Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

We were still eating when he opened a drawer, pulled out a DVD and put it into the TV combo they had back there. When the TV in the kitchen came to life, it wasn’t showing Coronation Street , nothing like it. Instead, the screen filled with the writhing bodies of a porn DVD. It was hardcore, too, with white men having sex with Asian girls.

It made me squirm because I’d never seen anything like it before. I tried to ignore what was on the screen, and I could sense Courtney doing the same. But Emma seemed to love it.

I was feeling more nervous by the second. Worse, Chef, who must have been in his forties, started trying to touch us up, all three of us, laughing as he did so. He was half watching the porn and either half talking to us or trying to touch us – our boobs, our legs, anywhere his oily hands could reach. At one point he said I was pretty, and then, horribly: ‘Today is pay day. I’m going to have sex with you all!’

He made it sound like a joke, but I still thought it was horrid. So did Courtney. Emma just burst out laughing and, for all my nerves and shock, I found myself giggling along with her. Part of me thought it was OK because he’d said I was pretty. I knew it was wrong, but I was full of the sense of excitement, too. It felt like living on the edge.

But enough was enough. Courtney and I asked Emma to tell him to stop touching us, but she just replied, ‘It’s all right, he won’t hurt you.’ So we sat there, fending him off whenever he approached. We’d had enough practise in school at fending off boys; this didn’t feel any different.

After a while, Emma walked over to him and they had a quiet conversation next to the fridge. When she came back, she said they were going to call Daddy and ask him to bring some drinks.

I actually relaxed a bit when I heard that. I know Daddy , I thought. Maybe he’ll stop Chef messing around .

Weirdly, when Emma made the call, she sounded really excited. ‘I’ve got Hannah here,’ she breathed into the phone. ‘I’ve got Hannah here! Now!’

It seemed strange. Why should she be so excited to tell him I was there when I’d not seen him for six months? Looking back, it was the excitement in her voice that should have warned me.

I’m guessing now, but I can’t help thinking that she’d told him I was staying at her house and that he’d asked for me. They must have come up with the plan together, but I was the last one to know. God, how naïve.

He came in through the back door, all smiles, all happy. Emma seemed equally pleased to see him, smirking like the cat she was. He asked Courtney and me if he could have a hug. When it came to my turn he held me that little bit longer, saying he remembered me and had missed me. I just muttered ‘Hi’, a little embarrassed.

He’d brought vodka with him and we had a glass each, just the three of us girls and those two men, one in his forties, the other, Daddy, in his fifties, all sitting together at the table.

They weren’t drinking because they’re Muslims and they don’t. Most Muslim people I have met are very strict like that. Emma poured the drinks and went to the fridge for some cola. The vodka, like before, was Glen’s: a litre bottle.

‘How have you been?’ Daddy asked. ‘How’s your mum? Are you still living at home? How are your holidays? Will you be back to school in September?’

I felt a sense of relief that the conversation was back on track as something a bit more normal; something I could deal with. Plus, Chef had started to behave himself once Daddy arrived. The TV was turned off and he seemed to calm down.

‘The holidays are great,’ I told him. ‘I’m living at Emma’s now. It’s cool.’

‘And which year are you in next term?’ he asked.

‘Eleven,’ I replied. ‘With GCSEs in all the things I hate!’

Emma poured me another vodka, then another. I noticed that Courtney wasn’t drinking like she’d normally do; in fact, she looked a bit down. I gave her a friendly dig in the ribs, to try to cheer her up. She didn’t seem to notice. Daddy was as chatty and jolly as I remembered him from Tasty Bites. I started to relax, then to get tipsy. Emma lifted the bottle and poured again.

The room was beginning to spin when Emma suddenly said she was going upstairs with Chef and, a moment later, they were gone. Then Daddy looked over at me and said he wanted me to go upstairs, too – for a chat, he said. He was laughing as he said it, and still sounding dead happy.

Even through my vodka haze, I wasn’t sure. I asked Courtney if she’d come with me, but she didn’t seem bothered and, anyway, Daddy didn’t want her to. ‘No,’ he smiled, ‘she’ll have to stay here because I want to speak to you in private.’

I still thought it was odd, but curiosity and politeness got the better of me – I didn’t want him to think I was being funny with him by not going. Plus, I’d spent so much time with Daddy before I didn’t think there was anything to worry about. At the back of my mind, too, I was thinking, Emma’s up there and Courtney’s here, so I’ll be fine . I had a momentary flashback to the time at Tasty Bites with Elouise, but pushed it to the back of my mind.

And so I climbed the staircase. I just went upstairs with him.

There was an empty, disused freezer on the landing, and some Asian-style pictures on the wall. Emma had gone into the room on the left; Daddy put a hand on my hip and guided me to the one on the right.

Daddy, this family man in his fifties, the one I’d always felt I could trust, opened the door for me and told me to go in. Then he walked in behind me and closed the door.

There was nothing in the room apart from a mattress on the floor with blue, crumpled sheets, and a pink clock, high up on the wall to one side.

Daddy told me to sit down on the mattress. As I did so, he stayed on his feet. I tried to feel reassured by that, but as soon as I sank into it and smelt the stale air wafting up from the sheet, I felt suddenly dwarfed by him; felt, too, the stirrings of a fear that will haunt me for ever.

Dimly, I noticed that the next-door room was silent. No conversation. Just silence. Almost like somebody was listening.

Even now Daddy was still looking happy. ‘When are you going to let me have sex with you?’ he asked merrily, a big cheeky smile on his face. I tried to answer in the same way, laughing. I thought he was joking, that I could handle it. ‘I’m not, Daddy,’ I giggled.

And that’s when he started to talk about all the things he’d given me for free at Tasty Bites: the vodka, the cigarettes, the chicken tikkas, the kebabs… and how I should repay him.

‘It’s part of the deal, Hannah,’ he said, as he smiled at me. I suddenly realised that he sounded sinister, like someone I didn’t know: had never known. And he went on. ‘I buy you things, you give me things,’ he said. ‘I’ve bought you vodka. Now it’s your turn to give something to me.’

My heart froze as I realised what he meant. I knew then, knew without a shred of doubt, that he was more dangerous than anyone I had ever met; I knew that he meant to hurt me.

Instinctively, I just kept saying, ‘What do you mean? What do you mean?’ I tried to say it with a giggle, trying to fend him off in a jokey way. But the drink had made me slur my words. He could tell I was panicking, but he didn’t seem to care. He just kept telling me I had to pay him back, and all the time he was coming closer.

‘We’re friends,’ he was saying, ‘and friends do things for each other.’

By now there was an aggression in his voice that I’d never heard before, a nastiness – as if he’d decided there was no further point in playing at being jolly. There were no smiles either. Instead, I could feel an anger building up in him as I carried on saying no.