I Never Gave My Consent

by Holly Archer

  My hands shook, as an awful reality dawned on me: if he could do the unthinkable, so could Andy.

  I think it was in that moment that I decided my life was no longer worth living. The next few minutes were chaos, as Liam summoned Mum and she read Mr Khan’s spidery, misspelled note in utter disbelief. She told me to phone Carly and get her to come round, which I did, as if I was on autopilot.

  ‘What?’ Carly said. ‘How did she find out? How does she know?’

  ‘Just come round,’ I said flatly. I didn’t know what I hoped she’d do or say.

  The colour drained from Carly’s face as Mum started to quiz her on whether or not I was a prostitute, and if I owed Mr Khan money, and what the hell this was all about. She stuttered that he must be making it all up because it definitely wasn’t true, but Mum knew something was going on, something far more serious than I’d ever let on.

  How could I have caused her such pain and humiliation? I couldn’t live with the guilt, and neither could I live with the constant fear that Andy was going to turn up in the middle of the night and kill my family as they slept. I genuinely believed I was better off dead and that my family would be safer if I was gone.

  I wanted to do one last thing to make Mum proud so I decided I’d wait until after exams had finished before I killed myself. She could open my results when I was dead and gone, and she could tell people that at least I’d worked hard and passed everything and my life hadn’t been one big fuck-up.

  My last exam was IT and it was the following Friday. I spent the next few days holed up in my room, pretending to be studying, but really writing letters to everyone telling them how sorry I was and how much I loved them, but I couldn’t go on. I explained what had been happening to me and told them I hoped they understood, but that I could see why they might not. There was a note for Mum and Dad, one for each of my siblings, and one for Omar and Carly. They were the only people who mattered in my life, but I honestly felt that their lives would be much better if I wasn’t there. Tears dripped from my eyes onto the white paper as I said my goodbyes, then sealed the envelopes shut.

  When Friday came, I was strangely calm. I got through my exam quite easily. I guessed I might have even done quite well, but of course I’d never know because I’d be long gone before the results came out. When I said goodbye to Jenny and the other girls at the gates, I felt a little sad and I wondered what they’d say when they found out I was dead. They’d probably come to my funeral and hug Mum and tell her they had no idea, which of course would be the truth.

  There was only one thing I wanted to do and that was to see Omar one last time. I phoned him and asked him to meet me in town. Things had been a bit strained between us since the incident with Andy and all the other men, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. I just wanted to say goodbye. We were only together for quarter of an hour but as he hugged me goodbye, I took his face in my hands and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. He looked a bit shocked, as we hardly ever kissed anymore, but he didn’t object. As we turned and walked in separate directions, I felt the smallest tinge of sadness that he’d never hug or kiss me again.

  That evening was one of the longest of my life. I’d decided I was going to wait until everyone had gone to bed to overdose, because then there was less chance of them finding me and trying to stop me. Mum had a medicine box in the kitchen where she kept lots of painkillers, and I’d had a quick look the previous evening. There were dozens of pills there and I planned to take them all. I’d bought some stomach salts from the chemist, to make sure I didn’t throw up. I wanted to be certain all of the poison stayed in my system. I’d also managed to buy a mini bottle of vodka from the corner shop, using the cash from Kev I still had under my floorboard.

  This was no cry for help. I really, really wanted to die.

  Around ten, everyone went to bed while I calmly went to the medicine box and counted out all of the pills I could find. There were nearly eighty paracetamol tablets there, and I fully intended to take them all. I opened all of the packaging and carefully placed it in bins all over the house. On the off chance that I did survive for a little while, I didn’t want anyone to know how many I’d taken as I didn’t want them to try to treat me properly. I just wanted this all to be over.

  I took the pills first. I didn’t even take a drink of water to wash them down; I just swallowed them dry, each one sticking in my throat as I tried to force it down. I’m not sure how long it took but I waited until every pill in the house was gone. Then I took the stomach salts and washed them down with a few massive glugs of vodka. It was so strong it burned my mouth and I almost gagged, but I managed to swallow it.

