Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

It would prove to be a hopeless thought.

Once I was dressed, Emma walked me down to Morrison’s to meet Cassie. He was meant to be on a shift for Castleton Taxis, but just after 9 a.m. his black people-carrier pulled into the supermarket car park and we climbed in so he could take us to his favourite lane in Ashworth Park.

Cassie was even more disgusting than the others: he liked to kiss the whole of my face, and I hated that. With just sex I could manage to detach myself from it, but all his touching and kissing just made me feel even more sick.

This last time, in fact, Cassie’s fun was interrupted by a couple driving down the lane towards us in a Ford Focus. Emma saw them first and shouted, ‘Someone’s coming.’ Cassie got up, with no trousers on, and climbed into the front, pretending nothing was happening. The couple must have seen us but they didn’t stop or say anything. As soon as they were gone, he climbed over onto the back seat and just carried on.

That time Emma had gone first. When it was my turn, I just kept thinking, This is the last time. After this it will be over and you’ll be going home. So just get through it, just get through it .

Somehow I did.

Emma had a plan as well as me that day. Hers was to go into the college she’d been referred to because of her appalling attendance record at school, and then to go with me to the scan.

‘It’ll be the two of us together,’ she’d said, sounding as sincere as I’d ever heard her. ‘Seeing the baby.’

I pretended to agree.

So, after the early-morning encounter with Cassie, he dropped her off at a bus stop in Heywood and then carried on to Harry’s place with me.

I got back at around 10.30 a.m., slipping quietly into the house, taking a shower, and then going into the still-empty living room to wait for Mum.

It seemed I was waiting there for ages, every now and then glancing at the bin bags tucked just inside the doorway, and all the time feeling a growing sense of excitement.

I was going to do this. I was finally going to be free!

Finally, Mum’s car drew up outside and I bounded out of the house, grabbing the bags as I left and piling them onto the back seat. Then I ran round to the passenger side, climbed in, and said, ‘Go, Mum. Let’s go.’

I kept looking back at the house, wondering if any of them had seen us leave, and then feeling the finality of it all. Soon, I knew, Emma would be getting back. When would she notice the bin bags gone? When would she realise that this really was the end? That finally I’d left her world behind?

We stopped off at a chippy on the way home to pick up an order – chips and curry sauce for me, fish and chips for Mum and Dad. Back at the house, it felt so deliciously normal to be eating soggy chips and looking forward to the scan.

There was still time for a lecture from Mum and Dad about this being my absolutely last chance – understandably – but then Mum and I were off again in the car, heading to the hospital.

As I lay back on the hospital bed ready for my scan, my breath caught as a tiny black and white image flickered onto the screen. I stared in disbelief at the tiny little form. I could see little limbs, a beating heart. Suddenly, a delicious warm feeling spread through my weary body.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I looked at Mum with tears in my eyes and she reached for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘It’s time to come home, Hannah,’ she said, tearfully.

It was a moment I’ll never forget; the moment I felt I was finally being dragged out of the dark and murky world I’d been living in for seven months and back into the real world. This tiny life gave me the connection I needed.

The intense fear that had gripped me during every waking moment of the day for seven months drained away. Suddenly, it didn’t matter who the father of my baby was, or about the gang or Emma. What they could do to me didn’t scare me any more. There was only one thing I needed to do – I had to get out and stay out whatever the cost. If this baby stood any chance at all, I had to use every last part of energy I had to fight; to make sure it had a good start in life and protect it from any wrong-doing in the world.

I realised, too, just how hideous those seven months must have been for Mum and Dad: to be worried all day, every day, about what their own baby girl was doing and what harm she was coming to. The confusion over why I was doing it in the first place. None of it must have made any sense to them.

Mum was so right. It was time to go home. I just had to figure out a way to make that happen for good.

As we stared at the screen, a nurse approached, smiling, and asked, ‘Would you like to know the baby’s sex? Whether it’s a boy or a girl?’

I wasn’t sure, and looked at Mum.

‘It’s up to you, Hannah,’ she said.

Maybe I should know , I thought, maybe it will help . Even if I don’t know the baby’s colour, at least I’d know something about it that might bring it closer.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

The nurse, tall, in her late thirties, must have had the same conversation a thousand times, but she wiped a tear from her eye as she said, ‘You’re carrying a little girl.’

A girl! Instantly I felt a flood of happiness…a girl… but then suddenly, I became fearful. How would life go for her? Would she be used by men, as I’d been? Or would she be safe and free? Would she be happy?

I blinked back tears, trying to focus on the ultrasound image again, looking at the tiny arms and legs, trying to imagine my growing baby as a girl. Gently, I touched the bump and smiled up at my mum.

She drove me straight home, with no thought of going to Harry’s: I was still so programmed into being with Emma that that had worried me – that I’d want to go over to hers and ‘impress’ her with my baby news.

I’d like to say it was a happy homecoming, but it wasn’t – the topsy-turvy relationship I had at home saw to that. For all that Mum and Dad tried their best to reach out to me, I was still a mess. I’d hit rock bottom by then, a feral creature living a half-life, abused by the gang, abandoned by both the police and Social Services. My parents had also been let down, and they were both confused and incredibly angry.

Mum had given my room a spring clean in the hope that I’d finally be coming back to stay for good but, as usual, we ended up rowing. She threw a cup of lukewarm tea in my face and I tipped the bed over. She then kicked me out of the house. I sat on the steps at the back for a while, but went back inside when Dad rang me on my sister’s phone. He told me to go in but to stay upstairs away from Mum.

When it had all kicked off again, Mum had rung Jane in tears to say – not for the first time – that she’d had enough. She and Dad had seen going to the scan of the baby as a pivotal moment for me, a wake-up call I suppose, to finally take charge of my life. Jane told her to ring Social Services and said she’d do the same.

If they were looking for help, it was a waste of time because now that I’d reached sixteen, Social Services were able to completely cast me adrift.

I had always felt as though Social Services were always trying to make me look like the one in the wrong: the prostitute, the silly, drunk schoolgirl who was messing everyone about. In some of their reports they talked about drugs, making it look as though I took them. But I never did – not beyond trying them and deciding I didn’t like them. But it felt as though in their eyes I was always the bad person. I know that I drank, and I’d drunk in the early months of the pregnancy, but I only started drinking when it was all going on with the gang. To block it out.