The door opened and three more girls were brought in. One of them looked off her face on something. One of them looked like she didn’t give a shit, and the really young one was sobbing loudly. She was obviously irritating the hell out of man with them and he shoved her down by me on the settee and told her to shut up. She didn’t. The man looked intensely annoyed, and walked out again, slamming the door and locking it. I tried to fight against the cotton-wool that seemed to have replaced my brain and looked systematically around. The two girls who’d come with me. Three girls already there and three girls just arrived. Various ages and types. No men. They seemed to be just warehousing us here.
“Oh do please shut up,” the couldn’t-give-a-shit girl directed at the crying one. “It’ll only make them mad, and it won’t stop them doing anything. It’ll just make it worse.”
The crying one tried to haul back on her sobs. Her face was all swollen up and her eyes bloodshot, and there was snot all down her face, so she’d obviously been at it for a very long time. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. All the girls just looked at her, their expressions varying from uninterested through unsympathetic to stony. The crying girl then used the other sleeve to wipe at her eyes. I looked intently at her. She finally glanced up and as her eyes met mine, her eyes widened in shock.
“What are you doing here?” She blurted out.
“I’m Ellie and I’m fourteen,” I said quickly, my gaze meaningful on her face.
“No you’re not! You’re-”
“I’m Ellie and I’m fourteen,” I repeated fiercely.
She went silent and stared in a confused way at me.
“And you’re-”
“Hea-” she began.
“Helen,” I said sharply, my eyes fixed on her own. “Helen Bolton.”
Heather Holt stared at me. I nodded emphatically.
“Um, yes, um, I’m Helen,” she stammered. “I’m thirteen.”
As the other girls started to talk among themselves, I hissed at Heather. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She jumped nervously. Tears sprang into her eyes again.
“Don’t cry,” I said a bit more roughly than I ought to have done. “It won’t help.”
She gasped back and then managed to whisper. “I went out to a party with Gemma – that girl there,” She pointed at the off-her-face one. “I lied to Dad about where I was going, said I was staying overnight with Katie, and then went to the party. He’d told me I couldn’t go see? But I didn’t see why I shouldn’t. I mean the party was fine, really it was, really tame, but then, after an hour Gemma said she’d been invited to another one that would be better, so we went on to that one. And there were all these men there. Lots of them, and,” she leant in and whispered even more discreetly to me, “all Asian. And then Gemma took something and went all weird and some man gave me a really strong drink which I drank because I was scared and I thought it would make me feel better. And I’d already had lots of vodka at the first party and that drink just finished me off, and then I woke up in a car with Gemma and her,” she jerked her head in the direction of couldn’t-give-a-shit, “with two men and I got my phone out to try to ring the police but they took it off me and threw it out the car window and we drove for absolutely hours and then they dragged us in here.”
I stared at her. And then finally my brain clicked into gear and at last I had the common sense to reach up to my left earring and set off the alarm. And then I realised that it was now after one in the morning and Quinn would probably be in bed asleep. My stomach dropped away. Little Heather Holt, daughter of John Holt, the local bobby from where I grew up who went to the Quinn’s Catholic church, was here, possibly at risk of being raped, and I had no idea whether Quinn would even know the alarm had gone off. He might not find it until he woke up tomorrow at seven. A lot could happen to a girl in five and a half hours.
“Where are we?” I directed at a girl with sleek dark smoothly straightened hair who looked like she was a bit older and a bit more with it than some of the others.
She glanced round at me. “Glasgow,” she said.
“Glasgow?” I echoed astounded, “Why the hell have they brought us all the way to Glasgow? Don’t they have girls of their own available here?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know the ins and outs of why. But they bring us here every now and again. They usually keep us here a few days, so you’d better get used to it. They come and get us when they want us.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Heather about to start howling again at the news that they might keep her here for days, so I kicked her. She looked reproachfully at me, but she shut up. I didn’t want to scare Heather even more, but I needed to ask. “What do they usually want us to do?”
She absentmindedly scratched at her bare arms. “Depends what the clients want. I think they bring us up to do the weird stuff. They’ve got us trained up for that see? Looks like they’ve made a bit of a mistake with her,” she jerked her head at Heather. “But either they needed someone to make up the numbers, or someone made a request for a virgin. Could be that, I s’pose.”
Heather went more pale than she even was already. I reached out and took her hand and squeezed it warningly.
“Will they come tonight?” I asked. “Or will they wait till tomorrow?”
She shrugged vaguely. “Could be any time really. But it’s really late now, so you might as well go and get some sleep in one of the bedrooms. If they want you they’ll come and get you.”
“Where’s the toilet?” I asked.
She pointed. “Toilet. Shower there. They’ll expect you to shower. Kitchen. There’s some basics there, milk, cereal, bread, jam.”
