by Holly Archer
But it was well over another hour before the chef finally got bored. He hadn’t finished but he climbed off me, still erect, and walked out onto the landing in his pants as I fumbled around, looking for my clothes. I could hear him telling Kev he wasn’t paying because he couldn’t come. Kev was going absolutely mental, telling him he was a dick for taking Viagra and he better pay up or else. I quickly shoved on my T-shirt and jeans and stood in the doorway, feeling lost.
‘Just get in the car, Holly,’ Kev said, ‘while I deal with this dick.’
I wondered if that was the angriest I’d ever seen him and I figured it might be, which was saying something as he was a very angry man. The wind drove the rain into my face as I walked downstairs and made my way into the car.
‘You were gone ages!’ Carly exclaimed. I looked at the clock on the dashboard and it read 1.35 a.m. I prayed Mum and Phil were fast asleep. If for whatever reason they’d come to my room and seen that I was missing at this time, they’d go absolutely nuts.
‘I’m really sore,’ I said, honestly. ‘He was doing it for ages. Where did you tell your mum you were going?’
Carly giggled. ‘She thinks I’m at Gran’s. Before you came out, Kev was getting really wound up. He said if you didn’t come out soon, he’d maybe let me do it. But then you turned up so, hey. Anyway, it’s fine. You always share the money with me anyway.’
With that, Kev threw open the door and plonked himself on the driver’s side. He was holding loads of cash, so I assumed the chef had paid up in full, though I’d no idea how Kev had managed to force him. Perhaps I didn’t want to know.
Almost to himself, he said, ‘He tried to fucking mug me off! We won’t be going back to that fucking bastard again.’
A few days later at school, I was sitting in a social education class and the teacher started to talk about sexually transmitted infections. She was speaking about chlamydia. She said if you didn’t catch it in time you might not be able to have kids, but in loads of cases there weren’t any symptoms, so most people who had it didn’t know. I felt a bit sick and Jenny leaned over to tell me I’d gone all pale. I’d seen signs about chlamydia when I’d gone to the walk-in clinic but I hadn’t thought much of it, or paid much attention. I just assumed I’d know if I’d caught something like that because there would be some sort of sign. For the rest of the day, I didn’t feel safe and protected like I usually did in school. I couldn’t even concentrate in travel and tourism. I was just desperate to get checked out to make sure I didn’t have this horrible disease festering silently inside me.
Omar hadn’t mentioned sex to me. He hadn’t even mentioned a blow job. But what if one day we did decide to have sex and I was riddled with this terrible infection? So far, I felt like I’d done a good job of persuading him all the rumours about me were completely made up. That’s what I told myself, anyway, because surely he would have tried to get sex or a blow job if he thought I was a massive slag? Surely he wouldn’t kiss me so much if he thought I’d given blow jobs to random men?
But if he caught something from me I’d have nowhere to hide, and he’d have even more reason to hate me because I’d infected him, and I’d lied.
I was so worried that I thought about palming Mr Khan off, but in the end I wasn’t brave enough. Thankfully the walk-in clinic was still open when he dropped me back by the phone box. I practically ran there and asked one of the nurses if I could have a chlamydia test. She’d given me the morning-after pill loads of times, so she must have known who I was, but she pretended not to recognise me, as she handed me a form to fill in. Then she gave me a little swab and I went into the bathroom. It took two minutes but she told me the results could take up to a week to come through.
For six long days, I could barely eat or sleep. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, I was now convinced I had a disease ravaging my body. When I stole half an hour here or there with Omar, he noticed something was wrong.
‘You’re really quiet,’ he said, nuzzling into my neck as we sat on our favourite wall, near the church but out of view of the main road. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Yeah, course,’ I lied. ‘Just tired. Nothing’s wrong.’
