Free The Edge of Me by Jane Brittan Page A

something but then thinks better of it. She goes to the door, beckons me. I pick up the little bundle of my old clothing and follow her down dimly lit corridors with doors opening off them into wide rooms like hospital wards or dormitories, full of beds packed tightly together. Many of the rooms are lit by candles, and I can just make out indistinct shapes huddled on beds and in corners.
    Every nerve in my body, every cell, is like a lit match, fizzing and spitting.
    Everywhere the floors are wood or stone and the high ceilings make the place almost as cold as the outside. The walls are bare and giant hides of peeling paint spiral away from them. In places there are even holes like some massive fist has punched through from the outside, and the freezing wind saws in as we pass. I stop at a mottled mirror and I don’t recognise the person staring back at me: my hair stands up in tufts, bits she’s missed hang down around my ears, my face looks thin and drawn and there are dark purple shadows under my eyes. My parents have done this to me. My family .
    Finally I’m locked in a room and left to sleep on a thin mattress. I wake at dawn and lie there watching the dust motes glittering like beads in the light.
    I need to get away as soon as possible, to find Joe and get out. Because of all I’ve lost, somehow losing Joe, and the kind of idea of Joe, matters more than anything. Where nothing is sure any more, where everything that means something turns out to be false or compromised, Joe is real. Now they’ve taken him too.
    Later, I’m sitting on a rickety child’s chair outside what looks like an office. I’m with the beehive woman from last night who knocks at the door. She looks nervous. The door opens and she drags me into the room where Milanković is standing waiting. The office is a complete contrast to what is outside it. The floor is carpeted, a lamp gives out a soft glow, and there are curtains rather thanbars at the window, a huge pink cabbage print that Mum would have loved.
    Milanković goes to her chair and plumps the cushions before she sits down. On her desk is a plate of assorted chocolate biscuits. I notice a couple have been nibbled and put back.
    She smiles and on her teeth I see traces of chocolate.
    She says in Serbian, ‘Sanda. Welcome to Zbrisć.’
    ‘Where’s my friend? What have you done with him?’ I try not to raise my voice.
    ‘Your friend.’ She says the word carefully, rolls it in her mouth. ‘He’s safe.’
    ‘What am I doing here? You can’t keep me here. I want to see him.’
    ‘You are going to stay here for a while Sanda, so you need to behave yourself. We do not like bad behaviour at Zbrisć.’
    ‘What for? Why am I here?’
    ‘This – this is bad behaviour, asking questions all the time.’
    ‘Look, I’ll behave when you tell me where my friend is and where my parents are and why you’re keeping me here.’
    She runs her pink tongue around her lips, hoovering up biscuit crumbs like a snake. ‘Your parents are in the country.’
    ‘Can I see them?’
    ‘No. Not now. Not yet.’
    ‘Where’s Joe?’
    She shakes her head slowly and reaches into a drawer for a packet of cigarettes. ‘No.’
    ‘What does that mean, no ? I want to know where you’ve taken him.’
    She settles into her chair and eyes me with interest; lights a cigarette and sits back in a curl of smoke.
    ‘They were right. You are trouble.’
    ‘They spoke to you? About me?’
    She shrugs. ‘It’s easy. You will stay here and you will behave yourself. That’s all. No more questions.’
    I start to protest but she waves me away and I’m shunted out of the room to the sound of her coughing.
    I cannot process what is happening to me. I cannot see in front of me or behind me.
    The woman says, ‘Come with me.’
    We go back down the corridor and stop at a large doorway to a kind of dining room. It’s like the school lunch hall, only not. For a start, it’s freezing. At the opposite end on the