by Sophie Hayes
I wrapped my arms across my chest and hugged myself tightly, trying to control the violent shaking of my body, and Kas pulled out a chair and sat down opposite me at the table. Thank God, I thought. He’s calming down at last. Now he’ll tell me what’s wrong and that he’s sorry. Whatever I do, I mustn’t antagonise him. Just think, Sophie. Think before you speak.
He began to talk in a quieter voice, telling me what had happened as though he was discussing an ordinary, everyday event. But I’d never taken drugs and I didn’t think I knew anyone who had, so to me it sounded as though he was describing a scene from a film.
‘I was smuggling cocaine to Holland,’ he said. ‘And when I realised the police were following me, I threw it out of the car. Now the dealer wants the money he lost.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s just the way it goes. The coke’s gone and Mario wants his cash. That’s why he wanted to see you the other day – to make sure you’d be able to earn the money for me.’
‘What? Oh my God!’ I stared at him, anxious for a moment that I was going to be sick, and then I pressed my forehead on to the cool surface of the table and tried to process the disconnected jumble of my thoughts.
‘So, as you can see, I have no alternative.’ Kas leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms in the air above his head and yawned. ‘There’s no other way for me to raise the money. I could use other girls, but I wouldn’t be able to trust them the way I know I can trust you. I know you’ll be loyal to me and that you would never do anything to disrespect me.’
‘We can work something out,’ I told him, lifting my head from the table and wiping my face with the back of my hand. ‘I’m sure that if we think about this together, we can …’
‘I know you won’t disrespect me,’ he said, looking past me and out of the window. ‘Because if you did, if you even thought about it, I would find out and there would be consequences.’
I knew people didn’t say things like that in real life, but however much I tried to tell myself it was all some elaborately cruel joke, I knew in my heart that he meant every word and that I’d made a huge and potentially fatal error when I’d allowed myself to break my golden rule and trust him. Already emotionally exhausted and bewildered, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the need to be at home, where my mother would put her arms around me and tell me ‘It’ll be all right, love’. Instead, though, I was alone in a foreign country with a man who professed to love me but who was asking me to do something no one in their right mind would ever ask anyone to do.
I began to plead with him: ‘Please. Please don’t make me do this! There must be some other way for you to repay the money. I can’t do what you’re suggesting. Please, Kas.’ I was still pleading with him when, without any warning, he reached out his hand and grabbed me by the hair, forcing my head backwards so that I was looking up into his face as he shouted, ‘It isn’t a suggestion, woman. How stupid are you? Don’t you understand? You’ve grown up in a world full of nice things, where you’ve never had to face the cold reality of many people’s lives.’ He sneered as he said the word ‘nice’, twisting his fingers in my hair so that it felt as though a million needles were digging into my scalp. ‘You have always lived in a world where the only thing you have to cry about is the fact that “Daddy doesn’t love me”.’ He mimicked the voice of a whining, spoilt child, and then his tone was cold again as he said, ‘You think that means you’ve had a hard life? You have no idea what a hard life is. You have no idea about the things some people have to do because, in their lives, there is no other way.’
‘I don’t think that,’ I sobbed, a small spark of indignation burning inside me for a moment.
In all the time I’d known Kas – or thought I’d known him – I’d never seen the slightest indication that he could be violent, and somehow it was the abrupt and very emphatic change in his behaviour and his attitude towards me that made me most afraid of him. My mind simply couldn’t process or make any sense of all the new information it was being presented with. I kept thinking that if only we could talk things through logically, we’d be able to come up with a more realistic solution to Kas’s financial problems.
I was so confused that I wasn’t certain about anything anymore, except, perhaps, that Kas wasn’t really intending to make me do the things he was talking about. So, even if I hadn’t been as frightened of him as I had instantly become, I don’t think I’d have tried to run away and escape from him. All I needed, I told myself, was to find something to focus on that would anchor me once again to the real world I was used to and could understand.
