by Sophie Hayes
Chapter 12
As soon as we arrived back in Italy, I went straight out to work. This time, though, it was different, because I was going back to a place I knew, where there were people I recognised, and some I even liked, and where there’d be no men with screwdrivers or crazy women trying to kill me. I hadn’t forgotten the dangers that did exist, but somehow, after all the madness of France, they didn’t seem to be quite so scary anymore.
In France, I hadn’t fitted in, but back in Italy I felt as though I knew the score: I knew how to dodge the police and that – mostly – nothing terrible would happen when I didn’t succeed. I knew what type of men to avoid and I had my regular clients, who were genuinely glad to see me when I got back. It felt almost like coming home – at least, as long as I didn’t think about my real home and my family. But my relief proved to be short-lived and it wasn’t long before things started to go wrong again.
Kas was doing a lot of drug deals and he knew that the police were looking for him. So, one day, he moved me out of the flat and into a room in a sleazy hotel, where I stayed for the next couple of weeks, sometimes on my own and sometimes with Kas there too.
I hadn’t been feeling well for some time. I was often queasy and dizzy, and every time I looked in the mirror I had a strangely disorientated sensation. I hated seeing my reflection staring blankly back at me, I hated the clothes I wore, and I hated the fact that I was ugly-thin, and so run down I kept getting sick. It didn’t matter to Kas how ill I was, though; he just told me to pull myself together and go to work.
Before long, I seemed to have developed an almost never-ending cold and there was one night, when my eyes were red and puffy and I could hardly breathe, when my nose began to run while I was having sex with a man and he stopped and handed me a tissue. I felt sick with self-disgust. I’d learned almost to close my mind to what I was doing, but somehow, in that moment, I felt as though I’d just lost the very last remnants of my self-respect.
The nights were bitterly cold by that time and I never seemed to be able to get warm. My feet and hands were always numb and I shivered constantly. I was exhausted too. But it wasn’t the sort of tiredness that a good long sleep might have cured; I was absolutely and utterly worn out. I walked around like a zombie, following Kas’s instructions and barely able to think for myself.
Sometimes I couldn’t believe it was possible that I could go on living like that, and those were the times when I became really frightened, because I couldn’t see any future at all, and I thought that must mean I was going to die. One night, a client who was a doctor told me, ‘You can’t stay out here like this. You’ve got pneumonia. You have to stop. You must go to the hospital and get some treatment.’
‘I can’t,’ I told him. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll be all right.’
‘No, you won’t,’ he said, and he touched my shoulder in a kind, fatherly sort of way that made me want to burst into tears. ‘You won’t be all right if you don’t get medical attention now.’
When I went back to the hotel that night, I told Kas what the man had said and asked him if I could stop working, just for a few days until I was better. But he shouted at me, ‘For a cold? What’s wrong with you, woman? What’s your problem? Why are you making such a drama out of a little cold?’
‘It isn’t just a cold though,’ I told him, in a voice that sounded pathetically child-like. ‘I feel so ill and weak and it’s frightening when I can’t breathe properly.’
‘It’s your own fault,’ he told me, slapping me across the head. ‘You wouldn’t keep getting sick if you ate properly.’
Maybe he was right, but I simply couldn’t eat, no matter how much I wanted to, because anything other than a few mouthfuls of bland food made me sick. For months my life had been a constantly repeated cycle of work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat … I never saw daylight, and when I woke up I was just as tired as I had been when I’d gone to bed.
I did gradually get better, though – and then immediately I fell ill again. I started getting terrible stomach pains, which grew steadily worse and worse until I began to wonder whether my bowel might have become twisted again, as it had been when I’d had to have an operation instead of going to Albania to marry Erion – what seemed like a whole lifetime ago.
One night, the pain was so bad that when I had sex it felt as though a red-hot poker was being pushed up inside me. I began to sweat and had to grip the sides of the seat so tightly to stop myself pushing the man away that I thought my fingers were going to snap.
