The Girl Without a Voice

by Casey Watson

  ‘How lovely,’ I said, peering into their trolley, ‘and let me see … is it, by any chance, going to be pink?’

  ‘Bright pink,’ Imogen said, grinning. ‘But not with princesses or anything. I didn’t want princesses or fairies or any of that girly-girly stuff. It’s going to be pink and purple butterflies. Daddy’s even painting some on the wall. But I’m still staying at Nan and Grandad’s sometimes, aren’t I, Grandad?’ she added, with a touching sensibility. ‘I’m still going to live there when Daddy’s away working.’ She grinned up at him. ‘So now I’ll have two bedrooms!’

  ‘Ooh, I am so jealous,’ Riley said, with feeling. ‘I would love to have two bedrooms. All that space!’

  ‘That’s because you need two just to create a bit of floor-space,’ I pointed out. ‘She is very, very messy,’ I stage-whispered to Imogen, from behind my hand. ‘And speaking of mess – well, in a manner of speaking – how is project sledge coming on? All built and ready to roll yet?’

  Mr Hinchcliffe nodded. ‘It is. Well, very nearly. Just another coat of varnish and it’ll be ready for action. Just need a bit of snow now, and the two of them can take it out for a proper road-test.’

  I smiled at Imogen. ‘So Henry did a pretty good job, then?’

  ‘He did indeed,’ said Mr Hinchcliffe. ‘Young Henry’s quite a dab hand with a saw, isn’t he, Immie?’

  But the girl herself had fallen silent. She was too busy blushing. She had gone as pink as the butterflies her dad was painting in her bedroom – as pink as the tips of her pretty hair. Mr Hinchcliffe and Riley and I all exchanged grins. So it seemed Imogen and Henry had really struck up quite a friendship. And was that so surprising? They would both soon be 14, after all.

  ‘What’s the matter, Im?’ her grandad teased. ‘Has the cat got your tongue, love?’

  And the smile on Imogen’s face was a thing of such beauty. Riley was right. You really didn’t need sprouts to make your Christmas. You didn’t really need a turkey, come to that. It was cheesy – seriously-make-your-toes-curl-cheesy – but it was also true. Sometimes – in fact most times, if you were talking about life’s priorities – a smile on a child’s face would do.

  Epilogue

  Once Gerri was out of the picture, and things settled down for her at home, Imogen came on in the proverbial leaps and bounds. She returned to the Unit after Christmas but wasn’t far behind Shona and Gavin in settling back into a mainstream class, where her speech and her confidence gradually returned to her.

  As anticipated, Imogen was able to move back into her dad’s house early in the New Year, but would always return to stay with her grandparents on days when her dad was on trips abroad. She also continued to have a good friend in Henry, who became something of a regular round at her grandparents for a time, and – for a time, anyway, a little further down the line – in her love life.

  In the longer term, Imogen’s father and Gerri divorced, though not before her trial for abuse and wilful neglect came to court. She was lucky – because her solicitor painted such a grim picture of her own childhood, she was given a suspended sentence and was ordered to attend counselling. She was also ordered not to contact Imogen and her father ever again.

  As for the rest of my little brood, they all trundled on through their teens and, as was to be expected, because that’s the way of things, some thrived and blossomed, while some continued to wrestle with their challenges. Shona went on to do very well academically, and became quite a regular when I needed help with my displays, and little Molly definitely reached her potential. Gavin too, though still medicated all the way through his schooling, turned out to be quite the academic, and the older he became, the less obvious were his symptoms. And though poor Ben never really got any less challenging, he managed to endure long periods in school with relatively few exclusions for fighting. His father was also allocated a family support worker to help him better support Ben at home.

