A couple of weeks later, she came to the house and was really nice to me, picking me up in her car and taking me to the shopping centre in town, where she told me, ‘I want to buy you something, Zoe.’ But although we looked round all the clothes shops, I didn’t see anything I wanted. So the next time she came she took me to McDonald’s and bought Happy Meals for both of us, and when we discovered that we had the same Care Bears, she said, ‘Yours is called Flora and mine is Smiley. I’m going to keep Smiley next to the rear-view mirror in my car so that she’ll remind me of you when I see her every day.’ I can remembering thinking how nice it was to have someone in my life who seemed to care about me, even though I found some of the things she said confusing and got the impression that she wasn’t very happy herself.
A few weeks later, I went to Denver House to see Paula and we went out together for the evening. After persuading someone to take our money and buy us a small bottle of vodka in a local shop, we sat on a bench overlooking the graves behind a church, just talking and drinking. I’d had a feeling after I’d spoken to her when we bumped into each other on the street that Paula might be gay, and when I told her I was – which was the first time I’d ever admitted it to anybody – we shared a kiss.
When I saw Frances a few days later, she told me there had been a photograph of me in the office at Denver House, which Paula had stolen and put in her room. ‘I know you left the unit together the other evening,’ Frances said. ‘What did you two get up to?’ So I told her about the vodka and sitting in the churchyard, but not about the kiss, although I did wonder if Paula had mentioned it.
Even when I was living in the foster home, I didn’t know what it was like to feel safe. At home, I’d always been afraid of my parents. At Denver House, I’d been frightened of Abbie and then, even more so, of Natalie. Now, at the age of 15, I was scared of a boy called Harry.
Harry was one of the two older boys Sandra and Bill had adopted, and he was a bully. Sandra used to buy cigarettes for me, and I was sitting reading on my bed one day when Harry burst into my room without knocking and said, ‘Give us some fags.’ I almost jumped out of my skin when he barged in, but although I was always frightened of any kind of confrontation, I knew that if I didn’t at least try to stand up to him, he would see me as an easy target and then I’d never be free of his bullying. So I said ‘No’, and I continued to refuse until he hit me, then kept on hitting me until I took half the cigarettes out of the packet and threw them on the bed.
I’d been right to think he’d consider me an easy target, because he did the same thing several times a week after that, and when I threatened to tell Sandra, he just laughed and said, ‘Go on. I dare you. She won’t believe you. Then you’ll have to move out and go and live in one of those residential homes for kids that not even the worst foster parents are prepared to put up with.’
Compared to Harry, I thought Keith, the other older boy Sandra and Bill had adopted, was quite nice, until a younger girl called Rachel, who they fostered at around the same time as me, told me he was sneaking into her room at night and sexually abusing her. I don’t think it even crossed my mind to tell anyone what Rachel said. I just assumed that sexual abuse was normal for ‘girls like us’, and I knew from my own experience that nobody would do anything about it. So instead of asking anyone for help, Rachel and I decided that we would run away together the following day.
The problem was, we couldn’t think of anywhere to go and ended up just walking around all day before going back to the foster home. It was a school day and Sandra shouted at us because someone from school had phoned to tell her I’d missed a mock GCSE exam. Then she demanded the bus and dinner money she’d given us that morning, and when we told her we’d spent it – on cider – she got even more angry. I can understand why she was annoyed, but she didn’t once ask if we were okay or if there had been some reason why we’d played truant. I don’t suppose she cared; she didn’t really mind what any of us did as long as we didn’t upset the status quo.
I didn’t ever let on to anyone about what Rachel had told me. So although I was more wary of Keith after that, he was always okay with me – while we were living under the same roof, at least.
I had been hooked on alcohol before I left Denver House, and during the months when I’d lived at home it was, quite literally, the one thing my mum seemed happy to provide for me. So by the time I went to live in the foster home, I was dependent on it. Sandra had been told about my drink problem before she agreed to foster me, and to begin with she used to think it was funny when I came back from school a bit drunk. Eventually though, when she stopped finding it amusing, she would tell me, ‘I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t cause any trouble. So if you’re going to drink, do it upstairs in your room.’ Which is where I self-harmed too, when I was feeling really bad.
I’m sure a lot of people would be shocked to think that a teenager could be dependent on alcohol. But if drinking is the only way you can get through the day and you know that if you don’t have a drink, you won’t be able to push all the horrible things in your life just far enough into the background for you not to kill yourself – on that day, at least – why wouldn’t you do it? That’s how I felt when I used to hang around outside a local shop, clutching my pocket money, school dinner money and the money for my bus fares that Sandra gave me every day, asking people to buy me a bottle of whisky or some cans of strong lager. Usually, I’d keep back just enough to buy some sandwiches and crisps, but I was quite thin as a teenager and didn’t have a big appetite, so I didn’t need to set aside much for food.
