by Holly Seddon
I’m not technical and I’m not canny. I’ve never even had my own phone contract and Steve set up my email address for me. I don’t know how they could have found it. I don’t even know who ‘they’ are.
I could try to tell myself that it’s a hoax but the details are pinpoint accurate. Ordinarily, I would ask Steve to help me but that’s out of the question. All of this was supposed to be in the past; that was an absolute condition on which everything has been built.
And Joe, I can’t even consider telling Joe. I meet his eye and smile. He’s always looking for reassurance, even now. Even mildly nudging his world is out of the question, let alone setting fire to it.
I try to catch Steve’s eye next, but he’s looking forlornly at my almost full plate. ‘The food’s great,’ I tell him and he smiles gratefully. He’s at the head of the table, a whole side to himself, presiding over events. He reminds me of an old oil painting, a medieval king and his banquet. No, that’s not true. He reminds me of someone pretending to be at a medieval banquet, dressed up at a corporate event perhaps. Or sticking his head through one of those wooden seaside pictures.
*
Jonathan sucks on his cigarette, then blows the smoke into the Surrey sky. ‘I only smoke when I drink,’ he tells me apologetically, as if I don’t know. The houses in this strip were once egalitarian, filled with postmen and teachers as well as bankers in their bowler hats. That was long before my time. Now it’s all marketing directors, city accountants and business owners, drawn by the detached ink-pot homes and direct line into Waterloo.
Every other house is having an extension built or a loft converted, builders’ skips bulging out of driveways like the caravans that used to squat there. The glow of London sits just over the shoulders of this suburb, lending us its litter, crime and extended licensing hours.
The overpriced bottles we’ve bought chime against each other as we walk. We needed more wine and I was glad of the chance for some air, but Jonathan offered to squire me. Ordinarily, I would ask Paula if she’d like to come too, hoping she’d say no but keen to appear above board. Innocent. I was too distracted, though, and I wonder now what she and Steve are thinking.
There have been moments like this over the years, stolen time when it’s just the two of us. Jonathan and me. Within these snatched pockets, the air changes, but we never address it. I look across at him and he smiles, a nervousness that’s usually well hidden. His face is flushed with drink but my tongue is mute with sobriety.
I wish I could think of something to say, some way to tell him what’s on my mind, but I can’t. Even after all this time, I can’t risk it. The only thing that has kept me safe for all this time is being a closed book.
London’s lights sparkle on the periphery of the view. No different to the London I first saw, all those years ago.
‘What are you thinking?’ Jonathan asks gently, crushing his cigarette under his brogue. This is a voice he uses only when we’re alone. I wonder if Paula ever hears it and feel a prickle of guilt, even though I’ve done nothing wrong.
‘Thinking about London,’ I answer, honestly. Steve and Jonathan grew up not far from our current Surrey home so the city holds no magic for them. But for me, it still feels like another country. Such a seductive city, a magnet. I will never fully trust in its promises.
Jonathan stops and leans against a large skip; planks of wood and old fittings jut out of it like teeth. ‘You’ve not seemed yourself tonight,’ he says, reaching for my hand. My gut twists, something shooting down to my groin and then up to my heart. All these years and he’s never touched me like this, no matter how much I’ve wanted him to.
‘Don’t,’ I say, almost silently. I let my hand fall from his but I don’t step away.
‘Samantha,’ he says. I don’t reply. I can’t do this now. All these years, all these moments. And now, as I stand on the edge of a secret abyss, just one gentle blow could push me in. I mustn’t get distracted.
I start to walk away, back to the family home I almost take for granted. I can still feel the impression of his fingers on me. So light, it’s excruciating.
I can’t remember the last time I was touched by Steve. I know that whenever it was, it didn’t feel like that.
Steve has gradually retreated to a respectful distance. Maybe he hoped I would follow and pull him back. It’s an odd stalemate cushioned with care for each other.
When we first got together, sex was part of the package. It never crossed my mind to demur, but even Steve, with his challenges, could tell I wasn’t exactly excited at the prospect. ‘Your eyes go blank, like you’re a million miles away,’ he said afterwards, a few months into our lives together. All I could do was shrug and try harder.
But I was a different person back then. A corpse that these people, ‘they’, have somehow dug up and reanimated.
As I reach our driveway, I notice Paula watching from the window. I give a small wave and slow for Jonathan to catch up. The curtain falls back into place and the door opens.
‘Thanks for coming with me,’ I call cheerfully to Jonathan as I step back inside, squeezing Paula’s shoulder as I walk past.
Greg
Friday, 14 June 2019
Eloise has been Greg’s manager throughout his time at the Hidden Humans charity. Somehow, despite the merciless onslaught of the work, helping thousands of people who have been trafficked and exploited, she manages to be permanently, almost supernaturally, calm and patient. She absorbs the emotions of the team but never collapses under their weight. Which is more than can be said for Greg. Often when he gets home at night, he limps into the flat as if he’s run an ultramarathon rather than cycled back from Lambeth.
