She got into a backless orange dress, which set off her dark hair. I helped her put a fake tattoo on her back. Then we were both ready. She looked me up and down.
‘You look great. Really great.’
‘So do you.’
‘Thanks, Snow.’
And so we went out. First we went to a pub. We had many offers, but Kim was very protective of me. Whenever it seemed someone was getting too familiar, she pulled me away. I had two glasses of white wine and I was already feeling a bit tipsy.
‘I hate to be a killjoy, but I really have to get back,’ I said.
‘No, no, you’ll sober up after we eat some food. The real fun hasn’t even started yet. You have to come to this club. It’s so awesome. Even celebrities go there.’
‘Can’t we go tomorrow?’
‘No, we’re out now. Remember, ladies’ night. Come on. It’ll be fun. I promise. Please, please?’
‘All right,’ I relented.
She started jumping on the spot. ‘Thank you.’
So we left the pub and went down the road to a kebab shop. Kim had a burger and I got myself a chicken kebab. Kim insisted on paying for everything.
‘My treat, remember?’ she said.
W sat on high chairs facing the glass windows and ate our meals. And as men passed on the street, they looked in and gawked at us. We laughed back at them and I swear that at that moment I never had the slightest inkling of what awaited just a few hours away. Not a clue. All I felt was a sense of freedom. I was in England and I was doing what I wanted to do. I knew I had made the right decision to leave India. My new life in England stretched out full of excitement and promise.
After we ate, we took a taxi. From the outside, the club did not look glamorous at all. It was tucked away on one of the small streets off Earl’s Court road, but I couldn’t find my way back there when I tried many months later.
There were two bouncers standing outside. As Kim had said, it was free for women that night so we sailed through. By then it was half past eleven. It was in the basement so we went down some stone steps into a small cramped area that was lit by red lights. A bored woman taking money off some guys barely glanced at us as we went through a black door into the club.
There was a dancing area and a few people were rubbing up each other, but mostly people were in dark corners making out.
‘Come on,’ Kim said, pulling me by the hand to the bar. As my eyes got used to the dark, I realized that the place was mostly full of men. There was no one our age. Both the men and women seemed to be decades older. And there were definitely no celebrities. The place could be described in one word. Seedy.
I looked at Kim, surprised. ‘This is it?’
She tapped her nose. ‘They come incognito. Wait until a bit later. For the meantime look at that guy checking you out.’ A man with grey in his hair was staring at me. When he saw me looking back at him he smiled and nodded. And I don’t know why I felt the hairs at the back of my neck rise in fear. I turned back quickly to Kim.
‘Listen, Kim. I don’t like it in here. I don’t want to stay.’
‘Just give it five minutes,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s really good.’
‘OK, five minutes,’ I said.
At that moment she saw someone she knew. She waved at him and he started to come over. He was more our age and I relaxed a little.
‘Hey, Andrew,’ she greeted and threw herself at him. He kissed her on both cheeks and then looked at me. ‘And who have you got here?’
‘This is Snow. Are you going to buy us a drink?’
‘Of course. What are you girls drinking?’
‘A double gin and tonic,’ Kim said.
‘Orange juice,’ I said reluctantly. I really wanted to leave, but I felt too frightened to find my own way back to the hostel so late at night. I knew I had too little money to take a taxi back. Back home I would have been driven to the club and the driver would be waiting outside to pick me up.
The drinks appeared on the bar next to Kim; she took them and passed mine to me. As I sipped my drink, Kim and Andrew carried on talking about people I didn’t know. I was starting to feel really, really tired. In fact, I was getting so tired that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
‘Can we go home, Kim?’ I asked.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Kim queried, a frown on her forehead. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No, I feel dizzy. Maybe I’m jetlagged, and with the alcohol …’ I mumbled.
I felt as if I had no legs. Nothing to hold me up. As if my head was free-floating. In fact, my whole body seemed to be ‘gone.’
I tried to widen my eyes and focus on Kim, but it felt as if I was detached from my body and physical surroundings. It was like being in a dream or a nightmare. Everything is fluid and strange. You move differently. I saw her grab my arm without really feeling anything. Neither fear or panic. There was no emotion at all. I felt Andrew and Kim grab my body and start helping me out of the club.
I couldn’t walk.
‘She just needs a bit of fresh air,’ she told the bouncers. I could feel my legs hitting the concrete steps, but I felt no pain.
‘You all right, love?’ the bouncer asked.
I wanted to tell him that I had not drunk a lot, but the effort was too much. But even then I did not panic. If only I had made a real effort to tell him, everything would have been different. I was watching with great detachment as Andrew and Kim walked me down the sidewalk. We came to a car. Andrew opened it and together they put me inside. Both of them got into the front.
I remember dry heaving.
‘Is she all right?’ Andrew said.
Kim turned to me. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you,’ she said, but her voice was echoing.
When she turned and talked with Andrew, their voices felt like they were coming from very far away or from underwater. Then I blacked out. When I came to again, Andrew was pulling me out of the car and carrying me. The sidewalk was wet. I felt the drizzle fall on my face. I tried to talk. I wanted to know where Kim was, but I could not open my mouth. I had no control of any part of my body. I felt a shaft of fear then. It crawled into my head on all fours.
