I told him my number and he punched it into his phone.
‘My name is Mohammed, by the way,’ he said, before he sloped off.
Sam tutted.
‘Do you realise how much older than you he is?’ she said disapprovingly.
But I didn’t care.
That was the day my life changed in a way I could never have imagined.
Chapter ten
EGYPTIAN MO
Later that evening Sam tried to warn me again. She was older and wiser than me and knew exactly the kind of person Mohammed was, and what he was after. She was streetwise and smart; I thought I was too but, in reality, I was easily led and inexperienced.
‘You shouldn’t even make eye contact with people like that, let alone talk to them,’ she told me.
But I had been chatty, friendly and open and Mohammed Karrar picked up on all the cues. A young girl in the cold, wearing skimpy clothes and make-up, I was more than ready to talk to strange older men and to hand over my phone number. He honed in on the vibes I was giving off and decided very quickly, through experience, that I was an easy target. I had ‘victim’ written all over me.
I had no idea that the random meeting was part of a plan and a process that he had gone through many times before with many different girls. He didn’t want to speak to Sam or Justine because he knew just by looking at them and their body language that they wouldn’t have any of it.
I ignored Sam’s concerns. Surely he was just being friendly?
Initially Mohammed did all the chasing and at first I was flattered. I had low self-esteem and the confidence I showed outwardly masked a deep-seated insecurity. The truth was, I hated myself: I hid behind a façade of bravado and make-up. I would never look at myself in the mirror without make-up on. Instead, I would go to sleep with a full face on and wake with it still in place. Mum tried to get me to wear less but I didn’t listen. I never took it off, I hid behind it.
It felt grown up to have the attentions of an older man. He sent me a text the following day.
‘R U still on for that drink?’
I played it cool at first and didn’t answer for a while. He persisted and his text messages continued. Each one asked me where I was and when he could meet me. After a few days of texting back and forth, I realised he didn’t have a job. He texted every day and each time told me he was free if I wanted to meet him. I wondered what kind of grown-up didn’t have a job, all of Mum’s friends did. But then again before I met Mum I was passed through a succession of jobless adults so it didn’t bother me.
For several days I kept avoiding the issue and wouldn’t commit, then I tired of his persistence and decided to meet him. I wasn’t at school at the time and he must have known this because, whenever he texted and asked what I was doing, usually I told him I was out with friends or at home watching TV. He knew that a child my age who wasn’t at school would have certain issues and probably led a disrupted life. If I wasn’t hanging out with my truanting friends, my days were mapped out with Jeremy Kyle and Facebook. I grew bored easily and was looking for something to do – another reason I was easy prey.
‘OK,’ I texted, ‘where shall we meet?’
At first our meeting had been sold to me like a date: we were going to go out for a drink. The prospect excited me. It was something to punctuate the boredom and I had never been on a date before. I had never had a normal relationship, gone to the cinema, let alone gone for a walk in the park with a boy. He told me we were going to have a drink and get to know each other.
Then he told me to meet him at a flat in Riverside Court, a rundown block of flats near to my home. He asked what I liked to drink and what I smoked. I told him Stella, WKD, Irn-Bru and Superkings. It didn’t sound like the date he had been describing, but it was a gloomy afternoon and so I agreed anyway. He texted me the number of the flat he was in and told me to meet him there in an hour. I pulled on a tight pair of jeans, with angel wings embossed across the back pocket, and a pair of pink suede boots. Then I reapplied my make-up, flicked on some eyeliner and told Mum I was going to see a friend. I knew it wasn’t right, but I was nonetheless excited.
Riverside Court was a collection of flats originally built by Oxford City Council for those with special needs. It was full of people with learning disabilities, drug problems and mental health issues. A lot of very vulnerable people were placed there initially and then, over the years, the council started putting families there as well. It was well known as a problem estate. There were over 70 flats, occupied by a combination of very vulnerable people, families and drug dealers. This was where Mohammed told me he lived. To get there I walked along the river towpath and, when I got to the block he was in, I texted to tell him I was outside. He buzzed me in and was waiting by the door for me.
We said hello and I felt awkward as he ushered me inside. The studio flat was very smoky but the smoke smelled strange, like burned plastic. I walked into the white haze and it caught in the back of my throat. Mohammed laughed. I didn’t know it at the time but the flat was a crack den. Unlike cigarette smoke, if you smoke crack in an enclosed space the fumes do not dissipate; they stay there, hanging in the air. Mohammed was wired when I walked in; energetic and talkative. There was no sign of the drugs he had been taking, but the flat was filthy. The carpet was heavily stained and sticky to tread on. There was a blue sofa covered in stains and a TV. It looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for ages and it didn’t feel like a home. There were hardly any furnishings; it was sparse and claustrophobic. It didn’t seem to matter at the time, though. Mohammed seemed really friendly and welcoming. He asked me about myself, where I lived, who I lived with, what I did. He never asked my age. He was on his own, but he told me a couple of his friends were coming over.
‘You’ll like them,’ he said. ‘They’re good guys.’
A little while later two men arrived. They all talked in street slang and had gang names – Mohammed was ‘Egyptian Mo’. He wasn’t from Egypt, but he looked like he could have been. I found out later that he was from a country called Eritrea.
