by Giles Ekins
And so, it began,
That was the first time that Charlie joined in with Josie and Damien’s ‘brother and sister games,’ which Josie said had been going on since she was seven.
And so, it continued.
Every month or six weeks or so, whenever the opportunity arose for Damien to coerce the two girls to join him in his perverted games.
And if Charlie pointed out that she was not Josie’s sister and Damien not her brother, he would justify it with yet more twisted logic or supposed biblical references. whilst Josie would either plead with her to stay or threaten to end their friendship if she did not join in.
As Charlie grew older and more worldly-wise, she began to realise that Josie was now the needy one. Josie needed Charlie, not just for friendship but to share in the shame, to spread the guilt she felt for allowing Damien to dominate her to the extent that he could do anything he wished to her. And it was when Josie was sixteen, coming up for seventeen, that Damien, then twenty-two, finally raped her.
‘I didn’t want to do it’ she sobbed into Charlie’s arms. ‘I told him no, I told I would toss him off again, as usual, but he wouldn’t have it and he held me down and forced me. I didn’t, didn’t, want to do it. It hurt, it hurt a lot.’
‘The bastard, listen Josie, you’ve got to tell somebody. Your Mum and Dad or the police, anybody. Damien can’t get away with it and we’ve got to stop these games.’ Charlie insisted, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before Damien tried to rape her as well.’
‘No, no, you can’t tell anybody. You mustn’t, it’d kill my Mum and Dad, they’d kill me, promise me Charlie, promise me you will never tell anybody what has happened. Promise me now!’
‘It’s not right, Josie, he should pay for what he’s done.’
‘No! He’s my brother, you can’t tell. Promise me. Promise me now or I’ll never speak to you again, Ever!’
Faced with such a threat, the threat of losing the only relationship that she held dear, Charlie had no option but to promise, as much as she hated herself for doing so,
‘I promise.’
‘Promise never to tell a living soul’
‘I promise.’
‘Say it, all of it, I promise never to tell a living soul,’
‘I.., I promise never to tell a living soul,’
But both girls knew, their friendship could never be the same again. Charlie confronted Damien and told him the games had to end, if not, she would report him to the police for rape and sexual abuse, and even as Damien threatened her, Charlie stood her ground.
Sixty-Three
I told him. Even though I was only sixteen, I told him that if he ever laid a finger on his sister again, I would not just go to the police, but that I knew some very unsavoury characters and would make sure he was beaten up before the cops got to him. I don’t know if he believed me, but he knew I came from a rough part of town and had no idea whether I could have gotten him onto the wrong end of a kicking or not.
It was all bluff, of course, but he had no means of knowing that.
But it was the end, and not before time, of the ‘brother and sister’ games. But the damage was done, permanent and irremediable .
The summer fled from Josie’s once bright eyes, replaced by the dull grey of oncoming bleak-winter.
She slid inexorably into depression, she lost all feeling of self-worth, filled with self-loathing and hatred for a world that she felt had betrayed her.
‘Life is not supposed to be shit forever, is it?’ Josie plaintively asked me one time.
Her behaviour began to deteriorate, she got into constant aggressive rows with her father Dennis or mother Joyce. Once so promising at school, her grades began to slip and apart from art and history, she failed all her GCSE’s and told her parents she had intended to leave school anyway. ‘School is just for losers’ she said.
Which prompted another furious row with her parents before she stormed out of the house, shouting. ‘Who gives a shit about fucking GCSE’s anyway?’
Josie did not return home for two days, sleeping at the flat where her current ‘boyfriend’ Jackson Parrott lived. At least she thought of him as her boy-friend, whereas Jackson, four years older than Josie, simply considered her to be a convenient shag. She spent the time there smoking spliffs and having sex with both Jackson and his friend, a taxi driver called Sadiq. When she left, Jackson told her, ‘next time babe, bring some money for your rent, else you’ll have to earn it, you know. Earn it with what you got,’ pointedly looking at her crotch.
