by Sophie Hayes
I avoided the Carabinieri that night, but there was one policeman who was determined to move me on and get rid of me. His name was Roberto Rossi and he was the chief of the local police – a large, angry, aggressive man whose absolute hatred of me was one of the reasons I began to feel as though trouble was brewing for me. He seemed to have decided to make it his mission in life to harass me so that it was impossible for me to work in the area, and there were several nights when his car screeched to a halt beside me and he jumped out, stood directly in front of me and sprayed my face with saliva as he shouted, ‘No scopare! Vai via!’
I’d turn and walk away down the road and he’d jump back in his car and drive slowly behind me, illuminating me in his headlights for all the world to see. If I ran and tried to hide, he always found me, and as I couldn’t go home while he was following me, I’d just have to keep walking, praying he’d tire of the game or would be called away to a crime more worthy of his high-ranking attention.
On some nights, if there were a lot of police in the area for some reason, I’d go to another spot. It was about 15 minutes’ walk away from my usual place and on a busy main road, with only short stretches of pavement and very few streetlights. Sometimes, I’d get locked into a ridiculous, exhausting game of cat and mouse with Rossi, dodging from one spot to the other while he drove backwards and forwards along the road looking for me. And then, one night, he stopped his car beside me, smiled a nasty, spiteful smile and handed me a piece of paper – a Persona non Grata notice that banned me from the region for seven days.
He waved his hands at me and told me to go, and as I walked along the main road, he followed me in his car, as he often did. This time though, he shone a huge, powerful spotlight on me and, speaking through a megaphone in a loud, insistent monotone, kept repeating the words, ‘Vai via! Andiamo. Vai via!’ Every car that passed slowed down to have a good look at the girl who was scuttling along the edge of the road under a spotlight, and I felt so humiliated that I wished the ground would open under my feet.
At one point, I got quite far ahead of Rossi’s car and when it stopped for a moment, I began to run, holding out my hand to hitchhike. It was only a minute or two before a car pulled up beside me and I jumped in without even looking at the driver, shouting, ‘Go! Go!’ Luckily, the man wasn’t a serial killer or a deranged kidnapper, and he dropped me off at another spot, where I spent the rest of the night being picked up by customers and hiding from Rossi.
All night, I dreaded the prospect of having to tell Kas about the eviction notice. I knew I had to though, because it meant I wouldn’t be able to go out on the streets and work for seven days. I was terrified as I handed it to him and, while he read it, I stood with my head bent and my hands clasped so tightly together that my fingers began to go numb.
But when Kas eventually looked up at me again, he just shrugged and said, ‘So?’
‘Well, I can’t go back there,’ I told him. ‘If he catches me, I’ll be put in prison.’
‘So don’t let him catch you.’ Kas screwed the piece of paper into a ball and tossed it on to the table beside him.
For a moment, I felt angry. He was forever flying into rages with me because he professed to think I’d done something that might result in him going to prison. But it was clear that he couldn’t care less about me and that as long as I didn’t implicate him, he wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep if I was put in prison – or ended up lying dead in the dirt somewhere.
To Kas, though, the subject was closed, and I knew better than to try to keep it open. I had no alternative other than to carry on working and dodging the police.
Not long after my night in the spotlight, I saw the two Albanian guys whose car Kas had shot at. I was standing at the side of the road waiting for customers when they drove past, very slowly, staring at me. I was already a bundle of nerves – every sound made me jump – and I suddenly felt exposed and very vulnerable. And as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, I had a sense of impending doom.
So when Kas told me a few days later that we were going to France, I could have cried with relief. He didn’t tell me any details and, of course, I didn’t ask any questions. He just woke me up earlier than usual a couple of days after he’d mentioned it and said, ‘Pack a bag before you go out tonight. We’re going to drive through the night to France when you’ve finished work. You’ll need to get some sleep in the car because you’ll be going straight out again when we get there.’