The other men had brought different drinks with them, including the Stella, WKD and Superkings I had requested. I thought it was a lovely gesture and we sat around drinking and watching music channels on the TV. There was no food. When I started to look around the flat, I realised there was nothing in any of the cupboards. It was as if no one lived there.
The more I drank, the more I relaxed. And, as I did so, Mohammed continued to ask questions. He was very clever – he was finding out where I came from, whether I was adopted, whether my father was in my life, whether I had brothers and sisters, what I liked and didn’t like. He didn’t really encourage me to drink, he just let it be known that it was there if I wanted it and that I should help myself; he gave me the rope to hang myself. I kept drinking because the more I drank, the more comfortable I felt. He asked specifically about Mum. What annoyed me about her, and what we argued over.
I know now that he was trying to find out as many details about me as possible to assess whether I was suitable for what he and his cronies had in mind. He was storing information so he could use it. He knew exactly what he was doing; without a doubt he’d done it before.
When I started to open up about my background he leaned forward and touched my arm; he frowned in mock concern and pretended to get emotional. He was a good actor – he could make his eyes well up while listening to my stories. And I believed that he cared. I was drunk, and he had me: it only took someone to pretend to understand me and to care and I was hooked in. In all, I was there a couple of hours the first time we met. He didn’t encourage me to stay and he didn’t press for anything physical. When I told him I had to go, he didn’t try to stop me and he didn’t tell me not to tell Mum about our meeting – he knew I wouldn’t.
‘OK, nice to meet you,’ he said.
In a way I felt relieved to get out. While his concern was flattering, I found it exhausting to be talking about myself for so long – I wasn’t
used to people showing that level of interest in me. As I walked home and started to sober up, I wondered whether we had been talking or if he had been interrogating me. I realised I knew nothing about him – he didn’t offer any information and I didn’t feel I was invited to ask. Still, I thought I had met a nice guy. Tired and drunk, I was more concerned about what Mum would think because she would be able to tell I had been drinking.
When I got home I had to knock on the door because I had no key. Mum didn’t let me have one. It was the best way she knew to keep a check on me and to try to control when I was coming and going. When Mum answered, she asked where I had been and who I had been with.
‘Friends,’ I shot back. I made it plain there was no discussion to have.
‘What kind of friends?’ she asked. ‘The type that buy you alcohol?’
Pushing past her, I went straight to my room.
Mohammed texted me later to make sure I got home. Over the following days, he continued to text. ‘Where are you?’, ‘What are you doing?’, ‘Do you fancy meeting up?’… Although the tone was insistent, I was pleased that he was so keen to see me again. I thought perhaps he was a bit desperate but I was being chased and I liked it – I hadn’t had that sort of attention from a man before. On average he would send around four text messages a day. Sometimes he would ask who I was with.
A few days after our first meeting we arranged to meet again. It was the same pattern as before. He asked me to go to the flat in Riverside Court, and when I got there we smoked cigarettes and he provided alcohol for me. He was friendly, he was tactile, but he never overstepped the mark. Meanwhile, he continued to delve into my life and my past. He asked questions about my dating history and the men I knew.
‘Make sure you text me back,’ he said when I left. Within 30 minutes my phone was beeping: ‘Are you home?’, ‘Who are you with?’ He was controlling me from the start but I didn’t realise this.
The contact continued and a few weeks after our first meeting I started to feel nervous. By now the attention was overwhelming and, although he had never done anything to make me feel threatened, I worried that I had given too much away and that he seemed overly eager. But I told myself he was my friend and, when he failed to go away, I texted him back and saw him again. It was becoming a regular thing and there was a part of me that was excited about going to the flat.
While my relationship with Mohammed established itself, life at home became increasingly fraught. I was arguing with Mum and she knew something was afoot. She registered that I was constantly on my phone and that I was going out and drinking.
I was still seeing Terri and my brothers and sister three times a year. Terri was pregnant again – didn’t know who the father was. On one visit, during her pregnancy, she had clearly been drinking. It repulsed me and made me angry to see her neglect yet another child. I just wasn’t interested in her anymore, and it saddened me to realise that I had less and less in common with my siblings. We had all started to move on and our lives were heading in different directions. I wasn’t interested in running around in Wacky Warehouse anymore. Conversations became forced and awkward. The meetings were still held in kids’ places and my brothers never grew up – they would play fight all the time. It was easier for them to see each other because they would just roll around on the floor and play, whereas Kirsten and I would struggle to find things to talk to them about.
I told Mohammed about the meetings and he nodded and pretended to understand. I was spending longer and longer with him. At first I only saw him in the afternoon and stayed for a couple of hours. Then it extended until after dark, then into the night and the early hours of the morning. Mum called and texted to find out where I was and waited up to question me when I got back. I didn’t tell her anything and just shouted when she asked who I had been with.
Mohammed and I never went out. It became clear early on, when he realised I could trust him, that he was a drug dealer. He was very open about it and he explained to me about the different drugs: crack, heroin and cocaine. He made them sound harmless and exciting.
