by Julia Bell
I ran away from Grandpa,
I ran away from Grandma,
And now I’m going to run away from you!
And as it sang the little round bun rolled away down the road laughing to itself . . .’
And so the story went on, and I watched Adik, holding Viktor and telling him about the wolf and the bear that were outwitted by the little round bun in exactly the same way as the rabbit. By the time he got to the fox, Victor was asleep. But Adik didn’t stop. His voice just got quieter and quieter. So quiet I had to lean over and put my head right near Adik’s face.
‘After a while little round bun met a fox coming towards it.
‘“Mmmm, delicious, a little round bun,” said the fox. “I’m going to eat you up.”
‘“Please don’t eat me, Fox,’ said the little round bun. ‘I’ll sing you a song instead.”
‘“A song?” The fox twitched his handsome red face. He wasn’t sure that the little round bun with a squeaky voice would sing a very good song. But sing it did.
I ran away from Grandpa,
I ran away from Grandma,
I ran away from Rabbit,
I ran away from Wolf,
I ran away from Bear,
And now I’m going to run away from you!
‘“I’m sorry?” said the fox. “My hearing is very bad these days. Could you be so kind and come a little closer so I can listen to your marvellous song? Hop on to my tongue so I can hear you better.”
‘So little round bun jumped on to the fox’s tongue and began to sing.
I ran away from Grandpa,
I ran away from Grandma—
‘But before it could go on, the fox opened his mouth and – snap! – little round bun was gone.’
Adik laughed softly. ‘That’s the way of the world, little Viktor. In this life you have to always watch out for the fox.’
And then the stew was nearly ready and Adik put Victor to sleep on the couch and lit a candle and we huddled round the table slurping up the hot food. And even though I was only nine years old I felt like I was about a hundred and three already. But that night, for a short while, the world was normal again: me, Adik and Victor, safe and warm, eating our supper. Just like everybody else.
12
Hope
I lie on the bed and scratch at the wallpaper with my fingernails. It comes off in thin, damp strips. I wonder how long it would take to scratch my way out of here.
There’s a dim orange light coming through the frosted window, and the occasional blue flash and wail of sirens. The first time I thought it was the police come to rescue me. I waited for the knock and thump of footsteps outside. But nothing happened.
This is all a big mistake. I can’t believe they don’t know that. I can’t see why they want me anyway. Natasha said they were stealing us. Perhaps she meant kidnapping, but this seems like a weird sort of place to hold people. And I don’t like the way the men look at me. It’s like a bad dream I can’t wake up from.
Natasha lies on the bed next to me. She tosses and turns and shouts in her sleep. I want to punch her. It’s her fault I’m here. Bitch.
There are muffled noises all around us. Voices in the corridor, footsteps outside our room, traffic thundering on the road. There’s still a cold burger on the bed, fat congealing on the wrapper. It makes me feel nauseous. My clothes are sticky and dirty and my head aches.
Then there’s a noise, close by, outside the room. Shouting in another language I don’t understand. A bright fluorescent light flickers on. The door is unlocked and Natasha wakes up with a start.
‘Get in!’ a voice growls, and two girls are pushed inside and the door is banged shut again behind them.
Then the light is switched off and they stand in the doorway, blinking. I can’t really see them properly, two thin shadows in the darkness.
Natasha says something in Russian, then in another language I don’t know.
‘She is Lulu and I am Ekaterina,’ the taller shadow says, in English with a thick accent. ‘From Sweden.’
Natasha snorts and says something that sounds like ‘Estonia’.
Ekaterina shrugs. ‘You are new?’ She looks at me.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m here by mistake. You have to tell them it’s a mistake.’
She sucks her teeth and doesn’t say anything. Lulu sits on the end of my bed and sniffs. ‘My bed,’ she mutters before turning to Ekaterina and talking in a weird language like I’m not even there.
