by Girl A
It was as though he didn’t know he’d done anything wrong. I couldn’t get my head straight: I knew he’d forced me, but then, after trying to push him off, I’d just lain there – I’d reasoned I would be safer that way. So now, afterwards, I was thinking, Was it rape or wasn’t it? He obviously doesn’t think so from the way he is acting.
Daddy told me we’d go downstairs. Courtney was still sitting at the kitchen table, just as she had been those few minutes earlier. And so were Emma and Chef.
It was obvious that I’d been crying, and I tried to give Courtney an imploring look so she could help me. But, weirdly, my friend of old wouldn’t look at me. Daddy, however, wasn’t having any of it. He gave me a look like thunder that sent a chill through me.
I looked at Emma but she just started laughing. She knew I’d been raped, but she actually found it funny. She seemed to be gloating. The thought seared through my mind, What kind of monster is she? And no sooner than the thought had formed, I felt a new fear building up inside.
Whatever Courtney may have been thinking, she said nothing. I think she knew it was best to keep quiet because of the way the other two were behaving. She looked almost as scared as me. Distantly, at the back of my mind, I wondered why.
We’d been back in the kitchen for about ten minutes when Daddy ordered us into what turned out to be his own car, a silver Honda Accord, so we could go and collect Immy, his ‘nephew’, who was due to work a shift at the takeaway that night. He was smiling as he said it, but I knew there was a veiled threat in every word he spoke.
Daddy came from Oldham, and that’s where Immy lived, too. All three of us girls sat in the back, me wedged in behind Daddy, next to Emma. I was still trying to grapple with what had happened to me upstairs at the Balti House.
Emma had brought the last of the vodka with her and now offered me a swig. I didn’t want it, but I drank some anyway, recoiling at the taste but wanting the effect it would bring, hoping it would start to relieve the feelings of sickness and revulsion that were coursing through me.
Then the girl I’d felt was becoming my best mate turned to Courtney and told her how Chef had given her £20 so he could go down on her. ‘Sad fucker,’ she said.
I couldn’t help but imagine the scene: her, sprawled, fat and leery on a bed in the room next to the one in which Daddy had raped me. I realised then that the things I’d heard about Emma were true – that she did go with lots of men, and, worse, that she’d let someone as greasy as Chef slaver all over her just to get £20 from him. The dawning realisation horrified me.
Again I tried to catch Courtney’s eye, but each time she’d look away. Feeling terribly alone, I drank some more of the vodka.
As we came into the main Asian district of Oldham, we pulled up at some traffic lights. There were two lanes, and as Daddy looked across at the car next to him he recognised the people inside. There were four of them, all men.
‘Shady!’ one of them shouted, his arm resting on the open window frame. I’d never heard Daddy called that before, but suddenly it fitted. It suited this new version of the man I’d once trusted. ‘Three girls, eh?’ the man went on. ‘You must be doing all right!’
Daddy laughed, and Emma did too. She was still holding the bottle of Glen’s, and held it out towards the guys in the car, whooping like she was at the best party ever.
I could only think, Is this real?
The lights were just changing when the chatty guy looked over at me, pale, and so obviously young, sitting in the back seat. ‘New girl, eh?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Daddy. ‘I’ll give you a ring.’
It was then that I dimly began to realise that my personal hell was only just beginning.
A few minutes later, we were picking Immy up from the fruit stall he worked on in a local market and heading off back to the Balti House. Immy was thin, in his twenties, with a pinched, mean-looking face. He sat in the front, and he and Daddy chatted in a language I had no way of understanding.
I wanted to run away screaming, but it felt as though I had nowhere to run to. And Emma made doubly sure I didn’t leave: she turned towards me and whispered, ‘So, what will your mum and dad think of their lovely little daughter now? Shagging a Paki, eh? They wouldn’t want to hear that, would they?’
