After we’d battled on in the flat together for several months, Jess told me she was going home to her husband, and a few minutes later she’d gone. She came back after a couple of weeks though, then came and went several times after that, and every time she left it broke another tiny fragment of my heart, because I thought I really was in love with her.
I didn’t ever tell Jess about what had happened to me at Denver House, just that I’d been in care and it hadn’t been a great experience. I don’t think I’d really faced it myself at that time. She used to talk about her childhood though, which had been traumatic for reasons that were mostly related to the mental health issues that had affected her mother and had eventually ended in tragedy.
What I hadn’t realised was that although I’d been doing quite well on my own, working, going to college and doing the boxing training, and thought I was okay, I was actually still incredibly vulnerable and my self-esteem had only risen a notch or two above zero. So I probably would have fallen for almost anyone who had shown interest in me the way Jess had done. Maybe it was the fact that I’d allowed myself to get close to her emotionally as well as physically – which is something I still find incredibly difficult to do with anyone – that made me believe I must love her.
Despite everything that was happening with Jess, however, I did manage to get myself back on track and, after qualifying, got a job as a fitness instructor at a ladies-only gym. Everyone I worked with was really friendly and I loved my job. I was still doing the boxing training too, and was really enjoying working towards my goal of becoming a professional boxer.
After having an interview with the British Board of Boxing, I’d been given the initial approval I needed to be able to start the process of getting a licence to fight, which would also involve having brain scans and all sorts of other tests before I qualified and was able to start earning money from doing what I loved. I still couldn’t believe that I was going to get the chance to do the one thing that had meant enough to me to enable me to turn my life around.
I had a couple of semi-professional fights at the boxing gym where I did my training – what they call white-collar fights, for people with little or no boxing experience – and although they’d both ended in a draw, at least I’d got my foot in the door.
Then Jess came back again and I started drinking even more, which led to me putting on weight and missing training sessions. I hadn’t been to training for three weeks when I went to the boxing gym one morning and was told that I wouldn’t be getting my licence after all. I was gutted, and more or less stopped going there altogether after that. So then I lost fitness, had to give up my job as a fitness trainer, and everything I’d built single-handedly out of nothing just vanished into thin air.
The one thing that did seem to stick with me after I’d lost everything else was the determination to work rather than fall back on benefits. I got two part-time jobs, one of them as a carer in a residential unit for adults with learning difficulties, which I really liked, except for the fact that I seemed to take all the problems of the people I was working with home with me every day. That’s why I eventually gave it up and just did the other job, as carer to a lad called Tony, who was about the same age as me and who’d been born with a muscle-wasting illness.
Tony lived at home with his parents and younger sister, and my job was basically to get him up, washed and dressed and take him out in his wheelchair. I’d been working for the family for a few weeks when I started taking him to the gym. His mum, Evelyn, came with us the first time, but felt so embarrassed about not being fit she refused to come inside. It was partly because of the way she felt that day that she started going regularly to dance and fitness classes. Then Tony’s very timid younger sister joined a karate class, which gave her confidence that transformed her almost overnight. And after I’d devised a very basic exercise programme for Tony, he eventually became fit enough to be able to stop taking some of the medication his mum thought he’d have to take forever.
It was amazing to see the change in Tony, not just in terms of what he could do physically or his increased ability to make eye contact with people, but also because of the calming effect exercise had on him. It was thanks to his mum’s hard work and determination that he was already far more independent in the house than anyone had ever believed he could be. But nothing she had been able to do had had the effect that exercise had of reducing his sense of frustration, so that he stopped banging his head with his knuckles or biting his arm when he was upset.
Evelyn was very supportive of me too, when I was having problems because of Jess’s comings and goings. But she could see that my own mental health was deteriorating because of it all, and eventually I had to give up that job as well. It was a very hard decision for me to make, and I still feel sad when I think about it. I knew I had to be honest with Evelyn though, and that it wasn’t fair on Tony when I kept calling in sick and disrupting the routine he’d got used to and relied on. So I stopped working as a carer and got a part-time job in a factory.
Then one evening, when Jess had gone back – again – to live with her husband, two police officers turned up at my door and told me, ‘I’m afraid we’re going to need you to come down the police station with us. We’ve had a complaint from someone who says you’ve been harassing them.’
I knew immediately it was Jess, even though it didn’t make any sense, because the few text messages we’d exchanged during the previous couple of weeks had all been amicable – ‘How are you doing? I hope things are going well’ – and she’d contacted me more times than I’d got in touch with her.
It was humiliating having to walk out of the house and get into a police car. The police officers were polite though, and apologised when we got to the police station, saying that because an accusation had been made, they had to go through the process of questioning me. So I told them about the text messages, they contacted the local police where Jess lived, then told me they wouldn’t be taking it any further, and drove me back to the flat.
It was a horrible experience, but I forgave her, of course, and not long afterwards she came back – ‘For good this time,’ she told me.
