‘Let’s just say he would if I was wearing my work clothes.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Which reminds me, I’d better be getting back. Got anywhere to stay?’
Another shake of the head but with more defiance, Val noticed.
‘You can stay with me if you like,’ she offered. ‘By the way, I’m Val and if you’re still suspicious I was just passing and thought you could do with a little help.’
‘Thanks for that, but I’ll manage on my own.’
‘These streets aren’t too friendly in the middle of the night,’ she advised, giving her one more chance to accept the offer.
‘I’ll manage.’
‘Suit yourself. See ya,’ she said cheerfully as she walked away. Four strides later she turned. ‘If you’re gonna sleep rough, head for Cavendish Square. They haven’t had a murder there for a couple of weeks now.’
Val was rewarded with an expression of horror on the girl’s face accompanied by a few swift chews of her bottom lip before she continued to walk towards the corner of the street.
She waited for a few moments before taking a cursory glance back. The girl was looking at the street signs. Val nodded as the figure began walking in the direction of Cavendish Square.
It wasn’t too busy at the moment, Val thought, following closely behind. She checked her watch, but in an hour’s time, well…
One bench remained free and the girl approached it. Val shook her head, the kid had no idea. She spotted the owners of the bench before the girl did and moved closer, protected by the darkness.
‘Move the fuck away, bitch!’ the smaller one ordered.
‘Huh…’
‘That’s ours,’ said the first one, closely shadowed by another.
‘What…’
‘The bench, bitch. It’s ours, so fuck off!’
‘But I’ve got nowhere—’
He leaned in closer. Even Val could smell the stale urine and sweat. ‘Do you want me to move ya?’ he asked menacingly. ‘Or you can stay if you’ll suck…’
The girl jumped up from the bench and walked away quickly, checking behind her as she went. She stood beneath a lamp and pulled her jacket around her tighter.
A week, Val decided. The kid would need no longer than a week and then she’d be ready. The night was young yet. Everywhere the kid tried to settle she’d be threatened and assaulted. Later, the winos would be making their way back to their favourite haunts and others would turn up during the night. Even if she found a secure place, she would get no sleep for fear of having her clothes ripped from her body or her throat cut. The dealers would be around in roughly two hours plying their trade, first one free, second one cheap and before you knew it… Val shuddered. She knew exactly how that scene would play out – she herself had acted it out nine years earlier.
She slipped back into the shadows and made her way back to the flat to tell Banda there would soon be a new recruit.
For six days Kit managed to stay alive within the confines of Cavendish Square, the place to which she returned each night seeking small comfort in its familiarity. At least this set of drunks now knew her face and left her alone, and she also knew where to walk to avoid the discarded syringes and needles. The first night she’d been offered the stuff herself. She’d refused and edged away nervously, wishing she hadn’t been too proud to accept the offer of help from the strange woman.
On the seventh day she was beaten and robbed. The last few coins in her pocket were taken by two men and one woman. It was unprovoked and it was unnecessary but it was tough shit – Kit knew that.
The frightening figure who had shoved her off the bench that first night watched as she was beaten and robbed and then offered his bottle to her. She took it gratefully and enjoyed the warmth both inside and out as the alcohol stole around her as comforting as a bear hug. He then cracked the empty bottle over her head, screaming maniacally that she’d stolen it. She began to run, drunk with dizziness caused by the blow to her head. He caught her easily in a side alley and beat her again. Finally, she heard his retreating footsteps fading along with his threats as he left her.
She didn’t get up. She couldn’t get up. It was safer to stay down and then maybe she’d just die. A comforting blackness was just descending when she heard an exclamation of horror. Hands clutched her arms as she was forced into a sitting position. Still she didn’t open her eyes. If she opened them she’d be alive, and she didn’t want to be.
An insistent voice kept asking if she could stand, but she ignored it. The presence was beside her now, on the uneven ground, still talking to her. Arms reached out and encased her. She didn’t have the strength to pull away. She collapsed into what she thought must be a hug. Finally, she was being hugged.
She awoke in a bed looking into the face of the woman who had saved her from the police. She knew that her flesh was bruised, her skin had been torn in places and her joints felt like they’d been ripped from their sockets. But more importantly she was in a bed, in a room, and a friendly face was watching over her.
As she slept and healed she asked for only one thing, alcohol, which was brought to her by a man with a charcoal face that faded in and out of her dreams. Kit didn’t know who he was and she didn’t care.
They bathed her, dressed her, tended her, and fed her. It couldn’t have been only a week that she’d spent on the streets. She felt like her whole life had happened in that time.
By the time she could walk her gratitude to these people was endless. She asked what she could do to repay their kindness and they told her. She’d been doing it ever since.
‘Fifty quid, mate!’ shouted Kit, leaning on the window glass, her black fishnet stockings more visible as she bent. Long shapely legs ended at a pert rounded bottom. As she leaned into the car the cherry red lace top fell away to reveal her cleavage.
‘What are you… twenty-two… twenty-three?’
‘Old enough for you, darlin’,’ she drawled, hardly able to remember her age, but he was close enough.
‘Nah, you’re about ten years too old for me, sweetheart!’ He wound up the window, forcing Kit to stumble backwards.
