Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade (23 page)

And that was when I realised I had to pull myself together and act normally, so that he didn't think I had
anything to hide. Incredible as it seems, I don't think the thought had ever really crossed his mind that I might have told anyone about what he'd done to me. Although I didn't consciously realise it at the time, he had a self-assurance and an arrogance bordering on the psychotic; I think he believed whatever he wanted to believe – including, perhaps, that I loved him and wouldn't intentionally do anything to harm him. Or perhaps he simply didn't care what I did – or had done – because he was convinced that he was too clever to be caught.

He typed his number into my phone, rang it, drank a mouthful of his coffee and then leaned back in his chair and said, with a smugly self-satisfied smile, ‘So now I have your number.'

‘Why are you here?' I asked him. ‘What do you want?'

‘You sound as though you're not happy to see me,' he said, his face set in an expression of mock hurt. ‘Are you not happy that I am here? I thought you loved me, woman.'

I don't even know who you are
, I thought.
And I don't think anyone – perhaps not even your own mother – could really love you.

‘You can't know how much I've missed you,' Kas said, flipping from scornful to serious. ‘Ah, my little mouse, all I want is for you to be back with me. I don't want you to
do
anything.'

Be smart
, the voice in my head told me.
Don't let him beat you. Take what he's taught you about how to stay safe on the streets and use it now.
And I realised that, this time,
he was in
my
country and although I didn't think I could actually stand up to him, perhaps I did have a chance of outsmarting him.

‘I need to go,' I told him, trying to sound as normal as possible.

‘Okay, I'll call you.' He stood up as I pushed back my chair and, putting his hands firmly on my shoulders, kissed me on both cheeks.

I walked home via a long, circuitous route, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds like some terrified hunted animal. But, to my relief, I didn't see him and I began to think that perhaps I
could
stand up to him; perhaps, when he phoned me, I would be able to say, ‘I don't want you here; you need to go,' and then he'd know that it was all over between us and he'd leave me alone. It was a fantasy I don't think I ever really believed, because I knew that people like Kas never give up. In his eyes, I belonged to him, and he wasn't going to let me simply walk away.

That night, Erion wasn't planning to come to my flat after he finished work, so, when I finally got home, I locked and bolted the front door and then sat on the floor in the living room with my back against the sofa, smoking cigarettes and trying to focus my mind and think.

Stay calm
, I kept telling myself.
Just stay calm and it will all be fine
. But what was I actually going to
do
? I'd already decided not to tell anyone that Kas had come – it was almost as though I thought that if I didn't say anything about it, it wasn't real. I was still very afraid of him, and I
was certain no one else knew what he was capable of doing if someone tried to confront him or stand in his way. Most of all, I was afraid that if anyone else did become involved, Kas would carry out the threat he'd made so many times in the past and harm my family. So, ridiculous as it sounds now, by the next day I'd almost managed to convince myself I could handle the situation on my own. Kas didn't know where I lived, and as long as he didn't find out, I was – relatively – safe. And then, a few minutes after I arrived home from work that evening, I received a text message saying, ‘I'm outside your flat.'

I threw my phone onto the sofa and began to run from room to room in a frenzied panic, trying to hide anything that related to Erion, the police or STOP THE TRAFFIK. There was a loose floorboard in the bedroom that squeaked every time I trod on it and had irritated me ever since I'd moved in, but I was glad of it now. By tugging at one end, I managed to lift it up just enough to be able to push things underneath it. And then I heard the sound of my phone ringing.

‘Don't you dare disrespect me in this way,' Kas shouted as soon as I answered it. ‘I know you're in there. Why are you trying to pretend you're not? Let me in
now
or I will get in some other way and break every bone in your body.'

As I walked slowly across the living-room floor to press the buzzer that would release the catch on the door to the street, the voice in my head was screaming,
No! Don't do it! Don't open the door!
But I didn't know what else to do, and
a few seconds later, Kas was standing in front of me asking, ‘Why did you take so long to answer the door? You're acting as though you have something to hide. Are you trying to hide something from me, woman? Is there something I should be paranoid about, some reason why I should be watching my back?
Why
? Why would you do this to me?'

‘I'm not doing
any
thing,' I whispered. ‘I'm sorry. I promise.'

He shrugged and said, ‘You don't have to be afraid of me. I just want to talk to you, to make sure you're okay. I'll come again tomorrow.'

No! Go away! I don't want you here. I don't want you in my life
, I screamed in my head. But I knew that Kas was once again in control.

At work the next day I kept making silly mistakes. It matters to me that I do my job well, and the fact that I couldn't concentrate on anything made me even more anxious and miserable. All I could think about was Kas coming again that evening.

Even after I'd been back in England for a year, I still wasn't in a good place mentally and I didn't have many friends in Leeds. It's difficult to make new friends if you're dreading the moment when they ask what you were doing before you started your current job and you either have to lie to them or tell them, ‘Oh, I was working on the streets in Italy.' And you don't really expect other people to like you when you hate everything about yourself.

There were days when I'd get up, do my make-up and my hair, get dressed and look in the mirror and think,
No
. Then I'd take off my make-up, wash my hair again and change my clothes – sometimes repeating the same wretched, frustrating process again and again until finally deciding not to go out at all.

I became obsessed with the way I looked, and convinced that people were looking at me thinking,
What a mess!
It still happens now, although not as often or as intensely. But at that time there were many days when I couldn't leave the flat because I couldn't find myself. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't recognise the girl who was looking back at me, and sometimes I'd just stand there thinking,
Who am I?