Sometimes, I’d take the drink back to my room at the foster home, and sometimes I’d tell Sandra I was going out with friends, then find somewhere quiet and out of the way to drink it. The truth was, I didn’t really have any friends by that time; I just didn’t seem to be able to fit in. And it’s hard to keep friendships alive when you’re focusing all your attention on trying to survive, which is what I thought I was doing, although, ironically, I was actually putting myself at huge risk on an almost daily basis by asking total strangers to buy drink for me.
There was one evening when I drank the bottle of cider someone had got for me and then decided that I wanted another. I hadn’t been standing outside the shop for more than a few seconds when a man who had just pulled up in his car agreed to go in and buy it for me, and when he came out, he asked if I’d like to go for a drive with him. I’d like to think that I’d normally have had more sense than to say yes, but I was already drunk and had had a really bad day.
We’d been driving around for a while, neither of us saying very much, and I’d drunk quite a lot from my second bottle of cider, when the man stopped outside a small terraced house and said, ‘This is where I live. I just need to pick something up. Why don’t you come in and wait for me?’
One of the main reasons I drank was because it made me feel as though I’d been anaesthetised and was watching everything that was going on around me through a curtain of fog. What it also did, however, was cloud my judgement and suppress my instinct for self-preservation. Which is why I followed the man through the front door and into a room where there was an unmade bed in one corner, a chest of drawers with a lamp on it, and an almost overpowering smell of damp.
I’d been taken to a lot of almost identical houses during the time when I was being trafficked, and the familiarity of the room made me feel instantly anxious. So I was relieved when he left me there and went in search of whatever it was he’d called in for. I sat down on the edge of the unmade bed while I was waiting for him, and I was just standing up as he came back into the room a few minutes later when he pushed me down again, held my head in his hands and tried to kiss me.
I was already feeling queasy because of all the cider I’d drunk, and when I pushed him away and said ‘No’ very loudly, he punched me in the face. The room seemed to be spinning around me as I lashed out, trying to fight him off as he pulled down my trousers and underwear and raped me.
/> I was still trying to find the place in my head that would blank it all out so that I could disengage my mind from my body when he squeezed my chest and bit me. It was the shock of him biting me that finally seemed to give me the surge of strength I needed to shove him off me and roll on to the floor, and as I started to crawl away from him, he raped me anally from behind, while I crouched there, sobbing and praying for him to finish.
I didn’t know the part of town he’d taken me to, so although I was desperate to get away from him, I accepted his almost casual offer of a lift back to the shop where he’d picked me up, then I walked from there to the foster home. It was November and a very cold night, but although I knocked on the doors and windows for at least half an hour, no one came to let me in. So I curled up on the back doorstep and thought about how much I hated myself and all the men who had ever raped and abused me, until I eventually fell asleep.
In the morning, when Sandra unlocked the back door and let me in, she was really angry with me and demanded to know where I’d been. I’d have been angry with her, too, if I’d been able to feel anything, because I knew she must have heard me knocking in the night and have realised that, by not letting me into the house, she was actually exacerbating the danger I’d already put myself in. But all I wanted by that time was a shower, so I walked past her into the house and up the stairs without speaking to her at all.
I was in the bathroom starting to take off my clothes when I saw the blood on the back of my coat. Apparently Sandra had seen it too, because by the time I’d scrubbed every trace of the man off my bruised body, she had phoned the police and they’d arrived at the house.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone; I just wanted to go to bed and sleep. But there didn’t seem to be any point in refusing, so I told them what had happened. Then they took the clothes I’d been wearing – unfortunately, I’d already washed away all the evidence from my body – and I agreed to go for an examination and to have photographs taken of my black eye, the bruises on my thighs and arms, and the bite marks on my chest.
Because there were nights when I drank so much I was completely out of it and unable to remember anything that had happened – like the night Sandra said she found me passed out in an alleyway near the house – I had started carrying a piece of paper with me all the time that had Sandra’s phone number on it. The man who raped me that night must have found it in my coat pocket, because although he always hid his own number and refused to say who he was, I knew he was the man who kept phoning the house and asking for me. Then, one day, I saw him driving slowly past and managed to get the registration number of his car, which I gave to Sandra and she gave it to the police.
Although the registration number turned out to be false, or to belong to someone else’s car, the police did find him, and when he proved to be a match for the DNA that had been found on my coat, he was put on remand. The thought of having to give evidence against him in court was really scary, even if we wouldn’t have to come face to face. But it seemed almost like a vindication too, because finally someone would be saying that what had been done to me was wrong. Then, a few months later, the charges against him were dropped when it was decided that, because of my drinking and risk-taking lifestyle, I wouldn’t make a reliable witness. They were right, I suppose, although at the time it just seemed to be further proof of the fact that it didn’t really matter – that I didn’t really matter.
Maybe the man eventually got convicted of something though, because I discovered recently that the house he took me to that night was linked to a major investigation the police were already conducting into child sexual exploitation.
During the time I was being fostered, I sometimes went home to see my parents, on visits that always involved Dad saying lewd things that made me feel uncomfortable and often ended with me falling out with my mum. I only went because I felt guilty for having left Mum on her own with him, because although my younger brother was living at home, I don’t think he knew about the way Dad sometimes forced himself on her.
