Bought and Sold Read online

  There was a small amusement park on the seafront, and after we had eaten our hotdogs, we went on some of the rides and I forgot about things for a while and had fun. Then we bought a bottle of wine and went back to the hotel room, where we got a bit drunk and started dancing to music on the radio. A song came on that I knew and I sang along to it in Greek, while Mum sat on the bed and listened. When it had finished, she clapped and told me I was brilliant. ‘You’ve got a lovely voice,’ she said. ‘And I can’t believe how well you speak Greek. I’ve been so impressed by the way you talk to everyone. I’ve been here almost as long as you have, and I can barely speak it at all.’

  ‘It’s just practice, Mum,’ I said. ‘If you know people – friends,’ I stumbled over the word, ‘friends who don’t speak English, you soon learn.’ I sounded casual, but in fact I felt incredibly proud of her praise.

  It must have been about 2 o’clock in the morning when a man poked his head around the wall that divided our balcony from the one next door and said angrily, ‘Hey! Some people are trying to sleep. Keep the noise down.’ We were behaving badly and the poor man had every right to be fed up with us. But we were drunk, he had a single curl of hair hanging from his otherwise bald scalp, and we couldn’t stop laughing.

  I hadn’t laughed like that, enjoyed myself or had someone to talk to for as long as I could remember, and I didn’t want the night to end. We did eventually fall asleep though. When we woke up the next morning we both felt a bit rough, so we sat on the balcony in the sunshine, smoking cigarettes, drinking iced coffee and talking. Mum rang Nikos and then handed the phone to me, saying, ‘He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘You must come to see us here very soon,’ Nikos said. ‘When you next get some time off work, come then. Okay?’ And I promised him that I would.

  That evening, Mum wanted me to show her where I worked.

  ‘I don’t want to go there on my day off,’ I told her.

  ‘We won’t stay long,’ she said. ‘I want to be able to imagine you at work. And I want to meet your boss.’

  ‘I’m there all the time. I don’t want to take you there today,’ I insisted, hating the fact that I sounded like the petulant teenager I sometimes used to be, and that I was lying to her. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a surprise planned for you.’

  Mum still moaned a bit, but I knew I’d got myself out of it. And then she suddenly asked, ‘Shall I stay another day? I would love to come to the café and have a coffee while you’re working. Why don’t I do that?’

  People say that the most convincing liars are the ones who manage to delude themselves into believing that what they’re saying is actually true. I think for me it was simply a case of ‘practice makes perfect’: I always knew when I was lying to other people – but it was simply something I had to do, every day. I can’t remember now how I managed to persuade Mum to stick to her original plan and not stay any longer. What I do remember, though, is that I was really upset because I knew I had hurt her feelings.

  What was true was that I had planned a surprise for her that night. Using what was left of the 250 euros Christoph had given me, I took her to a port just outside the city to have a meal at one of its fish restaurants. First, we wandered through a marina, trying to decide which of the many massive, incredibly expensive boats we would buy if we had a few million euros to spare. Then I chose a restaurant that had a glass floor and a huge picture window facing the water.

  Although it started to rain just as we sat down to eat, we could still see the lights along the coast and watch the illuminated water lapping underneath our feet. As we were still recovering from the excesses of the night before, we decided against drinking any more alcohol with what turned out to be a really good three-course dinner.

  At one point, Mum looked at me and said, ‘I always wanted the best for you, Megan. I’m so proud of you. You’re so clever, working and making a life for yourself, and speaking Greek the way you do.’ I had to force myself to keep smiling. And as I was desperately searching for something to focus on so that I wouldn’t burst into tears and tell her the truth, I remembered the photograph. Taking it out of my bag, I passed it across the table to my mum and said, ‘This is the café where I’m working. And this is my boss.’

  ‘Is he good to work for?’ She tilted the photograph towards the light. ‘Ah, he looks really nice.’

