Jane Elliott - Mummy’s Little Girl - A heart-rending story of abuse, innocence and the desperate race to save a lost child

‘What’s your name, then, gorgeous?’ he said, his accent thick with south London, just like Hayley’s.

‘Hayley.’

That look again.

‘Not seen you around much, Hayley.’ A giggle from one of the group.

The alcohol had created a warm feeling in her chest. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘So?’ The boldness of her response astonished her.

‘So … you gonna come with us?’

Hayley’s eyes flickered up towards the top of the tower block and she felt a sudden thrill of rebellion. Mum and Dad probably still didn’t know she’d left; even if they did, they wouldn’t care.

‘All right,’ she said.

The boy grinned. He took her by the arm again, but not so roughly this time, and led her away from the group. His friend followed.

‘Where you fucking going?’ a voice screeched. It was one of the girls in the little crowd around the car. They stopped and turned round, and Hayley watched as the girl approached the two boys. She was mixed race, and wore tight clothes against her curves which made Hayley feel like the little girl she was, and her lips and nose were pierced.

‘Fuck you,’ the toothless boy muttered. He pushed her to one side, took Hayley by the arm again and led her off.

‘I’ll be looking out for you, you little bitch!’ the girl called after her, her voice loaded with hate. ‘I’ll be looking out for you!’

Any other time, Hayley would have been petrified; but on that summer’s evening six months previously, with the alcohol doing its work, she felt something different. Carelessness. Recklessness. Whenever she thought back on it, she cringed at her own stupidity.

The boys didn’t tell her their names, and she didn’t ask. They led her to a different tower block on the south side of the estate, and into a flat several storeys up. It was a dingy place, but Hayley was used to that – her own home was hardly luxurious. Thick, dirty blankets were pinned up against the windows, and the only light came from a lava lamp on the floor in the corner. There was no furniture – just a few stained mattresses lying here and there, and a selection of blue and green milk crates scattered around instead of chairs. The kitchen area was covered with fast-food packaging, and there was a strange mixture of smells. Rotting food, of course, but also something else. A thick, musty smell.

As soon as they were in the flat, the boy without the missing tooth shut the door; then he collapsed on to one of the mattresses and pulled out a pouch of tobacco and some cigarette papers. Hayley watched as he licked the gummed edges of two papers and stuck them together, before sprinkling some tobacco into the middle. He then removed a small lump of something brown and held it in the flame of a lighter before breaking bits off and crumbling them onto the tobacco. He rolled the cigarette up and lit it; instantly Hayley could tell where that sweet smell came from.

He took a deep drag on the joint, and then passed it to Hayley. Suddenly timid again, she shook her head. A look of annoyance passed the boy’s face as he handed the joint to his friend. ‘You want another drink?’ he asked Hayley.

Not knowing what else to do, Hayley nodded her head.

She didn’t see him pour the drink; nor did she question why he was giving it to her in a dirty glass rather than straight out of the bottle as before. She drank it quickly, hoping it would give her more of the warm feeling that it had done when they were outside.

‘Why you looking at me like that?’ she asked the two boys when she had finished it. They were standing, watching her, as if they were waiting for something. She took another sip of her drink, trying her best to look grown-up.

It was from that moment that she started to lose her memory. She couldn’t remember what was said between them, or what she did; all she knew was that after a little while a terrible sickness hit her, a nausea that seemed to run through her whole body. She felt dizzy, the blood in her veins ran hot and she lost control of her limbs as she fell to the ground.

And falling to the ground was the last thing that she remembered.

When she woke up, her head was pounding, as though someone was beating the inside of her skull. But the pain in her head was nothing compared to the shocking, sinister stabbing she felt in her stomach, as though hot knives were slashing into her. She looked down and saw, to her horror and shame, that the bottom half of her body was naked. She was lying on one of the mattresses; the two boys were on the other side of the room, fast asleep.

She started to tremble with a mixture of sickness, fear and self-loathing. Slowly she sat up, and as she did so she became aware of streaks of blood down her legs.

Her jeans and underwear were lying on the floor near the boys. Wincing with pain, she got to her feet and crept towards them, quiet and terrified, to pick them up. As she started to get dressed, tears came to her eyes; her jeans became tangled as she pulled them on, and the more she struggled, the slower she became. She tried desperately to keep quiet, but she couldn’t help a sudden, loud sob escaping her lips.

The toothless boy stirred and drowsily opened his eyes. Hayley froze, her jeans still only halfway up her legs.

The boy leered at her, and then pushed himself up to a sitting position. ‘Get over here,’ he said.

Hayley felt her body start to shake. She pulled her jeans up over her hips and walked towards him. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down to the floor; she did her best to master another wave of nausea as he took her face roughly in one of his hands. It hurt, and she whimpered. They were face to face now, and she could smell the tobacco on his breath. ‘You can come back here any time, bitch,’ he whispered. ‘But tell anyone and I’ll kill you. Understand?’

Terrified, Hayley nodded her head.

‘Then get the fuck out of here.’

Hayley fled.

The sickness lasted for several hours, the discomfort in her belly for a few days; the shame endured for much longer than that. Hayley barely left her bedroom for the whole of the school holidays – she was too scared of seeing either the boys or the girl who had threatened her, and not even the prospect of a beating from her mum was enough to get her to leave the flat.

Hayley was not a worldly girl, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew she had been raped that night, probably by both boys. She knew she should tell someone, but there was no one to tell, and anyway, she was scared. Scared of the boys who had done it to her, and scared of what people would think. Much better to forget about it. Pretend it had never happened. Put it from her mind.

But that was not possible.

When her period was late, she ignored the little voice that nagged inside her head. Hayley was only young, and far from regular; it was nothing to worry about. But a week passed, and then two. She started to feel sick. Of course, she kept it from her mum and dad. Mum especially always reacted badly when she said she felt unwell. She didn’t go to the doctor, and even if she had had the courage to walk into a pharmacy and ask for a pregnancy test, she had no money to buy one.

And so the pregnancy progressed. Hayley knew she couldn’t keep it a secret for ever, but nine months was a long time. Maybe by the time the baby was born, something would have changed in her life.

But it hadn’t been nine months. Only five, when once again she slipped out of the flat without her mum and dad knowing. The pains were happening every fifteen minutes, and when they came she felt like doubling over in agony. There was no way she would be able to hide this from her mum, so she had to get out of there.

It was raining outside, a heavy, cold, persistent rain that saturated her clothes almost immediately. The sun had set, and there was no one outside in this weather – no one to see when Hayley bent over, clutching her belly and crying out. She staggered out of the estate and on to the main road that ran alongside it. There were few pedestrians here, but plenty of cars and buses, their headlamps on as they splashed their way through the rain.