I’d been in Italy for about four months and although I was very happy to be leaving, I dreaded the thought of having to start all over again in a place I didn’t know, where I wouldn’t even have my regular customers to check up on me from time to time and ask if I was all right. But at least I spoke a bit of French, so maybe I wouldn’t feel quite as lost and frightened as I’d done when I started working in Italy.
The Carabinieri followed me everywhere that night. It didn’t seem to matter where I went, I couldn‘t get rid of them. They watched every move I made and I began to wonder how I was ever going to get home. In the end, I sat on a park bench and smoked one cigarette after another while I waited for them to get bored and leave me alone. It meant I didn’t earn much that night, but I felt as though I’d dodged a bullet and I couldn’t wait to be on the road to France.
I finished earlier than usual, and back at the flat Kas sat on the bed making phone calls while I packed the last few things into a suitcase. Suddenly, he threw his phone across the room and shouted at me, ‘Are you stupid, woman?’ I was kneeling on the floor beside the case and as I toppled over backwards, he stood up and grabbed hold of my T-shirt, twisting the material in his fingers and picking me up like a rag doll. Then he flung me against the wall and held me there, shaking me and slapping my face as he bellowed, ‘Can you still not pack a suitcase properly, woman? Have I not told you this before? Did I not explain it to you in a way that even someone as stupid as you are could understand?’
He dropped me on the floor and began pulling everything out of the case. Somewhere inside me a tiny flame of resentment flickered for a moment and I thought, I am not a child. I do not need to be told how to pack clothes in a suitcase. Clearly, though, Kas thought otherwise, and he slapped my face again, snatched up a T-shirt and, as he began to fold it, said, ‘This is how you fold clothes. This is how you put them into a suitcase. Now that isn’t difficult, is it? Surely even you can do that. Pack it properly!’
Despite my brief moment of silent defiance, I’d been watching Kas carefully because I knew I had to do it his way and that I had to get it right. And as I packed the suitcase again with shaking hands, I thought, Why am I always so stupid? No wonder Kas loses patience with me.
And then we were in the car, en route for France, and as I sat and watched the sun rising in the sky, I felt a sense of relief that was as overwhelming as it was misplaced.
Chapter 11
I couldn’t sleep in the car, and by the time we arrived in southern France, it was midday and I was exhausted. I didn’t even think about why Kas wanted to go to France, and I certainly wouldn’t have dared to question him if I had. He’d told me I was going to be working there, which I simply accepted was all I needed to know, and the anxiety the prospect raised for me was enough to keep my mind occupied throughout the journey, a significant part of which Kas had spent giving me new instructions.
As we drove along the wide, busy promenade by the sea, he asked me, ‘So what do you tell the police if they ask where you’re staying?’
‘At the Hotel Mirabelle,’ I answered, turning to look at him with weary, blood-shot eyes and meeting the full force of his punch on my left cheekbone.
As my head snapped backwards, crashing against the window, Kas roared at me, ‘Are you fucking stupid, woman? Why would you tell the police the name of the hotel we’re actually staying in? Do you want to get us caught?’
What I wanted to do was shout at him, ‘I’m sick of having to pretend all the time. Before I met you, I never told lies t
o anyone, and now I rarely tell the truth.’ But, instead, I whispered, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that … I’m really, really tired.’
When we arrived at the Hotel Mirabelle, my face was red and swollen, but it wasn’t the type of hotel where anyone was likely to ask any questions. Most of its clients paid for their rooms by the hour and didn’t acknowledge the presence of other guests. After Kas had checked us in, we left our bags and drove around the town so that he could show me the place near some traffic lights on a street parallel to the promenade where I’d be working.
I was petrified that night. I’d been awake for more than 30 hours and I hated Kas for making me go out and work in a strange place while he sat in the hotel or in some bar somewhere, safe and warm and not giving even a moment’s thought to what might be happening to me.
