Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade (14 page)

So, once again, I was left feeling confused and bemused about what made Kas angry and wondering whether the policeman who'd just threatened to shoot me was actually one of his friends whom he'd sent to make sure I never forgot to be afraid.

After a while I became quite good at identifying different nationalities – by physical features, such as the shape of their head, as well as the way they spoke Italian. Some of them were angry when I told them I could only go with Italians, and I didn't dare say why. Luckily, few of them asked for reasons, and most would just swear at me and spin the wheels of their cars as they pulled out into the traffic again. But I didn't always get it right, and after I told one man ‘No Moroccans', despite his insistence that he was Italian, he came back a couple of nights later with his identity card!

Sometimes, though, I didn't pay careful enough attention until it was almost too late and one night it was only as I was just about to get into a car that I noticed the guy
looked Macedonian. When I asked him, he said he was Italian, but the music playing on his car stereo was definitely Eastern European and so I told him ‘No'. I was expecting him to swear at me, but my heart almost stopped beating when he leapt out of his car and went completely crazy, shouting at me and waving his hands in my face.

I knew I mustn't let him see my fear, so I shouted back at him and told him he'd better go, because my boyfriend was Albanian. As I said the words, a car turned off the main road and pulled in beside his, and when we both looked towards it, I almost burst into tears of relief when I saw that it was Kas. Pretending not to know me, he leaned out of the window and asked ‘How much?' and I edged away from the guy as I told him a price. ‘Okay.
Andiamo
,' Kas said, opening the passenger-side door, and I jumped into his car and we sped away.

He dropped me off further down the road and told me to walk back to ‘my spot' while he followed the man to make sure he didn't return. I felt a rush of gratitude to him for being there when I needed someone, but at the same time I felt uneasy because I couldn't help wondering how he'd just happened to turn up when he did. Was it chance that he'd been close by, or did he often watch me when I didn't know he was there, to make sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing?

It was just another uncertainty among all the doubts and insecurities I was living with. There seemed to be no
one I could trust and nothing I could rely on – even Kas's anger. It was impossible to guess at his reaction to anything. He seemed to have a split personality, although he was 10 different people rather than just two. Sometimes he'd drive past the petrol station and wave to me, or even open his car window and shout ‘I love you', and one night he beeped his horn and threw me a rose. Most of the time, however, he was either in a rage or on the verge of one, and his sudden violent outbursts and loss of control were often triggered by something completely trivial or imagined.

One night, when I hadn't made enough money, he went from angry to crazy within just a fraction of a second, hurling his mobile phone across the room at me so that it smashed against the wall and sent out an explosion of plastic splinters. ‘You've got five seconds,' he shouted. ‘Just five seconds to clear that up.' I began to scrabble around on the floor, making little moaning, whimpering noises as I searched under the furniture for bits of debris. But I was so shocked and frightened that my hands were clumsy and as I fumbled, dropping the fragments I'd already picked up, Kas started to count, slowly, ‘One. Two …'

At that moment, his other phone rang and he walked into the bedroom to answer it. I could hear him pacing backwards and forwards across the bedroom floor, and every so often I heard snatches of what he was saying. Although he was speaking in Albanian, I realised he was talking to his mother. Then he shouted the word ‘schizophrenia' and it sounded as though he'd kicked a chair
against the bedroom door. But when he came back into the living room a few minutes later, his anger had completely evaporated and he spoke calmly as he told me, ‘I'm sorry. I've told my mother what happened tonight and she says that I mustn't hurt you anymore.'

I didn't know if it was true, and, if not, what else might have caused his abrupt change of mood. He'd told me before that his mother wanted us to get married – although that seemed very unlikely, not least because she'd never even met me. And it wasn't the first time I'd wondered whether it might not be Kas who ran his own operation after all.

One day, when he was in one of his rare good moods, he told me he'd fallen in love with me the first time he saw me.