  ‘Yes, he’s great,’ I said. ‘He treats me really well. And the customers are good too. I get loads of tips. That’s how I could afford to bring you here this evening.’

  ‘Can I keep this? I want to show it to Nikos, and put it up on the wall in the bar.’ When I nodded, Mum put the photograph in her handbag, and I had to look away quickly so that she wouldn’t see the tears that escaped before I could stop them. In fact, she scanned the photograph when she got home, and put it on her phone and on Facebook with a note saying, ‘This is Megan with her boss at the café where she’s working. She’s happy and doing really well in Athens.’

  The next morning, Christoph texted me to ask what time my mum was leaving and to tell me to wait in the café at the coach station for him when she had gone. Despite what he said, however, I was edgy and anxious as Mum and I said goodbye, because I thought he might already be there, watching.

  When Mum walked away from me across the concourse, a little voice in my head was saying, ‘Why don’t you go with her? Go on, just get on the coach. What’s he going to do with all these people around?’ I had a sharp pain in my chest and suddenly I couldn’t bear the thought of Mum leaving me there on my own. I had just taken a step towards her when she turned, waved to me and mouthed the words, ‘I’m so proud of you, Megan.’ Suddenly I knew I couldn’t tell her the truth, because I wanted her to be proud of me, not ashamed. So I forced myself to smile and wave back at her, and then to watch her coach pull out on to the road before disappearing into the traffic.

  The only good memories I have of all the years I was in Athens are of those two days I spent with my mother. It still makes me cry when I think about it today

  I had been sitting in the café at the coach station for about an hour when Christoph finally turned up. He ordered a coffee for himself and another one for me, asked if my mother had enjoyed her visit, and then said, ‘I’m going out of town tonight. You’ll be working in a brothel on the coast while I’m away. We’ll get your coach ticket when we’ve had our coffee. Then I’ll drop you back at the hotel so that you can pack your suitcase.’

  My coach left late in the evening of that day and arrived at the town on the coast in the early hours of the following morning. It was a long and tiring journey, but the worst thing about it was that it gave me time to think – about Mum and about what might have happened if I had gone with her. In reality though, I knew that escaping hadn’t ever been an option, because there was nowhere I could go where Christoph wouldn’t find me and, one way or another, bring me back into line.

  I was met off the coach by a very camp Greek brothel owner called Dimitri, who threw up his hands in horror when he saw me. After making me turn round a couple of times while he examined me, he shrieked, ‘Oh my God! We’re going to have to get you sorted out right away. First, we need to get you some hair extensions.’

  ‘But I’ve already got them,’ I said.

  He lifted a strand of my hair between his thumb and first finger, the way you might pick up a small dead animal by its tail, and said, ‘I mean proper hair extensions. Then we’ll buy you some nice underwear. I don’t know what sort of places you’ve worked in before, but I don’t have tramps working for me. My place is five star.’

  Four hours and 800 euros later, I had new hair extensions and new nails. It seemed an awful lot of money for Dimitri to have spent, but he would soon recoup his investment.

  I hadn’t managed to sleep much on the coach and by the time I started work that night, I was really tired. Dimitri’s ‘five-star’ brothel turned out to be every bit as cold, dingy, airless and disgusting as all the other brothels I had worked in. I work
ed alone, and, despite my make-over, didn’t do very well on the first night. In fact, quite a few of the men who came in looked at me and went away again. Some of them obviously had no intention of paying for sex; others presumably found someone they liked the look of at one of the other 50 or more brothels in the area that all competed with each other for customers.

  ‘All the other places seem to be doing better than mine,’ Dimitri told me later. ‘I’m sick of changing girls. I just need to find the right one and then everything will be okay.’

  After two more nights of averaging about 40 customers a night – rather than the 50 or 60 Dimitri was hoping for – it began to look as though I wasn’t the right girl either, and my self-esteem sank to an all-time low. It’s a very surreal experience, feeling ugly because some disgustingly sleazy guy takes one look at you and decides he would rather have five-minute sex with someone else.