I had just turned 25, and a couple of weeks later I got a letter in the post telling me to go for my first cervical screening test. I didn’t make an appointment until almost a month later, and about a week after I’d been for the test, I got another letter saying that my results were abnormal and another appointment had been made for me. At the second appointment, they swabbed me with some dye, then used a camera to see if they could detect any abnormal cells, which, unfortunately, they could. ‘Some of the cells are a bit irregular,’ the doctor told me. ‘So we need to do what’s called a punch biopsy to find out what’s going on. It sounds a bit daunting, I know, but it’s just a small instrument that we use to extract a piece of tissue.’
All I could think about while he was talking was that it was cancer. So I didn’t really hear what he said about the other things it could be, and by the time they’d done the test and I got home, I was feeling very anxious. My distress was nothing compared to Jess’s, however, when I told her what had happened.
‘I can’t cope with this,’ she said, bursting into tears. ‘I can’t lose you. Not after everything that’s happened to me.’
‘Well, it might not be anything serious,’ I told her, trying to remember what the doctor had said. ‘We won’t know until they’ve got the results of the biopsy, which won’t be until everyone goes back to work after the Christmas and New Year holidays. So I’m going to try not to worry about it till then.’
But nothing I said seemed to make her feel any better, and eventually I suggested she should talk to someone else about it. I didn’t want to have anything to drink that night, so in the end Jess went out on her own, and when she came back, she was very drunk. I knew by that time that it was best not to say anything to her when she was in that state, although even saying nothing could make her suddenly go off the deep end and start accusing m
e of all sorts of bizarre and ridiculous things.
Unfortunately, however, the alcohol she’d drunk had transformed her self-pity into anger, and as I was feeling sorry for myself by that time, we ended up having a row, then wrestling like a couple of kids on the living-room floor.
I’d bought a little hamster during one of the periods when I’d been on my own in the flat, and when Jess kicked its cage a couple of times, then bent down to pick it up, I punched her. It was like an automatic reaction, and I was immediately sorry I’d done it. But she refused to speak to me when I tried to apologise and I could hear her crying as she went into the bathroom and locked the door. Although she slept on the couch that night, we talked about it in the morning, and after she accepted my apology, everything seemed to be okay.
We had another row a couple of days later – fuelled by alcohol, as they almost always were. Then Jess stormed off into the bedroom, and the next thing I knew, someone was ringing the bell and knocking very loudly on the front door.
It was 2 o’clock in the morning, so my first thought was that it was one of the neighbours coming to tell us to be quiet. In fact, it was two police officers, responding to a 999 call Jess had made from the bedroom saying I’d just punched her. It wasn’t true, but as she still had the black eye I’d given her a couple of days earlier, I was arrested and taken to the police station.
Chapter 19
When we arrived at the police station, I told them I hadn’t punched Jess and that I wasn’t responsible for her black eye. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ they said. ‘She’ll come round in the morning.’ I had to spend the night in a cell though, and as they were closing the door I thought how stupid I’d been to have put so much effort into building a life for myself only to let it all slip away, leaving me right back where I’d been ten years earlier, sitting in a police cell. Only this time I had actually done what I was being accused of.
It surprised me sometimes that when it felt as though I was being torn apart by my emotions, my physical body continued to function normally, and as I lay on the narrow bed in that police cell, watching a small spider scuttling across the floor towards the door, I remember wishing that something would happen to stop my heart beating and my lungs inhaling and expelling air.
When the police took me back to my flat the next day and I found that Jess had packed up all her things and gone, I sat down and wrote a short story about the spider I had seen in the police cell.
Along came a spider
The human body is incredible. It amazed me to discover that no matter how much emotional pain is consuming you at any given time, the body still functions as it would normally. Your heart continues to beat. You continue to breathe. And your blood continues to deliver and distribute the oxygen that is needed to live, no matter how much you wish it didn’t. Which begs the question, is there something deep inside us that keeps us going when the heart and mind long for an end to emotional suffering, for death?
I was locked inside a police cell at the time of my sudden realisation. I was sober. I had absolutely nothing to distract or numb me to the emotions that were tearing me to shreds, piece by piece, and then, along came a spider.
At first, I thought I had imagined it, the appearance of such a beautiful miracle – well, can you spin a web of silk? But I hadn’t. It really was there. No longer was I alone in this cold cell. I had company.
I asked the spider why it was here and if it knew that it was inside a police cell, and I told it that, in my opinion, it was far too beautiful a creature to be in here.
‘Why, that’s just what I was about to say to you!’ came the reply.
I was shocked, and explained how I had been arrested and that I had no choice in the matter.
‘Of course you had a choice. There is always a choice,’ the spider said.
I felt the first stirrings of anger as I recounted my story. I explained that I had been in a violent relationship for three years and that it had reached a violent climax, hence my arrest and detention.
‘Why did you not leave this violent relationship sooner so that you avoided this, as you say, violent climax?’
I became defensive then, and shouted that it was because I had no choice.
‘Why do you feel that you had no choice?’ asked the spider again, calmly.
