Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade (10 page)

‘You
motherfucker!
' he bellowed at me. ‘Are you trying to fucking kill me? What
is
this? I wouldn't give this disgusting slop to a dog! How many times do I have to tell you? Do you do this on purpose? Do you like to make me angry? What kind of person puts so much sauce on pasta?'

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' I snivelled.

‘
Sorry?
' Kas roared. ‘You
will
be fucking sorry!' And as he spoke he reached out his hand, lifted the plate off the table and hurled it at me.

Instinctively, I took a step backwards and as the plate smashed against the wall beside me, it sent out an explosion of broken china, pasta and thick tomato sauce. I was covered in it – it was in my hair and all over my clothes – and as I cringed and cowered against the wall, sobbing and trying to protect my head with my hands, Kas flew across the kitchen and grabbed me by my hair. He seemed to be completely out of control, kicking and punching wildly, like a large, violent child in the throes of a terrible temper tantrum. He shoved me up against the wall, grasping my throat so tightly with his fingers that I thought he was going to choke and kill me. But, instead, he started bashing my head against the tiles and screaming into my face, ‘How fucking stupid are you?'

I thought my skull was going to explode and as my knees gave way, Kas lifted me off the floor by my neck and threw me down at his feet, kicking me again as he shouted, ‘You fucking clean that up, you mother-fucking bitch!' He pushed the back of my head so that my face was pressed
against the floor and began to wipe the tiles with my hair, before dragging me to my feet again and roaring, ‘Look at your fucking hair. Do you take no pride in yourself, woman?' Then, suddenly, he let go of me and walked out of the room.

Every inch of my body hurt and I could feel the blood pounding in my temples as I just stood there, too shocked to move. And I was still standing there when Kas walked back into the kitchen, holding in his hand an electric razor. I tried to get away from him, but my feet slipped and slithered on the dirty floor and as he reached out and grabbed my arm, he shouted at me, ‘I cannot stand any longer to look at this messy hair. I am going to cut it all off. You are
disgusting
. You're like an animal.' And that was exactly how I felt.

But instead of cutting my hair, he pushed me away from him and said, in a voice thick with disgust, ‘Just look at you, shaking like a frightened little mouse. Get out of my sight. Go on. Clean up this mess and then go.'

So I scooped and scraped the food from the walls and floor and cleaned the kitchen, checking and re-checking for any traces I might have overlooked. And then I went into the bathroom, cleaned myself up, showered, changed my clothes and went to work on the streets, feeling angry with myself for having been so stupid as not to know how much sauce to put on a plate of pasta.

Although I was always afraid of Kas, realising that I didn't have any control over what happened to me was almost a kind of release, and it wasn't long after the incident with the pasta sauce when I began to think,
If he does kill me, it doesn't matter. I don't care anymore.
I'd done well at school and had left with good A-level grades, and then I'd had a responsible job that required thought and a reasonable level of intelligence, but clearly, by any practical measures, I
was
stupid, and however hard I tried, I was never going to get things right. So it wasn't surprising Kas got angry with me when I couldn't do even the simplest thing.

One day, when I'd only been working on the streets for a few days, I did something that made him furious – there were so many things that I can't remember what it was –
and he drove me to a river, parked his car on the dusty grass separating it from the road, and told me to get out. Then he grabbed my arm, pulling me to the very edge of the black water, and said, ‘If you ever disobey me again, that is where you are going to end up. I will kill you and put your useless, lifeless body in that river.' And I knew that he meant it.

For the first few nights when I was working on the streets, I would lie back on the seat of each new car and cry silently. But, gradually, I learned how to switch off the light in my mind so that it became dark and empty and I felt nothing – either physically or emotionally. After the first couple of weeks, I sometimes felt less vulnerable when I was working than when I was alone with Kas in the flat, never knowing what would be the next thing that would make him explode with anger. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but I began to have some regular customers who talked to me and were nice to me and with whom I felt almost at ease – in contrast to the many men who picked me up and frightened me, and some of whom asked me to do weird things, which I hated.

One night, I was picked up by an older man and as soon as I got into his car I felt scared. I didn't know why; there was just something about him I didn't like. I'd noticed it when I was talking to him through the open window, but I hadn't earned enough money that night and so I didn't have much choice if I was going to have any chance of avoiding being the target of Kas's fury.