  Christoph phoned me every night, and what concerned me far more than feeling ugly was the thought that he would be angry with me when he found out I wasn’t doing well. In fact, he was fine about it. ‘Just try harder tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re new there. You’ll get busy when people get to know you.’ Things never did change, however, and a couple of weeks later I was on a coach again, heading back to Athens.

  Christoph met me at the coach station and took me to a hotel in the city centre I hadn’t stayed in before. I started doing some escorting during the days, as well as working in brothels at night.

  Early one morning, Christoph phoned me and said, ‘I’m coming to get you now. Pack your bag and be ready to leave immediately. The police are on my trail.’ He sounded stressed, and as soon as I had put the phone down, I started running round the hotel room like a headless chicken, scooping up clothes and things from the bathroom and stuffing them into my suitcase. I didn’t have much, so it didn’t take me long, and by the time Christoph arrived I was packed and ready to go.

  I don’t think Christoph had ever been angry with me before that day. But as I sat beside him in the car, he seemed tense and preoccupied and barely spoke to me. It was just a short drive to the apartment building where he parked and told me, tersely, to get out of the car. I had learned a long time ago, as a small child, not to do or say anything that might irritate people who are stressed or in a bad mood. So I followed him silently along the dank, dirty corridor into one of the apartments, where five frightened-looking girls were sitting on the floor in a small, airless room.

  ‘You’re going to have to stay here until the police are off our trail,’ Christoph told me. He pushed the girl nearest to him with his foot, and she quickly shuffled sideways to make space for me to sit down. The stench in the room was overpowering. The window had been boarded up, but there were slivers of light seeping in around the edges. As my eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom, I could see the faces of some of the girls. Most of them had barely glanced up when we walked into the room.

  One of the girls was crying and as she lifted her head to look at me, I saw that her face was swollen and covered with dark bruises. Christoph noticed her too, and suddenly bent down and started punching her. The first time his fist made contact with the girl’s cheek, she cried out. Then she just sat there silently, one arm raised in front of her face almost casually, as if she was trying to block the sun from her eyes, and her head jerked violently from one side to the other with every blow.

  When Christoph stopped punching her and turned back towards me, I flinched involuntarily. But he didn’t hit me. He snatched my bag and threw it across the room so that its contents spilled out over the floor. Then he picked up my passport and phone, put them in his pocket and, bending down again, shouted into my face, ‘You’ve still got a few years’ work left in you and you belong to me now. Do you understand?’ I nodded my head.

  ‘And you.’ He looked round at the other frightened, cowering girls. ‘You’re nothing more than little whores. Instead of sitting there snivelling, you should be thanking me. You’re lucky to have someone like me to protect you. If the police find you, you’ll go to prison and then you’ll be sent back to where you came from with a criminal record. And don’t get any stupid ideas. The neighbours are watching you and I have many friends in the police force. You know what will happen to you if you try to escape.’

  It was obvious that the girls understood what he was shouting at them in Greek, so they must have been in the country for at least as long as I had. And they must have felt the same sense of crushing, defeated hopelessness I felt when Christoph turned and walked out of the room, locking the door behind him.

  During all the months I had been in Athens, I had learned a lot about fear, including the fact that it comes in many forms – fear of violence, of the unknown, of making a wrong decision when you know your life might depend on it, and when you know there is nothing you can do to help yourself. For a long time after Christoph had left, none of the girls moved or spoke. I didn’t dare say anything to any of them because I was convinced that we really were being watched and listened to. And I was afraid because I thought Christoph had lied and that he might never come back for us. Even now when I think about it, I get a tight knot in my stomach.

  For a while, I just sat there, staring blindly ahead of me with my mind almost completely blank. Then I began to look more closely at the other girls. Most of them seemed to be about my age or a bit older. But there was one very small girl who was curled up on the floor crying silently and who, I suddenly realised with a sickening sense of shock, was probably no more than eight years old. She seemed to be alone, without her mother, and no one made any move to try to comfort her.

