Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

I carried on drinking in those early weeks – to start with because I didn’t know I was pregnant, and later on because I didn’t care. Everything was still going on with the gang and it helped to make me forget.

I felt disgusted with myself and so ashamed. I hated myself all through the pregnancy, and spent hour after hour wondering who the father could be. It would be worse if it was a boy, I reasoned, because then the thought loomed, What if he turns out to be like them?

So for all those months, I never felt any excitement or elation. I didn’t want it at all. I hated the baby, and I hated seeing people putting pictures of their bumps on Facebook and writing about how excited they were and how they were buying this and that for their babies. When my baby kicked, I loathed it. The hospital did give me some ultrasound pictures, but I lost those. Looking back, I just think that shows how desolate I’d become. It seems so tragic now to know that I didn’t really care for the baby. I feel ashamed now, but that’s the way I felt. That’s the truth.

In the meantime, I still had school to cope with and, as soon as term ended, Christmas to get through. By the time school broke up, I was taking more and more time away from lessons: partly because of the gang, partly because education seemed totally irrelevant to me. What future did I have?

By Christmas there was still no bump, though finally my breasts had begun to swell. How ironic , I thought, that I’ve had to get pregnant for that to happen .

None of the men still paying Emma and Tariq so they could clamber on top of me noticed. I was still slim, still almost boyish. Only I knew, wincing as they assaulted me, and I tried with every sickening thrust to shut out the knowledge that I was carrying a child. I wanted to scream out, to protect my baby, but the paralysis I felt – the sense that there was nothing I could do to protect myself, let alone the infant – still gripped me. I pushed to the back of my mind that he or she was having to endure it, too.

I was at least able to spend Christmas Day with my family. It wasn’t anything special for me, except a temporary reprieve from the gang, though everyone at home was glad to have me back with them. They thought things were settling down for me. Dad actually said, ‘This is great. We’ve got our girl back.’

Mum and Dad gave me a new phone that Christmas – the latest Sony Ericsson with a really cool music player. It was black, an MP3 phone.

Sitting around the tree opening presents with the little ones was weird. I felt totally out of place. I tried to enjoy it, but I kept thinking of what would be happening to me straight afterwards.

I was back at Harry’s on Boxing Day and out with Emma and the gang that night. Juicy picked us up, and she told him I was pregnant as he drove. ‘Well, you don’t look pregnant,’ he said, once we’d parked. It didn’t bother either him or Boss. They just did what they always did to me, and when it was over took us home. Once again, I tried to block out the fact that I was carrying a baby.

The new year began with me living partly at home but still in the clutches of the gang, still being hawked around at any number of seedy addresses. Emma, as manipulative as ever, was trying her best to keep her grip on me. Within a week or two of me getting the new phone, she’d stolen it and had then sold it. I knew she’d have wanted the money, but it also gave her more control over me. Even on the nights I wasn’t with her, she’d be messaging me on Facebook to say she couldn’t wait for the baby to be born. It just made me feel more bewildered and helpless than ever.

But Jane was trying to help. She rang Mum and Dad one day, introducing herself and saying she’d been working with me over the past few months. Dad told her it would be fine for Jane to meet up with me later in the week. And, now that he and Mum had come down from their initial rage, they’d work with her. They’d do all they possibly could to keep me away from Harry’s place. They were on the team now: Mum, Dad and Jane. The three of them laid it on the line. Harry’s place was out of bounds.

Jane picked me up early on the Friday morning so we could go for breakfast at the big Asda in Pilsworth.

‘What do you fancy?’ she asked, as we joined the queue.

‘Actually, I’m starving,’ I said. ‘Is it OK if I have the full English? Oh, and hot chocolate, please.’

We carried our trays to a table in the far corner, her sitting opposite me. It started off with just chit-chat, but then she asked how I’d got involved with Emma, Roxanne and Paige.

I hesitated, blowing at the froth on my hot chocolate, but then told her about how Emma had told me it was a girl called Carla who had got Emma involved with it all when she was still really young. Carla had then dropped out of the scene, leaving Emma to take over. I hadn’t known any of this at the time, I said, and hadn’t known how dangerous Emma was. She had broken me into her world by letting Daddy rape me.

We talked about the baby and who the dad was. It was definitely Jake’s, I said. She asked if I was sure. I just shrugged.

I was still struggling with that question – and the feelings it prompted – when Jane asked the question she’d asked before Christmas: would I go to the police?

‘Jane,’ I said, anger bubbling up in me, ‘I’ve already told you I don’t want to speak to the police. Emma would go mad, and they won’t go through with my rape case against Daddy if they think I’m a prostitute.’

She told me I wasn’t, and then began to tell me about something called ‘a controlled abusive relationship’. As she spoke, she rummaged in her bag for a piece of paper. She began reading from it as she asked me a series of questions.

‘Just think about how things are between you and Emma,’ she said, before she started. ‘OK?’

I nodded, wondering what was coming, trying to shut out the sight of a mum breastfeeding her baby across the room from us. I couldn’t bear the reminder.

‘Are you scared to say “no” to Emma?’ Jane asked.

‘Well, yes,’ I said tentatively. ‘I can never cross her, I wouldn’t dare.’

‘Does she upset you for no reason?’

‘Yeah, she’s always doing that,’ I whispered.

‘And do you find yourself saying sorry, when it’s actually her who should be saying sorry to you?’

I nodded. I was always apologising to Emma. I didn’t even know why, really – not always. For getting upset, I supposed.

‘I’d apologise for getting upset,’ I told Jane. ‘Like one time at Aarif’s, the first time he… you know… did it that way. Darcy had run in, but all Emma did was laugh at me and then start going mad. She was telling me to go back in the bedroom and I was so scared I even said “please” to her – “please don’t make me, Emma! Please!” She called me pathetic, said I was a useless mardy ass. It was me who ended up saying sorry, just like always. And I’d always end up doing what she wanted me to do, even if it was, you know, that .’

‘And does she try to alienate you from other people? Keep you away from them?’

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of all the times Emma had taken my mobile phone, or come with me to my parents.

Jane reached across to me, brushing my hand with hers. Then she looked back down at her sheet of paper and started reading more of the points there, about people who were abused and the ones that abused.

She made it sound so scary but, deep within me, something started to click. The people she was talking about sounded familiar. Finally, I looked up, feeling, almost with a sense of awe, that I finally understood something about myself.

‘It sounds just like the way Emma is with me,’ I said. ‘She wants to make it so I have no one in the world but her.’