  And, as for me, well, I was just hitting my stride with little Imogen. New Year, new challenges, new problems to be tackled. I couldn’t wait to meet my next batch of pupils when I came back that following January, because for everything I helped them with I knew they’d teach me so much too. And needless to say, they didn’t let me down …

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  Chapter 5

  We drove straight from the airport to a beautiful lake, where we sat together outside a café, soaking up the heat of the late-summer sunshine. Kas was exactly the same as he’d been in Spain – just as relaxed and easy to talk to – and I felt immediately comfortable in his company.

  We went back to the lake that evening, and as the air was cool once the sun had gone down, we sat inside a restaurant, where we talked and laughed together and the waiter smiled at me and called me ‘La bella signorina’. Everything seemed perfect.

  After the meal, we went to a café to meet two of Kas’s friends, who were so nice to me I began to wonder what he’d told them about our relationship. At the café, we ate ice cream and drank brandy and when Kas and I were leaving, the two men stood up, kissed me on both cheeks like benevolent uncles and said ‘Arrivederci, Soffee’.

  That night, in Kas’s apartment in an ancient, yellowbrick house a couple of miles from the centre of town, we made love for the first time, and afterwards Kas held me in his arms and I felt safe. I didn’t know whether I was falling in love with him; I certainly didn’t feel the way I used to do when I was with Erion, when a light seemed to shine from somewhere deep inside me, but maybe I’d been wrong and that hadn’t been love, whereas the feeling of security I had with Kas was.

  For the rest of the weekend, we wandered around the city together, sat outside cafés drinking coffee or glasses of wine and ate our meals in restaurants that were full of the sound of laughter and where everyone seemed to talk at the same time. On the Saturday evening, we went to an elegant nightclub in the centre of town, which was decorated with lavish crystal chandeliers and carved-marble fountains and was quite unlike any nightclub I’d ever been to before. Home, with all its worries, seemed a million miles away.

  We spent Sunday by the lake and when we returned to Kas’s flat in the early evening, I had an almost physical sense of contentment. Kas’s arm was resting lightly on my shoulders as he put his key in the lock of the front door, and I reached up to kiss his cheek before walking across the little hallway and into the bathroom.

  When I came out again a few minutes later, Kas was in the kitchen. He had his back to the open doorway, but he turned as I stepped through it and looked at me with an expression I didn’t recognise and couldn’t read. Although he didn’t seem to be angry, there was a coldness in his eyes that made the skin on my scalp tingle and my heart began to race.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked him. ‘Kas? Is something wrong?’ But instead of smiling and reassuring me, as I’d hoped he would do, he nodded his head towards the little wooden table under the window and said, in a voice that filled me with dread, ‘We need to talk.’

  I pulled out a chair and sat down, expecting him to sit beside me, but he remained standing, with his back resting against the work surface, as he said, ‘There is a reason you are here.’ I looked up at him and smiled, but when he didn’t smile back at me, I felt my stomach contract sharply.

  ‘There is a reason,’ he said again, ‘and I am going to tell you what it is. First though, I have to ask you: do you love me?’

  ‘I think I do,’ I told him, trying to ignore the horrible sense of foreboding that had settled over me like a dark shadow. ‘I don’t know how people know when they love someone, but you’ve been there for me for so long that …’

  He interrupted me, raising a hand impatiently and saying, ‘Well, if you love someone, you have to make sacrifices for them. We all have to make sacrifices for the people we love, and that’
s why I asked you to come here: because there’s something you can do for me. There’s a sacrifice you can make to show me that you love me.’

  He didn’t raise his voice at all, but I could feel his irritation and when he looked at me, his expression seemed to be almost one of disgust. He spoke slowly, as though explaining a very simple concept to a determinedly slow-witted child, and although I nodded to indicate that I understood what he was saying, I didn’t actually understand it at all.

  When he spoke again, he sounded angry, in a way I’d never heard him sound before, and he barely glanced at me as he said, ‘As you say, I have always been there for you and now you must repay me by doing something for me.’

  ‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘You know I’d do anything I can to help you. But, please Kas, don’t look so serious. You’re making me nervous.’ And then I laughed, because I knew I didn’t have to be afraid. This was Kas, who never shouted, who had been my best friend for the last four years and who I knew was the one man I could trust, apart from Erion.

