Girl A

by Girl A

  It didn’t work. In the end she said, ‘Look, I’ll go and buy you a big bag of Haribo and leave them in my office. You come and pick them up at the end of the day and go home, and share them with your family.’ She paused and looked at me. ‘Have a proper chat with your parents, Hannah. You need to – and everyone wants to help you.’

  I wanted so desperately to say, ‘Yes, I’ll do that, I really will.’ But of course I couldn’t – not then. I’m so sorry, Miss Crabtree.

  And all the time she’d been talking to me, being nice, my phone – the new one Emma had ‘allowed’ me – had kept on vibrating in my pocket.

  I was still in tears as I fled Miss Crabtree’s office, heading for the exit and taking the phone out of my pocket as I ran. I could see I had loads of missed calls, all from Emma. When she rang again, I answered.

  ‘We’re outside,’ she said. ‘Come to the front.’

  It was Tariq’s taxi. I sat in the back as he drove to Harry’s so I could get changed. Half an hour later, we were on our way to some disgusting flat that didn’t know the world of Haribos and kindness.

  When I next saw Miss Crabtree she asked me why I hadn’t collected the sweets.

  ‘Sorry, I forgot,’ I said. Just deadpan.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jane

  By now I’d come to know every yard of the journey to Aarif’s flat. If the condoms weren’t already there, Emma would always have her supply from the Taylor Street clinic to fall back on. Billy was the only one who didn’t use a condom, but I wouldn’t dare object; and usually, if I was lucky, I was too drunk to realise, anyway.

  Apart from Billy, there wasn’t any pawing, not really. It was usually just quick, as if it was nothing – which, really, it was, I told myself. All I had to do was go into a bedroom with whomever – someone I’d never even spoken to – and let him do things to me until he was finished.

  Normally, as I say, it was in twos or threes. Sometimes it was up to five at a time, one after the other. They’d slap me and grab me sometimes. Once, at Safeer’s place, I got grabbed by the throat. I’d already slept with three of them and I told the next guy that I wouldn’t sleep with him. So he got me by the throat and threatened me and called me a ‘white bitch’ and a slag.

  I came to learn not to aggravate them. I knew they were going to have sex with me anyway, so it was best if I just let them. That way it would be easier. But even now I panic if someone shouts near me, especially if it’s a man.

  You never know what goes on behind closed doors, but I got the impression Asian girls are safe from them. Maybe it’s because they wanted them to be pure so they could marry them off, and maybe it’s partly about availability. Their girls are different because they’re generally so covered up. They don’t drink, they don’t go out walking the streets at night; they’re protected to the nth degree.

  Safeer was in his forties, but he had a much younger ‘girlfriend’; a half-white, half-black girl who looked the same age as me. Like the other mixed-race girl I’d seen, the one at Aarif’s flat, she was something of an exception, because in the time I was being passed around by the gang it was usually just white girls. We were the ones who were available. It might have been black girls or Chinese girls, or girls of any other race, but around our way, we were the ones who were available.

  I first met this particular girl on an evening when I’d already been raped, at a house in Nelson. Emma, Roxanne and I had walked to Morrison’s car park in Heywood, and been picked up by Saj and Aarif. We headed off to the motorway and then up into Lancashire, where we ended up at Saj’s place. As soon as we got there he gave us some gin. I wanted to get drunk because I knew what was coming, but I’d only managed two glasses before Emma told me to go upstairs. As usual, I didn’t want to, but as usual she just said, ‘You’re already here now, and if you don’t, how the fuck do you think you’re going to get home?’

  The sheets on the bed were brown and smelt of grease and sweat. There were Asian-style pictures on the walls; one of them with what looked like a poem and a scroll.

  Saj was in traditional Asian clothes with baggy trousers. It was all either white or light blue.

  He tried to take my leggings off for me, but I did it myself because I didn’t want him touching me. Then he put a condom on and started. He was doing it really slowly, which filled me with revulsion because I just wanted it to be over with. Doing it slow like that, it’s like the way you’d do it with your boyfriend or something – something loving.

