One of Us (22 page)

“Well,” he said. “So you do.”

“I do.”

“Or at least, you think you know something. Don’t believe everything you hear, Anna. People are jealous, that is business, that is life, and they say things that are not true.”

“You sell girls,” I said. It felt like a stranger was talking through my mouth. I was somewhere else, orbiting, watching it all happen as if it was happening to somebody else. But it was not. It was happening to me. “You sell them abroad, to be whores. That is what you do, you and now Aleksey too, that is what puts the food on our table and the clothes on my back.”

My father shook his head. “See what I mean? All this bullshit about selling girls, who have you been talking to, Anna? That idiot boy who doesn’t want me to come between him and your bed? Why do you listen to this bullshit? How can you believe this of me, your father. Your
father
, Anna. Haven’t I raised you since your mother died? Haven’t I looked after you, given you all that you needed?”

“Paid for with what?” I said. “The lives of these girls?”

“Look Anna, you know what I do. I run an employment agency, we find jobs overseas for girls, but that’s all it is. Bar work, restaurants, you know how it is Anna, the girls these days don’t want to be here, working in some factory, they think it is all glamour over there in the West, they think they will be discovered, be in a pop band, marry some rich German, get discovered and become a model. And maybe we sell them that dream a little bit, encourage them. But that is all. I’m a travel broker, a jobs broker, and you do not want to listen to gossips and fools. What the girls do when they are away I cannot help, I am not their keeper, I am not their father, so sure, some of them lose their jobs, maybe some of them turn to drugs, maybe some of them sleep with men for money because they would rather do that than come back here, or because they have to sell themselves to buy their drugs. How is that my fault, Anna?”

I stopped, shuddering and shivering as though I had a fever. Sean stared at me, not moving. “And you know what I did? I believed him. I believed him because he said what I wanted to believe, what would let me go on living the lie I did. That I was not the daughter of a man who was kind and loving and funny and who also sold girls like meat. That everything I had was not stained. That
I
was not stained. I have lied to you, Sean, like I lied to myself, over and over.”

The shivers came back, and the tears came, and the words all came out too, all of this mixed together and I could not stop anything, like I was vomiting.

“He lied to me, and I believed him because I could not face the truth. But if he had been telling me the truth, that he just found jobs, what happened next would not have happened. The men who killed my brother were police. But they were not at work when they killed him. They do not earn much back at home, the police. It makes them easy to buy. My aunt, his sister, told me when he was dead. I stood in a phone box that was full of cards for prostitutes, and she told me what he did. My father bought the police, for years. But then a rival to him, a man who did not want any competition, he paid them more. These men came and beat my brother to death. And no-one would do anything, because they
were
the police. And the same men arrested my father on charges that they had made up because they had been paid to do so, and they took him away and he died in the cell. End of my brother’s life, end of my father’s, and his business was gone and the other man has it all. Until someone more hungry comes and takes it away from him. That is the way that it works.”

I stopped and looked at Sean. I could not tell what he was thinking. I always knew what Sean was thinking. I did not like this blank face. But I could not blame him for it. I thought of my father, giving me a hug when I opened the letter and found out that I had got into medical school. He smelt of cigars and sweat and love. I thought of my brother, sitting on the end of my bed and reading fairy tales to me when I had a fever, even though he would rather have been out playing football. And then I thought of Elena, the raw red marks on her body when I first met her, her body lying dead and empty on the bed, and I thought about all the girls like her that my father and my brother had sent all over Europe to small rooms with a bed and not much light. And then I sat down on the floor, because I could not talk any more, and I cried and I cried and I cried some more because Sean did not come and put his arm around me, but just stood across the room, arms folded, not saying anything, not moving. When I could breathe again, I talked more without looking at him, because if I looked at him I knew that I would cry.

