Girl A

by Girl A

I should have tried to push my way past them and headed to the front of the takeaway and out of the door past the customers I guessed would be there, ordering or collecting their takeaways, oblivious to the sort of place this was. But I didn’t. I just did what Daddy told me. I was too frightened.

  Emma and I went upstairs and into a different room from the one when Daddy had first violated me. There was a mattress on the floor in this room, covered with an orange quilt; a table and two chairs; and a window with scruffy beige curtains that were hanging from nails.

  The two men joined us. Daddy continued to press the whole thing about the vodka and how it meant Immy deserved a treat. While he was talking, his nephew was touching me and trying to persuade me. I said I wanted to go, and reminded them that I was only fifteen. But it didn’t matter to them: Daddy just kept saying that in his country they could have sex with girls as young as eleven. ‘You’ve got to do it now,’ said Daddy. ‘It’s too late; you’re already upstairs. I gave you a treat, now you’ve got to give him a treat.’ And Immy wanted his treat.

  Daddy and Emma left, closing the door behind them as Immy moved in on me.

  He told me to get onto the bed and take my leggings off, and when I said no he started to take them off me himself. He was much stronger than me: I kept trying to shut my legs, but he forced them open again. Eventually, I realised I had no option, that there was no escape. Even if I’d pushed him away and managed to get out of the bedroom, there was still Daddy downstairs, and Emma.

  He was still forcing my legs open and pushing down on me, saying, ‘Come on, please, you’ve got to do it now.’

  In the end, I just lay there and let him do what he wanted. I realised dimly that the more I fought back, the longer it would take. The whole time, I just stared at the wall, trying to block it all out. When he’d finished, he just put his trousers back on and went downstairs, leaving me, in pain and in tears, on the bed. He’d worn no protection.

  I was putting my clothes back on when Emma walked in.

  ‘Come on,’ she said brusquely, ‘we can go now. I’ll go and get some money for you.’

  A few moments later she returned, handing me a £20 note. ‘I got it off Daddy,’ said my recruiter. ‘For giving Immy his treat.’

  As if that was going to make everything all right.

  * * *

  The whirlwind continued. Just one night later, Emma walked me into Market Street, supposedly just to have a drink. We were sitting on the steps of Dunne’s store, a few yards from Morrison’s, when Daddy drove into the car park and pulled up beside us.

  At the time I had no idea how he knew we were there, but I know now: it would have been from a text from Emma, or a phone call.

  ‘Get in,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said, rediscovering the belligerent tone I’d used so often with Mum and Dad. Out of nowhere, I’d decided to stand my ground.

  But it was pointless. ‘Look, Hannah,’ he said, leaning out of the open car window. ‘You’re my bitch now, and if you cross me someone might just kill you. So get in.’

  In a moment, Emma had grabbed hold of me, her nails digging into my wrist, telling me it was for my own good and that I had to go with him.

  ‘Listen to your friend,’ said Daddy. She wasn’t my friend, she was his! And so, finally, I climbed into the back of a car that normally bore trays of the Balti House’s gloop-like curries.

  I asked Daddy where he was taking me, and he said, ‘We’re just going for a drive.’

  Emma asked him if he’d be heading back to the Morrison’s car park. Yes, came the reply. ‘Hannah, I’ll wait for you,’ she said.

  Daddy drove for about five minutes: out past the Morrison’s petrol pumps, up the Bamford Road for a while and then onto a side street. His headlights picked out a couple of buildings and a set of gates. The gates were open and he drove through, then parked on a little slope next to a garage.

  There was nothing there beside an empty car park. Nothing beside Daddy and me. This time I was more frightened than ever, because it was the first time I’d ever been alone with him. At the back of my mind was the thought that if he wanted to kill me, here, now, he could do so and no one would be able to stop him.

  He switched off the engine and got out, his shoes scrunching on the stone chippings beside the car, and climbed into the back seat with me. I was in the furthest corner of the back seat, as far away from him as I could get.

  I was asking him if he was going to take me home. Yes, he said, but then came the inevitable: ‘Are you going to have sex with me?’

