Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

We spent ages in Primark across from the Arndale shopping centre, with me eventually buying some pyjamas, a few tops and a pair of leggings. We had a KFC in the food court, chatting like two sisters should chat: about the baby, about the future.

At one point I remember thinking, This is normal. It’s what I should be doing – not meeting up with old men . On the way home, I thought about my life and how sick it had become. From somewhere, I began to feel a sense of resolve building inside me, telling the stupid, hopeless part of my mind that with the baby coming I really, finally, needed to break away from Emma and the gang.

But then came the following day.

I was over at my parents’ when, about one o’clock in the afternoon, Emma knocked at the front door for me. I answered it, and she sounded the way she always did when she thought my family might be listening – all cheery, all matey.

‘So you’re sixteen now, eh? Join the club.’

She must have thought the coast was clear, because she lowered her voice a bit and then said, ‘Right, are you coming? We’ve got people for you to meet, so let’s get back to Harry’s.’

She must have seen me hesitate, because she went on, louder now: ‘You don’t have to answer to your folks now. You can live where you want, sleep with who you want. They can’t stop you.’

I was about to send her away, but just at that moment I felt a rush of air as my mum came storming up behind me; I guess she’d been listening from the living room. The front door had only just been ajar, but she yanked it wide open, clawing at me and pushing me outside.

‘Go on, then,’ she screamed. ‘You go with her. You’re sixteen. You go off with your men – just don’t ever come back here!’

And with that she slammed the door, leaving me bewildered and frightened on the garden path. Emma just thought it was the funniest thing she’d seen in ages, but I was aghast.

‘Mum,’ I wailed. ‘Don’t do this. What am I supposed to do now?’

There was no reply. All I could hear was Mum crashing about upstairs. I sat on the lawn in shock and disbelief. Then, I heard her coming down the stairs. Again the front door was flung open and this time a bin bag was dumped unceremoniously at my feet. Some of my clothes spilled out as it landed.

‘Now, go!’ screamed Mum. ‘I’ve had enough of all this. Just leave us in peace!’

I tried to reach out to her, but she was gone. The emotion of what she thought she’d heard too much for her. Emma didn’t hesitate. Laughing, she bent down, picked up the bags and set off towards the road, shouting: ‘Come on, let’s go. Taxi’s waiting!’

Distraught, I followed, crying as I staggered away from my home and from my family. I’d wanted to stay; I’d dared to hope I could finally break away from Emma. Now I was heading back to misery with her because I didn’t know what else to do.

Back at Harry’s, Emma was soon on the phone to Tariq. I was in the kitchen, quiet, smoking, when I overheard part of the conversation. ‘It’s all right,’ she was saying, ‘she’s sixteen now. So they don’t have to worry. She’s legal.’ Her voice sounded cold.

With the call over, she came to find me, suddenly all breathless and cheery. ‘You’ll be fine here, Hannah. You and the baby can stay. Harry will give you the money for a cot, and we’ll get a new double bed we can share. I’ll help you get your address changed. We’ll sort it out tomorrow. You can stay for ever and no one will be able to stop you.’

But I realised I wasn’t listening to her. I was focusing hard on what she’d just said – and what she’d said to Tariq a few moments earlier. My mind flashed back to the times I’d been with Jane, when she’d spoken of her fears for me, the way she’d talked to me about controlling relationships, and how it seemed Emma wanted to isolate me from everyone else so that I’d have no one to turn to but her. ‘You have to really think about this, Hannah,’ she’d said. ‘Until you do, you’ll never truly break free.’

The words I’d overheard Emma saying to Tariq a few moments earlier bubbled up again in my mind. That I was sixteen now, so there’d be no problem with the men; that it would be totally legal for them all to have sex with me.

For ever?

I couldn’t bear that. I really couldn’t bear that.

The next day, Mum drove to Harry’s place, knocked on the door and dropped off another bin bag full of my belongings. I saw her and ran after her. She was just opening the car door when I got to her.

I was sobbing. ‘Mum, Mum, I don’t want this,’ I said, clutching at her arm, her shoulder. ‘Let me come home. Please! ’

‘No,’ she said coldly, her voice at odds with the tears I could see welling up in her eyes. ‘You’ve made your decision now – and so have we.’

A moment later, she was at the wheel and driving away, leaving me standing forlornly on the pavement.

Thanks to Emma, I still didn’t have a phone, but that night Emma’s mobile rang and, as she answered it, she scoffed. It was Dad – he must have kept the number from when he thought she and I were just proper, ordinary mates. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, ‘I’ll put her on. I’m sure she’d love to speak to you.’

Dad spoke to me for nearly five minutes. First, he told me to go where Emma couldn’t hear me, then he said he’d talked Mum round and they wanted to give me one last chance. ‘Come home now and we’ll take you back,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t, that’s it. For ever. You choose.’

A sob – more of relief than anguish – caught in my throat. So I could still go home! But I hesitated. I was more canny, now that I knew what Emma was about. I knew I had to throw her off the scent.

‘I can’t come home now, Dad,’ I whispered. ‘But tomorrow – let me come home tomorrow. It’s my scan…’

A plan had begun to form in my mind. I started to explain it to Dad. He was up for it, he said, but there could be no turning back. A few moments later he was off the line, and I joined Emma in the living room.

‘Got rid of him, then?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ I replied, as nonchalantly as I could. ‘They’re off my back now.’

But as she turned away, I allowed myself a faint smile. I glanced for reassurance at the two bin bags full of my clothes, lying by the front door.

I tried to make it as normal a night at Harry’s as it could be. Mercifully, there were no calls from the gang and I was able to slip off to bed just after 10 p.m.

‘It’s the baby,’ I explained to Emma. ‘I feel really tired.’

For a while I lay awake, holding the bump as I thought of the misery I’d endured those past seven months, wondering whether this was the moment I could finally summon up the courage to break free. Because that is what it would take – immense courage. I was still so scared of Emma, and of what she could do to me if I didn’t keep in with her.

Would she batter me, and risk hurting the baby? In my last few days with the gang, I’d begun to stand up to her. Being pregnant actually helped me, because I didn’t think that even she would do anything to hurt my baby. But how safe were my parents and sisters and brothers? How would the rest of the gang react? Would Emma just let me go now, after all this time?

I cradled my bump, wondering if it would be the one thing that changed her mind – that I was now no use to her, and she would just let me go.

The next morning, the strains of ‘Disturbia’ ringing out from Emma’s room woke me up. A few minutes later, she was banging on my door, telling me to get up.

‘Quick,’ she shouted. ‘We’ve got to meet Cassie. Get up.’

It was 17 February 2009, the day of my three-month scan, and yet I was beginning it with my customary feelings of dread and despair. But this time I was determined to somehow get away.