I’d almost gone back to square one – not knowing what sort of people to expect as customers and not having any escape routes – and although I’d been happy at the thought of leaving Italy, the reality of being in France was far more frightening than I’d imagined. In Italy, working on the streets had become like playing a game of chess, but in France it didn’t feel like any sort of game at all, and I was very aware that I didn’t have any idea what I was doing.
There was a bank next to the traffic lights beside my new spot, a café across the road, which was always closed when I was there, and a block of flats a bit further down. In the darkness, the street would have seemed almost derelict if it hadn’t been for the bakery diametrically opposite where I stood, which was open 24 hours a day and which I’d often go to for something to eat before I went back to the hotel in the early hours of the morning.
The first night was very quiet, and the few clients I did have were unremarkable. But I hadn’t been out for very long on the second night when I was picked up by a man in a bright red Maserati. He drove to an open-air car park and as soon as he turned off the engine, a car pulled in behind us, illuminating us in the bright beam of its headlights. Immediately, I felt trapped and vulnerable and my heart started to thump. But the guy reached across, put his arm round my shoulders and said, ‘It’s the police. Pretend you’re my girlfriend.’ It seemed an odd place for someone who could afford to drive a Maserati to take his girlfriend, but perhaps the policemen didn’t care one way or another, because after a few seconds they drove away.
And although that particular guy was all right, he seemed to mark a change in my luck and I had some very weird and unpleasant customers while I was in France. There was one man who picked me up, drove me to a tunnel in an underground car park, gave me 100 Euros and told me to kick him. Even if I hadn’t been wearing stiletto-heeled boots, I’d have told him I couldn’t do it. But he was insistent, until eventually I agreed. He didn’t want me to undress, he didn’t want to have sex; he just wanted to sit in the driver’s seat, playing with himself and saying ‘Harder, harder’, while I sat beside him and kicked him, all over his body.
In fact, I don’t think I had one single customer who I felt as comfortable with as I did with some of my regulars in Italy, and there seemed to be a disproportionate number of freaks, some of them with sexual habits I’d never even heard of before. So I felt even more uneasy than I might otherwise have done when, after we’d been in France for just three days, Kas announced that he was going to Holland to pick up a delivery of drugs and would be leaving me on my own while he was away.
‘I’ll only be gone a few days,’ he told me. ‘You carry on working, and don’t forget, if anything happens, if anyone tries to kidnap you, don’t fight back. Don’t argue with them. Just do as you’re told and I’ll come and find you.’
I was panic-stricken. It was frightening enough being out on the streets when Kas was just a phone call away, but if there was no one there to help me, I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance if anything went wrong. Not fighting back and waiting for Kas to return from Holland didn’t constitute a plan that filled me with any confidence. And, judging by all the freaks and weirdos I’d already encountered, something bad happening seemed quite a distinct possibility.
Although I told myself Kas really believed what he was saying – that he’d be able to find me if someone kidnapped me – I think, deep down, I knew he didn’t really care about me. He might tell me ‘You’re the best girl I’ve ever had’, but I knew there were plenty more girls like me and that it wouldn’t be difficult for him to find another if he needed to. And it wasn’t long before it started to look as though that might be just what he’d have to do, because as soon as he left me alone in France, all hell broke loose.
Although I knew there were other girls working on the streets around where I worked in Italy, I’d rarely encountered any of them. But I saw plenty of others now, and they made it very clear from the outset that they didn’t want me there. The first to approach me was a Bulgarian girl who worked from a spot about 50 metres away from the traffic lights. On the night after Kas left, she came stamping across towards me and said, ‘You cannot be here. This is not your place to work. Find somewhere else.’
Don’t let her see your fear, the voice in my head told me, although it was almost drowned out by another one shouting Run! Somehow, though, I managed to stand my ground and look her directly in the eyes as I told her, ‘This is my boyfriend’s place. I can stay here. My boyfriend is Albanian.’