  It was only as I climbed the stairs that I started to feel a little woozy, but I put on my pyjamas and found my way into bed. I took some headphones out of my school bag and placed them in my ears, hoping some music would help me drift off to sleep.

  I shuffled through some tracks and found my favourite song, but it wasn’t something mellow and soothing. It was ‘Always on Time’ by Ja Rule and Ashanti which, ironically, was all about sex. As I settled down for the end, I put it on repeat and let the lyrics reverberate around my brain. Then, I closed my eyes and waited for death to take hold.

  It was the retching which woke me first. I sat bolt upright in my bed, as I realised I wasn’t dead, at least not yet. It was still dark outside and the light from the street lamps was pouring into my room. Drenched in cold sweat, I was trying to be sick. My body was trying to rid itself of the poison I’d fed it, but the stomach salts seemed to be doing the trick and keeping it all down. My stomach contracted violently as I gasped in pain. I just hoped Mum didn’t hear me. I didn’t want anyone to come into my room or to come to my aid. I just wanted it all to be over.

  Before long, the room was swimming before my eyes. I was drifting out of consciousness again. I prayed that this time when I closed my eyes it would be for good.

  It felt like just seconds before my stomach contracted again. I was sitting up straight, retching loudly once more, but now it was light. Hours must have passed and I could only hope that I was now beyond help, that it was only a matter of time before I slipped away. I’d thought it might be painless and peaceful, that I’d just drift into oblivion as my music played softly in my ears. I hadn’t bargained on how hard my body would fight to stay alive.

  I heard Mum’s footsteps on the landing and fresh sweat soaked my body. I turned away from the door, hoping she’d assume I was asleep, but she walked straight in and up to my bed, where I lay facing the wall.

  ‘You don’t sound well,’ she said. ‘Were you sick just there?’

  I mumbled something about maybe having a bug but my speech must have been slurred because suddenly Mum’s expression changed. She grabbed me by the shoulders and turned my face around to see I’d gone completely grey and my lips were blue. There was a flash of sheer terror in her eyes as she let out a piercing scream.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she roared. ‘You stupid girl! You stupid, stupid girl! Get up, now, we need to get you to hospital! Why have you done this? Why?’

  She threw open my bedroom door and started screaming and screaming. Phil came running to the foot of the stairs and she ordered him to call an ambulance. He was so stressed he had to ask Mum what the number was. I made it halfway downstairs before I slumped in a heap in my pyjamas. I couldn’t hear much. I felt like I was underwater and my vision was really blurred, but in the distance I could hear The Powerpuff Girls playing on TV, as Mum hastily turned it up and told Lauren and Amy everything would be fine, I just wasn’t too well but the doctors were coming to fix me and they’d not to worry.

  She was running in and out of every room in the house, each time with another empty packet in her hands, begging me to tell her how many pills I’d taken. I was beyond speech. Even if I’d wanted her to save me, I couldn’t form the words. My brain felt like it was slowly shutting down as things got hazier and hazier.

  It was only a matter of minutes before the sound of si
rens filled the air and blue lights shone into our once-quiet lounge.

  I was in hospital for a week but I don’t remember most of it. When the doctors tried to pump my stomach, I had an allergic reaction to some of the medicine. I had to have lots of injections and I was on oxygen but it was all a bit of a blur. Mum and the rest of the family must have been really worried but I was still in a daze. As I’d tried to kill myself, I had to see a psychiatrist. I wasn’t allowed to see her on my own – Mum and Dad had to be there too – so of course there was no way I was going to tell her half of what was going on in my life. I simply said I’d been raped, just once, and it had all been too much but I was fine now.

