by Julia Bell
‘So, what I want to know is why you are here and not her?’
‘He took me.’ I nod at Durak’s body. His dead face is stuck at a leery angle; lips drooping, eyes half closed. ‘I want to go home. Look, I won’t say anything if you let me go. I promise I won’t tell anyone. It’s just all a big mistake, right?’
He looks at me, making his eyes big, and smiles, showing lots of gold teeth. ‘Right. With girls it’s always a big mistake. Always so much trouble.’
He flips open a mobile and barks into it.
‘Did you know about this? Where’s Marie?’ I hiss at Natasha. She shuffles away from me on the floor. ‘You knew he would come and find you?’ I nod at Durak’s body. There’s a thick pool of blood seeping into the concrete. ‘And on the boat, you knew he needed another girl?’ I can’t believe it, she set me up.
‘No! It’s not like that!’ she mumbles. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You wanted Durak to take me?’ If I could move my arms right now I’d stand up and grab that gun and shoot her myself. But suddenly she’s laughing at me.
‘What did you call him?’
‘Durak.’
She giggles again. ‘That’s not his name.’
‘Well I only said it because you did.’
‘Do you know what it means?’
‘No.’
‘Arsehole! You think his name is arsehole! Ha ha ha!’
‘I don’t know why you’re laughing, he’s dead now.’
And I realize that she isn’t really laughing at all, her body is trembling, her teeth gritted, she’s almost crying. ‘His name was Zergei. He came from Chechnya.’
‘Why did he bring me here?’
‘Because if he didn’t –’ she nods at the man barking into the phone – ‘he would hunt him down and kill him.’
‘Is he buying us?’
‘Yes.’ Natasha bites her lip. ‘Although, maybe now he’s stealing us.’
The bossman snaps his phone closed and strides over to us. ‘You will shut up!’ He raises his arm and I flinch, but he doesn’t hit me. Then he shouts something and one of his men comes over and sticks a big piece of silver tape over my mouth. All I can taste is chemicals and glue and I can’t breathe at all, my lungs feel like they’re going to burst.
‘Breathe in your nose,’ Natasha hisses. ‘Slowly.’
I sniff through my nose and cough and then it gets a bit easier. Natasha wriggles closer to me. ‘Breathe,’ she says. ‘Breathe.’
The bossman laughs at us and lights a cigarette. Two of his men lift Zergei’s body and take it away. His limp arms drag at an awkward angle along the floor. I don’t want to look. I stare at the concrete so hard it’s almost like I can see every grain, every particle. This isn’t happening to me, I think. This isn’t real. And I close my eyes as tight shut as I can force them. I hope I wake up soon.
9
Oksana
Outside the door the Turkish are talking about the English girl again, although I can’t understand everything they’re saying because my Turkish is not so good. They talk about how little money they paid for her and if she is really a virgin. One of them laughs and threatens to come and check. And they are confused, because they know now that she isn’t really from Italy like the bossman told them, because her English is too good.
She’s in the corner, as far away from me as possible.
She’s been crying and calling out for her mother since they brought us here. I almost felt bad and put my hand on her shoulder or something, but I can’t feel sorry for anyone who still has a mother. They are the lucky ones, only they don’t even know it yet.
The bossman shot Zergei. I don’t know what to think about this. He went down so quickly. Even though I know bullets kill people dead, I still thought he might get up and fight back.
He was in trouble before he even got here – late, the car scratched and muddy, with only half the order, snivelling that he couldn’t do it without back-up. That it wasn’t his fault. He was just following instructions. He tried to tell them that Hope was a replacement from the Ukraine. But even I can see she looks English. His story didn’t make sense. He tried to make out like we were models, the best-quality girls.
‘I got contacts everywhere,’ he said.
He should have known better. Bossmen don’t like people who lie. Who make out like they’re tough when really they’re jumpy and messed up. It’s not good for business. That’s how mistakes happen. Mistakes like me and the English girl.
I wish now I had never picked her van. Or I should have got out and run away first chance I got. Now I will never find Adik.
