by Sophie Hayes
‘You go only with Italian men,’ he told me. ‘No blacks, no Moroccans, Moldovans, Albanians, Romanians …’ The list was long and I began to panic as I listened to his descriptions of all the characteristics and mannerisms that, apparently, would enable me to distinguish one race from another.
‘But what do I say?’ I asked him. ‘How do I explain to them that I can’t go with them?’ The very thought of having to reject someone because of their race made me feel sick with shame and anxiety. But Kas just looked at me with an expression of exaggerated bewilderment and said, ‘You say no.’
And what if they ignore ‘No’, like you’ve done? I thought, although already I knew I would never dare say such a thing to Kas out loud.
A sick feeling of dread settled like a weight in my stomach as he taught me how to say in Italian ‘No blacks’, ‘No Albanians’ and ‘No’ to all the other nationalities I had to refuse. And then he told me, ‘The Eastern Europeans and the Moroccans – especially the Moroccans – will kidnap you. Moroccans are filthy, dirty people who will steal your money and rape you.’
‘You said no one would hurt me!’ I wanted to shout at him. But I stayed silent, and as I looked down at the road that was speeding past beneath the wheels of the car, I considered for a moment opening the door and throwing myself out. And then I thought of my mother and how she would live for the rest of her life believing whatever story Kas told the police and would never know what had really happened to me. I think, too, there was still a part of me that couldn’t believe that what he was talking about would ever become a reality.
That afternoon, back at Kas’s flat, he gave me my mobile phone and told me to call my mother. He’d already told me what to say, as well as what would happen if I said anything different, and he stood beside me as I dialled the number. Mum answered on the first ring and I could hear the relief in her voice as she said, ‘I’m so glad you’ve rung, Sophie. I was worried when you didn’t answer my text, although Steve said it was just because you had more exciting things to do than phone your mother. And I know that’s true. But, even so, I couldn’t help being a bit worried. Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah, everything’s fine, Mum,’ I told her, biting my lip to stop myself bursting into tears. I turned my head away from the phone, coughing to cover up the tremor in my voice, and as Kas laid a warning hand on my arm, digging his fingers painfully into my flesh, I took a deep breath and tried to sound cheerful as I told my mother, ‘In fact, I’m having an amazing time and …’ I hesitated and closed my eyes. Once I’d said the words Kas had told me to say, there would be no going back. I would cut myself off from my family and from any chance I might have of getting away from him – although, in my heart, I knew I’d passed that point already.
‘In fact,’ I said again, ‘I’ve got some great news. Guess what?’ As I ran the back of my hand over my face to wipe away the tears, I thought for a moment that the words I was screaming inside my head were going to burst out of my mouth – and then God knows what Kas would do to me. But, instead of shouting, ‘Help me, Mum! I’m trapped here and I need you,’ I fought back the tears and said, ‘I’ve decided to stay here in Italy, with Kas. We’re planning to go travelling together later. So … So I won’t be coming home for a while.’
‘You’re going to stay there?’ My mother sounded shocked, and when she spoke again I could tell she was crying. ‘But, darling, what about … What about your job?’ She paused for a moment before adding hastily, ‘I’m pleased for you, of course. If you’re happy with Kas, that’s great. It’s just …’
‘I have to go now, Mum,’ I interrupted her. ‘Sorry. I’ll call you again soon.’ I hated myself for hurting her. There was a tight pain in my chest and as Kas reached across and took the phone from my hands, I broke down and began to sob.
Much later, I discovered that my mother had tried to convince herself that her sense of disquiet was really just hurt feelings because of the ease with which I seemed to be able to walk away from my family. She’d tried to accept what I’d told her and be happy for me, although when she told my sister, Emily, ‘Sophie’s going to stay in Italy,’ and Emily burst into tears and wailed, ‘I want her to come home. I don’t want her to be away,’ Mum had cried too. But she knew Steve was right when he said, ‘Sophie’s young. She’s enjoying herself, having fun. It’s what you want for her. I know how close the two of you have always been, but let her go, love. She’ll be back in touch when all the excitement dies down a bit. And even if she ends up marrying the man, Italy isn’t exactly on the other side of the world’ – although, for me, it might just as well have been, because the world I’d been forced to live in was not one I had even imagined existed.