  ‘I’ve got a debt that has to be paid,’ Kas said. ‘That’s why you are here. You are going to repay this debt for me.’

  His eyes had become cold and there was a closed, hard expression on his face. But still I told myself there was nothing to be afraid of. After all, what possible reason could Kas have for being angry with me?

  ‘Of course I’d help you if I could,’ I told him. ‘But I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I’ve got money. I spend almost everything I earn, so I don’t even have any savings. I don’t know what …’

  Again, he interrupted me and I could almost feel his irritation as he snapped, ‘This is what you’re here for. You are here to help me to repay this debt. This is why I asked you to come to Italy. It’s a sacrifice anyone would be happy to make for someone they loved.’

  I felt sick. I couldn’t understand what Kas was really saying or why he’d suddenly become so coldly detached. My heart was pounding and tears had begun to spill over on to my cheeks. I wanted to say to him, ‘This isn’t the way we are together. Why are you speaking to me like this?’ But he was watching me with an expression so close to dislike that the words stayed locked inside my head.

  ‘I’m in trouble,’ he said. ‘I owe a hundred thousand Euros – to Mario in fact, one of the men you met at the bar after dinner the other night and found so charming. I have to pay this debt.’

  ‘Oh Kas, I’m so sorry!’ I cried, although if I’m being honest, I’d have to admit that my sympathy was mingled with relief at the realisation that he wasn’t angry with me after all. When he’d first mentioned a debt, I’d assumed he meant it figuratively, as he wasn’t at all the sort of person I’d have imagined getting into financial debt. He’d never talked in any detail about his work – only ever referring to it as ‘the import and export business’ – but he seemed to have a comfortable life and I suppose, if I’d thought about it at all, I’d have assumed he earned a fairly good income. But I knew enough about him to know how much he must have hated having to ask for help, so I tried not to sound surprised or pitying as I asked, ‘What happened?’

  I don’t know what I expected him to say – perhaps that someone in his family had been ill and had needed expensive medical treatment and that he’d had to send home more money than he had. So I was caught completely off guard when he said, ‘It was a drugs’ deal that went wrong.’

  At first I thought he was joking – giving me a ludicrously unlikely explanation in an attempt to make light of a situation that embarrassed him – but his face remained completely serious as he continued, ‘If I don’t pay the money back, it will cause problems for my family. So that’s why I need you to make this sacrifice for love.’ And that’s when my heart began to race and the palms of my hands became damp with sweat.

  For a few seconds, I just looked at him, my mind totally blank and uncomprehending, and then I shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know what you mean. How can I help you? You know I want to, but it would take me a lifetime to earn that sort of money.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to earn it in your pathetic job in England.’ His sneer was cold and dismissive. ‘You will earn it here. I will find you a place to work – on the streets.’

  Again a wave of relief washed over me and I laughed as I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Work on the streets doing what?’ And then I added hastily, ‘But don’t worry, Kas. I will help you. We’ll think of something, I promise.’

  ‘We don’t need to think of anything,’ he snapped, and the unmistakable sound of anger and dislike in his voice filled me with dread. ‘I have already thought of something, and that is why you are here.’

  He took a step towards me and, instinctively, I cowered away from him.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ he shouted, leaning down so that his face was just a couple of inches away from mine. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? How dare you disrespect me in this way?’

  It was as though the temper he’d only just been managing to control had finally erupted, and his face was contorted unrecognisably as he demanded, ‘How dare you answer me back? Do you not know that if you love someone, you have to make sacrifices for them? Are you so selfish that you can’t do this thing for me?’

  I felt like an actor who’d walked on to the stage to speak my lines and realised I’d learned the wrong part in the wrong play, so that everything going on around me was completely incomprehensible. And then it suddenly struck me, almost like a physical blow, that the ‘work on the streets’ he was talking about was prostitution.

