Instinctively, I just kept saying, ‘What do you mean? What do you mean?’ I tried to say it with a giggle, trying to fend him off in a jokey way. But the drink had made me slur my words. He could tell I was panicking, but he didn’t seem to care. He just kept telling me I had to pay him back, and all the time he was coming closer.
‘We’re friends,’ he was saying, ‘and friends do things for each other.’
By now there was an aggression in his voice that I’d never heard before, a nastiness – as if he’d decided there was no further point in playing at being jolly. There were no smiles either. Instead, I could feel an anger building up in him as I carried on saying no.
I didn’t know what to do. I knew he wanted to have sex with me, but I didn’t want to with him because he was old. Much, much older than me. But nor did I want to say no, because I’d look soft to Emma.
I just kept trying to laugh it off so he’d leave me alone. I didn’t think to try to beat him off because he was so big compared to me, and I had no idea what he would do. Would he beat me up? Kill me? And I didn’t want to scream as I knew Emma would hear, and might get angry with me. And then, in the midst of the surge of my rising panic and the fear freezing my veins, I suddenly realised what had happened: that Emma had deliberately led me into a trap and I knew, without doubt, that if I resisted the monster looming over me, Emma would batter me, or maybe worse, much worse.
I just had no idea just how sickening a trap it would prove to be.
Daddy was still talking, saying, ‘Go on, go on, you’ve got to pay me back.’ I was still sitting up, rigid, but then he reached over and started to push me down.
‘Come on, it’s not fair,’ he was saying. ‘I’ve got you all this stuff, you’ve got to.’ Then he was pulling on my jeans, unbuttoning them, pulling them down, and putting them and my knickers on the floor.
‘No, no, no,’ I started to repeat, over and over. I started crying, but he just kept pushing my legs open. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was keep saying ‘no’.
And then he forced himself onto me, his beaded, pungent brow close to mine, saying, ‘Shh, shh!’ I told him it was hurting, and I was sobbing, but it didn’t stop him. I remember the tears pouring down my face, but I couldn’t scream because my throat had closed up so tight with fear. Instead, I screamed the sort of scream that could find no release but reverberated around my brain. On and on it went, silently, propelling the tears that were running into my mouth and down my neck.
All the time he was saying, ‘Don’t cry,’ and ‘You’re beautiful,’ and ‘I love you.’ And because I couldn’t look at him, wouldn’t look at this old man attacking a girl in a sordid box room in Heywood, I stared desperately instead at the clock and the serene, beautiful angel who couldn’t protect me, as the second hand carried on ticking around and around.
Chapter Seven
New Girl
Once Daddy had raped me, he sat up on his knees, wiped away a smear of blood – my blood – then buttoned up his trousers and left the room.
I felt a desperate feeling I’d never known before, my body torn and aching from what he’d done to me. Being with Elliot earlier in the summer had felt clumsy and bewildering, but this? This felt totally alien, like someone had reached inside me and torn out my soul. I couldn’t move; I just stared at the sheet below me, the tacky, dirty one, now stained with tiny droplets of red. My mind was numb, frozen, unable to comprehend the enormity of having been raped.
I hadn’t moved by the time Daddy returned, bringing with him some tissue for me. I stretched out a hand, eyes averted, mascara running down my face, and a moment later was reclaiming my knickers and pulling my jeans up as quickly as I could.
He just said, ‘Don’t cry,’ and then, again, that he loved me. Then he gave me either a £10 or a £20 note. I think it was £10. As he handed it to me he said, ‘This is for you because I love you. You’re my special girl now.’
I still didn’t understand what had just happened. I knew that I’d been raped but I was confused. From the things he was saying, it seemed as though nothing had happened and it was just normal. To this day I don’t know why, but I stuffed the note into my pocket.
I felt sick and dirty, loathing him for what he’d done to me, and loathing myself for not fighting him off, for not dying in the attempt. How could he have said all those things to me – ‘Don’t cry’ and ‘You’re beautiful’ – when it was obvious I hated what he was doing the entire time he was raping me?
It was as though he didn’t know he’d done anything wrong. I couldn’t get my head straight: I knew he’d forced me, but then, after trying to push him off, I’d just lain there – I’d reasoned I would be safer that way. So now, afterwards, I was thinking, Was it rape or wasn’t it? He obviously doesn’t think so from the way he is acting.
Daddy told me we’d go downstairs. Courtney was still sitting at the kitchen table, just as she had been those few minutes earlier. And so were Emma and Chef.
It was obvious that I’d been crying, and I tried to give Courtney an imploring look so she could help me. But, weirdly, my friend of old wouldn’t look at me. Daddy, however, wasn’t having any of it. He gave me a look like thunder that sent a chill through me.
I looked at Emma but she just started laughing. She knew I’d been raped, but she actually found it funny. She seemed to be gloating. The thought seared through my mind, What kind of monster is she? And no sooner than the thought had formed, I felt a new fear building up inside.
Whatever Courtney may have been thinking, she said nothing. I think she knew it was best to keep quiet because of the way the other two were behaving. She looked almost as scared as me. Distantly, at the back of my mind, I wondered why.
We’d been back in the kitchen for about ten minutes when Daddy ordered us into what turned out to be his own car, a silver Honda Accord, so we could go and collect Immy, his ‘nephew’, who was due to work a shift at the takeaway that night. He was smiling as he said it, but I knew there was a veiled threat in every word he spoke.
Daddy came from Oldham, and that’s where Immy lived, too. All three of us girls sat in the back, me wedged in behind Daddy, next to Emma. I was still trying to grapple with what had happened to me upstairs at the Balti House.
Emma had brought the last of the vodka with her and now offered me a swig. I didn’t want it, but I drank some anyway, recoiling at the taste but wanting the effect it would bring, hoping it would start to relieve the feelings of sickness and revulsion that were coursing through me.
Then the girl I’d felt was becoming my best mate turned to Courtney and told her how Chef had given her £20 so he could go down on her. ‘Sad fucker,’ she said.
I couldn’t help but imagine the scene: her, sprawled, fat and leery on a bed in the room next to the one in which Daddy had raped me. I realised then that the things I’d heard about Emma were true – that she did go with lots of men, and, worse, that she’d let someone as greasy as Chef slaver all over her just to get £20 from him. The dawning realisation horrified me.
Again I tried to catch Courtney’s eye, but each time she’d look away. Feeling terribly alone, I drank some more of the vodka.
As we came into the main Asian district of Oldham, we pulled up at some traffic lights. There were two lanes, and as Daddy looked across at the car next to him he recognised the people inside. There were four of them, all men.
‘Shady!’ one of them shouted, his arm resting on the open window frame. I’d never heard Daddy called that before, but suddenly it fitted. It suited this new version of the man I’d once trusted. ‘Three girls, eh?’ the man went on. ‘You must be doing all right!’