, she thought. She had always resented their control over her. She had always resented that they could use her as they liked, and that she had no means of retaliating. Her only tiny victory had been to conceal her ability to speak their language. They had never realised she could understand what they were saying, and that she could guess at least part of what they were thinking.
It had never really helped her, of course, but it had at least meant that there was a part of her mind that they couldn’t fully control. Something she could keep for her own. Something she had over them.
She could hear Mr Big saying, ‘We’ve got to get it all done tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, if possible. Do you think we can get all of them in the van?’
‘All of them?’ the young one responded. ‘All together. Jesus. That’ll be tight.’
‘We can live with tight,’ Mr Big said. ‘Well, they can. They won’t have a choice. I’d just rather they all arrived still breathing. I’m losing enough on this deal already. I can’t afford any stiffs.’
‘It’s not that far,’ the young one said. ‘Just down to the borders. Six, seven hours? Most of them will have experienced a lot worse than that.’
That was true enough, Jana thought. She recalled how she’d got here. Hours and hours in the darkness, never knowing when it would end. Never knowing whether she would survive. Knowing that no one, not even those she had paid handsomely supposedly to look after her, cared either way.
‘I just hope those bastards turn up,’ Mr Big said. ‘I don’t want us to find ourselves stuck in the middle of nowhere with that lot.’
‘If they don’t show,’ the one she’d called Mouse said, ‘we should just leave them to fend for themselves. They don’t know anything about us. They’ll either get picked up or they won’t.’
‘And I’ll have lost the little money I stood to make on this deal,’ Mr Big pointed out. ‘But it might come to that.’
Not for me it won’t, Jana thought. Whatever happens, it won’t come to that.
She had already decided. If they were shipping them out tomorrow, whatever their destination, then she would leave tonight. At least that way, finally, she would be in control.