Before falling prey to Daddy I’d drink with my friends to get happily drunk. It was fun with them. Now, each shot of vodka became its own anaesthetic. And the quicker I could drink each shot, the sooner I could embrace its numbing effect.
But, deep within me, in the hours and days after the time with Pino, I started to feel stronger. A new rebellion was building.
The day of my escape from Daddy, 6 August 2008, began like so many before it: waking up late at Harry’s house, realising that the nightmare still had hold of me, and in the evening being taken by Emma to the Balti House.
Daddy wasn’t there that night, and I felt a sense of relief as Emma and I sat on the stairs – hidden from the view of any customers who might be calling in – drinking straight out of the bottle. Emma had produced yet another bottle of cash-and-carry vodka, but it was me that drank the most. She just sipped it as she always did, ruthless, anxious to stay sober while her latest victim drank to forget. She must have reasoned that it was easier that way: less trouble. I couldn’t understand that about her, because in my mind the vodka made the horror of each night that much easier to bear – I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that she actually enjoyed all this, as she’d told Courtney in the car.
Although Daddy wasn’t there, Chef was, and he loved to touch. He couldn’t really speak much English: just the odd word or phrase to get by on. When it came to sex, he used the words: ‘jiggy jiggy’ was a favourite, so was ‘puddy’.
Now, he came out of the kitchen and stood over me. His hands started roaming, just as he liked them to, heading south towards my ‘puddy’.
He was saying, ‘Do you want sex?’ He wouldn’t stop, and he wouldn’t stop trying to reach into my pants. I said I’d ring my dad, and when he still didn’t stop I punched him in the face.
I hit him so hard he reeled back on his heels.
A second later, I heard the crack as his hand slapped the side of my face. Then he slapped me a second time. He was going mad, standing right in front of me and calling me a slag.
It was chaos. My cheek was stinging as Emma began dragging me away from the stairs and out into the empty restaurant, heading towards the front door. Then Immy raced out and caught us up. He was angry, but I was angrier still.
Looking around for anything I could get my hands on, I grabbed a big jar of mayonnaise and threw it at Chef, catching him in the throat. Then I started kicking and punching the glass front to the counter. In the end, I hit it so hard I put my fist through it. I’ve still got the scars.
I could hear Chef screaming at Immy to call the police, but the man who’d taken me as a ‘treat’ barely a fortnight earlier seemed suddenly anxious. ‘No, no,’ he shouted. ‘We’ll call Daddy.’
Just the name was enough to propel me out of the door. I ran into the night, with Emma behind. We ran across the road and then slowed to walking pace, victim and recruiter, using the Morrison’s car park as a cut-through. I know I was bleary from the vodka, but it felt like only moments later that a blue police van screeched around the corner and pulled up beside us.
Immy, it turned out, had been talked out of ringing Daddy and had instead dialled 999. It was something he’d come to regret, but not then, not in the summer of 2008.
Two police officers, one a man, the other a woman, both glaring at the drunken teenager in front of them, took only moments to arrest me but left Emma to slope off. They had to half lift me into the back of the van before slamming the door shut.
As the van headed out of town towards Rochdale, I looked dully at the two bobbies through the mesh bars, wondering what would happen to me next.
They parked at the back of the station and led me inside, first to the front desk, then to a cell, having taken all my belongings – my rings, bag and laces. ‘We can’t interview you until you’ve sobered up,’ I was told.
Quite suddenly I felt safe. Yes, I was scared, because I’d never been in a police station before, let alone a cell, but I felt a sense of relief that, finally, I was somewhere that was completely out of Daddy’s and Emma’s reach: a place of refuge they couldn’t deny me because, miraculously, I was there already. I wasn’t at Emma’s, I wasn’t at the Balti House, and I wasn’t at a flat being abused by Daddy and his friends. I was behind the safe, welcoming gates of a police station.
I slept, or tried to sleep, beneath the blanket they gave me. It was around 1 a.m. that the cell door opened and I was taken to an interview room.
But then the old fear came back to me: I was scared – not so much of what might happen to me here at the station, but scared of everything else: of what my dad would say about it all, of what my mum would say, and, most of all, of what Daddy would do to me if he ever got to me again.
It was at that point, somewhere between the cell door clanging shut behind me and the tape recorder going on, that I decided I really had to get help. If I didn’t, I’d be trapped in this world for ever.
I had to tell them what had been happening to me. It felt that this was my only chance. No matter how painful, how embarrassing, I had to do what Mum and Dad had always told me: to tell the truth, so things could be right again. If I didn’t, what would the gang do to me once I’d left the station? I’d be right back to doing what they wanted me to do.
The realisation was like a bright light going on in my mind. I was in a police station, after all. They’d look after me, and my family would, too, once they knew the truth.
But, first of all, there was my dad to cope with. He’d arrived at the station with a friend, bleary-eyed and mad at the news that his daughter had been arrested for criminal damage and thrown into a cell. He glared at me as he came into the interview room, then shook his head and sat on the chair beside me. It was obvious that he wanted to be anywhere else than there.
I remember how warm the room was, and how bare – just a table, some chairs, and the tape recorder on the table. I could feel the heat building up on my brow, the first trickle of perspiration on my palms.
The officer conducting the interview was about thirty and was clearly expecting a routine procedure, ending with a charge and a referral to court. He wasn’t aggressive, just methodical and probably a little bored, carefully reading out the statements of both Chef and Immy. They were lies, of course, the gist of what they were saying being that I’d walked into the takeaway and randomly smashed the counter.
I think he expected me to say something like, ‘Yes, that’s what I did. And I’m sorry.’
But this wasn’t going to be the easy shift for him that night.
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s wrong.’
So he asked me why that was wrong, and why I’d done it.
I think I paused for a few seconds, wondering how on earth I could say it. There were no tears because suddenly I could see that I was about to be set free. But I remember looking down at the table, not wanting to look at the uniformed officer in front of me and even more desperate to avoid the expectant gaze of my father beside me.
‘Because they raped me,’ I said.
Across the table from me the officer looked astonished, alarmed even; as if he had no idea how he should react. He then collected himself, refocused and said sternly, ‘You do know that’s a serious accusation you’re making, don’t you?’
My dad has told me since that he went into shock, and I guess the policeman had a similar reaction, with his mind still on the criminal damage. I started to go through what had been happening to me – the rapes, the car journeys, the threats – but every time I paused, the officer tried to bring the conversation back to the Balti House counter. As if the counter mattered!