For the rest of the journey I felt a relentless, creeping sense of self-loathing. I convinced myself that Mum and Dad wouldn’t want to know me. They’d see the fact that I had ‘allowed’ this to happen as the final straw. I knew – or at least thought I knew – exactly what they’d be like. In my mind’s eye, as we sped through that alien town, I could see them saying it: ‘You’ve brought it all on yourself. We told you, we kept telling you – and now this. People will just look at you and think, “Slag.” You shouldn’t have been there in the first place. They obviously wanted something from you, otherwise they wouldn’t have kept giving you free things. What did you expect them to do?’
In the emotional haze that engulfed me after the rape, I couldn’t see that I was the victim in all of this, and that for all their misgivings about my behaviour, Mum and Dad would have wanted to help me, to protect me. True, they’d come to despair of me, and it felt to me they were as happy as I was that I’d seemingly left home. But they were still the people who’d given me life; they were still my parents. I wanted to throw open the car door and run to them. But the shame of what had happened to me, and my growing sense of failure, wouldn’t let me. Instead, I closed my eyes, suppressing the sickness I felt in my stomach, crushed between the car door and Emma’s podgy, immoveable thigh.
I was trapped. I had nowhere to run.
* * *
In the space of a few hours, my whole life had become a surreal nightmare. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to know that it wasn’t the conscious me that was in such pain and fear.
I was still confused by the way Daddy and Emma were behaving. It made me wonder whether what had happened to me was normal. Everybody seemed to be acting like nothing had happened at all.
Back at the Balti House, Daddy – the new Daddy – told Emma to take me upstairs and to send Courtney home.
‘Please don’t go,’ I begged her, looking pleadingly at Courtney, just as I’d done in the car. ‘Please.’
Courtney bit her lip, nervously, looking from me to Emma. In that single, awful moment she looked desolate, but before she could speak, Emma started shouting, telling her to leave.
Courtney seemed terrified of Emma as well, so she took what she must have seen as her only opportunity to bolt, leaving me all alone. Emma turned to me and gave me that look she had.
‘You’re staying,’ she spat.
I wanted to run but I couldn’t move. I didn’t feel I could argue. By now, all the fight, all the spark, had gone out of me. I was numb, too confused and tired to even think straight.
We sat upstairs for what seemed like hours. At one point, Emma leaned her huge frame towards me and in a low, menacing whisper said: ‘You’ll do what I tell you from now on, OK? You know what they’ll think at home. It won’t be rape to them. They’ll think you loved it. They’ll think you loved being shagged by a guy even older than your dad.’ She paused, then said, ‘A bit like Courtney the other night. Remember? When she came back with cider all over her?’ My mind fought groggily to remember, and I nodded dumbly. ‘Stick with me now, though, and you’ll be fine. I’ll look after you. All you have to do is do what I say. You can carry on living at Harry’s; you’ll still get to eat and we won’t even make you pay rent. I might even give you some money.’
I was too frozen with fear to reply. Instead, I nodded slowly, my eyes lowered to the floor, avoiding the gaze I knew was bearing down on me. Inside, I shivered, and wondered about Courtney and what she, too, may have been through.
The takeaway opened at 5 p.m. and they gave us more food and more vodka. I drank it silently, just praying for this nightmare to end.
At about 11 p.m., Daddy came upstairs and told us to go to his car. ‘We’re going
to a party,’ he said. His words reignited my fear. Why didn’t they just let me go?
They led me outside and I joined Emma on the back seat. What did they have in store for me now?
* * *
We headed off to a flat that I think was somewhere in Oldham, but in a different area to the one we’d been to before. We pulled up outside a nondescript-looking house, and an Asian man opened the door.
It seemed we were expected because as soon as we arrived, Daddy started pulling me into a bedroom.
I knew what was coming, or at least I thought I did, and I started trying to talk him out of it. ‘We did something earlier,’ I whispered. ‘We don’t need to do it again.’ I was so frightened I even said, ‘We’ll do it another day.’ Anything to try to keep him away.