‘Well, my boyfriend is Russian,’ she sneered. Then she took another step towards me so that she was standing so close I had to turn my face away from hers, and added, ‘He says that this is my place.’ And, right there on the street, we had a stupid, pointless, scary argument about whose boyfriend was more powerful and more frightening, which ended with the Bulgarian girl saying, ‘The Russians control this area. They killed a girl not long ago, so you should watch your back and be very, very careful.’
I didn’t know if she was genuinely warning me for my own protection or if she was just trying to frighten me – which she certainly succeeded in doing. The problem was, though, that there wasn’t anywhere else I could go, which meant I had a simple choice: stay there, and perhaps be killed by the Russians; or stop working until Kas came back – when he would definitely kill me. So I stood my ground, and eventually the girl walked away and left me alone.
Unfortunately, though, she wasn’t the only one who seemed to hate me, and a couple of hours later, the transsexual who stood at a spot further down the road came stomping towards me. While her horrible little dog jumped up at me, yapping and scratching my legs with its claws, she shouted in my face, ‘We don’t want you here. Go away!’
‘I am not going to leave here,’ I told her, hoping my voice conveyed a conviction I didn’t feel and trying to shake the wretched little dog off my leg. ‘This is where I work. Now leave me alone.’
I didn’t dare stop and think about the situation I was in – standing on a street corner in southern France in the middle of the night, arguing with much larger, more streetwise prostitutes about which patch belonged to whom – partly because I didn’t want to have to face who I’d become. Despite my apparent bravado, however, I was really frightened. I knew my presence wasn’t welcomed by anyone and that they wouldn’t simply leave me alone to get on with it – and alone was exactly what I was.
Fortunately, though, I didn’t have any more problems from the other girls that night, which meant that all I had to worry about was what Kas would do to me when he got back from Holland and I had to tell him I hadn’t made very much money. So the next night – and all the nights after that – I decided to go out earlier, at 7 instead of 8.30, and to stay out until 5.30 or 6 in the morning.
The night after the Bulgarian girl and transsexual had warned me off, I’d been with a customer and he was driving me back to my spot when I saw the scariest woman I’d ever seen. She was standing on the main promenade, the road that ran parallel to mine, and was probably in her late thirties, about 5 foot 4 inches and at least 14 stone, with a completely shaven head and wearing a short fur coat, low-heeled knee-high boots, a skir
t even shorter than her coat and, quite clearly, no bra. She didn’t look like someone any man would pay to have sex with and when I described her to one of my clients later that evening, his face became serious as he said, ‘I know who you mean. They call her Scary Sue. Stay away from her. She’s crazy.’
So my heart sank a little while later when I saw her talking to the Bulgarian girl, and shortly afterwards she came marching round the corner and down the road towards me. She growled something I didn’t understand and then started waving her arms and shouting at me. There’d been a cold, persistent drizzle all evening and I was holding my umbrella – the one thing I had that was a link between Jenna and Sophie, because it was the only thing I owned that was pretty and that I might have bought for myself in my previous life. I held it in front of me, like a shield, and began making pathetic little parrying motions with it as I edged away from her.
Over the last couple of nights, I’d seen several girls fighting and standing their ground when other girls attacked them, but I’d never in my entire life been involved in a fight, and it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind to try to stand up to Scary Sue. Whenever Kas attacked me, I tried to protect my head with my arms, but I’d never in a million years have thought of trying to hit him or kick out at him. And I knew that my best hope now was to be able to protect my face from this terrifying woman. Instead of assaulting me, though, she reached out one short, stubby-fingered hand, snatched my umbrella, snapped it in two as though it was made of plywood and threw it on the ground at my feet.
Although it hadn’t been a great weapon, without it I felt as though I was completely defenceless, and I knew there was a strong possibility that this furious, demented woman was going to kill me. As if to confirm that fear, she suddenly lunged towards me, grabbed a fistful of my hair and started to spin me round and round, kicking at my legs until I fell to my knees on the rain-soaked pavement.
