The Other Hand

only a village girl. I would like to be a village girl again and do the things that village girls do. I would like to laugh and smile at the boys. I would like to do foolish things when the moon is full. And most of all, you know, I would like to use my real name.”
    Charlie paused with his spade in the air.
    “But Little Bee is yours real name,” he said.
    I shook my head. “Mmm-mmm. Little Bee is only my superhero name. I have a real name too, like you have Charlie. ”
    Charlie stared.
    “What is yours real name?” he said.
    “I will tell you my real name if you will take off your Batman costume.”
    Charlie frowned. “Actually I have to keep mine Batman costume on forever,” he said.
    I smiled. “Okay, Batman. Maybe another time.”
    Charlie started to build a sand wall between the wilderness and the suburbs of his city.
    “Mmm,” he said.
    After a while Lawrence came down the green steps and walked up to us.
    “I’ll take over here,” he said. “Go up and see if you can talk some sense into Sarah, will you?”
    “Why, what is wrong? Why didn’t she come down here with you?”
    Lawrence held his hands out with the palms upward, and hesent air upward out of his mouth so that his hair blew. “Just go and see her, will you?” he said.
    I walked up the steps. Sarah was still standing by the railings.
    “That bloody man,” she said when she saw me.
    “Lawrence?”
    “Sometimes I’m not so sure I wouldn’t be better off without him. Oh, I don’t mean that, of course I don’t. But honestly. Don’t I have the right to talk about Andrew?”
    “You were arguing?”
    Sarah sighed.
    “Lawrence still isn’t happy about you being around. It’s putting him on edge.”
    “What did you say, about Andrew?”
    Sarah looked out across the river.
    “I told him I was sorting out Andrew’s office last night. You know, looking through his files. I just wanted to see what bills I’m meant to pay now, check we don’t owe money on any of our cards, that sort of thing.”
    She looked at me. “The thing is, it turns out Andrew didn’t stop thinking about what happened on the beach. I thought he’d put it out of his mind, but he hadn’t. He was researching it. There must have been two dozen folders in his office. Stuff about Nigeria. About the oil wars, and the atrocities. And…well, I had no idea how many of you ended up in the UK after what happened to your villages. Andrew had a whole binder full of documents about asylum and detention.”
    “Did you read it?”
    Sarah chewed her lip. “Not all of it. He had enough in there to read for a month. And he had his own notes attached to each document. It was very meticulous. Very Andrew. There was so much detail in there. I only read a couple of papers, but it was enough to see where he was going with it all. I read an inspectors’ report about the immigration detention centers. How long did you say they kept you in that place, Bee?”
    “Two years.”
    “Oh Bee. I had no idea how hellish they are. I was imagining, I don’t know, a sort of high-security hotel, I suppose. Is it true they keep it deliberately cold in there? Is it true you have to apply in writing if you just need a paracetamol?”
    I smiled. “If you are planning to have a headache, you need to apply twenty-four hours in advance.”
    Sarah sighed. “So it is true, then. Andrew highlighted this one passage that said, We find the humiliating procedures excessive. We do not see how anyone could abuse an excess of sanitary towels. Did you really have to apply for them too?”
    I nodded. “They would only give them to us one at a time. You had to fill in a form.”
    Sarah twisted her hands together on the top bar of the iron railings. “The thing is,” she said, “I think I know why Andrew highlighted that passage. I mean, people would skim-read the barred windows and the perimeter fence. But if you really wanted to bring it home, you’d show how a girl has to apply in writing for Kotex Ultra. Right?”
    She stopped, and she looked down to where Lawrence and Charlie were laughing and kicking sand at each other. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “I think Andrew was planning a book,” she said. “That’s what I told Lawrence.”
    I looked up at Sarah.
    “That is why he was angry?”
    Sarah nodded. “I said I thought maybe I should carry on Andrew’s work. You know, read through his notes. Find out a bit more about the detention centers. Maybe even, I don’t know,