  I just shut my eyes, and thought, Hurry up, hurry up and get it over with. Times like this had become more of a mental torture than a physical one. I could deal with what was happening to my body, but in my head I just felt disgusted: sex is supposed to be with someone you love or, if not, then at least someone you want to be with, even if it’s lust.

  Above me, Saj was saying that he really liked me and that he wanted me to stay overnight. God, I could never do that! I couldn’t cope with lying next to some creature like that for an entire night.

  He kept trying to persuade me, saying he had enough money to pay Emma. I just kept saying no, and that I’d have to let Tariq know and he wouldn’t allow it.

  When he’d finished, Emma brought Aarif into the room and said I’d have to sleep with him as well. I was crying again by now, saying, ‘No, I want to go home. I’ve done it now, can you take me home?’

  Emma said, ‘You can’t just go with Saj and not Aarif when he’s here as well.’ But she then tried to appease him by saying he could have Roxanne. He moaned about it because for all that she was only thirteen, Roxanne was almost as big as Emma then. Eventually, though, he agreed to go into the bedroom with her.

  It was Aarif who took us back to Morrison’s car park, and from there, almost immediately, we were picked up by Tiger. Billy was with him in the car. As we sped away towards Safeer’s place, Emma told me we had to go with them because I’d only slept with one person that night. Unbelievably, I found myself wondering if I would have been safer staying the night with Saj.

  They’d given us a bottle of vodka, and even though the journey couldn’t have taken much longer than ten minutes, I tried to drink as much as I could. As ever, I knew that if I was drunk I wouldn’t feel as bad afterwards: it was always worse when I was sober, as I had been with Saj. The vodka was making me feel sick, but I kept forcing it down so I could get drunk.

  Safeer’s ‘girlfriend’ sat with us in the living room in an awkward silence. We’d been there for maybe ten minutes before Emma told Roxanne to go into the bathroom with Tiger and give him a blow job.

  I assume that was what she started doing, but after only a short time, Roxanne came out and said Tiger wanted to speak to Emma. They had a hushed conversation before Emma came to me and told me I had to go into the bathroom and finish him off. He didn’t like Roxanne: she was too fat.

  Emma pushed me through the doorway but once I’d got there, trapped and shaking, I told him I didn’t want to do it. He laughed at me, and then started trying to have sex with me but he decided the room was too cramped for that, so he ordered me to do what Roxanne had started. When it was over, he got up and left. I just sat there, staring at the wall, half-drunk, completely violated, angry that I’d had to do something Roxanne was supposed to have done. And then feeling guilty because I’d dared have that thought.

  Safeer’s ‘girlfriend’ stayed in the living room the whole time. I guess for her it was normal, and besides, maybe it was her turn later. I never saw her again.

  * * *

  As the days wore on, I began to wonder about Jane. She clearly wasn’t stupid, and I sensed she was becoming suspicious. She’d seen the way Emma behaved around me, and she must have wondered why I was so quiet and seemingly under her thumb.

  I didn’t give it that much thought, though, because my retreat into alcohol was pretty much complete by the middle of November 2008: even on the days and nights that I wasn’t being abused – which wasn’t many – I’d try to drink myself into
oblivion so I could forget.

  Jane came in to see me at school on a Wednesday, midway through November. She was there partly to explain that I’d been referred to Childcare Services, because everyone was worried for me.

  We began talking about drinking, and I let slip that when I was drunk I’d do things I’d never even think about doing when I was sober.

  ‘I’ll sleep with anyone when I’m drunk,’ I said. It was meant to be a joke, but Jane latched on to it and the conversation went deeper: a lot deeper.

  I suddenly found myself telling her how controlling Emma was, and how she’d deliberately get me drunk so she could take advantage of me and make money from me. She’d take me to meet men who’d then sleep with me. And she’d rarely let me have a mobile phone, partly because she wanted to control me and partly because she was paranoid about me having the men’s numbers for myself. As if I’d want to.