  I told him I didn’t want to – that I wanted it all to stop. I wanted to go home. But he just glowered at me and said, ‘You’re going to have to, my special girl. Because if you don’t, then maybe you’ll be killed or your sisters raped. And if you try to go home, maybe one day your house will be burned down.’

  With that, he shuffled towards me so he could begin making his sick moves on me.

  His breath was as stale as the smell of ghee from the takeaway that had seeped into the car’s upholstery. He took his jeans down and ordered me to use my mouth on him so he could get hard. I thought I was going to throw up because it tasted horrible. He grabbed hold of my hair so he could move my head up and down. Then he broke off and told me to lie down. I lay there, still, beneath him, and he knelt up and lifted my legs towards him. I begged him to take me home but it was no good. He just kept carrying on.

  Partway through, he complained that he had too little room to do what he wanted and he ordered me to sit on top of him. I didn’t want to. I’d never done that before, and I felt a further wave of embarrassment coursing through me.

  As it happened, I felt more disgusted with myself than ever before, because doing it like that made me feel that I was the instigator, the one in control, the one who wanted the movement I detested so much. I tried to block out the thought, and the pain, as he laboured beneath me. But I couldn’t.

  Afterwards, he wiped himself, threw the tissue away and drove me back to the Morrison’s car park where Emma – fat, violent Emma – was waiting for me, smirking.

  The whole sordid episode had taken no more than twenty minutes. As I got out of the car, dishevelled and in tears, she asked where he’d taken me.

  When I described it, she nodded. ‘Yeah, I know it,’ she said. ‘Been there loads of times.’

  * * *

  I had a bath as soon as we got back to Harry’s that night. The water was only tepid, but I was desperate to scrub away every trace of Daddy.

  The next morning, I ran another bath. I was about to climb in when Emma called out, realised where I was, and walked into the bathroom. She hadn’t bothered knocking, and there was no lock on the door to stop her, so in she came, lowered the loo seat cover and sat down.

  She looked me up and down, a frown coming to her face. I was embarrassed because she was looking at my breasts, or rather the tiny bumps that still hadn’t developed. Then she looked lower.

  ‘You need to shave,’ she said. ‘Shave it all off. It’ll make you look younger.’

  She looked around for a razor and handed it to me, then some gel. While I was drying myself she checked it to make sure I’d got every hair.

  ‘Make sure you do it every couple of days,’ she said, and then she was gone. The whole episode, and the thoughts it brought into my mind, made me feel weird and scared at the same time.

  * * *

  I think that was the day she took my phone. Without it, I was even more helpless and even more dependent on her. There seemed to be no respite. Two days later, Daddy called for us and said we were going into Rochdale. He set off in that direction, but then Emma told him we’d have to go via Mum and Dad’s house because I needed fresh knickers. ‘She’s not changed them since yesterday,’ she said. ‘She’s run out.’

  I went crimson – I had just kicked all my dirty clothes under the bed, not wanting to have to deal with them, or touch them, as they reminded me of what I had been through.

  In the
front, Daddy laughed and said: ‘You’ll need some clean knickers for tonight.’

  He parked just down the street from my parents’ house, and Emma and I walked up the pathway to the front door. It felt like the longest walk of my life as I struggled with my emotions. Dare I say anything to Mum and Dad? Should I try to stay? Or was my fate sealed? In the end, fear got the better of me.

  ‘Just come for some make-up,’ I said, still frightened, but probably just sounding like an everyday morose teenager to my family.

  ‘Are you stopping?’ asked Mum.

  ‘No, we’re off out again,’ I replied, wishing for all the world that she and Dad would insist I stayed.

  I desperately wanted a hug. I desperately wanted to escape.

  Instead, I climbed the stairs with leaden feet and went into my bedroom, looking briefly out of one of the tiny slit windows that looked out onto the estate. Emma came with me, and waited while I changed into clean knickers. Two minutes later we were saying goodbye, and another couple of minutes after that we were back in Daddy’s car and heading towards Rochdale.

  At a set of traffic lights I leaned across to Emma, who was in the back seat with me, and asked where exactly we were going.

