The two men joined us. Daddy continued to press the whole thing about the vodka and how it meant Immy deserved a treat. While he was talking, his nephew was touching me and trying to persuade me. I said I wanted to go, and reminded them that I was only fifteen. But it didn’t matter to them: Daddy just kept saying that in his country they could have sex with girls as young as eleven. ‘You’ve got to do it now,’ said Daddy. ‘It’s too late; you’re already upstairs. I gave you a treat, now you’ve got to give him a treat.’ And Immy wanted his treat.
Daddy and Emma left, closing the door behind them as Immy moved in on me.
He told me to get onto the bed and take my leggings off, and when I said no he started to take them off me himself. He was much stronger than me: I kept trying to shut my legs, but he forced them open again. Eventually, I realised I had no option, that there was no escape. Even if I’d pushed him away and managed to get out of the bedroom, there was still Daddy downstairs, and Emma.
He was still forcing my legs open and pushing down on me, saying, ‘Come on, please, you’ve got to do it now.’
In the end, I just lay there and let him do what he wanted. I realised dimly that the more I fought back, the longer it would take. The whole time, I just stared at the wall, trying to block it all out. When he’d finished, he just put his trousers back on and went downstairs, leaving me, in pain and in tears, on the bed. He’d worn no protection.
I was putting my clothes back on when Emma walked in.
‘Come on,’ she said brusquely, ‘we can go now. I’ll go and get some money for you.’
A few moments later she returned, handing me a £20 note. ‘I got it off Daddy,’ said my recruiter. ‘For giving Immy his treat.’
As if that was going to make everything all right.
The whirlwind continued. Just one night later, Emma walked me into Market Street, supposedly just to have a drink. We were sitting on the steps of Dunne’s store, a few yards from Morrison’s, when Daddy drove into the car park and pulled up beside us.
At the time I had no idea how he knew we were there, but I know now: it would have been from a text from Emma, or a phone call.
‘Get in,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, rediscovering the belligerent tone I’d used so often with Mum and Dad. Out of nowhere, I’d decided to stand my ground.
But it was pointless. ‘Look, Hannah,’ he said, leaning out of the open car window. ‘You’re my bitch now, and if you cross me someone might just kill you. So get in.’
In a moment, Emma had grabbed hold of me, her nails digging into my wrist, telling me it was for my own good and that I had to go with him.
‘Listen to your friend,’ said Daddy. She wasn’t my friend, she was his! And so, finally, I climbed into the back of a car that normally bore trays of the Balti House’s gloop-like curries.
I asked Daddy where he was taking me, and he said, ‘We’re just going for a drive.’
Emma asked him if he’d be heading back to the Morrison’s car park. Yes, came the reply. ‘Hannah, I’ll wait for you,’ she said.
Daddy drove for about five minutes: out past the Morrison’s petrol pumps, up the Bamford Road for a while and then onto a side street. His headlights picked out a couple of buildings and a set of gates. The gates were open and he drove through, then parked on a little slope next to a garage.
There was nothing there beside an empty car park. Nothing beside Daddy and me. This time I was more frightened than ever, because it was the first time I’d ever been alone with him. At the back of my mind was the thought that if he wanted to kill me, here, now, he could do so and no one would be able to stop him.
He switched off the engine and got out, his shoes scrunching on the stone chippings beside the car, and climbed into the back seat with me. I was in the furthest corner of the back seat, as far away from him as I could get.
I was asking him if he was going to take me home. Yes, he said, but then came the inevitable: ‘Are you going to have sex with me?’
I told him I didn’t want to – that I wanted it all to stop. I wanted to go home. But he just glowered at me and said, ‘You’re going to have to, my special girl. Because if you don’t, then maybe you’ll be killed or your sisters raped. And if you try to go home, maybe one day your house will be burned down.’
With that, he shuffled towards me so he could begin making his sick moves on me.
His breath was as stale as the smell of ghee from the takeaway that had seeped into the car’s upholstery. He took his jeans down and ordered me to use my mouth on him so he could get hard. I thought I was going to throw up because it tasted horrible. He grabbed hold of my hair so he could move my head up and down. Then he broke off and told me to lie down. I lay there, still, beneath him, and he knelt up and lifted my legs towards him. I begged him to take me home but it was no good. He just kept carrying on.
Partway through, he complained that he had too little room to do what he wanted and he ordered me to sit on top of him. I didn’t want to. I’d never done that before, and I felt a further wave of embarrassment coursing through me.
As it happened, I felt more disgusted with myself than ever before, because doing it like that made me feel that I was the instigator, the one in control, the one who wanted the movement I detested so much. I tried to block out the thought, and the pain, as he laboured beneath me. But I couldn’t.
Afterwards, he wiped himself, threw the tissue away and drove me back to the Morrison’s car park where Emma – fat, violent Emma – was waiting for me, smirking.
The whole sordid episode had taken no more than twenty minutes. As I got out of the car, dishevelled and in tears, she asked where he’d taken me.
When I described it, she nodded. ‘Yeah, I know it,’ she said. ‘Been there loads of times.’
I had a bath as soon as we got back to Harry’s that night. The water was only tepid, but I was desperate to scrub away every trace of Daddy.
The next morning, I ran another bath. I was about to climb in when Emma called out, realised where I was, and walked into the bathroom. She hadn’t bothered knocking, and there was no lock on the door to stop her, so in she came, lowered the loo seat cover and sat down.
She looked me up and down, a frown coming to her face. I was embarrassed because she was looking at my breasts, or rather the tiny bumps that still hadn’t developed. Then she looked lower.
‘You need to shave,’ she said. ‘Shave it all off. It’ll make you look younger.’
She looked around for a razor and handed it to me, then some gel. While I was drying myself she checked it to make sure I’d got every hair.
‘Make sure you do it every couple of days,’ she said, and then she was gone. The whole episode, and the thoughts it brought into my mind, made me feel weird and scared at the same time.
I think that was the day she took my phone. Without it, I was even more helpless and even more dependent on her. There seemed to be no respite. Two days later, Daddy called for us and said we were going into Rochdale. He set off in that direction, but then Emma told him we’d have to go via Mum and Dad’s house because I needed fresh knickers. ‘She’s not changed them since yesterday,’ she said. ‘She’s run out.’
I went crimson – I had just kicked all my dirty clothes under the bed, not wanting to have to deal with them, or touch them, as they reminded me of what I had been through.
In the front, Daddy laughed and said: ‘You’ll need some clean knickers for tonight.’
He parked just down the street from my parents’ house, and Emma and I walked up the pathway to the front door. It felt like the longest walk of my life as I struggled with my emotions. Dare I say anything to Mum and Dad? Should I try to stay? Or was my fate sealed? In the end, fear got the better of me.