Eddie seemed to know so many of the beautiful people in the club. He took me to a room and shared a spliff with me.
‘Cool,’ I said, as I dragged down the smoke of the first grass I’d had for several months.
For the rest of the evening I danced, laughed, felt happy and carefree, and over the next couple of weeks little changed.
48
‘A favour’ was how he put it. A friend of his wanted to meet me, take me out for dinner. All I had to do was be nice. It would help him with his business – something he was rather vague about.
What could I say? He had changed my life, taken me off the streets, given me a place to stay.
That was the first time he mixed something else with the tobacco and marijuana. ‘This will make you feel good,’ he said, passing me the joint – and he was right. Within a few minutes, I felt as if I was cocooned in the softest of cotton wool. My whole body was completely relaxed and a sleepy euphoria swept through me. It was the most incredible buzz, far better than the strongest grass or the happy, drowsy feeling I got from Mandies.
That was my introduction to heroin.
I still felt warm and calm as he put me into a taxi and told the driver where to take me: an address in Bayswater. ‘It’s his flat,’ he said, and told me which bell to ring.
Of course, that man and I never did go out for dinner.
There were more favours and more of something else mixed into my joints. The men were not great conversationalists – after all, there was no pretence about why I was there – but I still heard their excuses.
Going with a girl like me was not the same as being unfaithful.
‘I love my wife,’ most said; one even took a phone call from his and reassured her of that when he was still inside me.
49
I think if I hadn’t met Gina, I would have ended up working the streets around King’s Cross, desperate for my next fix. For that, I learnt, was what had happened to other girls who had had the misfortune to be ‘rescued’ by Eddie.
I remember so clearly the night I first saw her.
Eddie, in one of his increasingly rare spells of good humour, had taken me to a music venue in Hammersmith. We smoked joints before we left and, for once, he let me wear jeans tucked into a pair of boots and my old leather jacket – it reminded me of Dave.
There were three bands playing, but it was the last one that Eddie told me was going to be good. The drummer, obviously well known to the crowd, received a round of applause as he took his seat. His hands and feet flew as he provided a throbbing bass note below the electric guitars and the amplified voices of the band. The crowd went wild as the lead singer moved to the edge of the stage and, jumping up and down, they screamed for more after each song.
That was when I saw Gina, though I didn’t know her name then. I was still buzzing with the effects of the joint and the wine that I was drinking when I saw an olive-skinned face with a wide mouth bare of makeup and dark brown hair that was almost black tumbling in thick waves to her shoulders. Her long silver earrings sparkled as, head thrown back, she laughed at something someone in her group had said. I knew I wanted to meet her. I also knew a lot more than I had the night I had met Eddie. I knew he didn’t want me to have friends. Friends might put ideas into my head.
I knew it was the heroin, mixed with marijuana, that gave me the buzz I had started to crave. I knew he was a far bigger drug dealer than Dave had ever been. I knew that he had girls whose drug habit had wrecked their looks and were working the streets around King’s Cross – I had met some when they had come to the flat. In some perverse way he wanted me to see them, wanted me to know what might happen, should I ever refuse what he considered was ‘nice work’. That meant being sent to hotels and smart flats, rather than having to work the streets and give blow-jobs in the backs of cars. Some, like me, had once lived in his flat and catered for the ‘top end of the market’, as he liked to call it. But as their looks faded, they had ended up in less salubrious places.
I had learnt that Eddie did not work alone. There were the doormen, barmen and club owners he had in his pocket. He supplied drugs and girls, and they received commission on every one of their introductions. They in turn reported back when a girl got ‘out of line’. He always used that term for any girl who tried to get out of his clutches or to work alone.
Getting out of line, I also learnt, ended badly.
Dave had thrashed a boy who had stolen from him, but Eddie had beaten girls who had tried to pocket more than he thought was their share of what they earned from prostitution. As far as he was concerned, he owned them. I had grown to fear Eddie. I knew I was trapped.
50
In a crowded bar it’s impossible to monitor everything. While Eddie was talking to other people, I managed to get myself included in Gina’s group’s conversation. I found out that they were always there on a Friday night and was determined to meet up with them again. But how would I manage to do that?
My wish was granted just two weeks later. Eddie had business in Brighton. ‘I’ll be away for the night,’ he told me.
‘OK if I go to that bar and listen to some music?’ I asked, trying to sound as though I didn’t care either way.
He was in a good mood because he had arranged the meeting with his Brighton ‘connections’. New clubs were opening there and he was setting up a dealer network to supply the drugs. He smiled and said, ‘Sure,’ not thinking that it might be more than music I was interested in. He peeled some notes off the wad he always had in his pocket and gave them to me. When things were going his way Eddie could be generous, but I had already seen what a bad mood could bring.
‘Make sure you get the manager to order you a taxi back here,’ he said. ‘It can get rough round that area.’ Maybe he said it out of concern but, knowing Eddie, it was more likely that he wanted to check I had gone straight home after the club closed.
When I reached the club, Gina was there with her friends, who welcomed me with smiles. Over the evening, it became clear to me that not only did they know who Eddie was but also what he did.