I’ve always phoned my mother at least once every day, and I continued to call her almost daily for the first few days because Kas wanted to keep everything as normal as possible to avoid raising anyone’s suspicions. But, after a while, as he became more violent towards me, I found it increasingly difficult to sound ‘normal’ when I spoke to Mum and, gradually, I phoned her less often, until several days would sometimes pass before I answered her text and voice messages.
It must have been hard for my mother when the close relationship we’d always had seemed to come to such an abrupt end. But she told herself that her misgivings – about whether I was really happy and everything was all right – were due to the fact that what I’d done was so out of character, and that she should be happy I’d had the confidence to spread my wings and start a new, independent life away from home.
I had other messages too, from friends as well as from my sister and brothers, and before I answered them, Kas would say to me, ‘Do not say anything to raise anyone’s suspicions. Act normally. Do not mess up.’ So I’d speak quickly, always apparently with little time to spare because I was just about to go out, and I’d tell them how great everything was and how much I was enjoying myself. Then I’d drop the phone into Kas’s outstretched hand and wait for him to tell me what to do next.
After I’d spoken to my mother that first day, I tried again to reason with Kas. ‘Couldn’t I go back home for just a few days?’ I asked him. ‘I need to tie things up and say goodbye to people. I’m supposed to give a month’s notice at work, and I can’t simply walk out on them.’
But he just sneered at me as he said, ‘You’re always such a timid little mouse. Why are you so frightened of these people? They wouldn’t bother about letting you down. They wouldn’t go out of their way to help you. You live in this little world where you’re always running around doing what other people tell you to do. You go to work because it’s what you think you should do. You’re so conventional. But the truth is that no one gives a shit. It’s just a job.’
It wasn’t ‘just a job’ to me, though. Not wanting to let people down or feel that anyone had a reason to think badly of me was part of me. And I really wanted to see my sister and brothers, if only just to let them know that I would never willingly walk out of their lives and forget about them. Our father had walked away from us without a backward glance, and I couldn’t bear to imagine how hurt they must feel now that I’d apparently done the same thing.
At about 7 o’clock on that Monday evening, Kas handed me some clothes and told me to put them on. I’d been crying and he slapped my head as he said, ‘And for God’s sake, woman, tidy up your hair. Look at the state of you! Who in their right mind would want to pay money to have sex with someone whose hair looks like the nest of a bird?’
I cried again, silently, as I put on the clothes he’d given me – the black skirt made of shiny, cheap material that was too short and flared out too much at the bottom, the ugly top and the hold-up stockings under knee-high boots. Then I applied make-up in exactly the way Kas told me to do it, brushed my hair until it was as sleek and neat as he liked it to be, and looked in the mirror in the bathroom at someone else’s reflection.
I felt stupid, like a child trying on dressing-up clothes, but when I walked into the living room, Kas
put his hand on my shoulder, turned me round slowly and, using the first nice words he’d spoken to me all day, said, ‘My little mouse. How frightened you are and how beautiful you look now.’ For a moment, I felt almost a sense of pleasure, because instead of shouting at me or hitting me, or looking at me with cold, cruel disgust as he’d done so many times during the last 24 hours, he’d praised me, which meant that I’d finally managed to do something right – even if it didn’t feel right to me at all.
It was dark and getting cold by the time we drove down the hill to the main road. Kas stopped the car beside an area of broken concrete that ran along the edge of the road in front of some derelict buildings, and a girl stepped forward from the shadows. She smiled at Kas as she leaned in through the open window of the car to kiss him on both cheeks. Then she looked at me appraisingly, said something to him in Italian and they both laughed.
‘Cara will show you what to do,’ Kas told me, ‘but just for a couple of nights. So pay attention, because after that you’ll be on your own.’