But it wasn’t just Daddy I had to fend off this time. Emma joined in, persuading me, forcing me to do what he wanted. She said she’d come in with me, and then started pushing me through the doorway as he pulled. I tried to resist, but then she shouted: ‘Just get in the fucking bedroom and get it over with!’ For a few seconds the three of us were in the room together, but as soon as Daddy told Emma to get out she turned on her heel.
‘I thought you were going to stay,’ I said.
She shrugged and reached for the door handle. ‘Well, sorry, but I’m not,’ she said over her shoulder.
With Emma gone, and the door closed, Daddy took off his trousers, sat down on the bed and looked up at me. ‘It’s time to give Daddy a blow job, Hannah,’ he said matter-of-factly, like he was asking for a cigarette or something.
Instinct took over and I reverted to what I’d done previously. ‘No,’ I giggled, trying to make sure I didn’t make him angry. Maybe I could make him feel guilty; he’d remember how well we got on?
But it was no good.
I hated what he made me do then even more than earlier, because it somehow felt more intimate. I was choking and crying but still he didn’t seem bothered. He just kept a steel grip on my head. Eventually, he pushed me away and told me to lie down. Through the fear I sobbed. ‘But I’m only fifteen,’ I whimpered.
He wasn’t fazed at all. He just looked me in the eye and said, ‘It doesn’t matter. Where I come from, I can have sex with girls who are eleven.’
I didn’t know if that was true or not. But it horrified me. Instantly, my heart went out to any girl who had to endure what I was going through at such a young age.
I tried to get dressed again, tried to regain some dignity, but Daddy wasn’t done. ‘No, Mulla is coming in now,’ he revealed.
Mulla? Another man? My throat tightened. I couldn’t take any more.
‘No, please!’ I begged. ‘I’ve just done it with you.’ Daddy shook his head and stroked my head like I was a sleeping baby. ‘Shh,’ he breathed. My stomach churned as every inch of me trembled with fear.
Mulla, in his forties, with a black moustache, smiled as he entered the room. He could see that I was crying, that mascara had left smudges on my cheeks, but the smile stayed in place. He just didn’t care either. He and Daddy laughed and joked for about thirty seconds, before Daddy walked out. I could tell roughly what it was about because of the smutty looks on their faces and the way they both kept glancing towards me. But the detail passed me by because it was all in their own language – Mirpuri, I discovered later on. Much later.
My jeans were still on the floor because I’d had no time to retrieve them. In Mulla’s sick mind it just made it easier. This time, I didn’t do anything to resist the attack because I felt it would make no difference: he’d get what he wanted one way or another and it would just prolong my agony. Instead, I bit my lip and turned my face away from his leering smile.
As he raped me I could feel him touching my chest, my still-flat chest.
When he finally allowed me out of the bedroom, Emma looked up, then glanced over to Daddy and asked: ‘Right, are you finished now? Are we going?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied and, within moments, me in a daze, we were heading towards the car. Once inside, Daddy gave Emma £30 and she turned towards me, handing me a £10 note.
‘Get yourself some fags,’ she said, breezily.
So that was it: Emma had given me to two paedophiles, and now she was handing me money as some sick kind of compensation. In the front of the car, on the way home, the two of them – Emma and Daddy – chatted away as if nothing had happened. I spent the journey wiping away tears with the back of my hand.
Back at Harry’s place, she closed the front door and headed off to bed, telling me she’d see me in the morning. I stood in the hallway, still in shock. It was gone one o’clock in the morning and I felt broken and dirty beyond anything I had ever known. I wanted to have a shower, to scrub the filth of those two men away from my body. But my strength, my will, had gone, and instead I just slipped into bed beside the girl I was sharing with.
She was only about eight, and part of me wanted to snuggle up next to her. But I felt too dirty. I just lay there, gripping the very edge of my side of the bed, the duvet up to my shoulders, my body aching, looking at the darkening shadows on the wall.
I knew that life would never be the same again. My spirit had been shattered. Somehow, a girl just a few months older than me had sold me to perverts who wanted to have some depraved version of sex with me. I couldn’t understand the motives of either. I couldn’t work out how to escape. All I knew was that I felt exhausted and unclean.
