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looking anyone in the eye, so I guessed that this was his way of letting me know that he was concerned, without putting me under any pressure. Or perhaps, without getting himself too involved.
    One night, we were clearing up after the place had closed. It had not been busy. Pete was in the back, in the cupboard that he called his office. He often disappeared into there and said that he was doing the accounts, but Sean and I knew that he was reading the racing paper, or dozing for twenty minutes, looking at girlie magazines that he kept in the filing cabinet or just sitting back and breaking wind long and loud when he thought that we could not hear.
    I was wiping down the counters, and Sean was pushing a mop around the floor, chasing some spilt shreds of onion that had escaped the sweeping brush. Everywhere smelt of bleach. My feet hurt, and my lower back felt as if someone had been kicking me there. The streets outside had emptied, apart from the occasional drunks who still had not found their way home. Every so often, one would bang on the glass, but we just ignored them. The doors were locked, and the sign said closed, and if we started to talk to them through the glass they would never go away. So we pretended not to see them, and then they went away after a while. Sometimes a homeless man came and slept in our doorway. We never disturbed him, and we turned the front light off so that Peter would not see him. But once, I went back because I thought I had forgotten to turn the light off, and I saw Peter opening the front door, and handing the man a bag of food. I crept back through the kitchens, and did not say a word.
    “Anna,” Sean said, whipping the mop around in great circles, as if he was fighting something off. “I heard something the other day. Sorry, probably out of order telling you this, I’m not trying to pry into your situation.”
    “Don’t worry,” I said. Sometimes Sean got caught up in apologising for his apologies. I wiped grease and smears of sauce from the counter.
    “My landlord, he owns a few properties.” He kept his eyes on the floor, following the sweep of the mop. “And he was talking, the other day. He said there were going to be some vacancies in some of his flats. And I didn’t really say much, you know, I was just trying to ask him to fix my window because when it rains and the wind’s in one direction, the water comes in, and he’s one of these blokes that if he gets started on something, he’ll stand there for an hour boring you to death. Sorry, getting off the point.” He put the mop into the bucket, swirled it around, then slapped it back onto the floor.
    “Anyway, he goes on, says he knows there’s going to be these vacancies because his girlfriend—well, her sister—she works for the Borders Agency. And she says there’s a right panic on, quotas and targets to meet, or something, they’ve been told to get their numbers up or else. So they’re doing a whole bunch of raids, rounding up overstayers, asylum seekers who’ve got all the way through the appeals process but not gone, that sort of thing. My landlord, all he’s bothered about is filling the vacancies so he doesn’t lose any money, he couldn’t give a toss. But you know, I don’t, I don’t know your, uh, your status. You know. So I thought I ought to warn you that stuff’s going on. In case. I’m not trying to say—”
    “Thank you Sean,” I said, before the apologising started again. “I appreciate that. But I think I may be OK, I hope.” I dropped the cloth back into a plastic white tub of bleach and water, and wiped the counter dry with a paper towel so that it did not smear.
    “Cool, you mean they’ve made you legal? You got your refugee status? Oh Anna, you should have said.” He did a little dance, with the mop as his partner, whirling it around the room. “That’s fucking brilliant news. You should have told me, we should celebrate or something.”
    “Not quite that,” I said, and then