‘How can you love me?' I asked him. ‘What is there to love about me? Look at me. I'm like a zombie – I don't speak except when I'm spoken to; I only smile when you tell me to smile. How can you say you love someone like that?'

But he just laughed and said, ‘You're crazy, woman. This is all in your head.'

And, for a moment, I wondered if perhaps he really
did
love me and I just couldn't see it because I was so used to believing I was unlovable. I'd wanted for as long as I could remember to be swept off my feet by someone who would take charge of everything and create an amazing life for us to live together. The problem was that whenever anyone
told me they loved me, I'd always push them away – or let them down, like I'd let Erion down. It was as though I couldn't help myself. I simply didn't believe them. In my mind, they were either lying or mistaken. Because how could someone whose own father doesn't even like her be worthy of anyone's love? So I was already confused and bewildered even before Kas made me unsure about almost everything.

It sounds strange, I know, when, after everything he'd done and the way he treated me, I say that I wondered if Kas loved me, and it's difficult to describe how I felt. Although I hated him, I wanted to believe that there was some explanation I could understand for what he was doing to me. And the only explanation that seemed to make any sense at the time was that it was somehow all my fault.

Kas and I had been friends and had talked regularly on the phone for four years before I'd arrived in Italy, so he knew almost as much about my fears, anxieties and psychological hang-ups as I knew myself – or perhaps even more. And he was clever enough to be able to use what he knew to his advantage. Put simplistically, perhaps the fact that he frightened and bullied me and criticised everything I did, just like my father had done throughout my childhood, meant that I wanted him to love me – in the same way that I'd always wanted my father to do.

One evening, when he was about to drop me off at the bottom of the hill, he suddenly said, ‘Oh my God, you're
like an angel. I get goose bumps when I look at you. You drive me crazy. I can't control myself when I see you.'

Immediately I was wary, uncertain whether he was serious or his words were sarcastic and the prelude to an eruption of anger, because sometimes he appeared to be saying something nice to me when actually he was about to criticise and shout at me. This time, though, his good humour seemed to be genuine and he drove along the main road, turned the car on to a lane, told me to take off my leggings and had sex with me. He didn't use a condom and I was so pathetically grateful for those few minutes when he was being nice to me that it didn't even cross my mind to ask him to – not that I'd have dared to do so anyway.

Sex with Kas didn't occur very often, but when it did it was just like having sex with all the other men – there was no emotion involved; it was just something that was being done to me. Sometimes, he'd wake me up in the morning by calling ‘Come and give me a hug and a kiss' and I'd get out of bed instantly – even when I was asleep, there must have been part of my mind that was alert and ready to respond to anything he told me to do – and would pad across the bedroom floor and into the living room to lie with him on the sofa.

One day he hugged me and stroked my hair as he told me, ‘You know I'll always look after you, don't you, little mouse? I've never cared for anyone the way I care about you. I'm sorry you have to do the things you have to do,
but you won't have to do them forever. One day we'll go travelling. We'll be able to go wherever we want and do whatever we want to do.' But although I was grateful because he was being nice to me, I knew he was lying and that it would never be over. Whatever I did would never be enough, because Kas would always want more money.

Moments like that were rare, though, and although at one time I might have been beguiled by the thought of sharing a life with Kas, it now just filled me with dread. But I put my arms around him and clung to him like a child, focusing on the pleasure of being comforted and on the relief I felt because, for a while at least, he wasn't being crazy.

He never let me spend the whole night with him and sometimes I'd ask, ‘Why are you so mean to me? I'm never allowed to come to you; I have to wait until you give me permission. Why won't you let me get near you?' And, if he was in a good mood, he'd say, ‘Sometimes it's just not right and you need to learn that you have to wait. You can't have things simply because you want them.' So I
would
wait – like a little dog – trying not to get things wrong and trying to be good enough to be worthy of his notice.