‘Sick bastard!’ she shouted, walking back to where Val and Trish huddled for warmth. ‘Pervert’s into kids. Move over, Val.’ Kit shoved Val from beneath the direct glare of the street lamp. At thirty-five it didn’t do her any favours. She’d aged badly since the night nearly eight years earlier when she’d saved Kit’s life.
‘What you got?’ Kit asked Val with a slight slur.
Val checked her pocket. ‘Two hundred and thirty.’
Kit was confused: a trick was fifty quid.
‘Last bastard said he only had thirty quid. So the wanker shafted me, then shafted me.’
‘Come on, girls. The strip it is,’ decided Kit, reaching into her tiny bag for the bell-shaped bottle of whisky. A top-up was needed. She was becoming lucid.
‘Shit,’ they said together.
‘Got any better ideas? Val’s seventy quid short. We can’t go back with less than three hundred each. Banda will rip our fucking throats out, just for fun.’
They started walking. Val hardly ever made three hundred any more but Kit and Trish subsidised her to save them all from the beating they would get if she returned to the flat short.
They waited outside a particular strip club known for groups of teenagers on the piss. On cue three lads Kit guessed to be about seventeen staggered towards them, red-faced and unfocused.
‘Fancy a blow job, lads?’ offered Trish. They looked from one to the other as though they’d just seen Father Christmas.
‘How much?’ slurred the tallest.
‘Tenner.’
Kit watched as they guffawed and nudged each other excitedly, pooling their money. They slid up an unlit alley. It was too dark to see anything but Kit performed mechanically with her eyes staring straight ahead. The smell of rotten food invaded her nostrils from the industrial waste bin her punter leaned against. He pulled roughly on her short hair, bringing
tears to her eyes. She bit down on his penis. Recognising the signs Kit removed her mouth just in time. Val finished two seconds later.
‘Come on, you fucking black bitch, do it!’ screamed Trish’s punter. His eyes darted between his friends. Kit could see his humiliation at being the last. His masculinity was offended. He slapped Trish hard. She fell sideways into a murky puddle.
Kit was on him in seconds, her flick-knife at his throat. ‘Get out of here, you tosser, before I call your mummy!’
Val tended to Trish while Kit stood against the wall. She sighed and shook her head. It was time to do it all again.
‘Good night, girls?’ asked Banda as they walked into the flat. ‘How about you, Val? Did you make it?’
‘Yes… here,’ she said shakily, handing over the creased notes. The others did the same. Banda looked from Trish to Kit, amusement dancing behind his soulless eyes. ‘I knew you would,’ he said, leaving Kit in no doubt that he knew what they’d done. ‘Three-fifty from now on.’
‘But—’
‘But what, Val?’ Banda turned on her. The amusement had left the eyes that speared her and dared her to argue. The black skin, like hardening tar, tensed slightly where it covered his jawbone.
‘Umm… nothing,’ Val stammered as Kit closed her eyes. She knew what was coming.
‘Okay, girls, strip.’
They all began to slowly peel off their clothes. Down to the bare skin. Not for sex, Banda wasn’t interested in sex with his girls, only control. The nightly ritual was to ensure that no money had been kept back. Kit’s hand went instinctively to her watch strap as Banda came up behind her and poked a finger into every orifice in her body.
The grotesque masks that littered the room stared back at her. When she’d first seen them she’d assumed they were from some sort of carnival and they had looked quite harmless. That was before the night she came downstairs in the early hours to retrieve another bottle of vodka. He hadn’t seen her standing in the doorway.
His back faced her in a room lit only by candles. The masks which normally hung from hooks around the room now sat on a table that she could see served as a type of altar. Their gaze held hers transfixed for a moment as the eyeless holes stared eerily at her. In front of the masks were three wax effigies that lay in tiny handcrafted coffins. She was frightened to breathe but she had to watch. Never in her life had she seen anything like it. An eerie presence filled the room. A presence that he welcomed and that she felt, and feared.
He held a piece of black cord about three feet in length, which he passed through the heat of a candle and the fragrance of an incense burner several times as he whispered words that she couldn’t hear.
She watched transfixed as he began to tie knots at regular intervals in the cord and after each one he chanted in a voice that she didn’t recognise. It was soft, but no less menacing. She listened carefully.
By the knot of one, the spell’s begun.
He tied a knot in one end of the cord.
By the knot of two, it cometh true.
He tied a knot in the other end.
By the knot of three, thus it shall be.
He tied a knot in the middle.
By the knot of four, it’s strengthened more.
Another knot.
By the knot of five, the spell shall thrive.
Another.
By the knot of six, this spell I fix.
Another.
By the knot of seven, the stars of heaven.
Another.
By the knot of eight, the hand of fate.
Another.
By the knot of nine, what’s done is mine.
She watched as he tied one last knot and then once more passed the cord through the fragrance of the incense. Kit couldn’t move as she watched him almost tenderly pick up one of the wax dolls. He retrieved a long dressmaker’s pin from the altar and thrust it into the stomach of the doll.
