Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

Usually Saj was there, and Cassie from Castleton Taxis, Joe from Jo Baxi’s Taxis, and another of the drivers, who, for some reason – that I never wanted to know – was called Megamuncher. Sometimes there were other girls there too: Roxanne, Paige, a third girl who was introduced to me as Darcy, and a fourth I didn’t know who was half-Asian, half-white. I only saw her that one time.

Roxanne only came to Aarif’s flat at weekends that winter, because during the week she was away from Harry’s. She was thirteen but looked younger. She was with us about a dozen times.

I know she slept with Megamuncher, and I think with Cassie as well. I never actually saw her have proper sex, but I’d seen her give Aarif a blow job. It was on a night that Tariq wouldn’t take us home because he’d been arguing with Emma. He threw us out of his car at a garage near Aarif’s flat. So we walked there and rang the buzzer. Emma asked Aarif: ‘If one of them gives you a blow job, will you give us the taxi money to get home?’

He said, ‘Yeah.’

I don’t know why it ended up being Roxanne, but I remember Emma telling her she’d batter her if she didn’t do it. Roxanne just did it, while Emma and I sat there on the other sofa. Nothing was said, though I was squirming. I felt tight about Roxanne having to do it, but at the same time I was so relieved it wasn’t me.

For all that I’d been through myself, the sight of that thirteen-year-old girl giving a middle-aged man a blow job will haunt me for ever. She’d barely taken on a woman’s body, and yet there she was, leaning over him with a smile, giving the sort of performance that would have made you think she was a porn star.

At thirteen.

I shuddered when I thought about how much practice, how many encounters, she must have been through to become so proficient, so convincing. As if it was something she’d been doing since she was a kid. And would there ever have been any love?

All Emma could do was laugh at her, and him, as they went through the whole horrific pantomime.

To Roxanne, it was absolutely, entirely normal: just something she did, a trick in the repertoire, that she was happy to do for any bloke at all, just so long as she could have a few swigs of vodka and end up with a fiver or a taxi home. What did she get from it? A feeling that she was being appreciated? Valued? Loved? What was her life normally that she had to come here to get that? At the time, though, I never stopped to ask those questions of myself.

Most of the time at Aarif’s, though, it was just me and Emma, both of us lying there, in turns, being abused by however many of them had paid. Whenever it was all over for me I’d put my leggings on again and go back into the living room. Without fail I’d feel ashamed and dead inside. If ever I refused to lie there for them they’d throw me out and I’d have to make my own way home. But I was usually too numb, too cowed, to refuse.

They didn’t bother talking to us. Every night it happened, they would just chat among themselves in their own language until they’d finished and it was time for us to go home. We never stayed the night; we were always back home by sunrise and usually much earlier.

The worst times with Aarif were when he wanted me ‘the other way’. When he did it the first time, he promised me he wouldn’t but, of course, he did, suddenly and without warning, and the pain of it shot right through my body.

The first time it happened, Emma had just been with him and had then shouted me into the bedroom to sleep with him. They ended up dragging me in.

At first I lay on my back, but then he told me to turn over. When it happened I tried to arch away from him as the first sobs welled up deep within me. I was screaming and shouting at him to get off me. I shouted for Emma, too, and she came in, followed by Darcy, who’d seen me being dragged into the bedroom and who was asking if I was all right.

Aarif had just carried on the attack until they came in, me sobbing from the searing pain and humiliation, trying desperately to fend him off. Darcy had a friend there that night and because I was crying so much she was saying, ‘Should I stay for her?’ Emma was telling them to go, that’d I’d be all right. She was laughing. I think she got a buzz from knowing I’d been attacked that way.

Slowly, painfully, I put my clothes back on and a few minutes later Tariq arrived to pick us up. When Emma told him what had happened, he showed not an ounce of sympathy.

In his mind it was all about practicalities. ‘If it’s your period, you have to do it that way because otherwise it’s unclean for the man,’ he said. ‘There’s no point crying about it.’

Most of the other men liked to do that to me as well, especially if I was on my period. As Tariq had made clear, it meant they stayed ‘clean’ while they were raping me. Lucky them.

There were lots of times I had to sleep with Megamuncher, who was in his thirties, with long hair swept back over his shoulders. He sometimes used a silver BMW. I think he worked part-time in an Asian clothes shop. We went past it once, on a big road with a lot of takeaways, and Emma pointed it out.

Megamuncher had sex with Emma more times than with me, but for me it was still so often I can’t add them all up. It’s the same with most of them.

I think Joe from Jo Baxi’s and Cassie from Castleton Taxis were friends, because they’d usually turn up at the flat together. Usually I was dead drunk, but I remember the first time with Joe. Aarif just told me to sleep with him and I did because I was used to it. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t like it, but I was used to having sex with all these men. I knew it was wrong because they were old and I was only young – and because I didn’t want them to do it. Every time I’d just want them to hurry up, hurry up, for God’s sake, hurry up and get it over with.

That first time with Joe, and all the other times, I’d just turn my head away from him and towards the wall. He must have known – they all must have known – that I didn’t like doing it, because why else would I have just lain there and stared at the wall?

I tried not to think about anything any more. It was better that way. I was there in that world, I was living it, but I wasn’t thinking. I’d walk down the street like a zombie, emotionally shut down, with everything in my vision moving in slow motion. I could hear things going on around me, but I couldn’t distinguish what they were, and I couldn’t respond, because I wasn’t actually listening.

It was like a dream state. I didn’t want to contribute to the world around me any more, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been capable of doing so. My dignity and self-respect had both been ripped away, leaving me an emotionally empty shell. I could feel my brain and all my senses shutting down, leaving just numbness.

And I welcomed it.

Gradually, I had come to feel that the worst things were happening not to me but to someone else. I wasn’t sad any more, I wasn’t angry any more, and I wasn’t happy. Ever.

Thankfully, however, I had the occasional respite, as well as school. Most Thursdays would mean the walk into the Crisis Intervention place in Taylor Street with Emma. I’d always try to just sit there, hoping not to have to speak. I think Jane could tell I was intimidated by the huge girl next to me. Right from the start, Emma had done the talking for me, trying to lay a smokescreen, making up stories about men I supposedly loved to sleep with, saying, ‘Yeah, she’s a slag,’ and things like that.

But soon I wasn’t even embarrassed. I’d gone past that. I had other things to worry about, so what was the point?

As I say, Jane sensed that Emma had a hold over me – though at that time she had no idea quite how strong that was or how deep it went. Sometimes, if Emma had gone out to do a test or do a wee, Jane would ask: ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me while she’s not here?’ I always said no. Jane would then suggest I could see her alone. I wanted to, but again I would say no.