  ‘We’re going to Lateef’s,’ she said. ‘At least, that’s what he says he’s called.’

  Fearing what was coming, I told her I didn’t want to. I pleaded with her not to make me. ‘You’ve got to,’ she said, her voice level. ‘And, anyway, it’ll be me he’ll be having sex with – not you.’

  We drove for about twenty minutes, with me getting ever more nervous. Had Emma really meant it about it just being her? Could I ever believe her now, after she’d handed me over to men who had raped me?

  We pulled up outside a grey, characterless block of flats. There was a man, tall, about forty, wearing traditional kurta clothes, waiting outside. Instead of inviting us in, he spoke quickly to Daddy and then climbed into the front passenger seat. Daddy then drove to a rank of shops around the corner. The man, presumably Lateef, got out and returned a few minutes later with a bottle of vodka. As usual, it was a litre of Glen’s.

  Back at the flats, Lateef led us upstairs. He had a big moustache and the thickset build of a boxer. I felt intimidated by him, even though he didn’t speak beyond telling us his name or, more likely, nickname.

  I knew what was coming and felt petrified. Emma was just giggling.

  The flat had a buzzer that was answered by a thin, wrinkled old man with thin grey hair and a moustache. He looked about sixty and was pulling up his trousers, traditional Asian ones called shalwar, as he answered the door.

  There was a white girl with him who looked around seventeen. She was tall and skinny with bleach-blonde hair that she wore up. I’m guessing they’d come out of the bedroom – she was kissing him as we walked into the living room. It looked perverted to see such a young girl kissing someone as old as him.

  The old man offered us some weed. Emma took a joint, but I didn’t want one. I’d tried it once, but it had scared me. The two of us sat together while the men spoke to each other in their own language. The other girl barely spoke to anyone. I think she was high on weed. I never did get to know her name.

  I reasoned that the vodka would help numb the pain of this latest encounter, and, as usual, I wasn’t wrong.

  We’d been drinking for nearly an hour when Daddy stood up and told me to go to the bedroom with him. ‘I need to speak to you,’ he said.

  He knew he was going to rape me, and I knew too. I just hoped the vodka would make it easier to bear. Once in the room, he told me what I knew he would: that I had to have sex with him again, and if I didn’t, he’d leave me there, miles from home and probably much, much worse.

  ‘But Emma said you’d leave me alone,’ I said, more in desperation than anything else. He just smirked. ‘Emma’s lying,’ he chuckled. ‘You have to do it.’

  Then he started pulling my leggings down. I was crying, saying, ‘Just leave me alone, I don’t want to do it any more.’ He said I had to, and he raised his hand. I thought I had no choice.

  There was a mattress on the floor again, which reminded me of the box room in which he’d first attacked me. But this time I had more to endure, because while I awaited my inevitable fate he took off every shred of his own clothing.

  His nakedness made it even worse than before because it meant I could feel his skin on my skin. He was incredibly hairy, not just on his chest, but on his stomach, his legs, everywhere.

  I felt him breathing on me. He was saying, ‘Do it like you mean it,’ and ‘You’re supposed to be my bitch.’ He told me to touch him. I tried to block it all out but I couldn’t. I felt so dirty.

  Like the last time, he’d worn nothing – no condom – and I was worried in case he’d made me pregnant. I shouted for Emma and we went into the bathroom together. She told me just to have a wee and I’d be fine. That would stop me getting pregnant. She didn’t care, and Daddy didn’t care.

  She then took me out of the bathroom and into the kitchen where Lateef was standing. The look on his face told me he was expecting to have sex with me as well. Daddy was there by now, and he started to tell me to go back into the bedroom with Lateef.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t. I don’t want to.’

  The tears welled up and began running down my cheeks, but I knew they weren’t going to save me. Lateef grabbed hold of me and started pulling me by the arm. ‘Come on,’ he was saying, ‘come on.’

  He was a big man and I was no match for him. In the room he took his own clothes off, pushed me onto the mattress and started to pull at my leggings.

  I was trying to shuffle my legs to fend him off, but he was all over me. I couldn’t stand it any more and so I kicked him, aiming at his groin but only managing to catch the top of his leg. He reacted by hitting me hard across the face.

