Page 19

Swallowing her distress, Viyan tried to focus on the job in hand.

More than anything now, she just wanted to get back to the dormitory, to throw off her clothes and bow her head under the pitiful excuse for a shower.

She was desperate to scrub off the residue of the day’s grim duties, to feel clean again, but there was little chance of being excused yet. There was still work to do.

Work. Her whole existence, this whole place, revolved around the idea of unstinting labour.

From the minute you were shaken awake in the morning to the moment you were marched to bed at night, Viyan and her fellow captives were compelled to work their fingers to the bone, whether it was cooking, washing or cleaning in the camp, or disposing of dangerous medical waste in the outside world.

Idleness was not tolerated and illness forbidden, despite the fact that many of the workers suffered from fevers and breathing difficulties, thanks to the unsanitary conditions in which they were held.

How bitterly ironic it was that Viyan had fled Turkey to escape the privations of a dangerous and unpredictable refugee camp, only to end up in even more unpleasant and threatening conditions in her adopted country.

Cursing angrily, Viyan re-doubled her efforts, feverishly scrubbing the kitchen counter.

It was true that loyalty and industry was rewarded to some degree in this vile place, Viyan now allowed to work in the farmhouse after two years of diligent labour.

But if anything this made her situation worse , Viyan forced to witness first-hand the luxury and comfort her captors enjoyed.

Twice a day, she was expected to clean the kitchen, prepare the food and wash the dishes, in silence and without complaint.

She was not allowed to rest, not permitted to use the facilities and expressly forbidden from enjoying even a crumb of the copious leftovers that were handed to her, despite the hunger pangs that assailed her night and day.

Though she spent most of her life in the company of either her captors or co-workers, it often felt to Viyan that she was invisible, irrelevant, a non-person.

It was almost as if, when they’d confiscated her passport and phone on that first night, the old Viyan had ceased to exist. Her captors certainly never used her name, her co-workers were too scared to speak to her and in truth sometimes it was only the excruciating pain of her day-to-day life that convinced Viyan that she was still alive.

She felt like she was living in a vacuum, robbed of identity, of purpose, of hope, a zombie stumbling through a monotonous, remorseless existence.

Giving the counter one last angry wipe, Viyan was about to turn away when a noise outside startled her. For a moment, she was mystified by the strange screeching and hissing, but peering nervously through the window, she now spotted the articulated lorry coming to a halt in the dusty yard.

For a second, it was like stepping back in time.

This battered, old lorry, with its grimy headlights, faded paintwork and dented Dutch plates was the same vehicle she’d hidden away in, over two years ago now.

It seemed hard to credit that she’d actually been excited as she’d climbed into her hiding place in the container, before they crossed the channel to England.

For her it had been the end of a long and arduous journey and, she hoped, the start of a new life.

How wrong she’d been. A wave of deep sadness swept over her, as she watched the driver descend from the cab, throwing open the rear doors to release his human cargo.

She knew full well the shock, dismay and anguish that awaited the truck’s inhabitants tonight.

Even now they were starting to emerge, another assortment of the displaced from Asia’s varied disaster zones.

They’d come seeking sanctuary, but instead had landed in Hell.

Would the flow of desperate souls ever stop?

Or would there always be work for that Dutch thug?

The dangers of illegal immigration, the casual cruelty of the gangmasters, was well publicized, government infomercials and social media postings warning desperate souls against gambling on thin promises.

Yet still they came, risking all, losing all, ending up displaced and forgotten in a faraway land.

Would any of them survive? Or would they all end their days here, a shadow of the passionate, hopeful people they had once been?

Viyan felt she knew the answer, realizing now that those who fell by the wayside would always be replaced by fresh arrivals, like the poor souls who’d just emerged blinking into the scruffy yard.

In truth, there was only one solution to her current predicament.

She had often thought about it, but had pushed the idea away as being impossible, dangerous, futile.

But now there seemed no other way, her situation even more urgent following Selima’s horrific fate.

She had to escape. If she ever wanted to see her family, her homeland, again, she would have to find a way out of this camp.

The alternative was a slow, painful, agonizing death.

No, she would not, could not let that happen. She had to get out of this place.

The only question was how ?