He gives the four of them shelter in a clean, hidden building.

Apparently he makes a habit of giving shelter to people like them, who are released from the detention center with nowhere to go. A man on a tractor approaches them, and they all get really scared. The four girls walk out of the detention center gates and down the hill. When the taxi comes for her and the other three girls, Little Bee accidentally offends the taxi driver and he leaves without them. Now Little Bee picks up the story on the day of her release from the detention center. After six months, she feels some hope mixed with her horror and starts learning the Queen's English and learning about British history and culture. During the days thinks of ways to kill herself. She's put in the immigrant detention center as soon as she arrives in England. We learn that she fled Nigeria two years prior by stowing away on a British cargo ship. The story moves back to Little Bee's point of view. Sarah tells us, 'The only souvenir I have of that first meeting is an absence where the middle finger of my left hand used to be' (2.15). There, Sarah thinks back to the day she and Andrew met Little Bee and her sister two years ago. Little Bee attends the funeral with Sarah and Charlie. Five days after that, the day of Andrew's funeral, Little Bee arrives at Sarah's house in an English suburb. Charlie wears his Batman costume all the time and only answers to 'Batman.' We learn that five days after Little Bee calls him from the detention center, Sarah's husband Andrew, a columnist for The Times, hangs himself. Now meet our other narrator Sarah O'Rourke, and her four-year-old son Charlie. The four girls – Little Bee, a Jamaican girl named Yevette, a girl they call Sari Girl, and a girl they call the 'girl with no name' – go outside to wait for the taxi that Little Bee called to take them to Andrew O'Rourke's. He's angry, and tells her not to come to his house. She calls him from the detention center phone. Little Bee has a driver's license and business card belonging to Andrew O'Rourke, a white man she met on the beach two years ago in Nigeria. She is released from the adult detention center on a Friday morning in May 2007 with three other girls.

Little Bee learns the Queen's English in an immigration detention center in Essex, England, where she has been held since 2005. English is the official language of her home country, Nigeria, but that version has other African languages blended in too. Little Bee learns the Queen's English in order to survive in England. Unlike her, coins travel freely and safely.

Little Bee, who kicks off the story, wishes she was a British pound coin, instead of a Nigerian girl. Little Bee is narrated by Little Bee (not her real name) and Sarah (an English woman who you will meet in a minute) in alternating chapters.

Little bee by chris cleave