Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

My conversation with Jane left me confused and more than a little scared: each day I wondered whether Paige would grass on me to Emma.

It was December now, and I was missing yet more school. Despite telling Jane I wasn’t being taken to the gang any more, I was. Maybe she guessed as much, but she didn’t let on and I wasn’t about to tell her. I’d discovered that there’s only so much you can tell people, no matter how much they may be trying to help you.

Christmas was fast approaching. As if my life couldn’t get any worse, on 11 December – when the cheerful, festive Iceland and Asda adverts were running back-to-back on TV – came another event that threw me into an even deeper despair.

I’d gone to Crisis Intervention in Taylor Street, though this time with Robyn rather than Emma because she’d gone off to see a ‘boyfriend’ on her own. I had a pregnancy test, and I remember Jane sitting there with the testing kit in her hand, her hand over the panel that gives the result. ‘What will you do if it’s positive?’ she asked, with a gentle smile. It was an innocent question, but in my mind I started to panic. It must have shown on my face.

Slowly she opened her hand, looked for the tell-tale lines, and suddenly stopped smiling. She looked flustered, rising to her feet and saying, ‘I just need a second opinion on this.’

As she left the room I thought, It will be fine. If she’s not sure, it must be all right .

She came back a couple of minutes later and said, ‘Look Hannah, I think it’s positive, but I can’t be sure. We’ll have to do a second test in the morning.’

The plan was for her to meet me at school the next day, and carry out the second test. I wasn’t to have a wee in the morning when I woke up, she said, because the first of the day was always strongest. That way there would be no doubt.

I was back and forth between Harry’s place and home at that time (Emma must have realised I was in the gang’s grip so fast it didn’t matter if I went home occasionally) and a queasy feeling took hold of me as I walked home. I didn’t know what to think.

When I woke up the next morning, Mum thought I looked a bit peaky and asked if I wanted to stay off school – I could help her with the shopping, if I wanted.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I need to go to school.’

She looked astonished and exasperated all at once. ‘But normally we can’t get you there,’ she said. Then I told her I was seeing Jane, and she started to catch on. She knew who Jane was, and what her job involved, and she knew school wasn’t exactly my favourite place.

Her face clouded. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ she asked.

‘No, no,’ I said, but not with any real conviction.

So she told Dad, and Dad sent Lizzie off to the local shops to buy a tester kit. She came back with two, in fact. Maybe she thought the second one would come in handy another time.

Mum wasn’t taking any chances. A few weeks before I’d had another scare, but that time I had dipped it in the toilet bowl to make sure it said negative. Mum never said anything, but this time Dad said: ‘Make sure she does it properly.’ I was so wayward then, he knew he couldn’t trust me.

Mum came into the bathroom with me and made me wee into a cup, and then she dipped the tester in the cup. Then she dipped the second one in. They both said positive.

So there I was: chaotic, exploited and abused – and now pregnant. It was a fact, proved twice over.

It was just the identity of the father that was unknown.

Given the abuse I’d suffered, and was still going through, a nightmare scenario seared through my mind: the thought that this baby was one of theirs ; was one of the men who’d been abusing me over these past months. Billy’s? It could be. He didn’t use condoms. Oh God, it could be .

Mum broke down as we came downstairs, but I was in too much shock to cry. Dad had been waiting in the living room. The TV was on, but someone – I’ve no idea who, as I was out of it by then – switched it off. The rest of the family were sent upstairs, confused, upset, and then Dad gave Mum a hug and told her everything would work out fine.

All I could think was, Please, God, don’t let it be one of theirs .

I knew there were two possibilities. Either it was the offspring of one or other of maybe four middle-aged paedophiles, or else Jake’s. The first was unbearable; the second an indicator that I’d let my mum down, despite all her strictures about saving myself for the right sort of lad. If the lad was the father, it had been less a seduction and more of a mauling. But at least it was more ‘normal’, because he was at least around the same age as me.

There were no hugs for me; instead, a cold anger that I could have done this, that I could have got myself pregnant by someone, anyone, at the age of fifteen. And, equal to that, the shame of it. My parents still didn’t know about the gang. They just thought I’d been stupid and careless.

Upstairs in my bedroom I broke down, holding my stomach, wanting to love the tiny life inside me but not daring to. At least not until I knew the identity of his or her father.

In amongst the rows of the next few days, I told Mum and Dad the baby’s father was the teenage lad, because to tell them anything else would have aroused suspicion about what was still happening to me. That was torture as well. I thought, I can’t even tell them. They think it’s this boy’s, but it might not be . It was another worry I would carry all the way through the pregnancy, right up until the baby’s birth. I tried desperately to convince myself that it was his; that of these two possibilities, this was by far the best. I couldn’t face the thought that it might be one of theirs .

I know you’re supposed to know the identity of your baby’s dad, along with his favourite football team, the way he’d hold you, his favourite drink, and all the other things about him, but I didn’t. I might not even know his name.

Over the previous few days, Lizzie had started calling me a ‘Paki-shagger’ – she was at the same school as me and had picked up on the rumours that I was sleeping with Asian men: old Asian men. I’d tried to shut her up, but she’d told Mum and Dad. Now that I was pregnant, things started clicking into place. I could tell from their faces that they were both wondering just how wayward their daughter had become.

Dad now started asking difficult questions, his face reddening with fury as each of them left his lips.

‘This baby’s nothing to do with any Asian men, is it?’ he asked. ‘We’ve heard some of the rumours.’ Despite knowing about Daddy and Immy, like the kids in the playground he must have thought that if I’d done it, it was out of choice.

I felt trapped. I kept on denying it, of course. I just stuck to the story that the baby was my ‘boyfriend’s’. Inside I was in turmoil. I had no idea who the father was, and as Dad shouted and Mum joined in, I was eaten up by the feeling that I’d let them down; that my whole family was ashamed of me.

And I had no idea how Emma would react. The thought of that made me feel sick.

At my next meeting with Jane I told her I desperately hoped it would be the lad’s baby. If the dad turned out to be one of my abusers I’d still have it, I’d still give it that chance of life; I’d just never be able to keep it. It was a total, total nightmare – another example of the chaotic hell my life had become.

Worse than all this, however, was the news that my being pregnant hadn’t gone down well with Rochdale Social Services.

Christmas was barely a fortnight away when two social workers called at home, having made an appointment to see me and my family. I’d just got home and changed out of my school uniform and was sitting in the living room with Mum and Dad, when we heard them walking up the path.