  I wasn’t fine, far from it. I was still very mixed up and confused and I didn’t know whether I should be happy I was still alive with a family who loved me, or upset that it wasn’t all over like I’d planned. As I lay in hospital, mulling over the mess that had become my life, the ward sister stopped by my bed to read my chart. As she did, she narrowed her eyes and stared at me, still with my oxygen mask around my face, helpless and lost.

  ‘You’re a silly girl,’ she said, shaking her head with a tut. ‘Just looking for attention, I bet. Well, I hope you hurry up and get better soon – but only because having you here is a waste of our time and our money. We really could be doing with getting that bed back.’

  18

  Escape

  After my suicide attempt, I was told I had to go to counselling with my family. I didn’t speak about anything that had happened to me. I wanted to curl up in a ball and pretend none of it had ever happened. I mumbled a few things about being raped once but that was it. Then I was sent back home, as if nothing had ever happened, back to my old life and all its trappings.

  One thing that did change was that I didn’t get picked up by Mr Khan anymore. I think he’d got bored of me. Maybe I was becoming too old for him, or maybe he felt like he’d lost some of his power over me now that he’d gone and told Mum I was a prostitute like he’d always threatened to do. He didn’t know I’d tried to kill myself, so maybe he thought his letter hadn’t had any effect. Mum certainly never gave him any money and neither did I.

  Instead, he sold my phone number to a student from Afghanistan who picked me up occasionally instead. He did sleep with me, in exchange for driving lessons, but he was nowhere near as bad as Mr Khan. He was actually OK to talk to, just a bit lonely, and he didn’t smell horrendous, which was a huge bonus. In my crazy, mixed-up mind I thought I was actually getting quite a good deal.

  It wasn’t so easy cutting ties with Kev, though. He still had a weird sort of authority over me, as if he was my dad or something. I just felt compelled to do as he said, as I’d been following his orders for so long. He continued to take me to the Chinese man on Tuesdays and anyone else he could find. I remember sleeping with a horrible man who asked me to take my jewellery off because he had a water bed. As we lay down on it, he breathed his coffee and fag breath in my face, and told me how nice it was to lie beside a girl and not a woman. He made me sick, but I was a zombie, still sleepwalking through the nightmare.

  Miraculously, I’d managed to pass all of my GCSEs, despite being suicidal and doing barely any revision. I got an A in travel and tourism and Bs and Cs in everything else. I even got a B in IT, despite the fact I’d been hours from attempting suicide when I sat the exam.

  My teachers told me my grades were good enough to get me into sixth-form college, and maybe even university, but I was still living day to day. The little girl who dreamed of being an air hostess and travelling the world had left for good the night Andy had taken me to that house, and I wasn’t sure if she’d ever return.

  Despite everything, I decided to go on to college to do a diploma in travel and tourism, mainly because I couldn’t face being stuck in the house with my thoughts and memories. It was only a few weeks after I started that a familiar feeling returned.

  I was wrestling with my jeans one morning, trying with all my might to pull them up, when I realised they wouldn’t fasten at the top. I tried another pair, and another, but none would fit over my stomach. I was so bloated I had to go out and buy a pair of jogging bottoms.

  I just knew.

  I knew before I’d calculated when my next period was due that I was pregnant again. I had the same metallic taste in my mouth, the same dizzy feeling. It had happened again, and again I didn’t have a clue who the dad was or even what race he was.

  All I wanted to do was get rid of it, but I couldn’t get a scan in Birmingham for a few weeks so they sent me to Chester, which was a bit further north, just over an hour away by train. I went on my own this time and, after my scan, I walked around the shops in a daze, looking at clothes like nothing had happened. When I came home, I switched my phone off. I didn’t even want to speak to Omar because our relationship was in freefall.

  ‘Why do you have a password on your phone?’ he’d asked, a few nights before. ‘Why do you never leave it alone for two minutes? Are you cheating on me?’

  Things just hadn’t been the same since I’d overdosed, and I guess he felt guilty for not trying harder when I’d told him I’d been raped, but the situation was getting too big for two teenagers to handle.