“So, you kept saying you could not believe that I would not get asylum with my story. Well now you know why. I have not told them my story, because they do not know that I am here. I am an illegal, Sean. If I told them it, and if they check with home they find out what my father was, what he did, and they look at me and say you are just a dirty girl, daughter of a dirty man, you are not a political refugee you are a criminal and we do not want you here. The women I live with, the things that have happened to them—rapes, family murdered, and still they get sent back, back to hell. What chance would I have? They would send me back. But I cannot go back because they took my brother, and then they took my father, and I am frightened that they will take me.”

“Why would they do that?” Sean said in a quiet voice. “Unless there’s more you’re not telling me. You weren’t involved in the business. Were you?”

“No, and that is the truth,” I said, tired all of a sudden. I felt as if I could lie out on the floor and close my eyes and just sleep for a week. “All of this that I am telling you now, this is the truth. There is no more. I was not involved in the business. My father saw it as man’s work. If my mother had been alive, she would not have been involved either. You may not believe me, you have a right not to believe me, but this is all there is. The men who did that to my father, my brother, they do not know that though, and they do not like loose ends. They will think I was in the...the family business. That I know secrets, things, dirt. I do not. But they will think well, she does, or she might, and why take the risk? Or maybe she wants revenge, so why take the risk. This is how it works in my country, Sean, in that business.”

He thought to himself for a bit, and nodded.

“Now you see it?” I said. “Why I cannot leave. It is not just Elena. It is all the others. And it is the pony I had when I was thirteen and the car I had when I was eighteen and the holidays and the house with a swimming pool and the conversations I did not listen to and letters I did not read and the truth that I did not let in to my world. That is why. So, now you know, I have freed you. I lied to you. I am one of them, like Corgan, it is in my blood, so you are free, you can go. Go.”

Sean stood very still for a while. Then he came over, sat down beside me on the floor.

“Anna,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“What do you mean, you don’t care?”

“I mean, I don’t care. You were a kid, Anna. He was your dad. I don’t care, I don’t give a toss. All I know is you, now. That’s it. And the Anna I know now is a good person, she’s not like them.”

“But—”

“No,” he said. “No. Screw the past Anna, it’s not who we are now. Do you think I want that? Do you think I want to be the Sean I was? I’m
here
, Anna. I came back. What we were doesn’t have to be what we are. You’re not your father. You’re not Corgan. You’re Anna.”

“I know,” I said. “But the question is, who is Anna? I am not sure that I know.”

“I do,” Sean said.

I looked up at him. “I wish I was so sure.”

~

“Thing is,” Sean said, “he’s going to find me, isn’t he? Corgan. Sooner or later. People talk. It’s a miracle I’ve stayed this far ahead as it is.”

“Yes,” I said. “We need to do something.”

“Yes,” he said.

We sat there in silence for a little while. The boiler rattled and roared, and then suddenly shut off.

“How about I just go and wait outside Corgan’s flat and when he comes out I hit him in the head with a big fucking hammer?”

“Don’t joke,” I said.

“I’m not,” Sean said, and his voice left no doubt at all that he was not.

I looked at him. “I told you. Do not dare, Sean. Do not fucking dare. Do not even joke about it. I am serious.”

“I can tell,” he said. “You’re swearing. You don’t normally swear. It’s the company you’ve been keeping.”

“No,” I said, getting angry now. “Do not make a joke of me. I have only just got you back, I do not want to lose you again. You up against Corgan, it’s...Sean, he is an evil man, and a strong man. And even if you do it in the dark, in some alley, and you do it, then the police find you and I lose you that way. No. Promise me.”

“Might not get found out,” he said sullenly, playing with a cloth, threading it over and over between his fingers.

“Promise me!” I said. “Because do not think I did not notice that last time I asked you, you did not say anything. Promise.”

“OK, OK, whatever.”

“Say it.”

“I promise. There, happy?”

We sat in silence for a little while, pretending that we were interested in the flicker of light, the paint peeling from the walls.

“We’ll think of something,” Sean said.

“We do not have much time. You will be seen, he will know that you are here.”

“Police?” Sean said. “I know, I know what you said, but it doesn’t have to involve you, does it? I could go, leave you out of it.”

