Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

Fun. A good joke, eh? Though at least it saved my little sister.

Emma really knew no bounds. She seemed to have saturated every part of my life. The sight of her made me shudder, but it was the sound of the ring tone of her phone that became a thing of real terror for me. Typically for her, and fittingly for the situation I now found myself in, she’d chosen a song filled with dark piano chords and even darker lyrics.

In other circumstances, Rihanna’s ‘Disturbia’ might have become an anthem to my teenage years. But here, in this shadow world, it served as the calling card of pain, violence and degradation.

Day or night, her phone would come to life: the discordant sound of piano as someone runs their fingers along the keys, then Rihanna’s moody vocal filling me with dread as I began to visualise the darkness that lay ahead. As Rihanna sang about going crazy, I’d feel my mind begin to whir as Emma took the call.

I knew we’d be climbing into Tariq’s taxi within minutes, Emma in the front, me, as usual, in the back; heading into a scene that in my imagination was a mirror image of the one portrayed in the music video. For Rihanna’s act, it was a prison cell and a gas chamber: a girl tied to a burning stake, or caressing a mannequin on a steel-framed bed, or else trying to break free of the chains that held her fast. But that was all it was: an act.

For me, it was rape in the feral, urban landscape that neither the police nor the local social workers seemed prepared to acknowledge even existed.

Disturbia.

And so I’d hear that brilliant, awful song on so many occasions as I set off to be raped, hunched up in the back of a people-carrier that looked for all the world like just another taxi.

Even when we’d returned to Emma’s house there would be no let-up. Emma loved the song so much that she’d play it endlessly on her phone.

Disturbia.

Mixed in with the hell of Aarif’s flat and all the other places I’d be taken to, there were occasional times I could feel almost human. It still wasn’t the sort of stuff Mum and Dad would have approved of, but it just about kept me together.

One Friday in October, Emma hurried me out of the bathroom and said we were going to meet a new guy. We left the house, me thinking the worst, Emma swaggering towards the black Toyota Lucida that had pulled up outside, carrying the name ‘Eagle Taxis’ on the side. The same firm as Tariq’s.

You could hear the music pumping out of the stereo even before you got into the car. Pop music, chart stuff. The taxi’s driver leaned back and introduced himself. ‘Hi,’ he beamed. ‘I’m Car Zero.’

Another guy, another nickname , I thought. And then there were the drinks he’d brought: whisky for him, vodka for us, and two mixers, one of cola, the other lemonade. ‘So you can pick,’ he said, smiling.

He’d take us out, usually on a Friday or a Saturday. This went on for weeks, through into November. It seems so weird, but I grew to like him. Sometimes we’d go to Ashworth Valley, other times he’d just park up in an empty car park or industrial site. He’d drink his whisky and cola in the front, while we had the vodka – Glen’s, of course – in a litre bottle.

Everything seemed just as it did with all the other men, the paedos who’d attack me; everything except the end result. All Car Zero wanted to do was party. He loved the same sort of music we did, and he also loved to drink. He even brought little plastic cups each time for us to drink out of.

While he drank, he’d talk to us about normal things – as if he was one of us. It meant that whenever Emma said, ‘We’re going out with Car Zero tonight,’ I’d be relieved because unlike all the other nights, with all those other men, I knew I wasn’t going to be attacked. I felt safe. It might even be fun.

He didn’t get drunk the way we did in the back, but even so I knew he must still have been way over the limit. In the old days it would have worried me. Now I couldn’t care less: if we crashed, we crashed.

The last night I saw Car Zero he picked us up from Harry’s house as normal, before heading out to Ashworth Valley close to where Cassie would take us.

We’d been drinking for about an hour, laughing, being stupid, when Emma said she needed a wee.

‘Will you come with me?’ she asked.

I got out of the car and we both had a wee.

As I headed back to the car she pulled at my sleeve and said, ‘Are you going to sleep with him, then?’

‘No,’ I said, almost laughing. ‘We’ve never had to sleep with him. He’s not like the others.’

Emma gave me her look, the controlling look; the look that tells you you’ve got to do something.

‘But, Emma, he never tries to sleep with us. He doesn’t want to. He just wants to drink and chill with us.’ I could hear my voice starting to sound panicky.

It was no good. ‘He’s bought all this stuff for us, Hannah. You can’t just expect never to do anything for him. So get back in the car and do it.’

So he really was just like all the others. The penny dropped, and I suddenly realised she must have struck a deal with him. It made me feel worse than I’d felt in a long time. With the others, I’d just got used to it. With him, I thought I’d found someone in Emma’s world who was normal and safe. But it was just another betrayal. Stupid , I thought, I should have expected it . I knew I had no option.

It had started to rain as I climbed into the front passenger seat. Car Zero knew full well what our conversation outside had been about, and he just said, quietly, and a bit sheepishly, ‘Get in the back.’

As I did what I was told I could see Emma outside, drawing on a cigarette and pulling up the hood of her tracksuit to keep out the rain. She didn’t have long to wait. Once he’d joined me in the back he told me to take my pants off and lie down, so that’s what I did.

The music was still blaring out of the speakers as he drove us home, but no one was talking. Once we were at Harry’s place, the two of us got out and he drove away.

I never saw him again because Emma deleted his details from her phone. ‘The bastard wouldn’t pay me cos of all the beer he’d bought,’ she explained.

I went upstairs to the bathroom, feeling sick.

So there I was, this poor, stupid teenager, locked in a world I’d walked into and now wanted more than anything to escape.

Maybe I was naïve to think I’d be rescued; that the police would do everything they could to protect me.

What I needed most was to be protected from myself: however anyone might judge me, I was still only fifteen. A child. The police must have suspected from the interview I’d done that it was still going on, and knowing that still makes me feel gutted.

I know they couldn’t have stopped Daddy from raping me those four times, and Immy, with his ‘treat’, but, once I’d told them, surely they could have done something to protect me? Surely they could have made sure I went home, and stayed home, and kept me away from the gang?

Instead, the taxis kept on coming to Harry’s place, turning up, bang on cue, within minutes of me hearing the Rihanna ring tone chime out from Emma’s phone. Usually it was Tariq’s car 40. There were many other men in this sick conspiracy, but so often I couldn’t remember their names. Either that or the descriptions I gave police – the nicknames they’d told me, or that I’d made up for them, and the detail of how they looked and how they behaved – led to a blind alley, a cold trail.

In the days of my long-forgotten innocence Dad used to give me a lift to school and collect me when he could. Once I’d moved in to Harry’s place, my attendance at school dropped, but whenever I did go I’d either walk or get a taxi. Tariq’s taxi, usually. If I somehow persuaded Emma to let me go to school, she would ring up Eagle Taxis and ask for a cab, saying ‘Can you make sure it’s car 40?’ And he’d come, and I’d get in and we’d head off to school.