  I was eight weeks pregnant by the time I was given an appointment for the actual termination, in Birmingham. In my heart of hearts, I knew the baby wasn’t Omar’s. The chances were minimal. We barely held hands anymore, let alone slept together. Ironically Mum had softened a bit towards him since my suicide attempt, and she’d let him come round to the house, although he wasn’t allowed to stay over. I guess she assumed the baby was his because a few nights before the abortion she sat me down in the kitchen and told me to think carefully about what I was about to do.

  ‘I think you need to think carefully about this, Holly,’ she said. ‘Do you really want to go through with this?’

  I nodded my head.

  ‘But it’s the second time it’s happened,’ Mum went on. ‘Maybe your body is trying to tell you something? You do know we’d support you, don’t you? I think you’re just so messed up by this rape; maybe you should have some more counselling. What do you think?’

  ‘I’ve decided, Mum,’ I replied. ‘I’m having another abortion.’

  If truth be told, the only emotion I felt was disappointment. I was disappointed in myself for getting into this mess again, because I still firmly believed it was my fault. No one had ever told me about contraception, not properly, and I didn’t realise I had options. I guess if I’d gone ahead and had the baby I would have loved him or her, but I couldn’t imagine anything about it and I didn’t want to. I just wanted it gone, for all traces of my abuse to be sucked out of my womb.

  It was only after the operation that I realised I’d got off fairly lightly the first time. I bled so much and it was so painful I thought my insides were falling out. I rang the clinic and they told me it was normal but I couldn’t settle. Eventually I passed everything I was supposed to pass but it was an uncomfortable few days.

  I think it was then that I made the conscious decision to make myself unattractive. I stopped bleaching my hair and wearing trendy clothes. I hid away in the jogging bottoms I’d bought for the brief few weeks of my pregnancy and I ate and I ate and I ate.

  Carly hadn’t had to do half the stuff I had because she was fat. Maybe if I made myself fat too, I’d become less of a target. I knew I had a long way to go, but I’d try my bloody best to get as big as I could.

  Put simply, I’d just lost all respect for my body. It didn’t feel like my own anymore, so why should I try to do right by it? I stuffed myself with sweets and crisps and takeaways, and things only got easier when I turned seventeen and moved into a flat with Gemma. As well as studying for my diploma course, I took on a part-time job in Morrisons, where I could buy all the food I wanted with my staff discount. I went up a dress size or two and I looked really bloated, especially compared to how I used to be, but I was still by no means obese.

 
Kev wasn’t put off, at least not enough to stop taking me out. But it became harder for me to meet him. I was getting loads of hours in the supermarket, which he wasn’t happy about, especially when it meant I didn’t have time to do Tuesday nights with the Chinese man. I was nervous about pissing Kev off, but somehow I found the strength to stand my ground and he started to work around my job, always huffing and puffing like I was doing him a huge favour.

  Little did I know he had expanded his sordid venture.

  One night, he took me to a filthy house and there were several men there. It was no different from usual, except another girl was there. She said her name was Maria, but that was about all I could make out, because she had a bad speech impediment. She looked younger than me and it was obvious from speaking to her that she had learning difficulties. It made me sick to my stomach to think how easy it must have been for Kev to lure her in, but what could I do?

  One night, I was walking out of work, when a taxi pulled up at the side of the road and an Asian driver leaned out of the window.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey!’

  I folded my arms and said nothing, wondering what kind of request he would have for me.

  Instead, he said, ‘I know what’s happening to you. It’s no secret and it’s not right. I can help you.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t need your help.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. He had kind eyes, and looked around fifty. ‘I don’t want anything from you, I promise. I just want this to stop. It’s happening to too many young girls and it’s not right. I can give you a new sim card for your phone. Throw the old one away. Please.’

  I pulled up the zip on my green work fleece to shield my face. Just another older man, promising not to hurt me but to help me. How could I trust him? How could I trust any man?

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thank you, but I don’t need a new sim card.’