I don’t want to work for them any more, ever. For a moment, back in the English fields, I thought I would never have to. It seemed possible to be free like the birds, flitting about in the crops as the sun came up. Now there is a heavy cloud of feeling somewhere just above my head, threatening to drop down and crush me. I look at the floor and count the threads in the carpet, the balls of dust and hair in the corners, the dirty pink roses in the pattern of the wallpaper.
‘Hello, my name is Natasha.’ Over and over like a tableau at the fair that only moves when you feed it with money. ‘Hello, my name is Natasha,’ in twenty-six different languages. I remembered them all one by one when I was in Italy. One by one – Bonjour! Je m’appelle Natasha; Hallå! Jag heter Natasha; Hallo! Ich bin Natasha – looking at the horrible wallpaper, the carpet worn shiny by the door, where the customers came in and out. One language for every rose in the room. ‘Yasas! Me leni Natasha.’
Tommy told me I would make enough money to move me and my family to Moscow one day and live in Rublyovka where all the rich ladies live with many servants, where they dye their poodles to match their outfits. And everyone drives a Mercedes and eats the best caviar and steak and drinks champagne and gold vodka, and there are dishwashers and washing machines and everything you need to be happy and successful in life. He said Europe was better than I could ever imagine, McDonald’s on every street – and so cheap – Coca-Cola, Burger King and all the shoes and dresses I could ever want. Better than the pictures in the magazines they started selling in the shop. He told me I deserved it because I was pretty, and all pretty girls deserved the good things in life. He said it would be like the life I always dreamed of, but even better, because it would be real.
What a joke.
The English girl is making noises in her sleep, shouting out for Natasha now. She is better to be quiet. She hasn’t learned yet, the best way is to not speak, to not complain. Complaining gets you noticed, and getting noticed gets you into trouble.
I sit on her bed, and stroke her hair to quiet her. I don’t say anything because it’s better not to feel sorry for anyone. If you feel anything for anyone they just get taken away and all the feelings get smashed to pieces until you go cold and numb, like a stone.
The boss has sold us to some Turkish men. I heard him on the phone. He complained about Zergei. Said he’d never trusted him. That he was dealing in third-rate girls and always screwing up. He wanted high class, he said, for his bar. Not some used-up bitches from God knows where. He put tape over Hope’s mouth so the Turkish couldn’t know that she might be English until it was too late. He got twelve thousand for us with Zergei’s Lexus thrown in.
The Turkish came and got us in a white van and drove us tied up in the back to this place, above a fried-chicken shop, somewhere not so far away from the warehouse. They put a blanket over me, but I could still see the sign for Dixie Chicken flashing through the material.
I don’t know what class of a place this is, but it smells bad. Even in Italy it was better than this. In the corner there is green mould coming through the wallpaper and there are two beds crammed in the room, with only a small space by the door to stand up and get changed.
‘Life in London,’ Tommy said, ‘is the sweetest.’ And he kissed his lips like he’d just tasted the best caviar. ‘In that city, you can have everything you want.’
Hope has got h
er eyes open and she’s looking at me.
‘Are they going to kill me?’
She asks too many questions. She’s so stupid and scared it’s a pain. I don’t want to be nice to her any more. What is the point? Maybe if I had followed Zergei’s plan on the ferry and not been sorry for her because she looked lonely and lost, I would be out of here by now. Instead, I’m right back where I started.
‘No,’ I say. ‘They only kill you if you run away.’
‘Really?!’ She looks even more scared now.
I pick at the threads in the mattress. ‘If they kill me I will be saying, “Yes! Please!”’ Although really I am frightened to die. If I was brave like Marie I would have thrown myself in the canal when I had the chance.
‘You’re crazy.’ She sits up and pulls her knees to her chest. ‘You’re a weirdo!’ And she starts shouting for help again, but there’s no one who can help us here. And after a while she stops and folds herself up into a ball on the bed, her arms over her face.