“Go with what?” I said. “A story? No proof, no body? A man like Corgan, he will pay off someone in the police. I know how it works, same as back home, maybe less, but it will happen. And if he has, he will know what you have done. And where to find you. No, no police.”

We sat in silence for a little longer.

“Not very good at this, are we?” Sean said.

“That is the difference between us and them,” I said. “We shouldn’t feel bad about that.”

“Point taken,” he said. “But sometimes, just sometimes, it would be handy to be able to be like that. Otherwise people like Corgan, they overrun the world.”

“There is no just sometimes,” I said. “You act like them, it is a stain. And once it is on you, it is very hard to get it off.”

We sat for a long time like friends can, when you do not need to speak to fill the silence. It had started to rain hard, and we could hear the rattle of the drops on the bins outside, but it seemed to come from a long way away, and we were dry, and we were warm, even if it was just for this moment. Perhaps that was all we could ask for. Just moments, like this. It was all that we had left.

~

I opened my eyes, thought, where the hell am I? Something covered me, and I pushed it off, panicking.

“Hello, Sleeping Beauty.” Sean was sat on the floor near me.

“What...I...” I struggled to my feet. If there was a part of me that did not ache, I had not yet discovered it. At my feet was thick yellow wadding, which had covered me like a blanket.

“Thought you might get cold,” Sean said. “So I pulled it off the pipes.”

I stretched. My head hurt, and my mouth tasted foul, like I had been licking the floor. “How long have I been asleep?”

“A good couple of hours. Do you good, you looked like you needed it.”

“Have you been asleep?” I stretched again, trying to make my body feel as if it was not about to fall into a hundred different pieces.

“Nah,” Sean said. “Thought I’d keep an eye on things.”

“We must leave here when it gets dark,” I said. “We can’t stay here.”

“And go..?”

“We’ll rent a room,” I said. “Somewhere out of the way.”

Sean looked embarrassed. “Anna, sorry, but I’ve got nothing, I—”

“I have money. Peter gave me money.”

“Peter gave you money?”

I told Sean what had happened at the restaurant. “When it is dark,” I said. “We will go out the back way from here, into the alley. I do not know if this place is being watched, and I do not want to go out the front.”

“We should go now.”

I shook my head. “The alley leads round to the street, the other end is a dead end, just a wall, too high, and there is broken glass on it. If they are watching now, they could see us come out onto the street. When it is dark, probably not. It is safer.”

“Yes, boss.”

“That is more like it. But I need to get changed, I have been in these clothes all day yesterday, I need a shower and to change. I will get some food for us too, and bring it down. You stay here, no-one will come in here, no-one ever comes in here. If they do, pretend you are fixing the boiler or something. But no-one will, no-one does. You OK to wait? I will be quick.”

“Take as long as you like,” Sean said. “Just come back.”

I opened the door into the hostel a little way. There was no-one there. “I will,” I said. I closed the door again, very quietly, and hurried up to the ground floor, and almost ran into Sally.

“Anna,” she said. She looked over my shoulder, down the stairs to the boiler room.

Go on, I thought. Ask me. I will think of something. I was putting back a cloth. Some bleach. Something.

But Sally did not say anything. She walked over to the front door, paused just before she went out.

“Wanted to ask,” she said. “Can I borrow your top? The black one?”

“Sure,” I said. Sally had never asked to borrow my clothes before.

She nodded, and walked out. I ran upstairs to my room, wondering what had just happened. Halfway through my shower, I knew that Sally thought she had something over me now, even if she had no idea what. The question about my top had been a test. I was not sure if I had passed or if I had failed.

After my shower I changed clothes and skulked around like a thief. I took what food I had in the fridge, which was not very much, stole someone else’s can of coke, and wrapped it all around with a towel so no-one could see what I was doing.

I got back down to the boiler room without seeing anyone else. Sean was lying down by the sink, head resting on the material he had torn from the pipes. As I came in, he sat up very quickly.