‘Just come for some make-up,’ I said, still frightened, but probably just sounding like an everyday morose teenager to my family.
‘Are you stopping?’ asked Mum.
‘No, we’re off out again,’ I replied, wishing for all the world that she and Dad would insist I stayed.
I desperately wanted a hug. I desperately wanted to escape.
Instead, I climbed the stairs with leaden feet and went into my bedroom, looking briefly out of one of the tiny slit windows that looked out onto the estate. Emma came with me, and waited while I changed into clean knickers. Two minutes later we were saying goodbye, and another couple of minutes after that we were back in Daddy’s car and heading towards Rochdale.
At a set of traffic lights I leaned across to Emma, who was in the back seat with me, and asked where exactly we were going.
‘We’re going to Lateef’s,’ she said. ‘At least, that’s what he says he’s called.’
Fearing what was coming, I told her I didn’t want to. I pleaded with her not to make me. ‘You’ve got to,’ she said, her voice level. ‘And, anyway, it’ll be me he’ll be having sex with – not you.’
We drove for about twenty minutes, with me getting ever more nervous. Had Emma really meant it about it just being her? Could I ever believe her now, after she’d handed me over to men who had raped me?
We pulled up outside a grey, characterless block of flats. There was a man, tall, about forty, wearing traditional kurta clothes, waiting outside. Instead of inviting us in, he spoke quickly to Daddy and then climbed into the front passenger seat. Daddy then drove to a rank of shops around the corner. The man, presumably Lateef, got out and returned a few minutes later with a bottle of vodka. As usual, it was a litre of Glen’s.
Back at the flats, Lateef led us upstairs. He had a big moustache and the thickset build of a boxer. I felt intimidated by him, even though he didn’t speak beyond telling us his name or, more likely, nickname.
I knew what was coming and felt petrified. Emma was just giggling.
The flat had a buzzer that was answered by a thin, wrinkled old man with thin grey hair and a moustache. He looked about sixty and was pulling up his trousers, traditional Asian ones called shalwar, as he answered the door.
There was a white girl with him who looked around seventeen. She was tall and skinny with bleach-blonde hair that she wore up. I’m guessing they’d come out of the bedroom – she was kissing him as we walked into the living room. It looked perverted to see such a young girl kissing someone as old as him.
The old man offered us some weed. Emma took a joint, but I didn’t want one. I’d tried it once, but it had scared me. The two of us sat together while the men spoke to each other in their own language. The other girl barely spoke to anyone. I think she was high on weed. I never did get to know her name.
I reasoned that the vodka would help numb the pain of this latest encounter, and, as usual, I wasn’t wrong.
We’d been drinking for nearly an hour when Daddy stood up and told me to go to the bedroom with him. ‘I need to speak to you,’ he said.
He knew he was going to rape me, and I knew too. I just hoped the vodka would make it easier to bear. Once in the room, he told me what I knew he would: that I had to have sex with him again, and if I didn’t, he’d leave me there, miles from home and probably much, much worse.
‘But Emma said you’d leave me alone,’ I said, more in desperation than anything else. He just smirked. ‘Emma’s lying,’ he chuckled. ‘You have to do it.’
Then he started pulling my leggings down. I was crying, saying, ‘Just leave me alone, I don’t want to do it any more.’ He said I had to, and he raised his hand. I thought I had no choice.
There was a mattress on the floor again, which reminded me of the box room in which he’d first attacked me. But this time I had more to endure, because while I awaited my inevitable fate he took off every shred of his own clothing.
His nakedness made it even worse than before because it meant I could feel his skin on my skin. He was incredibly hairy, not just on his chest, but on his stomach, his legs, everywhere.
I felt him breathing on me. He was saying, ‘Do it like you mean it,’ and ‘You’re supposed to be my bitch.’ He told me to touch him. I tried to block it all out but I couldn’t. I felt so dirty.
Like the last time, he’d worn nothing – no condom – and I was worried in case he’d made me pregnant. I shouted for Emma and we went into the bathroom together. She told me just to have a wee and I’d be fine. That would stop me getting pregnant. She didn’t care, and Daddy didn’t care.
She then took me out of the bathroom and into the kitchen where Lateef was standing. The look on his face told me he was expecting to have sex with me as well. Daddy was there by now, and he started to tell me to go back into the bedroom with Lateef.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t. I don’t want to.’
The tears welled up and began running down my cheeks, but I knew they weren’t going to save me. Lateef grabbed hold of me and started pulling me by the arm. ‘Come on,’ he was saying, ‘come on.’
He was a big man and I was no match for him. In the room he took his own clothes off, pushed me onto the mattress and started to pull at my leggings.
I was trying to shuffle my legs to fend him off, but he was all over me. I couldn’t stand it any more and so I kicked him, aiming at his groin but only managing to catch the top of his leg. He reacted by hitting me hard across the face.
I screamed and, astonishingly, Emma came to my rescue, though I still don’t know why. She stood there in the doorway and yelled at him to get off me. Lateef was standing there naked and angry, but not quite sure if he fancied taking Emma on.
I used the moment to hitch up my leggings and run for the door. We ran out of the bedroom and away from the flat, waiting for the sound of him, or Daddy, or both of them, to come chasing after us.
Neither of us knew where we were, but we headed towards a main road, running part of the way but then slowing to a walk when we thought we’d got away and that they’d not bothered giving chase. But then, out of the darkness, we spotted Daddy’s car, driving on side lights and heading towards us out of the gloom. I didn’t bother running. The fight had gone out of me and, once more, I felt defeated.
Emma and I both climbed into the back seat, Daddy shouting at us as we did. He was livid. Livid with both of us for running; livid with me for not having sex with Lateef. ‘He’s a fucking gangster, you don’t mess with him,’ he said, glowering at us in the rear-view mirror as he pulled away. ‘How dare you! Do you know what he could do to you? Or to me?’
For once even Daddy looked scared, and as his eyes refocused on the road ahead I allowed myself a brief smile.
He dropped us off at Harry’s house. As we were about to get out, he leaned into the back and gave each of us a £10 note. ‘Don’t tell anyone what happened tonight,’ he said.
For all his apparent fear that night, Daddy was still happy to carry on raping me over the next few nights. Five, six times, they all merged into one, always punctuated by the smell of his sweat and the soap he used to keep it in check.
Just into August, less than a week after the time with Lateef, he picked us up from Harry’s place at about 6 p.m. and drove us, again in his Accord, to a house in the Coppice area of Oldham.
By now I was terrified of Daddy and too scared of reprisals to fall out with Emma. I felt well and truly trapped, mentally and physically. The place we went to belonged to a guy called Pino, who worked at Tasty Bites. I’d not been in Tasty Bites for ages, but I’d seen him outside so I knew he worked there.