‘Don’t try to talk. It’s OK. Everything is going to be OK,’ he whispered.
But I remember thinking that he looked nervous.
Then I blacked out again.
When I came around, I still couldn’t move a single muscle and I was in that dreadful hotel room.
Twenty-three
SHANE
I wake up suddenly with a jerk and freeze. Moonlight is filtering in through the curtains. Everything is still .... and wrong. Immediately I turn my head and look to the pillow beside me. It is empty. I jack-knife to a sitting position and listen. There is an intermittent scratching noise coming from the bathroom. I leap out of bed and rush towards the sound. There is no light coming from under the door. I rap on it. The scratching stops, but there is no answer.
‘Snow,’ I call. ‘Are you in there?’
There is no answer. I can feel my heart hammering in my chest.
‘If you don’t open this door I’m fucking breaking it down,’ I say. My voice has a thread of panic running through it.
Still she doesn’t answer.
Dread is like an icy claw around my heart. I stand back and start kicking the door. After three kicks it smashes open. I switch on the light and find her naked and cowering in a corner. Her fists are covering her mouth. Above her fist, her eyes are large and wild. Her hair is messy and strands fall over her face. She stares at me without any recognition. As if she is not even looking at me.
What the fuck! It is an incredible shock to see her reduced to something so feral, but another part of my brain takes over. Calmly, it deduces where the sound has come from. She has been scratching the side of the bathtub with her fingernails.
I take a step forward and she presses her back into the tiles, a look of sheer terror on her face.
I lift my hand. ‘It’s jus
t me, Snow. Shane.’
She stares at me without comprehension.
I very slowly get on my haunches, and when it looks like that that action does not spook her, I get on my hands and knees and start a half-shuffle, half-crawl towards her. ‘It’s me,’ I urge softly. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ I stop a foot away from her.
‘What are you doing here, Snow?’ I ask in a conversational tone, as if I was asking her to pass the salt.
‘I feel cold. So cold,’ she says, and indeed her teeth are chattering.
‘Here, let me warm you,’ I say without making any move towards her.
‘No,’ she whispers. ‘Nobody can warm me. I saw them again tonight.’
‘Saw who?’
‘The bastards who did this to me.’
‘What did they do, Snow?’ I ask, the blood in my veins turning to ice.
‘This,’ she says, and opens her thighs. She makes a fist with her small hand and is about to hit her own exposed sex when I grab it and stop her. I stare at her.
‘No,’ I say. ‘You can’t hurt that. That’s mine.’
She doesn’t fight.
‘That’s yours?’ she asks in a small voice.
‘That’s mine, Snow. I don’t care what happened before this, but that is now mine.’
‘I was a virgin and they didn’t even use a condom,’ she sobs.
‘Oh Snow,’ I say, and feel tears start prickling my own eyes. The sensation is novel. I haven’t cried since the day I found out they slit my father’s throat. I blink the tears away quickly and gather her into my arms. At first she thrashes and hits out instinctively, but I hold her tight.
‘I got you,’ I tell her. I got you, babe. No one will ever hurt you again.’
‘Something terrible happened to me in that hotel room, and I cannot tell you about it because it was too horrible.’ Her body shakes with emotion.
I hold her tightly. ‘It’s not your fault this happened to you. Nothing you did made you responsible for your assault. Shhhh … Shhh … Shhhh’ I whisper in her ear until her struggles cease and she is limp in my arms.
I slip one hand under her knees and the other around her back and carry her back to my bed. I lay her down, and when I try to disengage myself she clings desperately to me, so I sit on the bed and hold her. After a while she starts sobbing.
‘Break open, Snow. Cry all you want. You deserve compassion from yourself. You are always being compassionate to others. Now be compassionate to yourself. You deserve this moment of grace. You’re OK. You’ll always be ok. You have nothing to be ashamed of. This world is a better place because you are in it.’
Then falteringly, with great shame in her beautiful eyes, she tells me what happened.
And my blood boils.
Twenty-four
SNOW
The first thing I saw when I came to that night was the ceiling. It was off-white and sort of fuzzy around the edges and I couldn’t understand why. And then it came back to me that I had been very unwell. And Kim and Andrew must have brought me here because they couldn’t take me to the YHA. My mouth felt numb, strange, and I was freezing cold. I realized almost immediately that I was so cold because I was completely naked.
That was when I heard voices. Men’s voices.
I tried to move my head to find the owners of the voices, but I couldn’t. My entire body was frozen. Not even my little finger could lift away from the bed. Desperately, I swung my eyes around. I was in a hotel room, not a good one, but not a grubby one either. It was one of those family rooms with a double bed and a single in it. I was lying on the double. The curtains were pulled shut, and I could see many bottles of alcohol on a desk in the corner of the room, and the men in different stages of undress were actually crowding around it and snorting lines from the table.