‘Maybe I felt I had no choice because I felt I had no worth, no place or purpose. Maybe I felt I was not worthy of love from another and that I should be grateful for the little affection I did receive,’ I snapped.
‘Why?’ asked the spider.
I sighed heavily, expelling all my anger. I could not stay angry at this beautiful miracle and my eyes filled with tears as I told it that at the age of 13, I was taken into care, and only three weeks later I was raped by two men who had paid an older girl to pose as a friend and take me to their house. I told it how I was then introduced to another man who began to introduce me to lots of different men, and that I had been raped and forced to carry out sex acts on all of them. I told it how dirty I felt all the time and how the staff at the children’s home never noticed that anything was wrong. I told it that I had cut myself just to feel something other than the sadness, shame and disgust that was forced upon me day after day, year after year. I told it how I became withdrawn and unable to socialise. I told it that I had let my ex-partner get closer to me than anyone had ever done before, and that what should have been pleasurable was painful to me, and how eventually I overcame that with her and so forgave the abuse in the hope of things getting better and through the fear of never knowing that intimacy again. Finally, I let myself cry and when I had finished crying, the spider spoke again.
‘As you sit here in this cell, know that you too are a miracle, capable of miraculous feats. You have lived in darkness and fought with the devil and yet here you still are, talking to a spider and offering it kind words. Many would have seen fit to step on me, afraid of our differences, but you have embraced me in awe of them. The only time we have is now, and in this time we always have a choice, and there is no right or wrong. Do not weep over your choices. Take possession of them and strive to move forward, remembering that you, too, are a miracle!’
Then the spider made towards the cell door, where I noticed a tiny gap. It wasn’t imprisoned after all.
‘Wait!’ I cried out, intrigued. ‘Why are you here if you have been free to leave all along?’
‘It’s snowing outside and only a fool would refuse to seek shelter in a storm. And besides, I often like to visit the cells. It’s amazing the kind of people you meet!’
I’d been told at the police station that I mustn’t contact Jess, so I didn’t, and I never saw or heard from her again.
A few days later, I got the all-clear from the hospital.
I don’t know why Jess didn’t drop the charge against me. Maybe, after her last accusation had proved groundless, she’d been told that she’d get into trouble for wasting police time if she didn’t see it through on this occasion. Whatever the reason, she didn’t ‘come round’ the next morning, and when the case went to court a couple of months later, I realised it had been stupid of me to lie to the police when they arrested me and say I hadn’t been responsible for Jess’s black eye, because it went against me when I explained at the court hearing what had actually happened.
I had Legal Aid, and a solicitor who turned up just half an hour before the hearing started, didn’t seem to care if I ended up with a criminal conviction, and said, when I told him I wanted to defend myself against the charge, ‘Forget about it. Let it go. If you challenge it and they find you guilty, you might have to spend time in prison.’ So I pleaded guilty and was fined several hundred pounds, which I paid weekly out of the benefits I started claiming, because I didn’t go back to work after that.
But at least I didn’t have cancer. I’d told my mum about the biopsy while I was still waiting for the results, and she’d given me even less support than Jess had done. I don’t know why I said anything, or what made me think she’
d be sympathetic for the first time in my life. When I told her once that I was feeling suicidal, she’d said, quite seriously, ‘Well, don’t expect me to pay for your funeral. You’ll have a pauper’s grave.’ I suppose I just kept hoping that one day she’d surprise me and say something nice.
After I gave up work, I just fell apart. I kept thinking about the spider in the cell at the police station and telling myself, ‘You always have a choice. There’s always something good to hold on to. You just have to find it. It doesn’t matter what the police or anyone else thinks of you. You know who you are.’ I didn’t though: my drinking had got out of control again and after working so hard to establish an identity, I’d lost sight of who I was; all I could think about were the bad things that had happened.
I’d been told by a counsellor when I was 18 that, in her opinion, people didn’t need antidepressants to overcome depression and anxiety and they shouldn’t take them. So I wasn’t taking any tablets at that time, and my depression got so bad I ended up spending almost every day in bed with the curtains closed, reading, drinking and eating bread and butter. I was 25, but felt as though I’d reverted to what I was like at 18; except that at 18 I hadn’t yet had any opportunities to throw away like I’d just done with my job as a fitness trainer, the chance to box professionally, my own fitness … Everything that had been important to me had turned to dust – or, more accurately, I had destroyed it myself – and I didn’t think I would ever get any of it back again.
When Jess moved in to live with me in the flat, I had a desk in the bedroom, where I used to sit to do bits of writing, but I’d taken it to the charity shop after she said one day, ‘You’re not a kid. What do you want a desk for?’ I’d taken down the inspirational quotes I’d stuck on the wall above it too, and got rid of various other things that had been important to me but that seemed childish when she pointed it out. What I didn’t realise was that just the fact that those things mattered to me made them important, and by getting rid of them simply because someone else said I should, I was actually getting rid of bits of my own identity. And when I lost Jess, I no longer had the energy, or incentive, to try to get them back.
Trafficked Girl Page 19