I’d never even heard Kas swear before that day, so although I was shocked by the things he was saying, I was completely unprepared for what he said next. His tone was contemptuous when he asked me, ‘Do you think you’re the only woman who’s ever worked on the streets for me?’ Then his mood seemed to change and he stretched out a hand to touch the top of my bowed head almost affectionately before saying, ‘But you’re different. The other girls were all bitches. Do you know what a real whore is?’ Suddenly, he grasped my hair again, yanking my head back and upwards so that I was forced to look at him, and shouted, ‘Well, do you?’
I closed my eyes and tried to shake my head.
‘A whore is a woman who treats a man with disrespect by cheating on him when she’s going out with him. That’s a real whore!’ He sounded almost triumphant, and he smiled as he added, ‘But a woman who sells herself to make money is just being clever. Your pussy will be a goldmine.’
I began to sob, lifting my feet onto the chair in front of me and clutching my knees to my chest to try to stop my body shaking, and Kas exploded into uncontrolled rage. ‘If you give me that look again,’ he screamed, ‘if you disrespect me one more time, you’ll see what I will do! How dare you? How dare you do this to me?’ I dug my fingernails into my thighs and told myself, Stop, Sophie! You have to stop crying. Don’t let him see your fear. Your tears are making him angrier. And, as if he’d read my thoughts, he bellowed at me, ‘Stop it! How dare you cry? How dare you do this to me? Just look at yourself! You look terrible. Go to the bathroom and straighten your hair. Pull yourself together, woman, for God’s sake. Go! Go to the bathroom and see how bad you look.’
Still sobbing, I stood up, edged around the table and scuttled out of the kitchen, with the sound of Kas’s fury echoing after me as he called, ‘Don’t close the bathroom door. Leave it open.’ And already I wouldn’t even have dreamed of disobeying him.
In the bathroom, I looked in the mirror at my white, tear-stained face and the wild untidiness of my hair and it was as though I was looking at a stranger. I knew something profoundly significant had just happened, but as it didn’t fit anywhere on my own spectrum of reality, I couldn’t make any sense of it. And then I began to panic as the thought struck me that if I stayed in the bathroom too long, Kas might be angry with me.
I quickly tugged a brush through my hair, splashed water on to my face and crept back into the kitchen, where he was leaning against the sink. His voice was almost tender as he asked me, ‘You love your little brothers, don’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, I do,’ I answered hastily, relieved to talk about something normal and praying that the thought of how much I would miss my family might make him decide to let me go home.
‘How old are the twins? Thirteen? Fourteen?’
‘They’re thirteen,’ I said, trying to speak in what I hoped was a ‘respectful’ tone of voice.
‘Hmm.’ He smiled at me and I felt an almost imperceptible glimmer of hope, which was shattered instantly when he said, ‘So you would be very sad if anything happened to them?’
It sounded like a question, although I knew without any doubt that it was a statement – or, more precisely, a threat.
‘Of course, I know where your family lives,’ Kas continued, twisting his body slightly to one side so that he could pick up a carving knife, which he turned slowly in his hand. ‘So, if you disrespect me again, I will have your precious little brothers taken from t
heir home. It will happen as easily as that.’ He stepped forward and clicked his fingers in my face. ‘You have no idea what I can do. If you ever try to get away or do anything to disrespect me, I will have your little brothers taken, just like that.’
He snapped his fingers again and as the sound rang out like a shot from a gun, the room began to turn and I sank to my knees on the floor, screaming silently in my head, No! Oh my God, no! This can’t be happening. It isn’t real. What am I going to do?
Kas pulled me up roughly by my arm and pushed me towards the open door. I could sense his disgust as he spat out the words, ‘Get out of my sight! Go on! Go! Go to bed, and tomorrow I’ll take you to see where you’ll be working.’