She did return home and tried to be contrite, but over the next few weeks matters only got worse. It was open war, fierce, bloody and cruel. Eventually, Joyce called her an ungrateful brat, Josie responded, calling her mother a stuck-up hateful cow.
At which Joyce slapped her face, and, angry beyond reason, said those words that could never ever be taken back. ‘I wish to God we’d never had you, you ungrateful little bitch. You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since you were born. Go on, get out of this house.’
The shock of those words, from the lips of her own mother, hit Josie like an avalanche, far more impactful than the actual physical slap. Her already fragile world crumbled into bitter dust around her, the taste vile and acrid. Joyce stood there, paled -faced, her hand to her mouth, barely able to comprehend what she had done. What she had said.
After the initial shock, an icy resolve settled over Josie. She had to leave.
Leave, abandon this hateful house and the insufferable memories of rape and humiliation and shame. Memories of joyous times, of family holidays, of gifts, of the knowledge that Dennis and Joyce only ever wanted the best for her and the love they had showered upon her, all fled form her mind.
All she could feel was Joyce’s anger and the hurtful spittle-flecked words that echoed round and round in her brain, ‘I wish to God we’d never had you, you ungrateful little bitch. You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since you were born. Go on, get out of this house.’
‘What?’ she responded, her words seeming to come from a great distance away. ‘Well in that case, I won’t trouble you any longer. I’m out of here, you hard-faced cunt.’
Josie ran upstairs to her room. Backed a bag with anything she could grab out of the drawers and slid her lap-top and iPad into the Paul Kirkwood leather computer bag that Dennis and Joyce had bought her for Christmas. Her passport went into her handbag along with an old purse in which she had been saving £5 notes to buy Christmas presents and then ran of the house, shouting, ‘You’ll never fucking see me again.’ ignoring Joyce’s plaintiff pleas that she did not mean it, had never meant it and that she loved her with all her heart. Begging her not to go.
Josie was seventeen years old.
She moved full time into Jackson Parrott’s council flat on Livermore Street, although he did not seem overly pleased to see her.
‘I thought you’d want me to come’ she said tearfully, ‘you said you loved me and wanted to look after me.’
‘I do, babe, but now’s not a good time, you know?’ Jackson said, glancing towards the bedroom door.
‘I’ve got money, like you said, ’Josie pleaded, unable to understand why Jackson was so unwelcoming. She had left her home and family to be with him and he was acting as if he did not want her. She was close to tears, her emotions, already raw, in turmoil. ‘To bring money, you said. And there’s money in my bank account.’
‘Yeah? You got money, that’s good, babe, good. OK, babe. Listen, I wan choo to get down to Tesco’s and get some beers, right? And vodka, not their own cheap own brand piss. good stuff, Absolut or Stolichnaya, whatever the fuck they call it. OK? Then when you get back, we’ll send for pizza. You said you got cash, right?’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
When Josie got back from the shops, whoever it was who had been in the bedroom had gone, but she could see that the sheets were crumpled and there was a smell of cheap perfume and sex. She told herself that it must have been Sadiq
in there with a girl, but deep inside she knew the truth.
The money she had in her bank account did not last long, although she could never account for where it had gone. Whatever she gave Jackson ‘for her rent and keep’ was never enough and he began to hit her, always demanding more. When she tried to leave, he slapped her about and locked her in a bedroom. He stole her lap-top and iPad together with the leather satchel and sold them. Soon he began to ply her with drugs, keeping her locked up and making her pay for her supply by having sex with the men that his friend Sadiq brought along to the flat. Sadiq and Jackson split the money the punters paid, but Josie saw none of it.
Sixty-Four
Of course, as soon as Josie stormed out of the house and did not return, her frantic parents rang me to see if I knew where she was. Did I know where she was likely to go, who was she with, their pleas for help and information getting more desperate as the days went by without a sight of her.