I got up and went to the toilet. Heather leapt up and followed me like a little dog and waited right outside the door. In the toilet as I sat and pissed, I said quietly for the recording. “So now I’m here in Glasgow, locked in a flat with eight other girls and one of them has turned out to be the thirteen year old daughter of a friend of mine from home who’s here by accident. So I’ve hit the alarm, but I don’t know if anyone’s going to notice it until tomorrow morning, so I’ve got to try to keep Helen safe until help arrives. And we don’t seem to know when the men are going to arrive.” I wiped, pulled my scanty knickers up and unlocked the door. “Come in here Helen.” She came in and I locked the door. “Are you on your period?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Do you have anything sharp in that little bag of yours?”
She stared at me, then looked into her tiny bag. All she had in it was a bit of make-up and a mirror. I took the mirror and smashed it against a metal pipe running up the wall. It went into three shards, one of them with a point. I examined my left arm. My left arm was a mess already so what harm would another mark do? Which was that vein they took blood out of? Right near the cigarette burns. Showing blue through my pale skin. I jabbed at it hard and then tried slashing. Blood suddenly oozed copiously. Heather gasped and made a little noise but tried to hold it back by putting her hand over her mouth.
“Take your knickers off and give them to me,” I ordered.
She hesitated then as I held out my hand impatiently she bent over and whipped them off and handed them to me with acute embarrassment in her eyes. I mopped the blood up with the inside of the gusset of her knickers. And then squeezed at my arm to get more out and wiped again.
“Your first line of defence is to cry and say you’ve started your period and you haven’t brought anything for it. If necessary pull down your knickers and show them this. That should put them off.”
They might well expect her to provide other services instead, but at least it wouldn’t be penetrative vaginal sex. I tried not to think about the other orifices available and that girl and the bottling. My arm was already clotting up. I gave one last press on it and then handed Heather her underwear back. Then I washed the cut on my arm thoroughly, several times over with soap and water at the sink which made it start running again for a bit. “And
beyond that, we’ll have to think on our feet.”
We went to the kitchen and I made us both a cup of tea. I looked in all the draws. There were no sharp objects at all. No forks or scissors or sharp knives. Paper plates, plastic round ended picnic style knives. Plastic mugs. Nothing that could be used as a weapon. I decided to hang on to that sharp triangle of mirror. And then I looked through one of the other doors and found an empty bedroom. I lay down on the cold damp lumpy double bed and told Heather to get in with me and then I pulled the old fashioned bedspread over us. No swish flat this one. Really old, really run down, damp and scummy with bars over the small windows. Just a holding pen for us I guess. I glanced at my watch. Two thirty am. I put my arm round Heather. “Just try to sleep,” I advised.
Rather surprisingly, we both did fall asleep, Heather first.
We were wakened by the sound of men’s voices. They were going around the flat looking in all the rooms. Our door opened. For a second my heart leapt and I thought, maybe it’s Quinn! But it was only four am and there was no way he could have got here in that time, and he probably hadn’t even found the alarm yet. The police? But it wasn’t. It was two of the men who had come in the car with us. But not Mr. Nasty. They stood in the doorway discussing something in another language. Then one of them looked at me. “Get up!” He glanced at Heather. “And her.”
“She’s on her period,” I said defensively.
She stared in a terrified way at them. “Get up,” I ordered her. She got slowly out of the bed and I walked round to her side and sharply pulled her knickers down to show them. Heather went bright red and began to cry. I pulled her knickers back up again.
The men’s faces, as I had expected, looked completely revolted at the dark bloodstain in her pants and one of them walked straight out. The other jerked his head at me. “Just you then.”
As I followed them out I realised that I’d do anything to prevent Heather getting touched, even to the point of offering myself up instead. I hadn’t expected that. But I guess that’s how it works. Why older sisters do stuff to stop their younger sisters having to suffer. Why teenagers obey orders rather than allow their friends and family get hurt.
A middle aged man was out there looking us over. He was turning girls around and examining them like cattle. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me and beckoned me over. I tensed rigid but went. He indicated that I should take the cardigan off. As soon as he saw the big knife scar on my arm, the messy cigarette burns and the new congealing cut, he shook his head and turned away to the next girl. Phew, I thought. They took the girl with the glossy straightened dark hair and the couldn’t-give-a-shit girl. Gemma was still lying on the settee completely out of it. I put my cardigan back on and returned to Heather who was sitting up in the bed, clutching at her knees looking terrified.
“Well, we got away with that one,” I said and got back into bed and put my arms around her.
She clutched me tightly and I decided to do a Pete on her, and patted and stroked her till she calmed down and fell asleep again. I couldn’t sleep though. It was getting on for five am and in just over two hours’ time, Jo would be expecting to be setting off for the Mendips Raceway. What would she do when she found I wasn’t in the flat? What would she do when she found she couldn’t contact me? I was such an idiot! There was no way I’d be making the Final now. Why the hell had I risked going out the night before? I had got blasé. Got into the way of thinking that that was ‘our’ wall and only Mohammed would find me there. With the marks covered up I hadn’t expected anyone else to pay any attention. Now I was trapped here for goodness how long, missing the most important race of the season, maybe of my whole driving career. And maybe getting raped or worse before the ordeal was over. And the only thing that made it even slightly bearable was that I was here with Heather. Maybe I was here to protect her. Surely that was more important than a stupid race? I hoped John had been praying hard for his daughter. Because we needed all the help we could get.
