Slave Girl (10 page)

So that was it. Watching that man fuck Sally was meant to be part of my education. I was supposed to be learning how to be a prostitute by seeing her do it. For a brief moment I felt angry and defiant.

‘I don’t care what you did and I didn’t watch because I don’t want to learn how to do it; and I’m not going to and you can’t make me.’

Just as quickly as it had come the anger deserted me and the terror seeped back. I waited for Sally’s reaction – Christ, what if she hits me? Oh God, what if she tells Reece?

But she did neither. She just stood and looked at me for the longest time. And then she spoke, slowly and deliberately.

‘I’m sorry, really I am. But it doesn’t matter what you want. You will be a prostitute; you will work in this window; you will earn money by renting out your body, 10 or 15 minutes at a time. And no, I can’t make you: but John can. And he will. Believe me, he knows how to hurt girls – and there are people here who like watching girls get hurt, who will pay good money to watch that. There’s no way out. You can’t escape because he will track you down and break you. He doesn’t even have to do it himself: this whole city is corrupt. Prostitution and drugs aren’t legal here, but no one is interested in stopping them. Even if they were, the police are bent – half of them are on the payroll of the pimps and the sex bosses.

‘So get this into your head: there’s no escape from this. The only thing you can do is find a way of staying safe while you do your job – and a way to handle the hurt and the pain and the revulsion you’re going to feel. Now I’ll ask you again: what did you see?’

It turned out there were a lot of lessons I should have spotted in the 10 grubby minutes Sally spent with her punter. She spelt them out to me, one by one.

‘Rule number one: You want the business, so does he. But there are hundreds of other girls in other windows, so it’s a buyer’s market, right? That means you need to make him feel that you’re the one he really wants; not any of the other girls – just you. That way he’ll open his wallet quicker – and you can get him to keep dipping into it. So the act you put on when he’s outside that window is vital.

‘Rule number two: Once he comes inside, he pays. No exceptions. The trick is to get as much out of him as possible. Remember, everything is extra. If he wants you to take your top off – that’s 10 guilders extra. If he wants you naked, that’s another 10 guilders. If he wants to touch you, that’s another 10. If he wants anything out of the ordinary, then name a price – if you’re prepared to do it.

‘But two things you never do: you don’t kiss and you don’t do anything without a condom. John likes his girls to stay clean. You make sure you put the rubber on the punter, and once he’s finished you take it off him. That way you know it’s not split, or come off inside you.

‘Oh – and don’t think of trying to hold back any of the money from John. He’ll count the condoms – both the used ones in the bin and the ones you haven’t used yet. He’ll know if you’re cheating him – and you don’t want him ever to think you’re doing that: trust me.’

My head was spinning. It was too much to take in. I was trapped – completely trapped – and Sally was trying to help me, I could tell. But how could I do what she said? How was I going to cope the first time it was my turn to hook a punter – much less remember everything I was supposed to do, if and when I got him inside the window? And what if I didn’t? What did Reece do to ‘his’ girls if they didn’t earn him enough money?

All through the rest of the day and the first part of the night, I watched Sally at work. Between the time she opened the curtains at her window – 12 noon – and the moment her shift ended at 8pm she had lured six men inside. Two had paid for full sex – one repeatedly coughing up for extras; three more had handed over the guilders for oral sex; and the last, a sad old man – old enough to be her grandfather – had pawed at her while she rubbed him to a rubber-insulated climax.

The bin next to the bed had six used condoms and a pile of dirty tissues in it. Sally had snorted more lines of cocaine before each session and smoked big fat joints after each man had left. And there was a tidy stack of money in the little room where I sat – watching, learning: more than 700 guilders (£525) just waiting for John Reece to come and collect.

At five to eight that night, Sally told me that he would turn up in a few minutes. She was strung out from all the drugs she’d taken and exhausted from the men she’d serviced, but managed to keep her head clear enough to tell me what to do and what to say when Reece arrived.