The hardest, most frustrating part of the job is when the charity helps someone only for them to slip back under again. And when the worst happens – they wind up seriously assaulted or dead – it’s all the more punishing for having known them, having met them, having held their eye or their hand. So when Eloise asks to speak to him with that tone, he steels his nerve.
Greg can feel Eloise’s hand on his back now, waiting for the news to sink in. The heavy silver ring she twists when she’s worried presses into his flesh.
‘Marija? Seriously?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her voice soft. ‘I just heard.’
‘But we’d got her out, we had. She and her sister were out.’
‘It’s the job, love. You know this is always a risk.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ Greg says, shaking her hand away.
Sisters Marija and Ana had come to the UK to be au pairs, a long and optimistic journey from Central Europe. They’d lied about their ages numerous times, claiming to be eighteen and nineteen. ‘But she’s actually fifteen and I’m seventeen,’ Marija had told him in a whisper.
It used to be safer, back when there were visas for au pair work, but now it’s unchecked. Now girls arrive ready to look after kids, practise their English and do some sightseeing. Instead they’re locked in private houses, sometimes skivvying all hours for families, and sometimes there are no children there at all.
Marija and Ana finally got free from their captors due to the vigilance of a postman, who noticed they were always in the house, always looking ill and haunted. ‘He said his own daughter was the same age as me,’ Ana added at their first meeting, in perfect English.
They couldn’t go home but couldn’t stay where they were. Greg followed the procedures and referred them to the mechanism for applying for asylum, arranged for them to stay in a B&B the charity often use – the best of a bad bunch. Not ideal, not with the other people staying there, but those are the compromises.
A month later, they had disappeared.
The older girl, Marija, was found dead two nights ago. She’d been dumped at the side of the canal a few metres from a well-known solicitation site. Ana was still missing but apparently – according to the other women and girls working with Marija – she was making films, along with some others who had been sc
ooped up by a regular visitor to the B&B. The owner pleaded ignorance.
‘We need to find Ana,’ Greg says, finally. Eloise says nothing but shakes her head, almost imperceptibly.
*
Marianne isn’t home when he gets in. He forgets for a moment that she’s working late and feels the sting of her absence. More than anything, he just wants to hold her, press his body against her beating heart. Ground himself in the safety of the living. Instead the flat is empty, left to boil all day so the air is thick. Little whirlwinds of dust twirl in the evening sun that streams through the window. Fragments of her skin and his, dancing close.
He won’t cook tonight. On Fridays they get a takeaway, creatures of habit. He had been looking forward to this all week. Ready to lose himself in a comedy, to drink wine with his wife and toast another week done. He doesn’t feel like laughing now.
How late did she say she’d be? Greg makes a mug of tea, dumps three sugars in it and logs on.
He tries not to get sucked into the inflated chat that’s clearly been rumbling for hours already. So much of it is hot air. He’s in two minds about whether coming here is even worth it. There is true, valuable, critical activism happening on the dark web, but finding it and getting useful things done comes at a high cost. The things he has to wade through … the people he encounters.
This latest lot he’s found are more enthusiastic than effective. And their enthusiasm seems to run chiefly to the theoretical rather than the practical. The last group he was a part of were a good bunch, realistic, experienced, but they disbanded after a group of them were arrested and a leak was suspected.
The latest idea, of the many plans that are floated without becoming concrete, is blackmail.
‘We can only do so much in the background like this, why don’t we shoot for the stars?’ someone has written.
‘Everyone has a secret. Let’s force politicians to change policies, let’s bribe asylum-centre managers for better conditions, let’s force police to arrest the gangs. Why the fuck not?’
Greg’s guts squirm. This kind of thing is never the answer. As ever, he tries to steer them away.
Far better to make change on the ground. Use dark web back channels to help people get back in touch with family through untraceable email accounts, to track down and break up small-time trafficking gangs and to find girls who are obviously not ‘starring’ in videos and photos out of choice, girls being ‘offered’ for pennies. Girls like Ana.
He doesn’t bother telling them this again – they don’t want to know. Let them tire themselves out while he gets on with his own plan. He looks at a recent thread about identifying girls in illegal porn, but that’s not what he needs to do. He needs to reverse engineer a fuck-load of porn just to find a specific girl, Ana.
He posts.
‘I need to locate a girl. I know her name, date of birth (real and at least one fake one she used) and last whereabouts. I know she’s been exploited in videos and maybe other forms too. She wasn’t trafficked for sex originally but you all know the story. So what’s the best and quickest way to track her down?’
‘That’s easy,’ someone writes back. ‘Hacker Supermarket will have that done in a few hours. They do that shit all the time.’
‘They find trafficked girls?’ he writes, unable to hide his surprise. Why hasn’t this come up before? He’d heard of Hacker Supermarket but as far as he knew they were a kind of odd-job service, stealing credit card numbers, generating fake gift cards, doxxing people and so on. Not doing anything approaching humanitarian work.
‘They find anything and anyone you want, so they’ll be able to find your girl.’
He sees himself in the reflection of the screen. Tired, angry, his beard ever more grey. He thinks of Ana, whether she even knows what’s happened to her sister yet. If he’s fatigued, how the hell does she feel?
‘Can I get a link?’ he types.