‘Are you his newest girl?’ they asked me, not unkindly but knowingly. That was the first time I admitted to myself just what Eddie was, and what I had become.
From that night onwards, I felt a connection between Gina and myself. I loved how she laughed, how her silver bracelets jangled when she lifted her thick mane of hair off her face. More than anything I loved how, even knowing what I did, she had allowed me to join her group.
I arranged to meet her in the daytime when I managed to leave the flat on one pretext or another. Occasionally there were evenings when Eddie had no work for me and nights when he was away. The music venue seemed to be one place he didn’t mind me going to on my own.
For the first time since Dave had left me, I saw what a normal life was, and I yearned to be part of it, just to be a teenager without problems. I also wanted to be with Gina more and more. At night, when I drifted off to sleep, her face came into my mind and it was her laugh that I heard ringing in my ears.
Apart from Dave, I had never had any interest in boys. Until I met Gina, I had put it down simply to not liking men, but as I thought more and more about her, I began to accept that perhaps there was another reason.
Maybe Eddie caught me daydreaming once too often or asking too frequently if I could leave the flat. Whatever the reason, he decided to tie me to him in a different way. He introduced me to the needle, showed me the buzz that came from heroin when injected straight into a vein.
He did it for me the first time, tied the strap round my arm, slapped it till the vein stood out and slid the needle in. The buzz was instant and so much more than I’d experienced when I smoked it. This was unreal. It was so beautiful and I wanted more.
The first time is always the best, I discovered, but that doesn’t stop you searching for that exquisite feeling again. That’s why they call it ‘chasing the dragon’.
51
‘You have to get away,
’ Gina said. ‘You’ve got to get off the drugs, Jackie. You’ve seen what happens to girls who are on that stuff you’re taking.
‘And it’s Eddie and his ilk who get them hooked. It’s so they won’t leave them.’
‘He’d find me,’ I said, and told her about other girls who had thought they could escape him. How his network had found them and the beatings they had received. Then, when they were bruised and in pain, the drugs they craved had been withheld until they had agreed to work the streets.
‘He never lets them go willingly, not even when they’re so low they’re selling themselves for a tenner. It’s a matter of principle with him. One gets away and more might leave. He’d rather see them dead.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard all that too,’ Gina said, ‘but I only half believed it.’
‘Well, trust me, it’s true,’ I said, and felt defeated. If he could have a girl who worked the streets beaten to within an inch of her life, what would he do to me? I knew how much I was worth to him. Four or five men a week brought him in around a thousand pounds out of which he fed and clothed me, sent me to the hairdresser and gave me the odd present. Ten girls working the King’s Cross area didn’t earn him as much as that. Even I could work out that one docile underage girl was worth a great deal of money to him.
But, frightened as I was, Eddie had made a mistake when he had shown me the most wretched of his girls, those with dark rings round their eyes and the pallid complexion of the junkie. By doing that, he had shown me my future.
Although I’d said it wasn’t a future I wanted for myself, Gina wasn’t satisfied. One evening she bundled me into a taxi and made it take us to the areas where some of the street girls worked. I saw girls perhaps a couple of years older than me, standing on spindly legs that hardly appeared strong enough to support their weight. As each car passed, they looked hopefully at the driver, willing him to stop. They wore tiny mini skirts that only just covered their crotches and low-cut tops, while their feet were crammed into the highest stilettos. Nearly all of them had backcombed bleached-blonde hair, and every one of their heavily made-up faces bore the blank, dead look of someone drugged up to the eyeballs.
‘Look at them, Jackie,’ Gina said. ‘That’s your future if you don’t get away. They risk their lives every time they climb into the back of a car, but do they care? No, they don’t, Jackie. They only care about their next fix. And, even worse, do men like Eddie care? No. Those girls aren’t people to his sort, just money. They can be replaced when they die, killed by a punter or bad drugs. But think, Jackie, not one of those girls came into this world a junkie. They were children once, and however bad their homes were, they had a future. They don’t now. They’ll be lucky to see their thirtieth birthdays – or unlucky depending on how you look at it.
‘You might be his favourite now, but sooner or later, he‘ll find some other lost soul, younger than you, get her hooked, then put her to work.
‘You might last a bit longer than most. He struck lucky with you. Bet he never guessed how well you’d scrub up – but you won’t last for ever. Those men he sends you to, they like change, you know. They want young innocents. They don’t want the same girl every time – it takes the adventure away. Get real, Jackie. Eddie and his friends are evil bastards, and when you can’t bring in the big money, he’ll throw you out to work the streets with them,’ she said, pointing at the sad street girls who had clearly seen better days.
She was silent then and left me to think about what she had shown me. The taxi dropped us off at a coffee shop, and once we were seated, she broached the subject of my addiction. She told me about a centre where I could get help to come off heroin and how they would prescribe other drugs, far less harmful, that would help. ‘They don’t expect you just to stop, you know, Jackie.’
Still I looked doubtful. Where would I go? What would I do? Eddie had controlled my life for a year, even down to what I wore and what I ate. The thought of having to make all my own decisions was suddenly very frightening.