Inevitably, Erion and I were drifting apart, and although we were still ‘together', he didn't stay at my flat as often as he used to. He'd ask me, ‘Why do you always listen to such sad music? It's difficult to be with someone who's always so unhappy.' And I knew that he was right, because it can't be easy to live with someone who hates herself as much I did and who's paranoid about everything. The slightest noise or sudden movement would make me jump, and Erion would look sad as he told me, ‘I feel as though you think I'm going to hit you. It hurts me because you know I would never do that.'

I was confused and unsure about every aspect of my life and perhaps that's at least partly why I made the foolish decision to try to stand up to Kas on my own. I don't know
how he'd managed to follow me home without my seeing him. Maybe he'd got someone else to do it, and maybe what he'd told me so often was true and he
did
have people everywhere, watching to make sure I did what he told me to do.

That evening, when I pressed the buzzer to open the outside door and he walked up the stairs to my flat, I didn't pretend I was glad to see him. And he must have noticed the fear and resentment in my face because he asked me, ‘Why are you acting this way? What have I ever done to you to make you afraid of me?'

I almost laughed. I wanted to shout at him, ‘Are you insane? Have you lost your mind so completely that you don't know what you've done to me?' But I said nothing, and he told me I was ‘ridiculous' and that my behaviour was ‘pathetic', and then he said, ‘No one knows I'm here. Do you have any idea how easy it would be for me to take a pillow and press it down on your face until there is no breath left in your body? No one would ever know what had happened. So remember that, and think very carefully before you disrespect me.'

He came again the next night, this time to tell me a crazy story, which I knew was almost totally untrue.

‘I need something from you,' he said, and my heart started to beat so fast I couldn't breathe. ‘I need you to go back to work. I've found a place in Liverpool. It's a house, so you won't have to be out on the streets.' He said it as though he was offering me some kindness or favour, and I
began to feel as though I was trapped in a surreal nightmare. ‘It'll be easy this time. You'll be in a house and you speak the language, so it's easy money. Remember, little mouse, you're a goldmine. You'll be brilliant.'

‘I can't,' I blurted out at last. ‘I
can't
do it.'

‘Come on,' Kas cajoled. ‘You'll be fine. You can still do your day job. I'm not asking you to give it up. You can work Friday and Saturday nights – just two nights a week.'

Then his mood changed from coaxing to angry and he shouted, ‘Why are you making such a big deal out of this? All I'm asking you to do is open your legs and have sex for two nights a week. Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not asking you to kill someone. I'm not even asking you to break the law. What's wrong with you, woman?'

For the first time for as long as I could remember, I felt a sense of determination and resolve. It wasn't anything very substantial, but it was just enough to enable me to dare to look him in the eye and say, ‘I
won't
do it.' And then, suddenly, I didn't care what he did to me, because I knew I would rather he killed me than that he forced me back into a life of fear, loneliness and shame.

‘Do you think I'm
asking
you?' he barked at me, and I could almost see the rage flaring up inside him like a flame. ‘Don't you realise how easy it would be for me to get you out of this country if I wanted to? How simple it would be to inject you with a drug that made you unconscious, throw you into the back of a lorry and have you out of England before anyone even noticed you were missing.'

He'd said much the same thing to me before, and I knew that it was true.

‘Think about it,' he told me. ‘I'm not an unreasonable man, so I'll give you some time to decide which way you'd rather do this. I'll be back tomorrow.' Then he opened the front door and walked out of the flat, and I curled up on the sofa and wept.

Kas didn't come back the next night or the night after that, although he phoned several times to remind me he was watching me. And by the time I heard Erion's key turn in the lock of my front door late one night, I'd realised I couldn't fight Kas on my own and I told him what had happened.

‘Right, I'm phoning your mum,' Erion said immediately. ‘Why on earth didn't you tell me about this before? Why do you shut me out so that I can't help you? Why do you shut
everyone
out when it's clear you need help?'

‘You can't phone her now,' I told him tearfully. ‘It's two o'clock in the morning. She can't do anything at this time of night except worry. Please,
please
, Erion, let me tell her when I think the moment is right.'

So he agreed to wait and although he fell asleep with his arms wrapped round me, I knew that by shutting him out, I'd risked losing him.

I had to go to a work meeting in London the next day, and as I sat on the train, staring blindly at the world speeding past the window, I felt as though I was trapped in a
vortex, spinning faster and faster and waiting for the moment when it would spew me out and I'd have to try to land on my feet.

It was about 11.30 that morning when my phone buzzed and Robin's number flashed up on the screen. The meeting had already started, so I muttered an apology, said something about having to take ‘this important call' and walked out of the room into the hallway.

‘I've just had a conference call with your mum and Erion,' Robin told me. ‘Erion's told us everything.
Jesus
, Sophie, why didn't you tell someone sooner? You could have come to me, you know. Why didn't you phone me?'

‘I thought I could manage it on my own,' I said, and the words sounded stupid, even to me.

‘Then you clearly haven't understood just what you're messing with,' Robin sighed, echoing the words Erion had used when I'd told him what had happened. ‘You can have no idea what you're involved with or the danger you're in, otherwise you'd know that you can't deal with this on your own. I do understand, though,' he added more gently. ‘I know that you're so deeply involved in it that you're unable to take that step backwards that would allow you to see the situation as anyone else might see it. But the thing you have to understand, Sophie, is that you will never win against a man like that. He doesn't play by the rules that govern what normal people do – people like you and me. He makes up his own rules, which are based on just one immutable fact: no one and nothing matters to him except
himself and what
he
wants. You have to let me take charge of this now.'

It was what I'd often thought about Kas myself and I realised, with relief, that Robin was right. Until that moment, I'd thought
I
was the only person who understood what Kas was capable of and how his megalomania and delusions of self-importance guided all his actions. But the truth was that I was so afraid of him, I was the very last person in the world who should be trying to stand up against him.