The man kept touching me while we were having sex, and I told him – as I told all of them – that it wasn't allowed. Most men would apologise and stop immediately, but this particular man took no notice, even when I grasped his arm and pulled his hand away from my body. And then he snapped at me, ‘If I can't touch you, how can I do this? Give me back my money.' I gave it to him immediately and breathed a sigh of relief when he dropped me by the side of the road near the petrol station. But as I stood there, waiting for the next car to pull up beside me, I thought about what had happened and realised I was being silly: I was performing what should have been intimate, loving, sexual acts with complete strangers, so it didn't really make much difference if they touched me. I think that was the moment when I stopped allowing myself to care about any of it.

I had customers of all ages, from early twenties to late sixties, or even older, and some of them were good-looking, which I hadn't expected. If I had ever given any thought in my previous life to what sort of men go to prostitutes – which I hadn't – I think I'd have assumed they were all scumbags. I certainly wouldn't have imagined that some of them would be ‘normal' guys with girlfriends or wives and children. So it was strange to discover that most of them were ordinary, sometimes quite nice, men who apologised if they hurt me and who talked to me about their lives and their families. Sometimes, a man would ask how old I was and when I told him, he'd say, ‘Ah, you're the
same age as my daughter' – which seemed really creepy to me but never appeared to bother the men at all. It was a bizarre, surreal world and although nothing in it was familiar to me, nothing really surprised me, either.

But even with my regulars – the men I felt safest with – I didn't ever feel able to confide in any of them, because I never forgot that I couldn't trust anyone. I have a memory of being unnerved as a child when a teacher at school told me that God can see everything we do, even when we think we're all alone, and as I stood in the darkness at the side of the road, the thought would sometimes cross my mind that perhaps Kas could, too.

One night, a BMW pulled up beside me and I could see that there were two men inside it. I was always wary of flash cars anyway – especially BMWs and Mercedes – because they were the cars Albanians tended to drive. Kas told me repeatedly ‘No Albanians' and he'd frightened me by saying, ‘They won't care what they do to you or what happens to you afterwards.' But this particular night was another on which I hadn't made enough money, so my more immediate concern was what Kas would do to me, which probably made me less cautious than I might otherwise have been.

The two men paid me 50 Euros each, and when I insisted that one of them should wait at the side of the road while I went with the other, they shrugged their acceptance and the man in the passenger seat opened the door and got out.

I directed the driver to a spot further away than my usual one, which was just around the corner, because I was afraid that the other man might try to follow us. But already something didn't feel right, and when I had a chance to look at him more closely, I felt my stomach twist into a knot of fear as I realised he was Albanian.

Why hadn't I seen it immediately? I could hear Kas's voice in my head saying, ‘He'll rape you, or he'll kidnap you and then kill you. How could you be so stupid?' Despite my fear, though, I knew I could have little influence over whatever was going to happen.
So what if he rapes me?
I thought.
What would it matter? I'm going to have sex with him anyway. The worst that can happen is that he kidnaps me – and then I'd just go from one situation that couldn't be any worse to another
.

At that moment, he turned and looked at me and the expression on his face made me think that perhaps things
could
be worse than they already were – a possibility that seemed to be confirmed when he stopped the car and told me he didn't want to have sex with me. Instead, he wanted me to sit beside him with my legs open while he stared at me. It was horrible. I felt embarrassed as well as scared, and it took every ounce of my willpower not to show that I was panicking.

‘It's time,' I told him as soon as I thought I could get away with it. ‘We have to go back.'

I was expecting him to refuse, or at least to argue, and I could feel every muscle in my body tensing. But he just
shrugged, turned the key in the ignition and slewed the car across the road so that we were heading back towards where we'd left his friend.

Almost before he'd stopped the car, I jumped out and told his friend that I'd changed my mind and I wasn't going to go with him. ‘Here, take your money,' I told him, fumbling in my boot to retrieve the 50 Euros he'd given me earlier and pushing the notes into his hand. He was standing so close to me that I could feel his breath on my face and as I took a step away from him, I realised that the other man had already got out of the car and was right behind me.

This is it
, I thought.
It's over. They're going to do something horrible to me now.
I tried to focus on what Kas had told me so often: ‘Don't ever let anyone see that you're afraid. As soon as they can see your fear, you've lost.' But it was difficult to hide it when my whole body was shaking violently. I was about half the size and certainly less than half the weight of the smaller of the two men, and I knew that if they intended to bundle me into their car, there was nothing I would be able to do about it.