Once upon a time, when I was younger, I thought it was possible to get rescued. I thought someone would come like a prince in the old stories. Riding into town on his best horse, to pick me up and sweep me away through the forest to somewhere good, somewhere exciting, like America where Britney Spears lives. I used to long for it every night so hard that when Tommy turned up, I wasn’t surprised. After all, I’d wished for him.
I stand up and wash my face in the little sink in the corner. The water smells different from the water in Italy, or the water you could pull from the well in our dacha – clean, earthy water that smelt of leaves and rain and moss and growing, living things. In Italy, one of the girls got a rash on her face that she said was from the water. Her face went scaly and dry like a lizard. One night soon after, she disappeared. Never came back to our room after her shift. When one of the girls asked Antonio where she was, he laughed and said that he got rid of her because she was putting off the customers.
To get to the window I have to climb over both mattresses. I can’t see through it because the glass is frosted with a pattern of leaves and ferns. I can hear traffic outside, but I can’t tell where it is.
‘Can you see anything?’ Hope’s kneeling on the bed beside me.
‘No.’
‘D’you think it’s a long way down?’
‘Maybe.’
She pushes me out of the way and pulls her arm back.
‘Wait!’ She should wrap her hand in something first. When Adik and the boys went stealing they wrapped their fists in rags, and even then Mikki got cuts up his arm.
She brings her fist down into the glass, but it doesn’t break and she falls back on the bed holding her hand. ‘Ow.’
Then there’s noise outside, the lock turns with a heavy click. I move away from the window, and Hope lies down, covering herself with a blanket.
‘Hello, girls.’ He smells of cheap perfume and hair wax, of garlic and sweaty skin. He’s wearing a leather jacket that doesn’t hide his belly – a mound which shifts about above his trousers like it lives without him. I don’t want to look.
‘Food,’ he says, throwing a McDonald’s bag on the bed.
When they opened a McDonald’s in the town everyone wanted to go. Adik said that’s where you could see the best girls and hear the newest music. But it cost more money than we could think of for a cheeseburger and fries – the same as for a whole month of working in the fields digging potatoes. We went there once, just to see, and hung around outside in the cold, looking through the windows at the people. Dina, the mayor’s daughter, was there, with her friend Rita and her boyfriend Oleg, who was wearing a baseball cap backwards and a T-shirt for REM. They were all laughing like they were in a rock video.
‘Do you think they’re happy?’ Adik asked.
Mikki pushed him over in the snow. ‘Of course they’re happy, stupid. That’s why they’re called Happy Meals.’
Adik scrambled to his feet. ‘I’m going in.’
Once inside, next to the bright lights and fat plastic his saggy grey sweatpants and pale skin looked poor and shabby. Rita and Oleg turned round and pointed and started laughing again. I backed away from the window and hid in the shadows, in case they saw me, in my dirty blue coat and eighties jeans, and thought that I was with him.
But then he came running out at top speed, the fat security man lumbering and shouting after him.
‘Run!’ he yelled, and we ran like we were competing in the Olympics, the cold air burning our lungs. So fast I could hear the air whistling past my ears. Adik seemed to know by instinct which way to go, weaving through alleyways, turning left then right until in the end we hid in an underpass, just outside town, hot and out of breath and laughing.
‘Look!’ He unzipped his coat and out tumbled a McDonald’s bag full of fries and burgers – and from his pockets handfuls of sugar packets and these little cups of fake cream. ‘Happy Meal!’ and he laughed like he had just heard the best joke.
It tasted good, even though the fries were cold and the burgers got squashed. Mikki drooped a fry across his lip like a moustache and strode around doing stupid walks that made us laugh so hard we were crying. Then Adik gave us the packets of sugar which we put on our tongues in little pyramids of white crystal.
‘Let’s run!’ Adik bounced up and down on his toes.
‘You crazy?’
‘Of course!’ And he just started running. ‘We can catch the bus if we hurry.’
‘But the bus stop’s miles away!’ Mikki puffed after us.