‘I’ll tell him you did three and I did three. Okay? I did the full fucks, you did the others, understand? He’ll believe that – though he’ll tell you that you should have got them to pay for full sex.

‘He’ll check the money, pocket it and then he’ll check the condoms. He’ll count the unused ones and make us empty out the bin to show him the others. He won’t want to hang around: he’s only rented this window till eight. There’s another girl coming in to work the next shift for another pimp, and if we’re late out there’ll be trouble. He’ll take us back to where we’re staying. Whatever happens there, don’t say or do anything; in fact, don’t react in any way. Just watch me – like you have today – and I’ll try to show you what to do.

‘But remember one more thing: tomorrow, I can’t cover for you any more; tomorrow, we share the punters.’

She straightened the bed, made the little room as neat and presentable as possible and then closed the curtains for the last time. We went and waited in the room next door for John Reece to come and claim ‘his’ girls. As we sat there, in the semi-darkness and in total silence, I wondered what Sally could have meant: ‘Don’t react at all.’

React? What to? I was soon to find out.

When Reece arrived he was furious.

‘You’ve been here eight fucking hours – both of you – and you’ve done just 700 guilders? What the fuck good is that?’

He yelled at Sally and pointed at me.

‘Did she do any of them?
Did
she? Or did she just sit on her stuck-up little fanny and watch you work? Seven hundred fucking guilders! I may as well save myself the bother and sell the pair of you to the bastard Yugoslavs. Fucking useless!’

Sally and I said nothing. There was nothing we could say – and I couldn’t work out why Reece was so angry. He’d not done anything all day and Sally had just handed over everything she’d earned. What more could he want? And what did he mean about selling us to ‘the Yugoslavs’?

Reece marched us over to the car and drove us through the darkened, twisty streets. He pulled up outside a shabby building and unlocked a big heavy metal door, pushing us inside roughly. This was apparently where we would all sleep. There was an old iron bedstead on one side for Reece and Sally, and a mattress on the floor for me. I lay down and turned my back on them. I heard Reece lock the door as I closed my eyes, but I didn’t sleep. Sally’s words were running through my mind all night: ‘Tomorrow, I can’t cover for you any more; tomorrow, we share the punters.’

R
eece unlocked the door at the side of the glass window. I stepped through, followed by Sally. Neither of us spoke. The door shut behind us and a key turned in the lock. It was 10am and I was about to become a prostitute.

I felt numb that morning. I don’t think I slept more than five minutes at a time all through the night. At first I had tried to close my ears to the beating I could hear Sally being given on the bed behind me: the dull, sickening sound of a fist landing blows on the soft parts of her body – those parts which would be less obvious to the punters, at least until they were too close to back out.

Sally took the black bikini and I watched as she slowly put it on. Her body was slim – boyish almost – and I could see the marks of Reece’s pummelling, still fresh nearly 12 hours later. The bikini sat snugly on her hips, but it was too big at the top, leaving a big gap between the cup and the flesh. I noticed how, when she bent down, her nipples were just visible – and instantly wondered if that was the idea. Was it another trick to lure in the punters?

But I didn’t have time to ask her. She pointed at me and told me brusquely to put on my own bikini. It felt cold and clammy and my skin was suddenly covered in goosebumps. I had taken the first faltering steps towards my own downfall.

Sally opened the door which connected the little back room to the one with the big glass window, and motioned me to go inside. She followed and stepped over to the glass.

‘Okay, this is it. I’m going to pull the curtains now and unlock the glass door. You need to come over here and keep an eye out for a punter. Once you see one, make sure you hook him and reel him in. You know what to do now. I’ll be back there watching. Tonight John will want his money and I’m not taking the blame if there isn’t enough for him. Okay?’

I knew there was no way out; no way of avoiding what was going to happen to me. But maybe I could put it off, keep it at bay for as long as possible?

‘It’s only ten o’clock. Surely there won’t be any punters around at this time, will there? Can’t we just sit and talk for a bit?’