  I screamed and, astonishingly, Emma came to my rescue, though I still don’t know why. She stood there in the doorway and yelled at him to get off me. Lateef was standing there naked and angry, but not quite sure if he fancied taking Emma on.

  I used the moment to hitch up my leggings and run for the door. We ran out of the bedroom and away from the flat, waiting for the sound of him, or Daddy, or both of them, to come chasing after us.

  Neither of us knew where we were, but we headed towards a main road, running part of the way but then slowing to a walk when we thought we’d got away and that they’d not bothered giving chase. But then, out of the darkness, we spotted Daddy’s car, driving on side lights and heading towards us out of the gloom. I didn’t bother running. The fight had gone out of me and, once more, I felt defeated.

  Emma and I both climbed into the back seat, Daddy shouting at us as we did. He was livid. Livid with both of us for running; livid with me for not having sex with Lateef. ‘He’s a fucking gangster, you don’t mess with him,’ he said, glowering at us in the rear-view mirror as he pulled away. ‘How dare you! Do you know what he could do to you? Or to me?’

  For once even Daddy looked scared, and as his eyes refocused on the road ahead I allowed myself a brief smile.

  He dropped us off at Harry’s house. As we were about to get out, he leaned into the back and gave each of us a £10 note. ‘Don’t tell anyone what happened tonight,’ he said.

  * * *

  For all his apparent fear that night, Daddy was still happy to carry on raping me over the next few nights. Five, six times, they all merged into one, always punctuated by the smell of his sweat and the soap he used to keep it in check.

  Just into August, less than a week after the time with Lateef, he picked us up from Harry’s place at about 6 p.m. and drove us, again in his Accord, to a house in the Coppice area of Oldham.

  By now I was terrified of Daddy and too scared of reprisals to fall out with Emma. I felt well and truly trapped, mentally and physically. The place we went to belonged to a guy called Pino, who worked at Tasty Bites. I’d not been in Tasty Bites for ages, but I’d seen him outside
so I knew he worked there.

  He was tall and skinny, with long, swept-back black hair, aged about thirty. There was another man there, again Asian, tall and big, in his late twenties or so.

  I knew they’d want sex because they always did. Wherever Daddy took us, I’d know that that was what was going to happen. That night, while we were driving over, Emma had actually been saying how much she was looking forward to it. How she was going to sleep with them. How much she really wanted it. Stuff like that. She loved it; I hated it. But it had somehow become my life.

  Daddy had driven away as soon as he’d dropped us off. The house was in a big block in a scruffy part of town. It had an overgrown garden.

  Pino let us in. There was vodka for us as usual, and we sat there talking to each other while the two men chatted in their own language. They were obviously deciding what was going to happen next.

  After a while, Pino told me to go upstairs. He said it as though it was a request, but I knew what was on his mind. I was used to it by then, and just tried to block it out because I knew it was going to happen anyway.

  Emma started to come with us but he said he didn’t want her, and sent her back downstairs.

  The walls of the main bedroom had been painted a garish red. You could tell there had been patterned wallpaper underneath that had just been painted over. There was a double bed, along with a sofa, a big mirror, a wardrobe and a stereo.

  I was on the bed and Pino was telling me how pretty I was and that I should relax. He was trying to kiss me, pulling at my top and trying to pull my leggings down. It felt horrible. My head was spinning and he just kept on touching me.

  I started to cry. I was saying, ‘I don’t want to do it. I’ve got a boyfriend.’ I didn’t, but I thought it might persuade him to leave me alone. It didn’t, though; it just made him angry. He kept shouting at me, saying I knew why I was there and that I should bloody well get undressed and do it. Then he was on the phone to Daddy, shouting at him too, complaining about me. I could hear Daddy trying to smooth things out with him, but he wasn’t having it.

  One of them slammed the phone down; I think it was Pino. He turned towards me, pulling at my clothes again. Something inside me snapped. I couldn’t stand it and screamed at him to get off me. Then I was shouting for Emma. A few moments later, there was a banging on the door and we heard someone shouting, ‘Police!’