I get up and run to the door and start to bang on it. ‘Let me out!’ I shout so loud it tears at my throat. I kick the door as hard as I can with my foot. The wood gives a little against the lock, the bottom panel moving forward a few centimetres. For a second I think it might be possible to push it out so I can crawl through like it’s a cat flap. I kick it again in the corner, but this time someone shouts and then the door opens, nearly hitting me. Fat Burger Man is standing in front of me, squinting and angry like he’s just been woken up.
‘Shut up!’ he shouts. I flinch, not sure what to do. I wonder what would happen if I ran at him, if I could wriggle past. He balls his hand into a fist. ‘Yes?’ he growls. ‘What you want?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, looking at the dirty carpet. ‘But I have to go home. This is just a big misunderstanding. I’m not supposed to be here.’ It comes out more like a mumble than a demand. I clench my teeth to stop them from chattering.
He stares at me like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. ‘You shut up or I get boss.’
‘You can’t keep me here!’ I’m shouting now but I don’t care. ‘My dad is coming to get me!’
He laughs like I’ve just told him a joke. ‘You can not go.’ He leans across the door and grabs me by the wrist. ‘You stay here.’
‘Let me go!’ He tightens his grip, twisting, so it burns my skin.
Then Natasha’s behind me. ‘Be quiet,’ she hisses in my ear. ‘Please.’
There’s something about the way she’s pleading that scares me. Fat Burger Man is laughing, showing yellow teeth and oily, sloppy lips.
‘You listen to your friend,’ he says, dropping my arm and pushing me backwards. As I stumble he slams the door and locks it again.
‘You no make trouble,’ Ekaterina says, climbing on to my bed next to Lulu, taking my space.
Now there’s no room for me. ‘Where am I supposed to sleep?’
She shrugs. ‘You sleep on floor. This is our bed.’
Oddly, Lulu puts her hand inside her top, pulls a few notes out of her bra and smoothes them flat against her thigh. She folds the notes into small squares and stuffs them into the edge of the mattress. ‘You touch, I kill you.’ She stares at me.
‘I don’t need your stupid money! I want to go home!’ I don’t understand why they’re being so horrible to me.
She sticks her finger up, her nails red and chipped.
‘Why you here?’ She says this like she’s accusing me of something. ‘You’re not one of us.’
‘I don’t know. There’s been a mix-up or something. I was with her –’ I point at Natasha but she’s lying down again, with her back to us, staring at the wallpaper.
‘Then they will be looking for you,’ Lulu says simply. ‘And that will bring trouble for us. If the police come they will kill you.’
‘Kill me?!’ Fear pulls at my heart muscle. ‘Why? What have I done?’
She doesn’t answer that. ‘This is my bed. You sleep with her.’
I sit down on the bed next to Natasha. This is like a weird, horrible dream. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, yet I feel kind of guilty.
Lulu lights a cigarette. The end glows in the darkness and the air fills with thick smoke.
Behind me Natasha sighs and turns over. ‘Don’t pay attention to them,’ she says quietly. ‘They’re from Estonia. Only mad come from Estonia.’
‘Oh.’
She moves back towards the wall a bit, leaving me enough room to lie down. ‘You can have room here.’
‘Thank you.’
She turns away from me again like she doesn’t want to talk.
‘Natasha?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Why are we here?’
She sighs but doesn’t say anything. I don’t really want to hear the answer anyway, because I know it will be bad. It’s against the law, to buy people and shut them up in dirty rooms, but my mind is so confused. Maybe I did do something, but I can’t remember it. Home seems like a whole lifetime away. And in between it’s like my head has been full of fuzz and panic. I rub my arms. I’m not cold, but my body is clammy and shivery, like the time I got knocked off my bike by a car speeding down the lane. Mum said I was in shock and made me drink a cup of sweet tea.
The girls mutter and shuffle about on the beds. There’s a crackling sound and the flick of a lighter and the room is filled with a sticky chemical smell, like burning plastic. Natasha sits up and sniffs.
‘Ty shto delaesh?!’
The girls mumble something but don’t turn round. Natasha looks really angry and jumps out of bed.
‘Stupid!’ she says, standing over them, then she shouts something else in Russian.