Gina played her trump card. ‘Oh, come on, Jackie! You can stay with me, if you’re worried about where you’d go. I just want you to get sorted,’ she said. At last I began to waver. ‘And I’ll take some time off work and come with you to the clinic,’ she added, for good measure. She went on to tell me she had discussed it with Anna, the girl she shared her flat with, and they had agreed they wanted to help me.
‘OK, then, I’ll do it,’ I said.
52
I was so scared the day I left Eddie, plain terrified that he might walk in and catch me. My whole body was shaking as I hastily pushed clothes and my music into plastic bags. I told Gina to wait outside in a taxi – I wanted it there ready to jump into and make a quick getaway.
I left the short skirts and skimpy tops behind. It was the jeans and T-shirts I wanted. I found some money stashed in his bedroom, about three hundred pounds. Nothing to what I had earned for him, I thought, as I shoved it into my pocket. Then, gathering everything up, I pulled on my leather jacket, raced out of the flat and jumped into the waiting cab.
The next few weeks were hard. I went to rehab, and although they prescribed methadone, coming off heroin was still worse than anything I could have imagined. I shivered and shook, sweat poured off my body and it seemed that every inch of me was racked with pain. There were so many times that I wanted to give up, find a dealer, inject the heroin into my veins and feel at peace, but then I remembered those girls with the dead eyes. Some spark of my old fighting spirit told me to persevere. Or maybe my feelings for Gina did.
The worst side effect of being drug-free was that my five-year-old self put in an appearance. It was the drugs, the doctors explained, that had kept her at bay. The methadone helped make her disappear again and, gradually, I began to feel better. I put on a little weight and started to believe that I had succeeded in turning my life around.
After I had finished my treatment I made contact with my parents. Scared they might trace the call, I had only done that once before. I felt that contacting them was part of getting well.
My mother was distant, but my father sounded excited to speak to me and wanted to know if I was all right. I told him I was clean of drugs and wanted to look for work. I had nice friends and they were helping me. ‘If you need anything, I can send you money,’ he said.
Had I hoped he would say, ‘Just tell me where you are and I’ll come and see you’? Maybe, but I consoled myself that at least he had offered me something, even if it was only money.
I loved living in Gina’s flat. Anna, her flatmate, was a short, stocky girl who looked at the world myopically through thick glasses and fussed over me continuously. I could see that she had a huge crush on Gina. But she was so kind to me, I couldn’t bring myself to feel jealous.
I started to wonder about looking for work. My sixteenth birthday had come and gone, which meant I was no longer an underage runaway.
My embryonic contentment made me careless. I forgot that Eddie had spies everywhere. Although we were careful not to frequent the music venue where I had first met Gina, we still went out in groups to other places where, unknown to us, there were doormen and barmen who did business with him. I don’t know who told him where he could find me, but find me he did.
I was not in a bar or club when I saw him but walking down the road in broad daylight.
‘Hey, Jackie,’ he called.
A sick feeling of fear nearly paralysed me.
With long strides, he caught up with me. He looked calm, not angry, and somehow that terrified me even more. ‘Go away,’ I said, thinking that the people milling around on the street would ensure my safety.
‘Don’t be silly, Jackie, you’re coming back with me,’ he said, catching hold of my arm.
I stared at him defiantly. Surely he couldn’t do anything to me in broad daylight. ‘I’m not,’ I answered. ‘You can’t make me.’ I jerked my arm free and started to walk away.
But the presence of other people didn’t frighten Eddie
. I should have remembered what I’d once told Gina. He would rather a girl was dead than have her escape from him. I don’t think I had taken more than a few steps when I felt the searing pain of the knife that was thrust deep into my back.
53
I heard Eddie’s footsteps as he walked away, then the world went black.
The next thing I knew I was waking up in hospital, with no recollection of how I had got there, for the second time.
The doctors told me I was lucky. If the knife had been a fraction higher and had sliced into my vertebrae or entered a vital organ, I would have bled to death. As it was, I had lost a great deal of blood. With such a shock to my system, they wanted to keep me in for a few days. They asked for my parents’ telephone number but I managed to fob them off by saying they were abroad and instead gave them Gina’s. She arrived later that day. So did the police: a middle-aged sergeant with the tired eyes of someone who had seen too much death and violence in his life, and a younger constable. They arrived with their notebooks at the ready, looks of sympathy and endless questions.
‘Do you know your attacker?’ was their first question.
Fear silenced me. ‘No,’ I said.
Could I describe the person who had assaulted me?
Again I said no.
The nurse saved me. ‘That’s enough for today,’ she said sternly. ‘She needs to rest.’ But I knew they would be back.
I was right. They returned the following day, but this time I had my story ready for them. I believed that if I gave them Eddie’s name he would find me again and his revenge would be much worse. Gina tried to persuade me otherwise, saying that if he was behind bars he couldn’t do me further harm. I was too terrified to believe her. I had heard of bail being given and guilty people walking away from what the police believed would be a conviction. I was adamant in my refusal.
Can't Anyone Help Me? Page 21