Free The Edge of Me by Jane Brittan

thighs.
    ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘They’ll let you go now.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ he says, ‘I think they want both of us.’
    The door on my side is opened by Mirko. Milanković waits in the car while I’m hauled out onto the ground. He yanks me up and frogmarches me towards the door. I’m kicking and hitting at him for all I’m worth and yelling Joe’s name. All I hear are Joe’s muffled shouts and an impotent thumping on the windows of the car.
    In minutes we’re inside. I hear footsteps hurrying over flagstones. Mirko lets go of me and dusts himself off. Again footsteps, but different: a fat slap of rubber this time and a figure comes into view. A thin woman with bleached hair piled up in a beehive. She wears overalls and rubber boots like she works on a farm. She takes hold of my arm while chatting to Mirko.
    After a minute, they exchange a curt good bye and she steers me away down a shadowy corridor.
    She takes me to a concrete cell with a low arched ceiling and bolts the door behind us. The room smells of bleach and is lit by a single bulb. At one end, is a tiled section of floor and wall and at the other, a table and two chairs. On the table is a small brown parcel tied with string.
    She says nothing. She sits at the table, crosses her legs and gestures to me by plucking at her clothes that she wants me to strip. In spite of the cold, I’m burning. I want to refuse but I can see it’s pointless. I make up my mind I won’t cry. Slowly I bend to untie my shoelaces asshe touches up her lipstick. The floor is wet and there’s nowhere dry to put my clothes. I leave them in a heap, carefully tucking the photograph and cutting I’ve carried from London inside a sleeve. I stand there in my bra and pants, shivering and rubbing my arms, my flesh blue and goose pimpled.
    She looks up then and comes around the table to face me.
    ‘Everything,’ she says. She waits while I peel off my underwear. I must not cry. I must not cry. I fold my arms across my body and shuffle back towards the tiled wall. She twists me around to face the wall with my palms flat against it.
    And then water. Cold water: a force like I’ve never known pummels my back and legs. She shouts at me to turn, and holding my arms across myself to protect my frozen body I do as she orders. She grips the hose in both hands and the icy jet rams against my face and nearly knocks me off balance. I brace myself against the wall to stop myself falling.
    Just as suddenly, the water is switched off; she throws me a towel and I start to rub myself dry.
    She opens the package on the table to reveal a set of clothes and motions to me to put them on. I ignore her. I’m dry now.
    I wind the towel around me and I say: ‘Where’s my friend? Where’s my friend? I want to see him.’
    Her mouth contorts into a sneer. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
    Rage surges through me and I spit at her. Time slows and in the moment of peace before she hits me, I watch the bubbles of my saliva crawling down her rouged cheek. Her lips are slightly parted and a curl of spit licks its way into her mouth. She snaps her mouth shut.
    The blow lands hard on my face. She shakes her hand a few times as though to soothe the sting. Something in me, some small defiant part of me, gives me the strength to hold my ground. I meet her gaze and again, very calmly this time, I ask, ‘Where is my friend? What have you done with him?’
    She curses in response and goes out, locking the door behind her.
    I take out the clothes. They consist of a garish collection of hand-me-downs that smell of stale dishtowels: flared cords, boots, a knitted jumper with a zip, a T-shirt that says ‘University of Michigan’ on it, and a pair of men’s socks. I gather up the cuttings and stuff them into the pocket of the cords.
    The woman returns with a large pair of blunt scissors and cuts off my hair. And when it’s done, she steps back and looks at me in an odd way as though she’s about to say