The real problem for me, however, was that I always came away from those visits feeling even less self-confident and more miserable than I’d done when I arrived. And it was when I was on my way back to the foster home one day that I had sex with a man in exchange for money for the first time in my life.
Chapter 14
It was early evening and I was standing at a bus stop when a van that had already driven slowly past me a couple of times stopped on the other side of the road and a guy got out of the passenger side. It was only when I realised that he was waving at me that I recognised him as someone I went to school with. So I waved back, then watched him walk off down the road and around the corner.
I must have been standing at the bus stop for almost an hour by that time, and I was just pushing my hands deeper into my pockets and thinking how cold I was when the driver of the van rolled down his window and called across the road to me, ‘I think you’ve missed the last bus.’
‘No, there should be another one,’ I told him. ‘It must have been delayed.’
‘Don’t forget it’s a Bank Holiday,’ the man said. ‘There’s a different timetable.’
My heart sank as I realised he was right and that if I’d set off on foot an hour ago, I’d already be back in my room at the foster home, having the drink I so badly needed.
‘I can give you a lift if you like.’ He shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate that it was no big deal either way.
My immediate instinct was to say, ‘No thanks.’ But it was cold and dark, and I knew that if I set off walking now, I wouldn’t get back to the house until after the 8 p.m. curfew set by Sandra. And although I didn’t know the van driver, he was obviously a friend of someone I did know and I wasn’t afraid of him. So I accepted his offer of a lift, then crossed the road and climbed up into the seat beside him.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked as I was doing up my seat belt. ‘You looked a bit sad and worried standing there all on your own, waiting for a bus that was never going to come.’
‘I’ve had a row with my parents.’ The words tumbled out before I realised I was going to say them.
‘So are you running away?’
‘No. I was just visiting them. I’ve lived in a foster home for the last few weeks. Everyone keeps telling me I need to go home from time to time to see my parents so that I don’t lose touch with them. The trouble is, every time I do go, it ends badly. Which isn’t really surprising, I suppose, when it’s because of the problems I have with my parents that I’m in a foster home in the first place!’
It was way more information than I’d intended to give him, and more than I would normally have told anyone about myself. But I was upset, and once I started talking about it, I didn’t seem to be able to stop, perhaps partly because I was trying to get things clear in my own mind.
‘I’m sorry you’re in a bad situation,’ the man said. ‘At least if I give you a lift back to the foster home it will solve your immediate problem and you’ll have one thing less to worry about.’
‘Thanks,’ I muttered, as he did a U-turn in the empty street, then set off in the opposite direction from the way he’d come.
Neither of us spoke again for a few minutes, but when I glanced at him he seemed to be looking at me appraisingly, as if he was trying to decide whether or not to say something to me.
‘I’m doing you a big favour,’ he said at last, catching my eye.
‘Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it.’ I turned to look out of the window beside me.
‘A really big favour,’ he continued. ‘So maybe you should do me a favour in return.’
I could feel the permanent knot of anxiety in my stomach tighten, and as I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, trying to think of something to say in response, he added, ‘I’ll give you 20 quid if you’ll have sex with me.’
My immediate reaction was anger, which quickly gave way to hurt, because although what he was suggesting – about the sex, if not about the money – was wha
t I’d learned to expect from men I didn’t know, I felt as though I did know him. So I was shocked and upset to realise that he saw me just like all those other men did.
The saddest thing of all, perhaps, was that I was so convinced I was worthless I didn’t really think I could say no. So I accepted the man’s £20 and stuffed it into the pocket of my jeans. Then he drove to an area of town that was notorious for being frequented by prostitutes and perverts, where I lay on the cold, hard floor at the back of his van while he grunted and stared off into the distance above my head as he penetrated me roughly.
‘So that’s it,’ I thought, as the familiar disembodied feeling descended over me like a cloak of invisibility. ‘This is all I’m good for. All those scores of men who hurt and abused me have made me into what they thought I was – a disgusting, filthy, worthless excuse for a human being. Everyone must be able to see that’s what I am. I just didn’t see it myself. Until now.’
As soon as he’d finished, he zipped up his trousers without saying a word, then got back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. I only just had time to pull on my underwear and was still fumbling with the button on my jeans when he accelerated away from the kerb so abruptly I banged my head on the side of the van. Suddenly, I was frightened and my heart was pounding as I reached for the headrest on the passenger seat and pulled myself up so that I could look out of the window.
I could have screamed and banged on the side of the van hoping someone would hear me and phone the police. Or I could have said something to him. Instead, I stayed silent and tried to memorise the route he was taking, just in case I was wrong and I wasn’t about to die. Then, after a few minutes, the panic subsided as abruptly as it had come and I realised I didn’t care. Turning away from the windows, I crawled across the metal floor at the back of the van and sat in the middle of it with my legs crossed, like I used to do in my bedroom when I was a little girl so that I would be able to see the monsters – real or imagined – when they opened the door.
Trafficked Girl Page 14