Excerpt from The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Deqo looks around the room as the warmth returns to her skin: at the pink walls decorated with film posters, the fur rug on the blue lino floor, and the white furniture crowding around her. This is the finest room she has ever seen. Totting up how much all of the furniture, clothing, ornaments, knick-knacks and cosmetics must have cost in the market, she takes a sharp inhalation of breath. Whores live well, she thinks.

'Let me put some milk on the stove.' Nasra drops the towel on her bed and leaves the room.

Deqo tiptoes to the framed photos on a table; all the pictures are of Nasra, but in only one of them is she smiling. Her eyes move aside and she picks up nail varnish bottles one by one: pale pink, bright pink, dark red, electric blue – she would like to paint a fingernail in each colour. Everything in the room is gorgeous, made for pleasure; the soft rug is bliss against her tired feet, sequins twinkle on the gauzy purple curtains, the bed has pillow upon pillow. She struggles to see what shame there is in being a whore if it brings such luxury to a life. Nasra seems incapable of any work apart from beautifying herself; she is too delicate and too pretty to labour in the dust of the market or to wash someone's floors on her knees.

Nasra returns with two mugs of milk. 'I was thinking about you earlier.'

Deqo smiles and quickly hides her mouth behind her hand.

'It is wrong for any child, but especially a girl, to be sleeping anywhere near that ditch, with the wild dogs and even wilder men. If you wanted to, you could stay here; there is space for bedding in the kitchen and you'll be warm at night. We need help around the house, cleaning, preparing food; you could look after China's baby too. You would like that, wouldn't you?'

Deqo looks her square in the eye. 'Why do you want to help me?'

Nasra puts her mug on the floor and sits back on the bed. 'Because I was once not too different from you: lonely, hungry, uncared for. I hitched a ride to Hargeisa and arrived with nothing more than a toothstick and a change of underwear. I know how it is to be a girl on the streets.'

'I can really stay here? You won't send me away?'

Nasra smiles. 'Not unless you do something terrible.'

*   *   *

'That is China's room as you know, over there is Karl Marx, and in the corner the new girl, Stalin.' Nasra points to three closed doors made of rough planks on each side of the courtyard. 'You have to clean their rooms but if the doors are closed you leave them alone.'

'Are they foreign? Their names don't sound Somali.'

'No, those are their nicknames; every girl has a nickname on this street.'

Deqo skips beside her. 'What is yours?'

'Every girl but me. I liked my own name well enough and didn't care about anyone finding me.' She opens the kitchen door to reveal pots, pans and long knives dumped in a large plastic basket in one corner, and a mat, blanket and cushion in another.

'It's not the Oriental but it's better than the ditch, no?'

Deqo nods. Falling asleep in a warm kitchen with the smell of proper food in her nostrils is good enough for her.

'We all like to cook for ourselves but you might be asked to help chop or watch over dishes. When you're not cleaning stay within earshot in case we need you to run an errand.'

*   *   *

That night, as Deqo huddles in the kitchen, imagining her barrel in the ditch empty and miserable without her, she hears men's voices. She jumps up to peer out of the doorframe. All of the doors to the women's rooms are thrown open and light spills onto the courtyard.

'Stay away from me!' a young girl shouts from the hallway. 'Oof! I don't want you anywhere near me, you cannibal.'

Copyright © 2013 by Nadifa Mohamed