*
It’s nearly nine and Marianne is still not back, but it can’t be long. How late do Year 11s stay at school revising? And on a Friday night? The key could rattle in the lock any minute. Now or never.
He’s been staring at this site for a good hour, but now Greg springs into action. Types in exactly what he wants, fills in every field and tries to work out a reasonable deadline. As an afterthought, he adds that he works to help trafficked women. Who knows if the people behind this site have a conscience, but if they do, it might help expedite things.
He gives his anonymous email address and submits.
*
The door swings open and Marianne walks in, rubbing her shoulders as she dumps her bag on the table next to his closed laptop.
‘Good day?’ he asks, standing up and moving away from the table.
‘Long day,’ she says, but smiles. ‘I’m so glad to be home.’
He wraps his arms around her, smells the coconut conditioner in her hair and the tang of traffic fumes she’s travelled back through.
‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ he says into the curls that she’s just released from her hair band.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks, pulling back to study his face. ‘Did something happen?’
He looks at her frown, sees that little line scored ever deeper. He opens his mouth but where to start? And where to stop?
‘I’m starving,’ he says eventually, rolling his eyes and kissing her forehead. ‘Let’s order a curry.’
*
Marianne sleeps on her belly, one arm cast over the side of their bed. Greg inches down his side of the bed and flops onto the carpet carefully, but she doesn’t stir. He takes his laptop into the kitchen and closes the door after him.
He’s pretty full of wine and curry but he still needs something. He pulls down the bottle of Christmas whisky from his dad and pours a thick measure in a dusty tumbler. Then he opens his computer on the sideboard.
The quote is waiting for him. He throws the liquid down his neck, his eyes and throat burning in unison. There’s a link to accept the offer, to get things started. Greg has enough cryptocurrency, ‘money’ he still doesn’t really believe in but has gathered.
He pours another measure, adding a splash of tap water just like his dad. What would his dad think about this? He drinks it in one, feeling his head fuzz over almost immediately.
It’s for the greater good.
Accept quote.
Samantha
Monday, 17 June 2019
I get the second email while stirring milk into three mismatched mugs in the office kitchen of the animal charity where I volunteer. I’ve been expecting one, refreshing my inbox constantly since I received the first on Saturday and barely sleeping for the last two nights. Thank god Steve and I have our own rooms now.
In that very first message, they told me they wouldn’t give up.
This email contains a scanned copy of old papers. Mine. Filled with details that no one in my life now would recognise. A different name. A different date of birth. Place. Parents. All of it. I don’t delete it this time. They’ll only send more if I do – and if they can find this, I dread to think what else they have on me.
After spending most of today putting on a brave face, my eyes sting with exhaustion, my movements are sluggish and I expect I’ve done a bodge job on everything I’ve touched. I’m only cushioned from complaints by my voluntary status. And maybe my long service; I’ve been helping out at the charity a few days a week since Joe started secondary school.
I carry a trembling tray of drinks through to the little office I share. By the time I place a mug down on Alice’s desk, a pool of grey coffee surrounds it.
‘You OK?’ she asks, frowning up at me from under her thick curly fringe. Sensible, solid Alice.
‘I’m fine.’
She doesn’t believe me, but we’re both adults so she lets me lie.
I put my own mug down on my desk and then take the other to the corner seat where Ruth is on the phone, handset clamped between ear and shoulder. She winks her thanks at me.
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Back at my desk, I wiggle my mouse and the monitor comes back to life. The Facebook update I’ve been writing on the charity page is still there. I add a few more photos of small pets for adoption, drop in an extra ‘donate’ link and post it.
As I sip my lukewarm coffee, counting down the time until I can leave and hide away at home, my ‘work’ email dings. I toggle to the old version of Microsoft Outlook, an uneasy feeling growing. Could they know I’m here? Of course they could, they seem to know everything.
What will your son do if you’re sent back? Will he come to visit you in jail?
We will report you to the authorities in 24-hours’ time. Unless you do the one simple task we have assigned you. Go here now:
E-Z Luggage & Lockers – London Waterloo
Pear Place, SE1
Locker number 49
Key code to open locker: 160399
Further instructions will follow.
And Samantha, if you tell anyone about this, the offer is rescinded and a file on who you really are will be sent to everyone you know, as well as the authorities.
*
The train into Waterloo snakes slowly through South West London. I still feel uneasy on trains, still furtively look around.
When I first arrived in Britain, the trains looked like toys. But I learnt that they were no more benign than back home. Still laced with officials, people checking tickets, people asking where I’d come from. They wore smiles but it was the same deal. There were police hiding in normal clothes. Guards looking closely. Nosy businessmen with bulky mobile phones.
I learnt what to say, coached first by the men who ‘looked after me’ and then by my friend Cristina. I learnt about hiding in the toilet when I couldn’t pay the fare, and how to seem younger to get a child ticket if there was no toilet. How to get the money for the ticket from other passengers, the sob stories that worked. I learnt the tube map, the overland and all the rat runs; it’s still there like muscle memory. It was so long ago that none of those people from my early days in London would recognise me, but I still can’t settle.