Neither of them made any attempt to touch me though, as the man I'd been with said, ‘Give me back my money.' I was so surprised that I answered without even thinking, ‘
No!
You've had your time. I can't. You have to go.' And then I used the Italian phrase that made most men who were considering messing with me change their minds: ‘
Il mio ragazzo è Albanese.
[My boyfriend is Albanian.]' It didn't
work this time, however, and for a moment both of them just looked at me. Then the man said again, ‘Give me my money,' and I held out the 50 Euros he'd paid me a few minutes earlier. It seemed a small loss if it meant they might leave me alone, although I didn't for one moment think that that would be the end of it and I expected them, at the very least, to rob me of the rest of the money I'd earned that night. So I was amazed when he snatched the notes from my hand and they both walked back to their car and drove off – the man in the passenger seat holding my gaze for a few seconds with a look on his face that seemed to say, ‘Don't think you've seen the last of me. I'll be back for you.'

As soon as the car was out of sight, all the tension drained out of my body and I burst into tears. My knees gave way and I sat down abruptly on the dry, spiky grass to phone Kas and tell him what had happened.

‘How fucking stupid are you?' he shouted at me. ‘Why would you go with Albanians after everything I've told you? How many times do I need to say this to you? A child could understand the simple things I tell you, and yet you, woman, you can't even follow the most basic instructions.' He continued to rant at me for a while and then said, ‘Tell me what they looked like. What sort of car were they driving?'

He'd drilled into me right from the start the need to make a mental note of the make and model of every car that picked me up and to memorise its number plate – which proved to be a great deal more difficult than it might
sound. But I
was
able to describe this car and these men, and just a few minutes later, I saw Kas driving past in the direction they'd gone and I realised he must already have been somewhere in the area.

I was still standing at the side of the road when I heard what sounded like a car backfiring. I waited for Kas, but he didn't come, so I tried to push what had happened to the back of my mind and carried on working for the rest of the night.

Later, Kas told me he'd seen the BMW parked further down the road, where the men were talking to some girls, and he'd fired a warning shot at it – which must have been the sound I'd heard. He showed me his gun as he told me, ‘Now perhaps you will understand that we are not playing games.' But as well as being frightened by the knowledge that someone as angry, unstable and unpredictable as Kas had a gun, I was appalled by what he'd done, because I knew the men would come back to make
me
pay for it.

And they did drive past slowly every now and then, just staring at me, and then, one night, at around 5 o'clock in the morning, when there was no one else left on the streets and I was about to go home, I recognised their car driving down the road towards me. With my heart racing, I slipped into the shadows and ran to the back of the petrol station, where I crouched down on the ground behind the low wall and tried to stifle the sound of my breathing. I knew that if the men got out of the car, I was dead. But, by some
miracle, although they drove through the petrol station with the windows open, looking and listening for me, they didn't stop and, eventually, they drove away.

I'd learned my lesson, though, and after that I was more careful to look out for the national characteristics Kas had described to me – although I
did
wonder if the two Albanians would have continued to be quite so interested in me if Kas hadn't shot at their car.

I always dreaded having to go anywhere other than to one of ‘my spots' with anyone and if someone said they wanted to take me to their house, I'd sit beside them in their car as they drove there, looking anxiously out of the window as I tried to memorise any landmarks that might help Kas find me if anything went wrong. As soon as I'd agreed to go with someone, I had to text him to let him know and to give him the registration number of their car, but I knew that, in reality, there would have been little he could have done in time if anyone
had
attacked me. So even though I could earn more money by going home with someone, which meant that Kas would be pleased – or, at least, less likely to be angry with me – it made me feel even more vulnerable and afraid than usual.

One night, I was picked up by a man who paid me 150 Euros to go to his flat with him. After we'd had sex and I told him his time was up, he gave me 150 more, and then another 50. Then he took off his watch and tried to make me take it so that I'd stay longer. But the truth was that, although I realised he didn't want to be alone and I felt
sorry for him, I didn't want to be there at all, because I felt uncomfortable too, like a reluctant voyeur who was being forced to glimpse part of his life that no one else ever saw – and that I didn't want to see either. It made me even more nervous when he kept trying to make me take his watch, because I knew that just because he'd given me money didn't mean he was going to let me leave with it. But eventually he did drive me back to the petrol station, although, for reasons I didn't understand, I felt even more miserable than usual for the rest of the night.

On another night, a man took me on his boat on the lake. There were pictures of his wife on almost every flat surface and I couldn't imagine why he'd taken me there and why he didn't seem to see that there was anything wrong in what he was doing. I never did get used to the fact that most of the men who picked me up didn't appear to consider it to be a big deal and clearly had no sense of shame about it. The worst thing on that occasion, though, was that I kept remembering the day Kas had taken me to the river and told me how easy it would be for him to kill me and dump my body in its black water, and I realised that if the man decided to push me over the side of his boat, my body might never be found and no one would ever even know I'd been there.