  I don’t know how long I had been sitting with my back against the wall when I finally plucked up the courage to whisper, ‘Is there water? Are we allowed to get a drink?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a tap,’ one of the girls answered, without looking at me.

  I didn’t get up immediately: I waited until my thirst outweighed my fear before tiptoeing across the narrow hallway to the tiny kitchen. I had always drunk bottled water since coming to Greece. Even in Athens, where the tap water is supposed to be safe, I didn’t risk drinking it in the sort of hotels I was used to staying in. But by that time I was so thirsty I think I would have drunk whatever had trickled out of the single grimy tap in the kitchen of the apartment.

  When I went back into the other room, I asked one of the girls if she knew where the child’s mother was. She looked at me for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to answer, and then just shrugged her shoulders. All the other girls were equally unresponsive. Later, when two of them had a brief, whispered conversation, I thought the language they were speaking was Russian. For most of the time, though, we all sat there in silence, thinking our own thoughts, or trying not to think at all.

  As the light around the boarded-up window began to fade into darkness, I got up again, took a chipped glass out of the cupboard in the kitchen, filled it with water and took it back into the room, where I gave it to the little girl. Then I lifted her on to my knees and stroked her dirty, tangled hair until she fell asleep.

  There was a narrow, metal-framed bed in one corner of the room, but no one slept on its misshapen mattress. They just lay down on the hard wooden floor, pulled their knees up to their chests like children do, and shut their eyes. I sat with my back against the wall and my arms wrapped tightly around the little girl, and I must have dozed off too, for a while. When I woke up and remembered where I was, I thought for a moment about shouting for help. There were no sounds from the street below to stifle my voice, so someone in one of the other apartments would be bound to hear me, and then they would call the police. But every time I had almost summoned the courage to open my mouth, I heard Christoph’s voice in my head saying, ‘You know what will happen to you if you try to escape.’

  I slept fitfully after that, for maybe a couple of hours, before being woken up by the sound of voices. I was still half-asleep when the two men who had come into the apart
ment pulled the little girl out of my arms and took her away. I wished at the time that I had been awake enough to have reacted. In reality though, I knew that even if I had been, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop them.

  I could hear the little girl crying outside the door of the apartment; then the sound became muffled, as if someone had put their hand over her mouth. Still none of the girls said anything and I wondered if, like me, they were trying not to think about where the little girl might be taken. I didn’t ever see her again. I often prayed that she hadn’t been used for sex and that she was reunited with her mother. At the very least, I hope someone looked after her.

  Chapter 10

  When I was in the kitchen earlier in the night getting water, I had seen a loaf of bread on the work surface. It was hard and stale and splattered with blue patches of mould. But there was nothing else to eat and at intervals throughout the rest of the following day we went into the kitchen one by one and picked bits off it. It didn’t make any difference to how hungry I was, but at least it gave me a reason to stand up and move around.

  It was starting to get dark on the second night when the door of the apartment opened again. This time, it was Christoph who came in, followed by a short, heavily built man wearing a crumpled shirt and oily jeans. No one said anything; the man just looked at us and then he pointed at me.

  ‘Right, get up,’ Christoph said. ‘This is a job for you.’ Even when he nodded towards the narrow bed in the corner, I didn’t understand what he meant. Then the man began to unzip his jeans and it finally dawned on me that Christoph expected me to have sex with him right there, in the room where all the other girls were sitting.

  Bizarrely, one of the first thoughts that came to me was that I hadn’t had a shower for two days. It wasn’t something I needed to worry about on the man’s behalf, however. I think I could have been caked in mud from a pigpen before he’d have noticed, or cared, as he climbed on top of me, had sex with me – without using a condom – and then zipped up his jeans and followed Christoph out of the apartment.