I followed the girl to her car, which was parked down the side of one of the dark, broken-windowed buildings, and a few minutes later we were driving down the road as she added her instructions to the multitude Kas had already given me.
‘You are here sometimes,’ she said, in stilted English, pointing to a patch of grass under a single, leafless tree. ‘If the Carabinieri see you at your other place, you go here.’
For a moment, my heart stopped beating and I thought I was going to faint. ‘The police?’ I said. ‘But what will happen if the police see me?’
‘It’s normal,’ she told me, lifting her hands off the steering wheel as she shrugged. ‘They tell you “Vai! Go!” Or they take you to the stazione for a few hours. But it’s not a problem.’
Tears had started to roll down my cheeks and when Cara noticed them, she shrugged again. Clearly, the prospect of being taken to a police station held no shame or dread for her. Later that evening, she told me that she used to work in a bakery, but had given up her job to work on the streets voluntarily to earn the money to pay her boyfriend’s legal fees when he’d been sent to prison for kidnapping a girl and forcing her into prostitution. And she laughed as she told me, ‘It’s better money than selling bread, and more exciting.’
She made me memorise her phone number, as Kas had done, telling me, ‘Call me if you have problems.’ And then she took me to the spot where she would wait with me for customers that night.
After parking her car on a narrow dirt track, out of sight of passing motorists, she led the way back to the main road, where she stood, calmly confident, beside me while I tried to concentrate on not being sick. The temperature had dropped abruptly in the last hour or so, and although I was wearing a jumper over the hideous top, I was shivering violently – both with cold and with fear. Suddenly, Cara turned and started walking back towards the car, ignoring me when I called frantically after her and then disappearing into the darkness.
I stood alone under the single streetlight at the side of the busy main road, trying to control the panic rising up inside me and praying that no car would stop, and I almost cried with relief when I saw her running up the track towards me again. In her hand, she was holding a white tracksuit top, which she told me to put on. Then she placed her hands on my shoulders, turned me round so that I was facing her and pulled up the zip, just like my mother used to do when I was a child. My eyes filled with tears, and at that moment, a car drew up beside us and Cara pushed me towards it. ‘I can’t. Please Cara,’ I whispered to her. But she’d already turned away.
As I bent down to look in through the car’s open window, I felt as though I was outside my own body, watching myself, and all I could think was, How is this going to happen? How am I going to do this? I can’t. And then, just as I felt Cara’s finger poking me sharply in the back, the stranger asked me ‘Quanto?’ I took a deep breath and answered ‘Trenta Euros’, and to my horror, he shrugged his shoulders and said ‘Okay.’
I stood with my fingers still resting on his open window, swallowing the sour bile that was flooding into my mouth, and prayed that I wasn’t actually going to vomit. My legs felt like leaden weights and I could hear a voice inside my head screaming No! And then Cara said ‘Vai. Go!’ and I walked around the car, opened the door on the passenger’s side and got in beside a man I didn’t know.
As I pressed my body against the door and gripped the armrest so tightly my fingers ached, he must have wondered what was wrong with me. But he just shot me a quizzical glance and then asked in Italian, ‘Where? Where do we go?’ With my heart pounding, I tried to remember what Cara had told me just a few minutes earlier. ‘Go straight,’ I said, hoping I’d pronounced the Italian word correctly. ‘Then left.’ I sounded like a terrified, timid robot, and perhaps he was beginning to wonder why he’d agreed to pay 30 Euros to have sex with someone who was obviously crazy.
He was young – probably not much older than me – and as he drove he asked my name and where I was from. Kas had created a persona for me, a ridiculous story I was supposed to tell anyone who asked any questions. So I told the man I was Russian, my name was Jenna and I was working as a prostitute because I needed to send money home to my family in Russia. I spoke in broken English, in what was supposed to be a Russian accent, although it sounded nothing like one. As the words tumbled out of me, I began to think that if I could make this man believe I was Jenna, perhaps I could believe it too – if only just enough to be able to detach myself from the reality of what was happening.