A temporary escape finally came to me: sleep. I dreamed I was caught in a spider’s web, held in the middle of it by threads, each silky and thin but with a grip like steel. Every time I tried to break free, I was pulled back, slowly, reluctantly, inevitably, by the spider that wanted to consume me.
* * *
Lying in bed the following morning, sore, aching, the images from the night before wouldn’t leave me. As I watched a lone flea negotiate its way along the coverless duvet, I realised that, just as in the dream, I was trapped, and there was nowhere for me to hide.
Trying to go home wasn’t an option now. Until I’d been raped, first by Daddy, then by Mulla, I’d hated home, I’d wanted to be a rebel, and I’d wanted to be free. But was this freedom? No, it was a trap – a spider’s web in which I was the fly. I couldn’t go home, I realised, not ever, and least of all now that Emma held this sick secret over me. Oh, I might still be able to pop back to see Mum and Dad and my brothers and sisters, but never again with the freedom of knowing I could actually stay. I could never now fit back into normal family life. I felt I was tainted, that I was an outcast, different. Instead, I would be for ever linked to Harry’s place, and to Daddy, by the near-invisible threads being pulled by Emma. Hannah, the free spirit, the teenage rebel, was now a prisoner. Lying there, reluctant to face the day, I suddenly realised that with Emma controlling my life, Harry’s house was going to become a hell of its own.
* * *
I had, perhaps, one hope. Over my first couple of weeks there, Harry had become a real father figure to me. With my own dad suddenly out of my life, I felt I could get on with him. In the early days he didn’t say much, but gradually he’d include me in conversation and I came to feel part of the household. I thought it was really cool that he bought vodka and cider for us, and let us come in and go out whenever we wanted.
There were times, usually in the day, when he’d have long chats with me and maybe Emma. By then, Courtney had stopped coming by. It didn’t feel like she was my friend any more; we’d drifted apart. Instead, at least at weekends, there was another of Emma’s friends, Roxanne, who was thirteen. Roxanne had been coming to the house for ages so they all knew her.
Part of me wanted to tell Harry what had happened to me, but I didn’t dare because of Emma. She warned me the morning after those first rapes not to say anything. It would be our secret, she said, and, anyway, Harry was never going to believe me if I said I’d been raped.
So for all that I’d speak to Harry, and try to take comfort just from him being there, I didn�
�t dare confide in him.
Chapter Eight
Emma’s Lying
Daddy had moved quickly in taking me to Mulla, and now Emma did likewise. Within a couple of days, my rapist’s little blue car pulled up outside Harry’s just before 7 p.m. and she led me out to it. Afraid, I did as I was told and squeezed into the back, while she sat next to Daddy in the front.
He dropped us off outside the Balti House, telling us to go round the back while he collected some curries from the kitchen and delivered them.
We were sitting on the stairs when he returned ten minutes later. Smiling benignly, as if the last few days had never happened, he held out another bottle of vodka, some cola and a couple of glasses.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Don’t look so sad, Hannah. This will cheer you up.’
It didn’t, of course. It couldn’t. But sitting there, one step below Emma, I put the glass she’d poured for me to my lips and sipped. I’d never liked the taste. Now I liked it even less.
He brought us some food, too. Immy had been working front of house when we’d arrived, but the takeaway was quiet enough for him to join us, and for a few minutes Daddy and he were talking to each other. I’m guessing now that they were deciding what to do with us. All the time, I was nervously sipping the vodka, Emma refilling my glass every time.
It was a litre bottle and we’d had about half each by the time Immy came up to us. He started trying to hold me, his hands roaming around my top and leggings. Everything was getting a bit hazy when Daddy came up onto the staircase to join us.
Once again, he started to talk about the treats he’d given us, meaning the vodka, and that I should give Immy a treat in return. He kept saying it was his birthday present. He said we’d just go upstairs and chill for a bit.