I don’t know how I got through the rest of that night, and when I went back to the hotel I told Kas, ‘I can’t do it anymore. You have no idea how much it hurts. I can’t bear the pain.’
The next night, the pain was even worse and I tried to detach my mind from my body by repeating over and over again in my head, like a mantra, the words, It won’t kill you. It’s only pain. I think I must have begun to look ill, though, because Kas drove me to work the following night – which was something he rarely bothered to do by that time – and as he was dropping me off he said, ‘I’ve been speaking to a friend and his girlfriend sometimes gets the same thing. It’s just a urine infection. You need to drink more water and try to do more oral.’ But that night was the worst of all, and I was with what was probably my fifteenth customer when the pain became so intense that I didn’t care what Kas did to me, I knew I couldn’t carry on and I blurted out, ‘Stop! Please! I can’t do this. I’m sorry.’
It took far longer than usual for me to walk back to the hotel, and all the time I was trying not to think about how Kas would react. I knew he’d be angry because I’d stopped work early, but there was nothing I could do to change that, so I was amazed when he took one look at me and told me to go to bed.
I desperately wanted to sleep, but the pain kept waking me up, and when I heard Kas go out the next morning, I dragged myself out of bed, got dressed and walked out of the hotel and down the road. I didn’t know where he’d gone or how long he’d be out, and I could only walk slowly, looking around anxiously all the time, expecting at any moment to see his car driving along the road towards me.
When I finally stepped through the double glass doors of the main entrance of the local hospital, I was on the verge of passing out. I remember someone rushing forward and putting her arm around my waist and the next thing I was aware of was opening my eyes and looking up into a bright, almost white, light that was shining from somewhere above my head. In fact, I was lying on a trolley in a curtained cubicle and after I’d been examined by a doctor, I was taken by ambulance to another hospital on the other side of town, where I was examined again, admitted to a ward and put on a drip.
Then a woman in a white coat came and stood beside my bed, looked at me with a grave, but not unkind, expression and told me she was a gynaecologist. She spoke good English and asked me lots of questions, including, ‘How often do you have sex?’
‘Not often,’ I answered, looking away from her as I told the lie. ‘But when I do, it’s really painful.’
She touched the back of my hand gently and smiled a small, rueful smile as she said, ‘We’re going to keep you here for a while. You need to get some rest and, more importantly, you need fluids. You’re dehydrated. But you have to stay here. Do you understand?’
I nodded my head and, despite my blush of embarrassment, felt a great wave of weariness and relief wash over me as I thought, She knows. Thank God, because I can’t do this anymore.
The Italian mobile phone Kas had given me had been in the pocket of my jacket, but someone must have taken it out when I’d put on the hospital gown I’d been given, because after the doctor had gone, I noticed it lying on top of the little cupboard beside my bed. I reached out my hand and picked it up, and then sat for a while, just looking at it, before ringing Kas’s number and whispering, ‘I’m in the hospital.’
The possibility of not phoning him didn’t even cross my mind at the time. I was completely conditioned to do what he told me to do, ev
en when he wasn’t there, and even when going against that conditioning might have meant he’d never have found me and I would have had the chance to escape from him. It’s hard to explain, but defying him simply wasn’t an option.
I was terrified of him and I was like an obedient child – or a puppet on a string, and he was the puppet master. I’d quickly learned to accept as normal the fact that Kas decided everything on my behalf, and for the last few months I had made almost no decisions of my own. If he told me to eat, I ate; and I asked his permission before doing anything: Can I go to the toilet? Can I wear this? Can I smoke a cigarette? Can I listen to music? And if he said no, I didn’t even consider going against him, any more than I considered not phoning him from the hospital to let him know where I was.