Then they became angry with me, convinced that I knew where Josie was but not telling them out of a misguided sense of loyalty. But the truth was, that by this time, Josie and I had begun to drift apart, there had been no rows, no major break-up but I was getting my life on track whereas she was straying away big time, going down a road I had no intention of following, I still loved her, loved her to bits, she was still my best friend ever, but things were not the same.
I had passed 9 GCSE’s with high marks and had gone on to sixth form, studying for my A levels, even though my mother wanted me to leave school and go to work somewhere. Anywhere. But I was having none of that. I was going to better myself and an education was the only way that was going to happen. ‘Sorry, Ma, if you want more money, get off your fat arse and go out to work yourself.’
For the first time in my life I felt that I was clever. That I had a chance. That I could achieve something in my life.
At that was until…
Until the gods decided that I was getting above my station. Who did I think I was? A street brat from a scabby council flat on the Upper Storrs estate thinking she was clever, putting on airs and graces and so the gods of fate decided to slap me down. It was the time of all the evils, as Lisbeth Salandar would have it, (this is a reference to the ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, one of my all-time favourite books)
Sixty-Five
Josie had dropped completely out of sight. Charlie knew nothing about Josie’s infatuation with Jackson Parrott, she had never mentioned him to her, probably realising that Charlie would not approve of a relationship with a known drug dealer.
Jackson soon tired of Josie, she was too weepy, crying all the time, pleading to go home, and was not proving to be as much of an earner as he had hoped. It was then that Sadiq offered to help her.
‘Listen, Josie, I can get you out of here, if’n you want?’
‘Take me home, you’ll take me home?’
‘Nah, can’t do that, can I? Jackson, he knows where you live, you don’t want him going round there and creating a fuss do you?’
‘Nooo.’ Josie answered uncertainly.
‘Look, you know what a vicious bastard Jackson is, well he’s dead spiteful an’ all. You don’t want him going around your Mum and Dad telling them you been fucking all these guys for drugs, do you now? ‘Cos he will you know, just out of spite’
‘I s’pose,’ Josie answered, still very uncertain, wanting only to go home, beg forgiveness and pick up her life again.
‘Look. I’m only trying to do you a favour here, if you don’t want it, well, sod you.’ Sadiq said, as if preparing to walk away.
‘No, wait, I’m sorry, just can’t get my head around things these days, you know? Get me out of here, please, I’ll do whatever you say,’ she pleaded, holding onto his arm.
‘Alright, then. Get your stuff together but be quick about it.’
‘Where’ll we go then?’ Josie asked, barely able to believe she was getting out of this hell hole. How could she have been so stupid as to believe that Jackson Parrott wanted her for anything other than sex and whatever money she could earn.
‘Leeds’ Sadiq answered, ‘Ahmed, my cousin, he’ll take care of you.’
‘Leeds?’
‘Yeah. Leeds, nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘No, no, just a bit surprised, that’s all, I thought it would somewhere in Garside.’
‘Don’t be fucking stupid, Josie, if you’re anywhere in town, Jackson’s gonna find you, in’t he? Now, you coming or not, if so, stop pissing about, else I’m long gone, and we never had this discussion, right?’
‘Sorry, just give me five minutes, OK? I’ll get my stuff together.’ Not that there was many of her possessions left after Jackson had stolen anything of value she might have had.
‘Make it quick,’
‘Yes. And thanks, Sadiq, I appreciate this, I really do.’
‘Yeah, whatever, just get a move on,’
A sullen rain spattered down on them as they hurried out to Sadiq’s taxi, a dark grey diesel Skoda Octavia, which belched out clouds of black smoke as soon as he started the engine. He had removed the DPF filter when it became clogged and found it too costly to replace. The car passed its MOT courtesy of £50 passed over to the garage owner on top of the MOT fee. Just about every other diesel taxi in town was the same.