Finally the clinic called me on my mobile and told me I was clear. I almost cried with relief. I remember thinking it was a minor miracle, as by that point I’d had unprotected sex with dozens of men and I’d convinced myself that one of them must have had it and passed it on to me. But I knew it was only a temporary reprieve. The next time one of the men paid Kev the extra twenty-five quid to shag me without a condom, I wouldn’t only have to worry about going for the morning-after pill, so I wouldn’t get pregnant, I’d have all of this to think of, too. Where would it end?
You might think that everything I was going through meant I didn’t want to have sex with Omar, but I was so confused and mixed up that I didn’t have a clue what I wanted. We’d been together nearly three months when I was at Dad’s and he was heading out on a night shift. It was a Saturday, and usually my phone would be buzzing with calls from Kev, with places to go and people to see, but today he was strangely quiet.
Omar’s family were really strict Muslims, so there was no way I could ever have gone round to his house, not as his girlfriend anyway, so I texted him and asked him if he wanted to come round to Dad’s.
By now, Gemma and Liam were grown up and doing their own thing, so I had the place to myself. Omar and I rarely had time to ourselves, never more than half an hour, and we never got to spend any time together indoors. On that afternoon, we just sat on Dad’s couch, cuddling and watching telly. It was so simple, but it felt so nice.
‘Where did you tell your mum you were?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, just at a mate’s,’ he smiled, swooping in for another kiss. I draped my legs over his and we began kissing again, a bit more passionately this time. I could tell Omar was getting a bit hot and bothered but still he didn’t say anything, or ask me for anything. After a few minutes, I pulled away, slowly but surely.
‘My dad’s on night shift,’ I said, taking his hand in mine. ‘He won’t be back for hours.’
Omar nodded, slowly, like he wasn’t really following.
I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear nervously. ‘Do you want to, you know?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean . . .?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Will we go into the bedroom?’
13
Betrayed
Sex with Omar was different from the sex I’d had with anyone else. Although I’d been with loads of guys before, I normally just lay there, so it wasn’t like I had loads of tricks up my sleeve. It was a bit fumbling at first, but we soon got into the swing of things. We did it slowly and it wasn’t rough.
I was two months shy of my fifteenth birthday and Omar was the same age. In the cold light of day, we were too young to be having sex, but sex felt like the only currency I had. Omar liked me for who I was and he’d never complained that we hadn’t done anything sexual yet. But I just had this awful feeling that if I didn’t do it he’d go off me. He was really good-looking and Carly said he was a bit of a heart-throb at their school, which made me feel really insecure. He’d have loads of girls after him. I had to do everything in my power to keep him, because seeing him was the only thing that made my life feel like it was worth living. If I lost him, I didn’t know what I’d do.
‘Do you love him?’ Carly asked one evening, as we sat in the back of Beaver’s car, while he delivered pizzas.
‘I think I do,’ I said. ‘He’s so fit and so lovely. He’s not like Ali or any of those other lads.’
Carly shrugged. ‘I don’t think you do love him. If you love him, why are you still shagging other guys?’
Thankfully Beaver came back and started the car before I had time to answer. I hadn’t told Beaver about Omar, as close as we were. I’m not sure why, it just felt weird, though we usually told each other everything else. I guess I figured he had enough on his plate. His wife had given birth to the
ir baby, a little boy called Hassan, and he seemed a bit distracted. Not that he ever seemed to spend much time at home. He was always out with us, delivering his pizzas and blaring his music and doing the silly dancing, which made us laugh so much.
Omar’s parents were really strict, so he was never allowed to stay out very late. I always had to see him in the early evening, usually after I’d been with Mr Khan. Our brief meetings were still the highlight of my whole day. Although we’d by now had sex, we rarely had time alone, properly alone. We could only ever do anything more than kiss when Dad was on night shift. If I took him back to Mum’s, the girls would never have given him a moment’s peace and, needless to say, going to his was out, so things actually still felt quite innocent in a lot of ways.
But word had begun to spread that we were together, especially around all of the lads at his school. Two of Ali’s mates had caught us kissing near the church one day and then the cat was out of the bag. It became harder to ignore them. Now they had something on me, something they knew I cared about. I had something to lose and that something was Omar.