Kas went crazy, as I’d known he would. ‘How dare you?’ he shouted. ‘How dare you go there without asking me?’ And then, abruptly, he seemed to calm down and he sounded almost concerned as he asked, ‘What have they said to you? You’re going to be okay, aren’t you, little mouse? I’ll take better care of you in the future, I promise. I’ll come to the hospital.’ Then his tone changed again and he said angrily, ‘But you should have told me. You shouldn’t have just gone on your own. You have to do what I tell you to do. Do you understand? It’s very important. You won’t forget it again, will you?’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was just … I felt so ill.’ But in my head a voice was screaming, Don’t come. Please don’t come to the hospital. Please, God, let something happen so that he doesn’t come. And although my prayer wasn’t answered, at least he didn’t visit me until the next day – and then he only stayed for 10 minutes.
There was only one other woman on the ward, a couple of beds away, and Kas spoke quietly so that she couldn’t hear what he was saying as he hissed into my ear, ‘There are Carabinieri all over the hospital. Do you have any idea how much trouble I could get into if anyone saw me here?’ Then, speaking at a normal level, he said, ‘I need to go now. I’ll come back tomorrow. In the meantime, you must stay here and sleep, and make sure you eat.’
In fact, I slept for most of the next 24 hours and not long after I woke up the doctor came to see me. ‘We’re in a very difficult situation,’ she told me. ‘As you’re British, you shouldn’t have to pay for your treatment or for being here in hospital, but because you don’t have any ID, the cost could be 10,000 Euros, or even more.’
I was horrified. Kas had my passport and I felt trapped. What on earth was I going to do? Tears began to well up in my eyes, and the doctor patted my hand as she added hastily, ‘But don’t worry about that now. We need to concentrate on getting you well again. There’ll be plenty of time to work something out later.’
Kas arrived about an hour after the doctor had been, and when I told him what she’d said, he sat down on the bed beside me and whispered, ‘I’m going to get you out of here tomorrow.’
‘But I can’t leave,’ I said, instantly regretting having spoken so quickly and having allowed the fear to be so clearly audible in my voice. The blood was pounding in my ears and I had to struggle to focus on Kas’s face when I looked at him. ‘I mean because I’ve got a drip in my arm,’ I added hastily.
He glanced towards the woman in the other bed, smiled pleasantly at her and then, putting his arm around my shoulders and his mouth close to my ear, hissed at me, ‘You think a fucking drip is a problem? I’ll rip it out of your arm myself if I have to.’
Although he appeared to be stroking my hair, what he was actually doing was pulling it so hard that my neck was twisted. He dug his fingernails into my scalp and, with his other hand, jabbed the tips of his car keys into my thigh as he whispered, ‘Whatever you do, do not tell anyone where you are. Do you understand? Do not even think about telling your mother.’
‘I won’t. I promise,’ I said. I was trying to sound calm, but my heart was thudding and I felt sick, because the truth was that I’d already phoned my mother. I’d called her after the doctor had been in to see me earlier that afternoon, because I was frightened and because it had suddenly seemed really important that someone who actually cared about me knew where I was and that I wasn’t well.
‘How’s Auntie Linda?’ I’d whispered to my mother as soon as she answered the phone, and her voice had been hoarse with emotion as she answered, ‘We’re going to visit her tonight.’ And that’s when I’d started to cry, because I knew that my mother and stepfather would be leaving home that night to come and find me.
‘I’m in a hospital,’ I told my mother. ‘But don’t worry; I’ll be fine. It’s just that …’ I paused for a moment and blew my nose to try to stop the flow of tears. ‘It’s just that I haven’t got my passport with me and I need insurance. I don’t know what to do.’
She told me not to worry, that she’d work something out, and then she asked me, ‘Is he violent towards you, Sophie?’ and I began to sob as I whispered, ‘Yes.’
Now, though, with Kas sitting on my bed, all I could think was, Oh my God, I’m in so much trouble. He’ll kill me if he finds out what I’ve done.