They headed out to the M1 at Dodworth and turned northwards towards Leeds.
Josie asked several times, ‘where were they going exactly ’ but all Sadiq would say was ‘Leeds’ or ‘my cousin’s’
She wondered what this Ahmed would be like. She presumed she would have to sleep with him to pay for her board, but anything had to be better than living with Jackson. ‘Wouldn’t it? And it was only for month or so and then she could go home.
Couldn’t she?
Just south of Leeds they turned off the M1 and onto the M621 into Leeds.
Josie looked about her as they drove into central Leeds, but she had only visited the city once when she was a child to visit an elderly relative and nothing looked remotely familiar.
They passed by a large hospital complex, St James University Hospital, which she thought might have been the subject of a TV documentary and possibly something to do with the disgraced paedophile DJ, Jimmy Savile.
They drove along street after street of brick built terraced houses and then past a large stone-built mosque with twin minarets spearing skywards and then a Pakistani Community Centre. A lot of the women she saw were dressed all in black or wore a hijab.
‘Where are we?’ Josie asked as they passed a row of shops with halal butchers, brightly coloured fabric shops and kebab restaurants, the shop signs in English and Urdu.
‘Harehills’, Sadiq answered. ‘Paki country,’ he laughed, but there was no humour in his voice.
They turned into another street of brick terraces, a bit more run down than ones they had passed earlier. The lower windows of just about every house they passed had thick lace curtains, or drawn blinds or in one case she noticed, newspaper pasted to the glass, all to prevent curious eyes from peering inside.
Sadiq pulled outside the last but one house in the street,
‘Are we here’ Josie asked, unbuckling her seat belt.
‘Yeah, but you stay here ‘til I tell, you. Right?’
‘OK’
Sadiq got out of the car and ran over to the front door of the house and knocked on the green painted front door.
The door opened about six inches and a face peered through the gap before nodding to Sadiq. Sadiq looked up and down the road before beckoning Josie to come.
Despite trepidation and the fluttering butterflies in her stomach she was glad to get out of the car, the diesel fumes had made her feel nauseous.
When she reached the front door, Sadiq almost pushed her inside ‘Get in’ he snarled, ‘Quickly’
The door, which directly into the front room, slammed behind her. A tall man, with a shaven head, short black beard and the bulked torso and arms of a weightlifter was standing next
to Sadiq, looking her up and down.
‘Skinny bitch, ain’t she?’
‘Yeah, maybe. Josie. this is Ahmed, the cousin I was telling you about. I’ll just get your bag and be off, not making no money driving all the way out here.’
As Josie looked about the room, noticing the threadbare sofa and armchair and the large screen television, she did not see the money change hands.
‘OK, cuz?’ Ahmed asked and Sadiq, quickly pocketing the cash, nodded ‘yes’ and then brought in Josie’s small carry-on case. ‘There you are, now I’m off.’
‘Thank you so much, Sadiq. Thank you.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
As soon as the door closed, Ahmed turned to Josie and slapped her hard across the face
‘You’re mine now, bitch. Now get down on your knees’ he ordered. unzipping his jeans.
Sixty-Six
Chloe re-read what she had written, nodded in approval at one or two of the sentences, changed a word here and there, ran a spell check and then saved the file under the name ‘Beyond’
Sixty-Seven
Meanwhile.
‘The Clusterfuck or All the Evil’
I call it the Clusterfuck, defined by Wictionary as ‘a chaotic situation where everything seems to go wrong. It is often caused by incompetence, communication failure or a complex environment.’
Or in my case by ‘vile nasty bastards’
Of course, I should have known better, the gods are always ready to slap you down and put you back in your place. Comeuppance!
I was doing well at school, studying for ‘A’ levels in English, English Literature and History, my sights firmly set on getting in to Uni and a degree. What I would do afterwards, I was not certain. Except I was not going into teaching.