Kit had to cover her mouth to stop the terror forming a scream. Unnoticed, she edged out of the door and trembled all the way back to her room, reliving what she had just seen. The effects of the alcohol had worn off completely; the fear inside caused her to stare unblinking at her bedroom door, holding her stomach protectively. Sleep did not come that night. Every minute that took her closer to daylight was a triumph.
Before six she was startled by moans that turned to screams. She ran into Val’s room to find her clutching her abdomen, her face as white as the wax effigy still imprinted on Kit’s brain. Banda materialised beside her and only Kit noticed the expression of triumph that curled up his fleshy, pink lips. From that day on Kit’s fear of the man that didn’t sleep had taken on a very real, sinister element.
‘Okay, you’re clean,’ said Banda, disturbing her thoughts.
A quick wave of the hand signalled satisfaction with the results of the body search and that he was in control. They were dismissed. ‘Wait, Kit,’ he ordered.
He waited for the others to leave the room. ‘On your knees, in repentance for Val,’ he ordered while undoing his trouser zip. Kit knew what was coming, or rather who. She knelt down and performed as she always had to when Val stepped out of line. His eyes stared straight ahead and she knew he’d had enough only when he pushed her roughly away from him. ‘Now apologise,’ he said.
‘Wh… what?’
‘Apologise for being such a whore. Apologise for getting to your knees so easily. Apologise for what you are.’
Kit bowed her head. When did it stop? When did the humiliation end? How much more could she take?
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured because she knew what would happen if she didn’t. It would be Val’s turn as it had been four years earlier when Kit ran away. She was gone for almost a month but he’d found her, working part-time stacking shelves in a supermarket and sharing digs with five other girls. He’d waited for her one night after work and a single blow to the head had rendered her unconscious.
Kit had braced herself for the beating that was about to come. And it did. A broken nose, two black eyes, a fractured cheekbone, cut ear, split lip and two broken ribs, only they weren’t hers. They were Val’s and she had to sit and watch every punch and kick, knowing it was her fault.
Val had never made a sound as the blows landed one after another. When it was over, it had been Kit’s job to clean her up.
That was how Banda ran things. If they stepped out of line it was one of the others who got it. Banda knew everything. He understood that even though Val had brought her into this life they all had to make friends with someone. And inevitably, night after night, out on the street, it was with each other. Then came the loyalty. For yourself you could take the beating but if you ran away it was one of your friends who got it. It held them closer to Banda than glue.
‘You’re not working tomorrow night,’ he stated as she waited to be dismissed.
Her breath caught and she felt the nausea begin to rise. There was only one reason why they didn’t work.
‘You’re going scouting. I want fresh blood. Val’s an old slag now and while you’re wasting time down the strip subsidising her, you could be earning real money.’
Kit tensed. She’d always managed to avoid scouting. The thought of bringing a young girl into this sickened her – it was part of the punishment to keep her in line, she knew that.
‘Some of my contacts are after young blood. And I mean young. Do you understand?’
Kit nodded and quickly left the room. She needed to vomit.
Banda’s laughter followed her up the stairs.
Kit crawled into bed, wide awake. Just a little longer, just a little. If she could carry on just a little longer she might be able to get away. She listened carefully. No sound. She quickly removed her watch, revealing an indentation that circled her wrist where it had been pulled so tightly that the carefully folded notes beneath wouldn’t be detected.
Feelings she’d never had before began darting around in her head. She knew she was nearly there. She had nearly enough mone
y to get away. A few more weeks and she’d have enough to take Val. Soon, her life would begin. She would be able to go where no one knew her, start again. Every punter was taking her a little closer to freedom. She thought of the money rolled up, hidden painstakingly inside unused tampon applicators. It warmed her. She reached for the bottle that lived beside her bed – that warmed her too. She swigged greedily; she needed the comfort before she lay down to sleep. Without it the events of the day would run around like a virus in her blood. The drink helped her separate herself from the whore she had become.
She clutched the bottle possessively, drank it like orange juice and waited for the feeling of well-being, which she knew would inevitably be followed by sleep. Her spinning head and random thoughts were old friends.
A soft tapping at the door told Kit it was Val. She closed the door quietly behind her and sat next to Kit on the bed. Her eyes stared straight ahead.
‘I was listening, you going scouting tomorrow?’
Kit tried to focus and reached for the light switch.
‘No,’ Val ordered. ‘Leave it off.’
Kit pushed herself up in bed, the effects of the alcohol subsiding. Something was wrong.
‘You have to leave,’ Val told her quietly. ‘Tonight.’
‘I can’t,’ replied Kit. They both knew why.
Val turned to face her in the darkness.
‘If you do what he asks tomorrow it will be the last step. Once you’ve scouted and secured your own fate for another, you’ll never go back. The hatred inside will eat away at you. It’s an act that will confirm to you that your soul is gone and every day you’ll watch that girl and know she’s here because of you. Trust me, Kit, I know.’
‘But I can’t leave yet,’ she protested.
‘Why, because of me?’ Val spat. ‘You’re staying because of what he’ll do to me. After it was me that brought you into this?’
The Forgotten Woman: A gripping, emotional rollercoaster read you’ll devour in one sitting Page 4