  A wave of nausea washed over me, followed swiftly by embarrassment at the thought that I must have misunderstood. He doesn’t mean it, I told myself. Just keep calm. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life. But Kas was clearly in deadly earnest and as I rested my elbows on the kitchen table, holding my head in my hands with tears streaming down my face, I was afraid. The last man I’d ever been afraid of was my father, and as I looked at Kas, all the old feelings of dread and helpless vulnerability that I’d been so determined never to experience again threatened to overwhelm me once more.

  Kas strode backwards and forwards in front of me, sometimes shouting, sometimes speaking in a quiet voice that was even more menacing and frightening than his anger. Then, suddenly, he leaned down towards me again and screamed, ‘Who do you think you are, woman? Do you think that after I’ve waited for you all these years I’m just going to let you go? Well, you’re wrong. I’m not letting you go. Do you understand? I will never let you go. You are mine now. Your life belongs to me, and you will never get away from me.’

  And that’s when the thought struck me that perhaps he was actually crazy. No one who was sane could possibly say the things he was saying: men like Kas aren’t pimps – or drug dealers – and girls like me don’t work on the streets. The idea was absurd and, in any case, how could anyone actually make someone else do that? But, whether he was crazy or not, the fact remained that Kas was in a rage – apparently with me, although I didn’t understand why – and I was very frightened.

  I kept telling myself he’d be all right again in the morning. We just had to get through the night and he’d have got over whatever had upset him. And if he hadn’t, I’d simply tell him, ‘I’m not going to do it. I thought you knew me. If you did, you’d know I would never do that in a million years. I’m sorry about the money you owe, but I can’t help you in that way.’ Then I’d make some excuse to cut short my visit and go home – to the ‘pathetic’ job I enjoyed, the family I loved and my ‘normal’ life.

  I wrapped my arms across my chest and hugged myself tightly, trying to control the violent shaking of my body, and Kas pulled out a chair and sat down opposite me at the table. Thank God, I thought. He’s calming down at last. Now he’ll tell me what’s wrong and that he’s sorry. Whatever I do, I mustn’t antagonise him. Just think, Sophie. Think before you speak.

  He began to talk in a quieter voice, telling me what had happened as though he was discussing an
ordinary, everyday event. But I’d never taken drugs and I didn’t think I knew anyone who had, so to me it sounded as though he was describing a scene from a film.

  ‘I was smuggling cocaine to Holland,’ he said. ‘And when I realised the police were following me, I threw it out of the car. Now the dealer wants the money he lost.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s just the way it goes. The coke’s gone and Mario wants his cash. That’s why he wanted to see you the other day – to make sure you’d be able to earn the money for me.’

  ‘What? Oh my God!’ I stared at him, anxious for a moment that I was going to be sick, and then I pressed my forehead on to the cool surface of the table and tried to process the disconnected jumble of my thoughts.

  ‘So, as you can see, I have no alternative.’ Kas leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms in the air above his head and yawned. ‘There’s no other way for me to raise the money. I could use other girls, but I wouldn’t be able to trust them the way I know I can trust you. I know you’ll be loyal to me and that you would never do anything to disrespect me.’

  ‘We can work something out,’ I told him, lifting my head from the table and wiping my face with the back of my hand. ‘I’m sure that if we think about this together, we can …’

  ‘I know you won’t disrespect me,’ he said, looking past me and out of the window. ‘Because if you did, if you even thought about it, I would find out and there would be consequences.’

  I knew people didn’t say things like that in real life, but however much I tried to tell myself it was all some elaborately cruel joke, I knew in my heart that he meant every word and that I’d made a huge and potentially fatal error when I’d allowed myself to break my golden rule and trust him. Already emotionally exhausted and bewildered, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the need to be at home, where my mother would put her arms around me and tell me ‘It’ll be all right, love’. Instead, though, I was alone in a foreign country with a man who professed to love me but who was asking me to do something no one in their right mind would ever ask anyone to do.