  At one point Jane looked up and asked: ‘Did you ever see money changing hands?’

  I nodded. Emma always had at least £60 on her at any one time, I said, and I’d seen her force Roxanne to sleep with a man. Emma got £20 for it, and she gave Roxanne a fiver.

  It was a day for confessions, and for the rest of that meeting I couldn’t help but confide in her, as maybe I should have done a long time before. I suppose I saw it as my only chance. I told her a lot about what I’d been going through, and how, for all that Emma and Roxanne seemed to enjoy what they were doing, I always felt scarred and damaged. And how I wanted it to end so that I could have my life back.

  The one thing I didn’t tell her about was Courtney’s involvement in it all. I thought she’d been attacked, but I wasn’t sure.

  Sitting there with Jane, I told her that despite all that was going on in my own life I’d made a new friend at school. Her name was Robyn, and she was the sort of girl who right from the start would try her best to look after me. Fat chance, but Jane still smiled. I said I felt ashamed about what was happening to me, and that I didn’t want any of the other kids at school to find out.

  It reminded me of Harry’s house. ‘There’s sick graffiti about me on the walls outside,’ I said. ‘And in one of the bedrooms … it’s like it’s been written about someone else, someone I’ve never met.’

  But of course, I had.

  While I was with Jane that day, she got me to fill in some forms about relationships and respect. The first page was called, ‘My life as a young woman in Rochdale’, and after that came some headings where she asked me to give her answers. This is how I filled it in:

  Something nice: Hanging around with mates

  Something horrible: School

  My mates: Robyn

  How do I spend my time: Drinking and going out

  Where do I go: Friends’ houses

  What do I do: Party

  What do I want to do in the future: Be rich

  What risks have I taken: Loads

  After that, she wanted me to make a list under two headings: ‘Good things about being a girl’ and ‘Bad things about being a girl’.

  In the first column I wrote down the usual suspects: Boys, make-up, getting hair done and shopping.

  In the second I wrote:

  Losing your virginity, periods, having a baby, responsibility, being used, being in love, vulnerability.

  I thought we were finished, but then she asked me to do one more of the things she did with kids like me. ‘Perfect Partners’, she called it, and I had to describe the sort of lad I dreamed about.

  Looking back, I think she was trying to make me think about Jake (she still didn’t know he hadn’t been a real, proper boyfriend). She said she wanted it to be all about respect: how you’d look at the qualities a lad had to offer and aim for someone with good ones, because that would make you feel good about yourself and good about life.

  So I thought about that. And I realised that while I was being ravaged by the men, and flipped this way and that way – treated as though I might have been one of those naked, plastic models they have in department-store windows – Jake had come on to me and he had used me too.

  And, finally, I tried desperately hard to imagine that I was leading a normal life and could actually choose someone to be my partner – someone to love and to look after me; someone to value and respect me.

  All of that was beyond me for ever, I thought. I could feel Jane studying me as I scribbled my list of ‘Perfect Partner’ words for her, but she had only an inkling of why I was wiping away tears.

  I’d written:

  Caring

  Nice body

  Honest

  Fit

  Nice

  Money

  Drinks

  Car

  Funny

  Trustworthy

  Good looking

  Kind

  Job

  Romantic

  ‘Well done, Hannah,’ she said. ‘It looks a lovely list.’

  A week later, on 28 November, Jane was back in school, and this time she asked me the question I’d been pushing to the back of my mind – it filled me with dread and fear.

  Would I talk to the police again? she asked. Would I tell them what the gang had been doing to me since the days with Daddy?

  ‘No way,’ I said. ‘I only told you because I’m not involved any more. And it’s confidential.’

  Inside, I was shuddering, and wondering how the hell she could even ask such a question – even though I was bluffing, and was actually still caught up by the gang.

  I’d reported it all to the police nearly four months earlier, and what had happened? Nothing. Who was Jane to be suggesting that I talk to them again now?

  ‘No,’ I said again.