I stand up to see over her shoulder. Lulu has got a bit of tinfoil and she’s holding a lighter underneath it. I think for a moment that she must be trying to start a fire. But there’s some oily stuff on the tinfoil that burns, and as it burns she sucks up the smoke with the tube from an empty biro.
‘Why do you do this?’ Natasha is really cross. She knocks on Lulu’s head with her knuckles. ‘Hello? Anybody home?’
Lulu swipes her away with her hand, clumsy and floppy, and passes the foil to Ekaterina. Then she lies back on the bed and groans. In the flickering glow of the lighter her eyes are white as moons.
Natasha sucks her teeth and sits on the bed next to me. ‘Stupid,’ she mutters. ‘Stupid,’ she says again, loud enough for them to hear. Lulu sticks a lazy finger in the air at us and her friend blows out a slow breath of smoke, like someone letting air out of a balloon.
‘You want some?’ Ekaterina asks, holding out the piece of foil to me.
‘What is it?’
‘They give it to them,’ Natasha says, pointing at the door. ‘You don’t touch.’
Ekaterina shrugs and bends over for another hit. After that she falls asleep, still sitting up, her head bent into her lap, hands clasped together like she’s trying really hard to hold on to an invisible piece of rope.
I wait for a while until Natasha is obviously asleep. I need something heavy that will smash the window in one go. I feel around under the bed but there’s nothing except dust and greasy carpet. I stand up as silently as I can. I don’t want to wake them until I have to. In the corner under the sink there’s a rubbish bin made out of some kind of rusted metal.
I tip the rubbish into the sink and hold the bin in front of me towards the glass like a hammer. I take a deep breath. I hope it’s not a long way down.
The first time it bounces, but the glass cracks in the corner. Natasha sits up and shouts at me. The other girls don’t make a sound. I bring the bin down again quickly, and this time the whole window breaks in crazy jagged lines. I use the bin to shield my arms and knock away the rest of the glass. Chunks of it fall, smashing again as they reach the ground somewhere in the dark tangle of garden underneath. We are three storeys up, in the attic, with a steeply sloping roof right in front of me. There’s a drainpipe that I might be able to reach if I can get out of the window and find a way to slide down the slates without falling off. At the end of the garden is a thick concrete wall and beyond that a dual carriageway outlined by rows of orange street lights. It doesn’t look like I expected. I thought I would be able to see the street, houses, even other people. Maybe there’s a way to get around the front.
‘No!’ Natasha grabs my wrist.
I shake her off. ‘I can’t stay here.’
The night air is a relief, cold and fresh. I take great lungfuls of it as I bend down and turn round to step out on to the roof. Carefully I try to balance on the tiles, but the grip on my trainers isn’t good enough and my feet start to slip away from me and suddenly I’m sliding towards the edge of the roof with nothing to break my fall. Natasha screams and the fluorescent light flicks on and there are other voices shouting and Fat Burger Man has his head out of the window and he’s yelling at me. I press down with my hands, but there’s nothing to hold on to. I dig my toes into the plastic guttering as I get to the edge. It creaks, but it doesn’t break. It doesn’t feel very secure though. I couldn’t stand up or hang from it. Beneath, the garden is thick with overgrown brambles and rubbish.
It’s too far down to jump, and now there’s someone crashing around down there anyway, a younger man in a tan jacket and bright white trainers. He shines a torch up at me. At his heels is a snarling, barking dog.
Gingerly, I turn round so I’m sitting, pressing on the drainpipe with my heels. The plastic creaks and I hold my breath to try to make myself lighter.
Natasha leans out of the window.
‘My hand! Take my hand!’
Behind her Fat Burger Man is holding her round the waist.
‘Quick!’
I don’t know what to do. I’m scared of going back and scared of going forward. I can’t move.
Natasha’s face is going purple with the effort. She’s trying to grab me but her fingertips just graze my hair. Fat Burger Man grabs her legs and lowers her further out of the window.