That night I slept in a single bed in Kas’s bedroom, although, in fact, I barely slept at all. My mind was racing, and every time I began to slip into exhausted oblivion, my eyes snapped open and I’d try again to concentrate on thinking of some excuse that would convince Kas I had to go home. I attempted – without success – to comfort myself with the thought that, Tomorrow everything will be okay. When he wakes up, he’ll be all right again. I’ll explain to him that I don’t want to do it and he’ll understand. Everything will be fine.
In the morning I told him, ‘I’ve got to go home. I can’t just leave my family and my job. And I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. I don’t want to do it, but even if I did, I can’t because of the operation and the problems I’ve had …’
He’d shrugged his shoulders and made a dismissive ‘pfff’ sound when I’d mentioned my family, but suddenly he erupted into fury and shouted, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, woman. You’re being a hypochondriac. You’ve had your operation. It’s over. There’s nothing medically wrong with you. You’re fine. You need to stop thinking about yourself and your imagined illnesses and think about all the people who are far worse off than you are.’
But on that first morning of the new life Kas had planned for me, all I could think about was finding some way to explain to him why I couldn’t stay in Italy and work to pay off his debt. I told him all the excuses that had sounded so reasonable in my head during the night, but he didn’t even listen. For four years, he’d been nice to me. Even when I’d told him on the phone that I’d met Erion and he was upset and said he didn’t want to hear about my new boyfriend, he hadn’t sounded angry. And then he’d said he was in love with me. So I still couldn’t believe that when he realised how distressed I really was, he wouldn’t change his mind and tell me he was sorry and of course I didn’t have to do the horrible things he’d talked about. What I hadn’t yet understood, however, was that Kas’s idea of what was normal and acceptable was quite different from the normality of most other people.
‘Please don’t make me do this,’ I begged him again. ‘I want to help you, but I really can’t do what you’re asking.’ And again he shouted, ‘Don’t you dare to disrespect me,’ slapping me so hard across the face that he sent me flying into a corner of the kitchen, where I cowered on the floor. ‘You will do whatever I tell you to do,’ he bellowed. ‘If you try to make contact with anyone without my permission, your family will suffer. Is that you want, woman? Are you so selfish that you’d let something bad happen to your precious little brothers just because you have to do something you don’t want to do?’
I shook my head mutely.
‘Do you think anyone will listen to you anyway?’ He took a step towards me as he spoke and I recoiled, covering my head with my hands and pressing my body against the wall. ‘Do you think anyone will care what happens to you? All you are now is a piece of pussy on the street.’
The harsh crudeness of his words made me flinch and he laughed as he asked, ‘Do you know what Italians like most?’ It didn’t seem to be a question that required an answer, but he suddenly bent down towards me and shouted, ‘Do you?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I whispered.
‘The three Ps,’ he said, smiling his humourless smile. ‘Pussy, pizza and pasta. So who’s going to give a fuck about what happens to you?’
Chapter 6
Kas’s flat was in a residential area on a hill just outside town and as we drove down the winding street to the main road, he kept up a constant stream of criticism and harassment, while I stared blindly out of the window. A few hundred metres along the road that ran into town, he turned the car onto a dirt track that led around the back of a petrol station, nodded his head towards a small wooded area beside a solitary house and said, ‘This is where you’ll be working.’
I looked in the direction he indicated, half-expecting to see … something, I don’t know what. But there was nothing, just a small, dark copse of trees – which looked gloomy even in the bright morning sunshine – and the dusty, unlit track.
‘This is where you’ll come with your customers,’ Kas told me. ‘It must be this spot, nowhere else. It’s the only place you can’t be seen from the house.’
Tears began to trickle down my cheeks and as I pressed my forehead against the window, I thought, Why is he telling me this? Why is he carrying on pretending that this is going to happen? None of this is real. But when he drove back onto the main road and said, ‘This is where you’ll wait to pick up your customers,’ I began to realise that, in his mind at least, it was a reality.