At long last, they could blackmail me.
It started one evening when I was walking to meet Omar in town. I’d just had a really nasty encounter with Mr Khan and he’d hit me hard with his iron bar. The only reason he gave was that the sex had been rubbish, but it was no different from usual. I was feeling sore and sorry for myself when an Asian lad approached me. He was a couple of years older than me and he got right up in my face. Later, much later, I’d discover that his name was Mubarek Ali.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I hear you give good blow jobs. You look like you give good blow jobs. Want to give me one?’
I tried to push past him but he wouldn’t let me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to meet my boyfriend.’
‘Boyfriend?’ he laughed. Suddenly I became aware of seven or eight of his mates, all crowding round me. I felt really intimidated but I tried to keep my nerve. ‘Does your boyfriend know you’re a little slag? Because everyone else does.’
I met his gaze and said, ‘I’m not giving you a blow job.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I know you do it for everyone else. Meet me at the bowling green in ten minutes and you can sort it, yeah?’
His mates let rip a peal of laughter, as if on cue.
‘No,’ I said, again. I broke away from the group of lads and started to walk down the street, but Mubarek was hot on my heels. It was only after a few seconds that I realised he was chasing after me.
‘Bitch,’ he hissed. He’d been holding a bottle and I’d assumed it was juice but, as he threw its contents towards me, the stench of urine overpowered me. It felt warm as it collided with my face, and I winced in disgust as it ran through my hair and down my cheeks. Instinctively I went to cry out in horror, but I clamped my mouth shut so I wouldn’t accidentally swallow any of it.
As I dabbed my face desperately with a tissue, hot tears of humiliation pricked my eyes. All of Mubarek’s mates were hooting and howling with laughter now, as if it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I’d never felt shame quite like it. It was different from being hidden away in a dingy, damp room or the back seat of a car. Mubarek had made a massive public spectacle of me, and that was somehow equally awful but in a whole different way.
I knew I could never meet Omar in this state. I couldn’t bring myself to explain what had happened. It was far too embarrassing. I turned to head for home, where I could clean myself up, hopefully before the next call came in from Kev.
On the way back, I got my phone out and dialled 999. I’d never thought to call the police when I’d been raped and sexually assaulted, mainly because I didn’t think anyone was committing a crime. I’d agreed to go there, and I’d been paid, so I thought they’d just laugh and tell me it was my own fault.
Surely they would take this seriously, though? I hadn’t asked for this and, in my opinion, it was an assault.
‘I’d like to report an assault,’ I said to the operator. ‘Someone has just poured a bottle of pee all over me because he was asking for a blow job and I wouldn’t give him one.’
The operator couldn’t get me off the phone fast enough. She launched into a tirade about how I was wasting police time and that I ought to hang up and let them deal with real crimes. I felt really angry, but it just confirmed what I already suspected: no one really cared what was happening to me, because they all thought I had brought it on myself. If I thought that incident was a one-off, I was sorely mistaken, and the reaction of the police operator only made me feel more powerless.
No one else threw piss over me, but they all shouted at me that I was a slag and that they’d tell Omar. My insides would clench with dread, wondering what they would say to him and, even worse, how much of it he would believe. The irony was that most of these guys my own age didn’t have a bloody clue what I got up to. They didn’t know the half of it, and they’d have probably been shocked if they did. But they filled in the gaps by simply making up other things about me and by repeating the old rumour that I gave out free blow jobs to anyone who gave me the time of day.
It was a lad called Asif who made me cave first. I was on my way back from meeting Omar one time and he accosted me as I walked through the centre of town. I recognised him, as Carly had mentioned that he was in a couple of her classes and he was a bit of a dick.
‘Holly,’ he said, grabbing the sleeve of my denim jacket. ‘Sort it for us, eh? You know you want to.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend. I’m not doing it.’