‘No it’s not, and it’s all downhill.’ Adik was already ahead, his shaved head bobbing, only just visible in the darkness. Eventually the town gave way to the fields and then, beyond that, the forest and the long road home.
Sometimes I wonder if I had wings. I felt like I was flying: arms and legs everywhere, mad fast, faster than I ever thought I could run, down the side of the road, stumbling into Adik, laughing, gasping for breath, splashed by puddles, skidding through mud, like I’d never had so much energy. Even Mikki, who was fat like a dumpling, kept up with us, till we came to the last slope, up towards the bus stop, when he dropped back and eventually stopped, and walked the rest of the way towards us, grunting as he tried to catch his breath.
When the bus finally arrived we were cold and squelchy and heavy. Adik went quiet and sat behind me, his arms folded across his chest, staring right ahead, hard. Mikki fiddled with his coat and then fell asleep. I stayed awake and watched the fields disappear into forest as we bounced and lurched home.
‘This is shit,’ Adik said finally.
I didn’t say anything, because Adik’s mother left him with the Volkov family when he was a baby, and although he said she paid them to look after him, they treated him bad and made him sleep in the shed with the chickens, and I thought if anyone had it shittier than me, he did.
‘How come I got born in this dump? How come when it was my turn to be born I was born here? It’s not fair.’
He punched the back of the seat.
‘Adik—’
He leaned over and put his face next to mine. ‘No, Oksana, why do I live in this place? And Americans live in big houses with TVs and a movie room and cars and girls? Because it was my bad luck to be born at the moment I was. If my mother could have waited just a few more seconds I might have been born to someone else in America or something.’
He told me once that he thought all the souls in the world lined up in heaven before they were born, and it was just luck which body you ended up with when you got to the front of the queue.
‘But maybe you would queue up for ages and still be poor in America,’ I pointed out. ‘And anyway, how do you know? I can’t remember before I was born.’
He sucked his teeth and his eyes shone with frustration. ‘Better to be poor in America than here. At least in America I can have rich dreams.’
Cheeseburger and fries. Hope won’t eat any. She lay in bed with her eyes closed the whole time he was in the room. He didn’t do
anything, or even seem especially frightening. He just gave us the food and looked at the floor and coughed a few times and then left.
‘It’s not that old,’ I say, offering her some. ‘Eat.’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘Makes me want to puke. That stuff’s so bad for you.’
‘You don’t eat McDonald’s?’
She makes a face. ‘Eugh. You joking? Give you a heart attack.’
This makes me angry then – she’s all Missy Missy like she’s better than me. I throw a cheeseburger at her. ‘You are lucky to eat!’
She sighs and turns over. ‘The police will be looking for me you know.’
The light starts to fade outside the window and the room becomes gloomy. I’m dozing, listening to the noise of the traffic, English traffic. My mother always said I would travel. When she ran her finger along the lines of my hand, she said I’d go far and see many things in my life. I don’t know how she could tell.
She thought I was going to be clever and brave and strong.
After she died I used to be able to hear her voice in my head, clear, like she was standing in the same room. Now I can hardly remember the way she used to look, even though I see her in my dreams. I remember her outline, curly, frizzy hair, but it’s all got confused and frightening. If only I’d been better, if only I’d tried harder to be strong, if only I’d said no.
10
Oksana
The first thing that happened after she died, was Viktor.
Father brought him into the flat wrapped up in her coat. The blue padded one she wore to the hospital. He put him on the table and told me he needed feeding.
‘I don’t know how to do it,’ he said.
I didn’t know what to do either. I was only eight years old.
Then the baby coughed and made a little mewing sound, like a kitten. I tried to think what Mother would do. I warmed some milk in a pan and picked Viktor out of the coat and held him on my hip. He was so light and tiny, his face scrunched up and wrinkled like an old man. I fed him from a teaspoon like the kitten we had to feed after Mitzi rejected it. I didn’t understand how Mitzi, who was a beautiful, friendly, furry cat, could ignore one of her own kittens. She cuffed it with her paw when it tried to get near her, even hissed and bared her teeth at it.