One night before I went out to work, he told me to iron his shirt. I hated having to do things like that because I was so nervous and so afraid of making a mistake that, however hard I tried not to, I'd always end up making one. But, to my relief, this time he barely glanced at me while I was ironing and he put the warm shirt on without comment.

Later, when he was dressed and smelling strongly of aftershave, he stood in the kitchen doorway and said, ‘Look at me! What a beauty! Everyone's going to want to talk to me tonight. Do you wonder where I'm going? Go on, why don't you ask me? I know what you're thinking. You're thinking,
It isn't fair that he's out having fun while I'm working
. But that's just the way things are. I do what I have to do – I go out and see people and take care of my business – and you do what you have to do. It's the way it is, that's all.'

Yes, it
is
unfair
, I thought.
You're absolutely fine. And while you're out having a good time, I'll be having sex with men I don't know, who may or may not pay me and who may or may not let me get out of their cars unhurt.
But I said nothing, because I'd learned not to react in any way. This time, though, even saying nothing turned out to be wrong, and he suddenly turned on me, shouting, ‘So you're happy with this arrangement, are you? You think this is okay? Obviously you don't want to know where I'm going because you don't care about me.'

Sometimes, when Kas was in a good mood, I'd describe to him some of the men I'd been with, and one day he asked me, ‘Do you ever enjoy it? Tell me the truth.' He said it with a smile and when I was shocked and said ‘
No!
', he laughed and kept insisting, ‘Go on, you can tell me. Surely there must have been times when you enjoyed it.'

‘No, never,' I said again.

‘You're lying!' he retorted, but he was still laughing. ‘You're expecting me to believe that you have sex at least 20 times every night and you've never once enjoyed it?'

‘No, I haven't,' I told him, and I wondered how he could be so completely mistaken about what it was like to be forced to have sex with strangers. But I knew that his questions were leading
some
where, and as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, I was instantly alert.

It seemed that, for whatever reason, he was determined not to let the matter drop. He kept asking me over and over again, and then he said, ‘Come on. You can tell me the truth. There must have been one. Of all those men, there must have been one who was different. Who was he?' And eventually I decided to lie, just to make him stop his relentless probing, and I said, ‘Okay, there
was
just one time.'

It was as though a switch had been flipped in his brain. The smile disappeared from his face and he launched himself across the room at me, grabbing me by the hair and yanking my head back sharply as he shouted, ‘You fucking bitch. How weak are you? How fucking
dare
you disrespect me? You're a disgrace. You're disgusting.' And even though I'd lied, I knew that he was right, not because I enjoyed having sex with strangers – I didn't, ever – but because of what he was making me do.

One night, I was with quite an old, nice guy I'd been with a few times before when Kas rang. There were rules about answering the phone – as there were about everything: I was only allowed to answer calls from Kas's
number, and I had to answer after no more than three rings. This time, however, I didn't get to my phone before he rang off, and although I called him back immediately, it was too late.

‘What the fuck are you doing?' he shrieked. ‘How dare you not answer the phone when I call you? You, woman, you wait till I get hold of you.' And then he described in graphic detail what he would do to me, while the man I was with sat beside me in open-mouthed amazement, not able to make out what Kas was actually saying, but clearly shocked by the angry, shrieking voice he could hear.

When Kas finally rang off, I tried to pretend everything was all right, although in reality I was shaking and close to panic. The guy could obviously see that I was upset because he smiled, patted my hand and said, ‘Let's just get out of here. Let's go somewhere else.'

Kas told me repeatedly that I was never to go anywhere other than my usual places without telling him first, but suddenly I felt exhausted. I was weary of trying to remember all the things I was supposed to do and not do and, what the hell, I was in trouble anyway. So I tried to smile too as I said, ‘Okay, let's just go.'

We hadn't driven far along the main road when I glanced in the wing mirror and saw Kas's car right behind us. My instinct was to turn my head, but even though I didn't, and I kept staring straight ahead, Kas sent me a text message saying, ‘Don't pretend you haven't seen me. You're cheating on me, aren't you?'