But Asif wasn’t one for giving up. ‘Omar?’ he laughed. ‘Yeah, whatever. Go on, just do it. I know you do it for everyone else. He’ll never know.’
I was determined not to give in. Sleeping with Mr Khan and the men Kev took me to was one thing, but giving one of Omar’s classmates a blow job was another. It was too close to home and, boys being boys, I just knew they’d boast about it and he’d find out in no time.
It might sound strange, but blow jobs felt different from sex. Don’t get me wrong, sex with some of the men I’d been taken to had been absolutely horrible. Most of them smelled really bad and a lot of the time it was rough, aggressive and painful. But the thought of giving someone a blow job seemed ten times worse. With blow jobs, you couldn’t lie there and switch your brain down and think of other stuff. You had to be involved, to pretend you were enjoying it, to put on a big act. In most cases with Kev’s men I managed to avoid it, and the only good thing about Mr Khan was that he never asked for one. I figured it was because he always wanted to kiss me.
But Asif didn’t want to kiss me. I told him no again, and I tried to walk on, but he grabbed hold of my arm, his fingers digging into the sleeve of my jacket. His eyes were cold as they focused on me, and his voice dropped to a whisper.
‘Do it,’ he said. ‘And I won’t say a word to Omar.’ I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. ‘And if you don’t do it? I’ll tell him you did. I’ll tell him you sucked off every guy in our school.’
I closed my eyes, just for a second. I didn’t say a word and, as I opened them, Asif was still standing there, smirking. I didn’t even have to say yes. He knew he had me over a barrel, as he led me up an alleyway and dropped his trousers.
After Asif, I can’t remember how many more blow jobs I gave out. It was always the same story. The boys would tell me that, if I didn’t do it, they’d tell Omar that I had, and I couldn’t cope with that. I hated every second of it, as they dragged me down alleyways or round the back of the church, and shoved my head into their crotches without a word of warning.
What made it even more repulsive was that I never did it with Omar. Not once. We had sex occasionally, when Dad was on night shift and Omar could sneak away, but most of the time we just kissed and cuddled, as we sat on some random garden wall. That’s why it felt so horrible, doing it with his so-called friends.
One night, as we sat there hand in hand, Omar turned to me and said: ‘I have to as
k you something. There’s a guy at my school called Asif.’
My heart sank, but I nodded, willing him to go on.
‘Everyone says you gave him a blow job down the alleyway near the church. Is it true?’
I could feel the colour draining from my cheeks, as I dropped Omar’s hand. ‘If that’s what you think of me, then fine,’ I replied, coldly. ‘If you want to believe those horrible boys over me, then go ahead. I know whose side you’re on.’
Omar wrapped his arms around me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but I pulled away.
‘You think I’m a slag, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Everyone says I am and you believe them.’
‘I don’t!’ he cried. ‘I promise! I don’t think you’re a slag. I’m sorry. I . . . I don’t know how to say this, but I think I love you.’
My eyes widened. ‘You love me?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do. Do you love me?’
I tried hard to swallow the lump in my throat. I was feeling so many emotions I couldn’t decide which one to concentrate on. Of course there was the shame and guilt, for having done all of those things, and then lying about them, but I also felt elated that, in spite of everything everyone said about me, Omar loved me. He loved me.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think I do.’
I suppose it’s probably no surprise that after that I tried to find ways of avoiding the teenage boys who pestered me for blow jobs. The easiest way, of course, was to go off with Beaver in his car. It was much nicer, and warmer, than walking anywhere, and Beaver didn’t ask anything in return. He just wanted to moan about how horrible his wife was and how hard their life was now they had a baby.
His wife had to go back to work in Tesco quite quickly after she’d given birth, so sometimes Beaver brought Hassan along when he picked up Carly and me to help him with his pizza rounds. Hassan was really cute, and I loved playing with him as he gurgled away on the back seat. I couldn’t understand why Beaver thought he was such a burden, but I guessed it was probably because I didn’t have a kid and I didn’t get how hard it was caring for them all the time.