He drove on along the road, slowing down as we passed a patch of dry grass and saying, ‘This is another place you can wait.’ There was no pavement and almost no streetlights, and I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to stand there alone at night. My head was spinning as I tried to take in the long list of instructions he was giving me. Then he said, ‘When someone stops, he’ll ask you how much,’ and he taught me the numbers and Italian phrases I’d need to know, testing me and making me repeat them until he was satisfied I’d be understood.
‘When you’ve given him the price,’ Kas told me. ‘He’ll either say “Get in” or he’ll drive off. If you get in, you ask “Bocca or fica?” – it means “Mouth or pussy?”’
Just hearing the words made me feel sick with disgust, and I knew I couldn’t possibly say them – let alone do with a stranger the repulsive things Kas was talking about.
As we drove down the road from his flat earlier that morning, I’d tried to memorise some landmarks, so that I’d be able to get my bearings if I ever managed to escape. Now, though, I knew with absolute conviction that that was never going to happen. Kas had told me the night before, and again several times during the day, that if I tried to get away, he’d find me. He’d already hit me and pulled my hair so hard that great clumps of it had come away in his hand, and when he described how he’d ‘passed on’ to someone else a girl who’d proved to be ‘thick and stupid’, and told me he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to me if I disobeyed or disrespected him, I had no reason not to believe him.
In my ‘real’ life, I’d simply have said ‘No, I won’t do it’, and walked away from him. But I already seemed to have lost any ability I’d ever had to stand up for myself. The previous evening, Kas had snatched up my bag, taken out my mobile phone, passport and purse, which contained all my money and my credit card, and slipped them into his pocket. In doing so, he seemed to have taken control of my life, and I was completely powerless to do anything about it. I felt as though I was tumbling through space, unable to save myself and dreading the inevitable moment when I hit the ground.
It was hard to believe that in just 24 hours I’d learned to be frightened of the man I’d thought was my best friend. I felt confused and disorientated, although in my mind there was still just one certainty: that he would stop at nothing to safeguard himself and get what he wanted, which meant that he wouldn’t hesitate to carry out his threat to harm my little brothers if I defied or disobeyed him in any way.
As we drove along the main road, Kas continued to give me instructions – although sometimes he could have been speaking a foreign language for all the sense I could make of what he was saying. Suddenly, my heart began to race as I realised he’d asked me
a question. ‘Are you listening to me?’ he shouted. ‘Look at me, woman, when I’m talking to you.’ Before I had a chance to turn towards him, he reached across the car and hit the side of my head, smashing it against the window and sending a sharp pain shooting down through my neck and into my hunched shoulders.
Although I was shocked and taken by surprise, I didn’t make a sound, and Kas just continued talking as though nothing had happened. ‘You must always have two packets of tissues, a packet of baby wipes and plenty of condoms,’ he said. ‘You never do it without using a condom and never, ever, anally.’ He looked disgusted as he added, ‘That would be wrong.’
Wrong? Was that really the only part of it that he thought was wrong? I felt as though I was trapped in some surreal nightmare.
‘The price you give them is for 15 minutes – maximum,’ he continued. ‘If they take longer, the cost is more. You never agree to go with someone to a house without telling me first. If you call or text me, you must immediately delete that call or text from your phone log. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘But I’m frightened. What if someone hurts me? Please Kas, don’t make me do this. There must be some other way.’
‘Who’s going to hurt you?’ he snapped, lifting his hands off the steering wheel so that I cringed back against the window, anticipating the next blow. This time, though, instead of hitting me, he patted my knee and laughed as he said, ‘You’re not important enough for anyone to bother to harm you.’ Then his mood changed abruptly again and, in a tone that was cold and threatening, he added, ‘If anything ever happens to me, if I’m traced because of your stupidity or because you haven’t done exactly what I’ve told you to do, you will be punished. If you cheat on me or try to hide money from me or break the rules in any way, believe me, woman, you will be sorry. Do you understand?’
And again I closed my eyes, nodded my head and whispered ‘Yes’.