But she took no notice. She drew the heavy curtains, unlocked the glass door and pointed to where I was to stand. Then she moved out of sight into the room next door. I looked up and down the alleyway. There were a lot of people on the street – men and women – and with a start I realised that some were clearly eyeing up the girls in the windows. At 10am? It seemed the sex business kept office hours here – at least in the morning.

Five minutes later a man walked up to ‘my’ door. I didn’t have to do anything to hook him. From the look on his face I knew he wanted to come inside. I had seen that look many times before – a disgusting animal sort of lust, a rush of perverted adrenalin, making his eyes cold and piggy. I was terrified, but I knew what I had to do. I opened the door and let him come in.

He was in his fifties and Dutch, but quickly spoke English when he realised I didn’t understand his language. He looked sort of ordinary; if I’d walked past him on the street in Gateshead I don’t think I’d even have noticed him. Yet here he was, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket and telling me he wanted ‘everything’. I mumbled something about 200 guilders and he handed me a little rolled-up wad of notes.

For a moment my mind seemed to switch off, while my fingers fumbled with the little bikini. He stared at me.

‘The curtains? Aren’t you going to pull the curtains?’

I snapped out of my trance and quickly shut out the light and view from the street. My body, though, seemed to be on automatic pilot as he stepped over to the bed and began to get undressed. Bizarrely, he spent a few minutes folding his clothes and putting them into a neat pile on the floor by the bed, then he turned round to face me. I found a condom and somehow managed to put it on him. And then it was time.

I have tried ever since to blot out the memory of the next few minutes. Tried, but never succeeded. What he did is burned into the soft, vulnerable flesh of my brain so deeply, so indelibly that I know it will never, ever fade or heal. I cried all the way through it – but he seemed to like that and carried on doing it ever more roughly.

How long did it last? It seemed – still seems, when the tape plays over and over in my mind – like hours. It couldn’t have been. Probably it was no more than 10 or 15 minutes. And when it was over, and after I had done as Sally had told me with the condom, he stood up, carefully put on his clothes and simply said ‘thanks’. Then he was gone.

I sat on the bed, curtains still closed, in a state of complete shock: relieved beyond belief that it was over but still incapable of understanding what had really just happened. And why did he say ‘thanks’ – as if I had done him some small favour that could be repaid by a simple word of empty gratitude? Thanks. For what? For letting you rape me? – for that was surely what it was. Thank you?

And then I started to shake uncontrollably. My whole body shuddered in great heaving waves and I felt as if I was falling off the world and into some dark, endless void. I wasn’t Sarah Forsyth any more: that Sarah was dead and gone, smothered by the shame of the new Sarah I was becoming: Sarah the woman who fucked for money. Sarah the hooker.

Sally came in and tried to hold me, to give me some kind of support, I suppose. A hug of recognition. But I couldn’t bear to be touched by anyone. My skin was hot and I felt dirty beyond belief. I wanted to scratch away all my contaminated, corrupted flesh, to claw myself clean again. But when I began tearing at it, Sally grabbed my hands and held them tight, then she forced me to turn and look at her.

Listen to me. It’s over. Your first one is over. That’s always the worst, take it from me. It’s over, you’ve done it now. Next time will be easier.

I wanted to believe her. Sally was all there was between me and the men outside, the men who wanted to abuse my body for their own selfish pleasure. Suddenly I needed to trust her and be held by her.

I know now that this is a classic psychological response to extreme trauma – the so-called ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, where victims become emotionally attached to their captors or abusers. But at the time all I knew was that I needed to be held, and to believe that the worst was over.

She lied, of course. The worst wasn’t over – not by a long chalk – and it wasn’t easier the next time. Or the time after that.

By lunchtime that day I had serviced two more men. Each time was just as bad as the first. Both times I sobbed quietly as they used me; both times they just carried on as if it were normal. Both times they silently, relentlessly pounded away at me until they found whatever release they had been seeking. Both times they muttered a cursory ‘thanks’ as they left.