Excerpt from Little Bee by Chris Cleave, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

While this was happening, the second girl in the queue, the girl with the lemon-yellow sari and the see-through bag full of yellow, she had become the first girl in the queue, because now she held the telephone receiver in her own hand. She was whispering into it in some language that sounded like butterflies drowning in honey. I tapped the girl on her shoulder, and pulled at her sari, and I said to her: Please, you must try to talk to them in English. The sari girl looked at me, and she stopped talking in her butterfly language. Very slowly and carefully, like she was remembering the words from a dream, she said into the telephone receiver: ENGLAND, YES PLEASE. YES PLEASE THANK YOU, I WANT GO TO ENGLAND.

So the girl in the purple A-line dress, she put her nose right up to the nose of the girl in the lemon-yellow sari, and she tapped her finger on the girls forehead and made a sound with her mouth like a broom handle hitting an empty barrel. Bong! Bong! she said to the girl. You already is in England, get it? And she pointed both her index fingers down at the linoleum floor. She said: Dis is England, darlin', ya nuh see it? Right here, yeh? Dis where we at all-reddy.

The girl in the yellow sari went quiet. She just stared back with those green eyes like jelly moons. So the girl in the purple dress, the Jamaican girl, she said, Here, gimme dat, and she grabbed the telephone receiver out of the sari girls hand. And she lifted the receiver to her mouth and she said Listen, wait, one minnit please. But then she went quiet and she passed the telephone receiver to me and I listened, and it was just the dial tone. So I turned to the sari girl. You have to dial a number first, I said. You understand? Dial number first, then tell taxi man where you want to go. Okay?

But the girl in the sari, she just narrowed her eyes at me, and pulled her see-through bag of lemon yellow a little closer to her, like maybe I was going to take that away from her the way the other girl had taken the telephone receiver. The girl in the purple dress, she sighed and turned to me. It ain't no good darlin', she said. De Lord gonna call his chill'en home 'fore dis one calls for a taxi. And she passed the telephone receiver to me. Here, she said. Yu betta try one time.

I pointed to the third girl in the queue, the one with the bag of documents and the blue T-shirt and the Dunlop Green Flash trainers. What about her? I said. This girl is before me in the queue. Yeh, said the girl in the purple dress, but dis ooman ain't got no mo-tee-VAY-shun. Ain't dat right darlin'? And she stared at the girl with the documents, but the girl with the documents just shrugged and looked down at her Dunlop Green Flash shoes. Ain't dat de truth, said the girl in the purple dress, and she turned back to me. Its up to yu, darlin'. Yu got to talk us out a here, 'fore dey change dey mind an lock us all back up.

I looked down at the telephone receiver and it was gray and dirty and I was afraid. I looked back at the girl in the purple dress. Where do you want to go? I said. And she said, Any ends. Excuse me? Anywhere, darlin'.

I dialed the taxi number that was written on the phone. A man's voice came on. He sounded tired. Cab service, he said. The way he said it, it was like he was doing me a big favor just by saying those words.

Good morning, I would like a taxi please.

You want a cab?

Yes. Please. A taxicab. For four passengers.

Where from?

From the Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre, please. In High Easter. It is near Chelmsford.

I know where it is. Now you listen to me...

Please, it is okay. I know you do not pick up refugees. We are not refugees. We are cleaners. We work in this place.

You're cleaners.

Yes.

And that's the truth is it? Because if I had a pound for every bloody immigrant that got in the back of one of my cabs and didn't know where they wanted to go and started prattling on to my driver in Swahili and tried to pay him in cigarettes, I'd be playing golf at this very moment instead of talking to you.

Copyright 2008 by Chris Cleave. Originally published as The Other Hand in Great Britain in 2008 by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton.