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I thought: did I want to say that? Was it not easier just to tell Sean what he wanted to hear? It would make him happy, and it did not seem like there were many things in Sean’s life that made him happy. It would save me having to explain any further, or not explaining enough and leaving Sean hanging as if I did not want to tell him.
    He heard something in my voice, and straightened up. The grin fell from his face. “OK,” he said. “Look. If it’s something—if you want to talk. If you don’t, you know, it’s no problem.”
    All of a sudden, I felt like I wanted to cry. All the time I had spent in the terrible journey here, I had not cried. When the other women in my room had cried themselves softly to sleep, I had lain in my bed and dug my nails into my hand and thought to myself: you must not cry. I do not really know why. Maybe because I thought that it was weakness, and that if I was not strong I would go under. I came out from behind the counter and sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs bolted to the tables.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”
    Sean dropped the mop, and vanished behind the counter. I blew my nose on a rough blue paper towel, and took some deep breaths, grateful that he had gone, but also hoping that he was coming back. I was starting to think that he had gone home, disappeared out of the back door into the cold air of the early morning because he had taken offence that I was not sharing with him. But a minute or two later, he came back, with two polystyrene cups of coffee and a handful of paper napkins. He sat down at the table with me, slid across one of the cups and all of the napkins.
    “Just in case,” he said. “I’ve checked in on Pete. He’s fast asleep, snoring up at the ceiling tiles. Office reeks of brandy. I think he stays the whole night in there sometimes, you know.”
    “I thought he had a wife at home.” This was safe, conversation about someone else.
    “Yes, he does,” Sean said. “I think, you know. Maybe that’s why he stays here sometimes.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yes.”
    We sat in silence for a little while, and I drank some of my coffee, even though it was too hot.
    “I’m so scared of being sent back, Sean.”
    “Of course,” he said. “I mean, would you be here, doing this—” he gestured at the plastic and grease around us— “if you had any choice?”
    “No,” I said. “I would not.” And I wondered whether he had a choice, but I did not ask.
    We drank some more coffee.
    “I cannot go back,” I said. “My family were on the losing side. And so, I cannot go back, because I am on the losing side too, and the winners, they do not like loose ends or people who might want revenge. And anyway, there is nothing to go back for. They took the best things that I had. My family. My place in the medical school. I cannot go back, Sean.”
    “I understand,” he said. “They won’t make you, they can’t.”
    I laughed, as if he had just suggested that we applied for a Michelin star for Peter.
    “Not with a story like yours,” Sean said. “They can’t.”
    “Sean, my story is just another story,” I said, and I thought, yes, this is true. “All these things are hard to prove, here in England, when the people in your immigration offices hear so many stories, from so many people. Everyone has their own story to tell, some of them true, some of them not, and I think it is easiest for the people in the offices to believe that all are not true. Easiest not just because it helps them reach their numbers, but also because it is easier when they go home at night and have to be with their families and be normal people.
    “I have nothing to show that my story is a true one. So I am just like everyone else, taking my turn, scared that this week it will be the end for me and I will be put on a plane. And I cannot do that. I cannot. So, I am made an offer which will make me safe. Which means I will not be sent back. And in return for this, I