Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

A couple of days after the police interview, detectives drove me around so I could show them the flats and houses Daddy had taken me to. They told me the knickers had finally gone off to a forensic lab to be tested. Once that had been done, they’d really start making progress. Soon, they said, they’d be able to get a file sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

‘If the DNA matches, it will be proof enough,’ said one of the detectives. At that point, they would bring charges and it would go to court. They also told me that in cases involving children, defendants are brought to trial as quickly as possible because everyone in the legal system, from the police and the CPS to the barristers and the judges, all want to save kids the trauma of a long wait for justice.

So in my case – a case of multiple rapes and being passed around, trafficked, by Daddy – it shouldn’t take too long. It was easy, simple and it would mean I could get on with my life.

In the end it was me, rather than my abusers, who appeared in a courtroom first.

I went with my dad to Rochdale Magistrates’ Court, where we sat on a hard wooden bench for ten minutes, me half terrified, half angry, hauled up on the charge of criminal damage. At the end of it, the magistrates decided to adjourn the case because of the allegations I’d made.

Meanwhile, Daddy and Immy were still out there. Daddy had been given bail the same day he was arrested. In Immy’s case, the police didn’t even arrest him until the October. It seemed astonishing that they were still free to roam the streets. And always in the back of my mind was the thought, What if they come for me?

Fatally, Mum and Dad were still happy for me to stay at Harry’s house with Emma. They thought it was all about the Balti House and nothing remotely to do with her. And she, cunning as ever, made out as if her new best friend had been raped and she’d be there to support her. So, she came to collect me not long afterwards, watched as my parents gave me a hug and off we went – me and Emma – back to the last place in the world I should be.

I don’t know to this day how Emma held her nerve about being my ever-caring friend, but somehow she did. I’m sure that most normal people, even criminals, would have laid low to see if the coast was clear, but not Emma. Maybe she had some sixth sense that regardless of Daddy’s arrest, she was safe from the police. But, whatever the reason, her phone was crammed with the numbers of the Asian men she’d met in Heywood, Rochdale and far beyond. And she wasn’t slow to start ringing some of them.

I knew nothing of this, of course, but what I did know, from the moment I stepped back over the threshold at Harry’s place, was that she still wanted to control me. And, as usual, she had a plan.

‘Time for a bath,’ she announced. ‘And make sure you shave. I can’t have them seeing you like that.’

Them seeing me? I shrank back in fear. The police involvement had made no difference to her. She was still determined to control me, and I, submissive, broken, couldn’t fight back. I know I should have done, but I always felt so incredibly weak when I was with her – and even when I wasn’t.

I never, ever had a real heart-to-heart with her, and I always felt she was on the verge of laughing or sneering at me. Her reputation as the hardest girl in the area made even lads tremble and I knew that if she ever battered me, I’d be pulp. I made it a rule right then to try as hard as I could never to show any weakness in front of her. All the time I tried to put on a front to make her think I could take it – and also so that she wouldn’t get any pleasure out of whatever was happening to me.

The police interview had been on the Friday. That very weekend, Emma was taking me into Heywood. Depressed, fearful, I clung to the hope that maybe I’d read things the wrong way: that it was all over, and she wouldn’t dare do what she’d done with me before.

It was a forlorn hope because we ended up at the front door of Tasty Bites. I had a shock when Emma and I walked in because there was a girl I recognised – Paige, a dizzy blonde from my school. She was two years younger than me, incredibly naïve, and still very much a girl. I shuddered. Could she have been caught up in this as well?

We barely acknowledged each other as the three of us climbed the stairs. I’d been here before, of course, but had Paige? Maybe after I’d stopped going all those months ago? I could barely lift my feet as we made our way upstairs.

So, there we were, back at the place where, a lifetime ago – or so it seemed – I’d had such a great time. Climbing the stairs this time, though, was a totally different experience. Whereas in my old life I’d have almost skipped up the stairs, this time, recalling the almost identical staircase of the Balti, and what had happened once I’d got to the top, I could barely lift my feet.

On the landing we could hear the sound of muffled laughter coming from a bedroom. It turned to silence as soon as Emma twisted the door knob and pushed her heavy frame into the room. Following on behind Paige, I was confronted by half a dozen Asian men – all of them old, in their thirties, forties, maybe even fifties, like Daddy.

One of them, a thickset man with tousled black hair and dense eyebrows, broke the silence, leaning across with a bottle of vodka and saying: ‘Here, you can have this… Saj, give them some glasses. The cola’s over there.’

The man’s voice, low and hard, carried an unmistakable authority and menace. It was Emma, of course, who poured the drinks and handed one each to me and Paige. As she did so, she glanced up at the man with the tousled hair and said: ‘This is Tariq’.

Tariq. Emma’s new sinister ‘boyfriend.’ The same man I had been too afraid of telling John about in the police interview.

The men, Tariq included, had been leering at us before, but now, as we sipped the vodka – me scared, Paige scared, Emma her normal, impassive self – some of the men started pointing at us. Mostly they were speaking in their own language, but occasionally I’d catch the odd word in English: like ‘fat’ when they looked at Emma, and ‘young’, ‘tight’ and ‘pretty’ when they looked at Paige or me. I felt like a piece of meat.

Then one of them asked me if I’d have sex with him, then another. I said no. They were asking Paige too.

‘You do sex,’ said one, his eyes burning first into mine, then into Paige’s. It was an instruction. Another pressed close by. ‘Do it, do it, do it,’ he said. Others took up the chant. ‘Do it, do it, do it!’

That was it for me. It was a small room, scarily so with all these men in it, and as they herded around us I started to panic. I looked around wildly for Emma. For all my new-found intentions never to show weakness in front of her, I clutched at her, begging her to let me leave.

‘I’ve got to go, Emma. You’ve got to let me go!’

Maybe she did have a lingering concern about the police, because rather than batter me she just shrugged, reached into her purse and handed me a two pound coin. It felt like a miracle.

‘Go on, then,’ she sneered. ‘Get a taxi back to Harry’s. But don’t do anything stupid. Understand?’

I nodded and headed for the door, brushing away the alien hands that grabbed at me as I fled. I tried to catch Paige’s eye so she’d come with me, but by then Emma was already putting a chubby arm around her to head off any possible escape.

One of the men followed me out, trying to grope me as I headed downstairs, but Tariq pulled him away. ‘Sorry, master,’ said my would-be groper.

I got a taxi outside Morrison’s and, in the darkness, me quivering on the back seat, the car headed back to Harry’s.