  Jane realised she’d crossed a line with me that I wasn’t about to go over, and held up her hands as if to say, ‘I surrender.’ Then, while I sat there, sullen, eyes down, staring into my lap, she changed the subject.

  She talked for what seemed like ages, and, slowly, as I came round from being angry with her, I gradually began to take in what she was saying.

  She was talking about exploitation, sexual exploitation, of girls like me who some men saw as easy meat. They were young and they were vulnerable, and they were afraid to come forward and tell people who could help them.

  ‘It’s happening to lots of girls, Hannah,’ she said softly.

  I looked up, but only for a second.

  She carried on. ‘I’ve seen them over the years, talked to them, and all of us at Crisis have tried to help them. And, Hannah …’ She paused. ‘Hannah, I know it’s still happening to you, and that you don’t want it to be. It’s fine that you don’t want to speak to the police again for now, but maybe one day you will. And if that happens, then I’ll help you with that. Do you understand?’

  I understood, but it was still difficult for me to deal with. We sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, me undecided, one moment raising my head to speak, the next lowering it again, too frightened, too ashamed.

  Eventually, though, I found my tongue. ‘I’m still not going to the police,’ I whispered, ‘but I’ll tell you.’

  So for the next few minutes I gave her some of the pieces of the awful, broken jigsaw that Emma had made of my life.

  I told her about the flats and houses I’d been to, the ones in Rochdale, Bradford, Leeds and Oldham. ‘The men don’t usually live in these places,’ I said. ‘They just meet there. Sometimes they’re just empty.’ And then: ‘Did you know I’ve been raped?’

  ‘I’m not sure …’ she said, her voice trailing off to a silence.

  So I told her, told her about that first time with Daddy, and the room above the Balti House, and the clock, the children’s clock, that kept on ticking, and how he’d forced me even after I’d said no. I told her how I’d been shouting for Emma, whose only response had been to tell me to shut up.

  I told her how Daddy had made me feel sick, and how after that first rape it had all got into sort of a pattern that always had Emma at the heart o
f it.

  I told her about the time I’d gone with Emma and Roxanne to a flat in Rochdale where I’d been slapped for refusing to have sex with one of the men. And the time a taxi driver I’d never met pulled off the road onto a dirt track. Emma had told me to give him oral sex and I’d refused. Why couldn’t she do it? ‘Because we can’t get home if you don’t – and he wants you to do it.’ And, shamed and humiliated, I told her I’d done what Emma had told me to do and the driver had dropped us off in Heywood.

  I told Jane what a bully Emma was, and how scared of her I was. I told her how sorry I felt for Roxanne and Paige because they didn’t stand up to her. As if I ever did.

  Jane seemed to be on the verge of tears herself when I told her about the time Emma had told Roxanne to sleep with two men, but had handed over her mobile so she would be safe – as if a girl of thirteen could be safe with two paedophiles four times her age. That night, Emma had tried to ring Roxanne to check on her but the phone had been switched off. When we’d finally found her, Emma had gone mad with the kid because she’d only got £5 for sleeping with each of the men, twice. Emma had screamed at her and hit her.

  I told Jane about Tariq, and that even though Emma’s mum knew what he was up to, she’d let him drive her around in his taxi. I also told her how Emma had gleefully confessed to blackmailing another man by telling him she was pregnant, even though that couldn’t have been true because she’d had the hormone implant.

  In the middle of that heart-to-heart, Jane got to know how the people at Harry’s place knew exactly what Emma was doing, and didn’t lift a finger when she’d take little kids with her when she went to meet the men in the Asian gang. She’d say one of them was her kid. Around this time, in fact, Emma was mad with Crisis Intervention for telling Childcare Services that she sometimes took a little niece of hers with her when she was out ‘partying’. It wasn’t Crisis Intervention, as it turned out, but that’s what she thought.

  I was also really worried for Paige, I said, because she looked so young and I knew she was still involved with Emma. In the same way she’d softened me up, she was taking Paige out. Though in her case, because at that time she was still only thirteen and a virgin, Emma just made her give the men blow jobs.