When he stopped the car at the spot I directed him to – the one that Cara had pointed out to me earlier – the voice in my head began to shriek, I can’t do this. Oh God, what am I going to do? For a few horrible seconds, I sat there in total silence, and then I started to fumble in my pocket for a condom. I’d never put a condom on anyone before and I didn’t have any idea how to do it. The worst part of it all, though, was asking, ‘Bocca or fica?’ And as I whispered the words, the sour taste filled my mouth again.
‘Bocca,’ the man answered, and I felt a surge of relief – until I realised that the moment had really come and I was going to have to do what he was expecting me to do. The thought flashed through my mind to tell him I wasn’t what I seemed to be. I wasn’t Russian and I didn’t have a poor family dependent on my ability to trade sex for money. I was a ‘nice’ girl from England, who’d come to Italy to visit a man she thought was her friend but who had threatened her family and forced her to work as a prostitute. Then, as I remembered what Kas had told me about sending people to check up on me, so that I would never know whether a man who stopped his car beside me was really a client, I could see in my mind the look that had been on his face when he’d said, ‘And you wouldn’t want to be responsible for what would happen to your precious brothers then.’
So, instead of bursting into tears and begging, ‘Please, please help me. I’ve been kidnapped and I can’t do this,’ I took the condom out of its packet, explained my awkward fumbling by telling the man ‘It’s my first time’, and then did what he’d paid me 30 Euros to do.
As I tugged – awkwardly and with shaking fingers – at the zip in the man’s trousers, I felt a surge of almost overpowering disgust at the thought of the intimate and very private act I was about to perform on the total stranger sitting beside me in his car. Then I closed my eyes and forced my mind to focus on the dark, empty space that seemed suddenly to surround me.
Afterwards, I handed him some tissues and while he cleaned himself up and refastened his trousers, I turned away so that he wouldn’t see my tears. Slowly, I could feel my fear and self-disgust being replaced by a heavy, dull sense of shame – and that’s when I realised with a sick feeling of horror that he hadn’t actually paid me at all. I’d been so anxious to remember everything I was supposed to do, and so frightened by the thought of what Kas would say and do to me if I got anything wrong, I’d forgotten the most important thing of all – to make sure I got the money fir
st. Luckily, though, when I asked him for my money, the man reached into his pocket, opened his wallet and handed me some notes, which I stuffed inside my boots, as Kas had told me to do. Then I sat in the car, numb and mute, while he drove me back to where Cara was waiting for me.
‘How is it?’ she asked me. ‘It’s okay?’
‘Yeah, okay,’ I told her. And in some ways it was, because the first time was over and I knew that, in future, ‘okay’ was going to mean something completely different from what it had ever meant before.
More cars came after that, and more men gave me more money, which I pushed down into my boots as I directed them to ‘my spot’. And each time I performed the same horrible, disgusting act with a stranger, I felt a little more like Jenna – who was doing what she had to do to help her family – and a little less like Sophie, who lived in a nice flat in the centre of Leeds, had a good job and a mother, stepfather, sister and brothers who loved her and who would not in a million years have believed it if someone had told them what she was doing.
I’d been with four men by the time a silver-coloured Mercedes pulled up beside us, and I was just about to walk round to the open window when Cara put a hand on my arm and said, ‘We can’t go with him. Say no.’
‘What do you mean? Why not?’ I asked her, my heart beginning to race.
‘Just say no,’ she hissed at me, and when I still hesitated, she stepped towards the car herself and said firmly, ‘No! Vai via!’
I felt myself blushing with embarrassment because she’d spoken to him so rudely – a reaction that didn’t strike me as ironic until much later – and then I held my breath and waited to see what the man would do. But in the end he just swore at her and drove away.
‘What was wrong?’ I asked Cara. ‘Why did you tell him to go?’
‘He’s bad,’ she answered, shrugging and pulling a face. ‘He’s a bad man. Remember this car and this face. Do not go with him – ever.’ And the warning I could hear in her voice made me afraid in case I didn’t recognise him if he came again.