Suddenly there was a bashing at the door. My heart thudded. I heard repeated smashing noises. I glanced swiftly down at my watch and switched the recording mechanism back on and then leapt up and went out into the living room. Heather followed me out looking terrified. Some of the other girls were standing about staring fixedly at the door, but no-one screamed.
I heard a male voice saying, “Try using the crow-bar!”
Quinn! It was Quinn! It really was Quinn!
“Quinn!” I yelled, bashing back on the door. “We’re in here!”
“Can you let us in?” He yelled.
“No, we’re locked in!” I shouted back.
“Hang on,” He encouraged. “I think Rob’s going to manage it!”
Rob? He’d got Rob with him. I felt weak with relief. Rob was just the sort of guy you needed at a time like this.
The door splintered open and Quinn and Rob were standing there looking sharply around.
“There’s no men here at the moment,” I said hurriedly to reassure them. “But it’s not just me Quinn, we need to bring Helen with us,” I emphasised her pseudonym as I pointed at Heather. Quinn looked utterly shocked as he recognised who she was, and she stared fearfully back at him. “And Gemma there.” I had a feeling that Gemma had just done a Jessica on Heather, but I couldn’t know for sure, and I couldn’t just leave her here.
“Where are the girls who arrived with me?” I asked one of the two who had already been here when we’d arrived.
“They were taken off while you were in the toilet. Pretty much straight away,” she answered.
“Do either of you want to come back with us now?” I offered.
They glanced at each other and then shook their heads. “We need to wait for Jaz. We try to stick together if we can.” I realised they meant the girl with the dark straightened hair. I knew that was the right decision. They couldn’t abandon their friend.
“Come on Eve,” Quinn said impatiently. “You’re supposed to be driving a race today!”
I pointed at the comatose Gemma. “You’ll have to throw her over your shoulder Quinn, sorry!”
Rob grabbed my wrist, “Come on!” He urged. So I grabbed Heather’s wrist in turn and we stumbled down the stairs. Rob was taking the stairs two at a time in his sensible trainers and we were getting towed chaotically after him in our high heels.
Quinn had taken me at my word and just thrown Gemma in a fireman’s lift over his shoulder and was coming awkwardly down the two flights of stairs after us.
Outside was the RAC van. Rob threw open the back doors and Heather and I leapt in among the gear and Quinn flopped Gemma down trying desperately to avoid bashing her head on the metal floor. Rob slammed the doors on us and the men ran round to the front, got in the cab and drove us away with a screech that threw me and Heather into each other.
“Help me get her into the recovery position will you?” I said to Heather. We turned Gemma over and put her left knee out and her left arm up and her head turned towards them. “Now she’ll be ok if she throws up,” I explained. I put my arms around Heather. “You’ll be ok now Heather. Just keep away from that sort of crowd in future.”
She sniffled a bit. “Adam will tell Dad won’t he?”
“No,” I reassured her, “but you really ought to…”
She looked horrified. “I just can’t! And I only did it because I was so angry with him!”
“Well I know how that feels,” I agreed.
“What? Being angry with your Dad?” She queried.
“No, being angry with your Dad!” I told her with a laugh. “I always used to be absolutely furious with him!”
“Right,” she said cautiously, eyeing me sideways.
After a thoroughly uncomfortable half hour or so, being thrown around while crouched on a metal floor, the van pulled up and Rob opened the doors. “How are you all?”
“Cold and uncomfortable,” I reported. “But don’t think we’re not grateful all the same.”
He smiled slightly.
“Heather, are you ok to stay here with Gemma and keep an eye on her, and maybe lie down and try to get some sleep, while I move into the front so I can talk to the guys?”
She nodded.
Rob got up into the back with us and fetched down a couple of duvet jackets. Then he got out a couple of sleeping bags. He saw my raised eyebrows. “We have to have minimum survival stuff in here. We’ve had teams get stuck out in the snow overnight trying to get to someone who’s rung in, and sometimes we get there and it’s some old lady who’s nearly hypothermic.”
“God, you lot are such heroes! I had no idea…” I drawled sarcastically. His eyes lidded at me.
He helped us roll Gemma one way, put the sleeping bag under her then roll her back on it again and then he covered her with the jacket. Heather obediently put the other jacket on and lay down in the other sleeping bag by Gemma. Rob fetched her something she could use as a pillow, and then we shut them back in. I hopped up into the cab in the middle and Quinn got back into the passenger side while Rob got back in the driver’s seat and we set off again.
“I can’t thank you two enough for coming to get us,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d see the alarm had gone off until the morning Quinn.”
“Rob and me were on a night shift,” Quinn said. “So I heard the alarm straight away and when I saw you were in bloody Glasgow I just flipped! Honestly Eve, you don’t make it easy do you? I explained to Rob what was going on and he rang in and told them we were going to have to clock off and he’s driven like the devil to get here. I reckon the only reason we haven’t got a speeding ticket by now is that the Police assumed we were going to an accident!”
Purgatory Is a Place Too Page 28
