Off we go anyway. The suitcase trails behind me, like a sad dinosaur. The woman’s suitcase is so much smaller that I think, isn’t it normal, when you leave town in the autumn, to take wellies in case you go for a walk?

‘Are you here for long?’ she asks.

‘The whole month. That’s what my referral says. You?’

‘The same’.

So she’s not here for less time, so I’m a welly-clad slave to fashion, and one without a scrap of vision when it comes to steps on the return route. I’ll surprise her, I think.

‘The Social Security Office referred me. I had to. You understand. There was a committee and they said I had to come here for the whole month’.

‘It’s worse for the Socials’, she says. Her ‘expert’ mode kicks in. ‘First and foremost, we’ve no chance of getting a single. Even twin rooms are rare. Then there’s the trouble with the passes’. She looks at me, checking whether she’s made an impression. She has. She continues, ‘I’m a Social too this time, but I prefer to go private’.

I’m realising that she spends, so to speak, half her life here, that she’s now leading us at a confident pace, that we’ve turned left, her, me, our different sized suitcases, and we’re heading straight towards our destination.

‘You know where we’re going, don’t you?’ I ask.

‘Of course. I asked for directions because you have to break the ice somehow’. She stops, extends her hand. ‘I’m Beata. I thought, since you look younger than me, that you could be my friend. You’ll see, younger friends are very valuable here’.

I can’t escape, I think, I’ve got a big suitcase. I’m not supposed to run, I think. What the hell do I know, I think – she knows, and since she knows, shake her hand and introduce yourself nicely.

‘Kama’, I say. ‘From Warsaw’.

We’re walking again. Well, I’m walking behind her, because she’s walking. Behind me is the suitcase.

‘From Warsaw’, she says with a hint of disappointment. ‘That’s not the best. You know no one likes people from Warsaw?’

‘I know’, I say, because it’s hard not to know that if you’ve ever left the capital. ‘But I moved there for university and I just stayed’.

‘Ah, that’s a little better’, she says. But she doesn’t believe what she’s saying, it’s obvious. ‘I’m from Włocławek. It’s a good city. Anyway, no need to be ashamed of it’.

I’ve never been ashamed of a city, I think. How can you be ashamed of a city? What is shame for a city? We’re walking. We’ve made two more turns. The facility building is already looming on the horizon. I know, I’ve seen pictures of it online.

‘I’m a PE teacher’, says Beata. ‘Once, quite a long time ago, I won the junior vice championships in artistic gymnastics. Over the years it turned out that my bones didn’t much like that discipline. Which is why I’m hanging out here now. Though that’s not the only reason…’ She smiles suddenly. A kind of stretched-out smile. ‘Have you had your operation yet?’

Excerpt translated by Kate Webster