‘Come with me. Please.’ She says, between gasps for breath. ‘If you don’t he will drop me. Then we both fall and die.’
‘I don’t want to go back in there! Why are they keeping us locked up? What have they bought us for? What are we doing here?’
‘I tell you! I tell you! But you have to come back inside. Now.’ Fat Burger Man drops her a little lower and she grabs me by the arm. ‘Hold on.’
Slowly, he pulls us both back up. My trainers slip against the tiles, greasy with moss and algae. When I get to the window another arm reaches under my shoulder to haul me up.
Then there’s a lot of shouting and pushing. Fat Burger Man pulls the sheets out from under Lulu and her friend and tips them off the bed like they’re laundry. He kicks Lulu in the back while she’s still on the floor. Then he turns on me. He shoves his hand against my shoulder and shouts. He waves his fist and pushes me against the bed so I bruise my ankle on the frame. I fight the urge to cry. Then Natasha grabs my hand and says something and he seems to calm down.
‘We have to go to another room,’ she says. ‘He says you cost him money. He wants to know who is going to pay.’
They make us all walk down the corridor to another room which is almost identical to the last one. Except this time there is no window at all, just a big square of plasterboard where the window should be. At least there are four beds, but there’s mess everywhere. Sheets on the floor, plastic bags, empty McDonald’s and KFC bags, cans of beer and stacks of magazines.
Fat Burger Man shouts something at us and then shuts and locks the door. At least we have a light switch inside.
Natasha starts to pick up the rubbish. ‘He said we have to clean up.’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘For him?!’
‘He says he will take the window out of our wages.’
‘Wages? He’s paying you to be here?’
Natasha sighs. ‘No. We are paying him.’
I don’t understand. ‘Paying him? For this?!’ I wave my hand at the shabby room.
‘Paying him back.’ She doesn’t look up. ‘It is expensive to come to England. We cannot afford to pay. So he pays and we work and we pay him back.’
‘Don’t lie.’
‘I don’t lie. I am telling the truth. We have to pay them what we earn.’ Natasha shrugs. ‘That’s business.’
I know she’s not being completely honest with me, but before I can say anything more I notice there is bloo
d on her leg, and her jeans are ripped where she cut herself pulling me back through the window.
‘You’re bleeding.’
She looks at her thigh and brushes her hand over it. ‘Only scratches,’ she says.
I suddenly feel bad for being mean to her. ‘I’m sorry.’
She looks up at me and smiles, just slightly, the corners of her mouth twitching a little. In the dingy light she looks exhausted, the dark hollows under her eyes even more pronounced.
‘It’s OK,’ she says. But I know it’s not. None of this is OK. We’ve, I’ve, got to find a way to get out of here.
With the window boarded over, the room is hot and claustrophobic and the strip light makes everything yellow and shiny. The Estonians are huddled under blankets with their eyes shut. I don’t understand why they’re paying to be here. You don’t pay to be locked in a room and kicked in the head and shouted at.
I wash my face in the sink and look at my reflection in the dusty mirror. I hardly recognize myself. My eyes are puffy and swollen, my skin is grey and blotchy, and my hair is like a thick hedge, all sticking out at funny angles.
I pick up an empty Coke can, some tissues and shove them in Natasha’s binbag. Next to the bed there’s a stack of magazines. I pick one up. Teen Hotties Special. I didn’t really notice before. They’re all dirty magazines.
When I was eleven I went round Kaz’s house for tea and she showed me a magazine she found in her brother’s room and we giggled at the pictures of the women, posing like dolls, their white breasts shocking and naughty.
This magazine is different. It’s just photos of girls in school uniforms, posing like Britney Spears, except every few frames their breasts escape from their too-tight shirts. Further on, there are pictures of men too, and close-up shots of bits of body and people having sex. I feel embarrassed to look, but I can’t ignore it.
‘What kind of work are you doing –’ I hold the magazine so Natasha can see – ‘exactly?’
Natasha stacks the second binbag neatly by the door. ‘What?’ she says distractedly, although I know she heard me.