‘You fucking dare try anything and you’ll see what I’ll do to you,’ Kas was saying. ‘You think these people are here to help you? They don’t care about you; no one cares about you except me, so don’t fuck with me. I will come tomorrow and take you out of here and if you say a word to anyone, I’ll kill you and then your precious mother will never see you again.’
The woman in the other bed glanced towards us and Kas patted my arm and kissed my cheek as he mouthed at me again, ‘Don’t fuck with me.’ Then he left, and as I lay back on the bed and cried, the thought went round and round in my head: If he finds out, I’m dead.
Suddenly, it was as though all the tension had drained out of me and I felt almost calm. I was, quite literally, tired of being afraid and, in any case, the reality was that whatever happened now was out of my control. I couldn’t fight back against Kas – I was too weak and too exhausted. But, before I gave up, I desperately wanted to hear my mother’s voice again. So I dialled her number, although all I managed to say before I burst into tears was ‘Oh, Mum!’
I could tell that my mother was crying too as she told me, ‘It’s all right, Sophie. We’re coming. We’re on our way. We’ve already booked a ferry. We tried to get a flight, but we were too late to get anything today or tomorrow morning, so we’re driving. We’re leaving now. But listen to me, darling. This is very, very important. Do not tell him we’re coming.’
‘But Mum, he’s taking me out of the hospital tomorrow,’ I sobbed.
‘No! You mustn’t leave,’ my mother shrieked. ‘We’ll be there tomorrow. Sophie, you have to wait for us.’
‘But what if he gets here first?’ I could feel the panic building up inside me so that I couldn’t breathe. ‘Oh Mum, don’t let him take me. Please Mum, please. Get here before he does.’
For the rest of that day and the night that followed, my mind was numb. All I could think about was my fear and every time I fell asleep, I had the same dream, in which my mother and stepfather were running down the corridors of the hospital calling my name while I sat beside Kas in his car as he drove out of the car park and into the traffic.
During the afternoon of the next day, Kas sent me a text message saying he’d had to take his car to the garage but that he’d be at the hospital within the next couple of hours. I was already on the verge of hysteria and I was shaking and stammering when I phoned my mother to tell her.
‘Just try to hold on, Sophie,’ she said. ‘We’ve spoken to someone at the embassy and they’ve contacted the hospital, so they know we’re coming. They already suspected something was wrong and they’ve said they’ll try to keep you there until we arrive.’
‘Hurry, Mum,’ I sobbed. ‘Please hurry. I’m so frightened.’
Two hours later, I had a phone call from Kas to tell me he was almost at the hospital and then another shortly afterwards from Mum saying, ‘We’re five minutes away.’
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��When you see him, don’t say anything,’ I pleaded with my mother. ‘You don’t know him, Mum. You have no idea who he is. If you upset him or cause any trouble, you can’t imagine what the consequences might be. So, please, just act as though everything’s normal.’
It felt as though I was holding a bomb in my hands, waiting for it to explode. Kas had told me many times what he’d do to my little brothers if I disobeyed him in any way, and I’d seen some of what he was capable of when he attacked the man who’d overstepped the line with me, so I was in no doubt that he meant what he said.
He hadn’t ever met my mum, but in the early days, before I stopped talking about anything, I’d talked about her a lot and he used to say to me, nastily, ‘Oh your mum! You always do what your mum tells you to do. She’s controlling your mind.’ Which was nonsense, and ironic considering that that was precisely what he was doing.
‘It’ll be all right, I promise,’ Mum said. ‘But you must not leave the hospital. Do you understand, Sophie? Do not leave.’ And then she gave one, heart-rending sob as she added, ‘You’ve got to stay where you are, Sophie, or I might never see you again.’
For the next few minutes, I sat in the chair beside my bed, watching the door and praying, Please let it be Mum. Please, please, please God, don’t let Kas walk through the door first. And then there he was, pushing open the door and walking towards my bed.
I could see from his expression that he knew immediately something was wrong and as I stood up, trying to suppress my instinct to back away from him, I blurted out, ‘My mum’s here.’