‘Would you try drugs?’ he asked.
‘I might try crack,’ I answered, ‘but I would never do heroin.’
‘What about cocaine? It’s much weaker than crack.’
‘Yeah, I’d do that,’ I said. And with that, he pulled a wrap of cocaine from his pocket, cut up two lines on the coffee table, snorted one and offered me the rolled-up £10 note he’d used. I took it and snorted my first line of cocaine without really thinking. If he said it was weak, it must be. My nose went numb. I hated the sensation – it left a bitter taste at the back of my throat. After a few minutes, I felt light-headed and I started to relax but felt alert. It was a good feeling.
I began to work out that the flat wasn’t Mohammed’s home. There was another man who was there most of the time, Steve. He was a creep and disgusting, and it appeared that he lived there.
We talked about what I had done in the time I had not been with Mohammed and I thought it was nice because he seemed to want to get to know my mum. He asked all about her, what she worked as, how old she was, whether she had family, and he asked about my adoption and the other carers I had lived with too. Very quickly he found out there were no male figures in my life. He focused on my home life and didn’t want to know about extended family; he wanted to know whether there was a father figure or someone protective. He asked about my elder brother and where he lived. When he found out that Jayden lived in Cheshire, he seemed relieved. He asked how close we were and how often I saw him. With hindsight, if I’d said I have a dad at home who is 6ft and has a history of violence or told him my dad was a policeman, things may have turned out very differently.
Soon I was sucked in, deeper and deeper. If I had a bad day, I went straight to the flat to talk about my problems. Mohammed listened intently and continued to supply booze, cocaine and cigarettes and to tell me about drugs. He started to openly take them in front of me. I ended up there every day – I told him what was wrong and what had happened and he fixed it with booze and cocaine. There were no alarm bells – I thought he cared about me, I thought he was my friend.
He seemed to understand my life better than anyone and he started the process of twisting my thoughts and feelings. Slowly, and in a very calculated way, he began to turn me against my mum. She in turn became increasingly suspicious the more I disappeared. I always came back drunk and she saw a pattern developing. My phone rang or I got a text message and soon after I left the house. She asked where I was going and I started an argument. Sometimes I found a reason to start an argument before she even asked just so I had an excuse to storm out of the house. She had a good idea that I was seeing a man but, whenever she asked, I lied and said I was with friends.
Mohammed told me she was jealous that I was having a relationship. He said that she would try her best to stop me going out, and she did. I thought he was incredibly sensitive, he understood me and knew everything. He wasn’t a genius, though: Mum was just doing what any good parent would.
When I was with him I drank and the more I drank, the more I opened up. I told him about the abuse and neglect when I was little; about the rape. He pretended to well up and tried to make himself cry. Then he started stroking my leg. He gained my trust and encouraged me to confide in him and the more I did, the more power he had over me. After weeks of these meetings, I still knew nothing about him: he never gave anything back. I never felt I was in a relationship with him. I went there because it was somewhere to go and he showed me attention and provided me with drink, drugs and cigarettes.
I never saw him drive a car. If he needed to go out, people picked him up and took him places or he got taxis. People came and went, and passed through the flat. Some stayed, smoked crack and leered at me. Many of them seemed to be related to Mohammed or part of a gang, and the longer I knew Mohammed, the more I got to know them.
A few months after I first met him, I was out with a friend in a park near home. I had bee
n drinking and I was wearing a skimpy top and jeans. It was a cold day and, as we chatted, a huge guy I recognised from the flat called out my name and came over to us. He was wearing a long, heavy leather coat and he took it off and put it over my shoulders.
‘You’re going to freeze dressed like that,’ he told me. ‘I’ll give you a lift home.’
I had only seen him a few times before. His name was Akhtar Dogar, but I knew him by his gang name: ‘Spider’. He was a tough-looking man with a wide, aggressive face and on the few occasions I’d seen him at the flat he had been with his brother, Anjum, who was known as ‘Jammy’. At the time I thought nothing of it and just assumed he was being friendly so I followed him to his car and got in, despite my friend telling me not to. I didn’t even think there was anything strange about the fact that he knew my name and what road I lived on. I directed him to my house and he dropped me off outside. From that point on, he knew my full address.
Both Mohammed and Spider were part of a gang of criminals; they had different territories they controlled and dealt drugs in. Spider ran the Cowley area, where the main road was lined with Halal shops, kebab shops, chicken huts and bookmakers. There were perverts everywhere. Walking through Cowley, I would regularly be accosted. I went there because one of the convenience stores served me alcohol. There were a lot of men loitering on the streets and I learned that they were usually drug dealers and, although there were normal families living in the area, the streets around Cowley were full of drug dens. These were marked out by signs: if there was a pair of trainers thrown over the telephone wire leading into a property, this indicated there were drugs available inside. The dealers left the lids of the salt bins open on the corners of the streets where they lived to signify that they had stuff to sell, but most of the time they just shouted down the street. They weren’t scared, they ran the place. Spider seemed to be the main player, the one they answered to, even though there were two territories. Fearsome, he didn’t have to do anything threatening – you just knew from the way he looked that he was evil.
Girl for Sale Page 11