There were six of them. They had different accents. The only impression I had was that they were all excited. I could sense it in their voices and the air. It was like they were at a party. One, I could tell by his accent, was German. I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it was possible one of the men was Middle Eastern. Three were definitely European, but I was certain that none of them were English. There was an Indian man too.
When I first spotted him, I had the ridiculous idea that I could plead with him. Tell him I, too, was from India. Ask him for mercy.
Then they were on top of me until it felt as if they were thrusting hot metal rods. Burning. Burning. But I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t do a thing. Not one thing. They pinched my nipples. They were animals. Licking. Biting. Hurting. Their faces were alive with lust.
The whole time I could hear them talking to me; calling me a dirty little bitch. You like this don’t you. You want more. Take that, slut. Give it to the bitch. Fill her up. I was like a life-size doll that they could bend, twist, flip, and pull according to their wishes.
Months later when more and more memories came back and I researched it on the net, I found other women with the same story to tell. I pieced their memories with mine and a picture emerged. Strangers went onto the dark net and paid to gang rape a woman in a hotel in London. I even remembered that one of them said he had flown into London for the express purpose of raping a drugged woman. The others had presumably included it as part of their holiday experience.
For hours they used my body. Every orifice. Even though I could not move a single muscle I felt it all. Tears continuously flowed out of my eyes, but they didn’t care. They just carried on one at a time, two at a time, three at a time. For hours and hours. I was a human toilet.
I thought the night would never end.
But I won’t carry on with any more gory details, you can use your imagination.
I don’t know exactly when they left, but when I came back from the darkness I was alone. I wanted to get up and run away. I was afraid they would come back but I could not move. I didn’t give up. I just kept on trying to move my finger. I knew Andrew or Kim had spiked my drink and it would wear away.
An hour or so later, I could move my fingers and my mouth. With all my strength I waved my fingers and, slowly, movement came back to me. I was so frightened and so filled with adrenaline that I did not feel any pain at all then. When I sat up, I saw that my entire body was blue-black with bruises and bite marks, and there was quite a lot of blood between my thighs.
When I tried to stand I fell over. My legs felt like they did not belong to me. They were like jelly. The whole time I was terrified the men would come back. I started to crawl and pull myself along the carpet. I dragged my body to the door, but my hands were almost useless. Crying with frustration, I finally managed to open the door and I was in the corridor. It was empty and silent. At the end of the corridor I could see a lift.
I had gone beyond fear. My mind was blank. All I had to do was reach the lift doors and someone would help me. The carpet burned my legs and elbows, but I felt no pain. Unable to see clearly, I pressed both the buttons on the consul. When the lift doors opened I saw a man standing inside it. He looked down at me with a frown. There were other people around him, but my vision was strangely blurred and I could only see his face.
For a brief moment I was afraid again. There was something about him that frightened me. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
I fainted at his feet.
That man was Lenny.
Twenty-five
SHANE
For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.
—Cynthia Occelli
‘Lenny?’ I repeat in disbelief. I am in such a rage that it is difficult to keep my voice from shaking.
‘Yes, Lenny,’ she says quietly. ‘The hotel belonged to him. He was on his way up to the suite he keeps for himself on the top floor.’
I frown, but I don’t share my thoughts about Lenny. ‘So Lenny took you to the police?�
��
She shakes her head. ‘No, he took me to his suite and when I woke up I didn’t want to go to the police. I was in a state of shock.’ She makes a small noise. ‘To be honest I think I was a little mad. And I was so sick from the drugs they had given me.’
‘Didn’t he take you to the hospital?’
‘No, he brought a doctor to the suite. The doctor cleaned me up and prescribed some pills.’ She stops and says, ‘I think I need one now. Could you please get it for me?’
I go out to the living room and look in her purse. The pills are in a transparent plastic tub with a white screw top. There is no label on the tub. I unscrew it, take one pill out, and slip it into my trouser pocket. Then I fill a glass with water and take it and the container of pills to her. I shake one out and hold it out to her.
‘It doesn’t have the label. What is it?’
She puts the pill on her tongue and swallows it down with water. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it helps me.’
I take the glass and put it on the bedside table.
‘So,’ I say. ‘You never went to the police.’
‘No. Lenny said it would have been too late anyway. They would all have left the country by then. Plus, I can’t remember their faces clearly. They blur in my mind. Once, I hated them and I wanted them to be punished. I used to pray that something horrible would happen to them, but I don’t think about them anymore.’
I look at her swollen face. ‘They never used a condom. Have you had yourself tested for any diseases?’
She shakes her head. ‘Lenny always uses a condom and that is why I am very careful with you too.’
I don’t feel the kind of burning anger that I would have expected to feel. Inside, I am cold as ice. I want Snow, and I want revenge. And I will have both.
‘Do you understand now why I am indebted to Lenny? I was so broken and he fixed me. I couldn’t go home. I was too ashamed. And I couldn’t hold down a job. He gave me money and protection. And all he asked for in return, when I was a little better, was … a bit of comfort.’
Beautiful Beast (Gypsy Heroes) Page 14