Bought and Sold Read online

  I knew there was nothing we could do that would change whatever was going to happen. And Lexi was too scared and confused to argue with me when I said we would just have to wait for Christoph to come back. Ultimately, I was going to pay the price for running away and talking to the policeman. But I didn’t believe that Christoph would harm Lexi or even that he had any real intention of trafficking her and making her work as a prostitute. If I was wrong, I would be responsible for whatever happened to her.

  We had been in the apartment for three days by the time Christoph came back. He brought with him some clothes for me and some takeaway food, and he apologised, briefly, for having been away so long. Then he told me, coldly, ‘You made a very big mistake. Don’t ever think about running away again. You and your friend are going to have to earn your keep. So tonight you’ll be working in a bar.’

  When I told Lexi, she was upset and said she didn’t want to do it. And then Christoph suddenly broke into smiles and, in a voice that was now almost jovial, said, ‘Tell your friend there’s nothing to be worried about. All you have to do is talk to guys who come into the bar and encourage them to buy drinks. You’ll earn a percentage of all the money they spend.’ I really wanted it to be true and for everything to be all right, but I still felt like Judas when I repeated to Lexi what Christoph had said and she decided that it sounded like fun after all and she would do it.

  Christoph left us at the apartment to shower and change, then he came back in the evening to take us to the bar. The bar owner was friendly and after he had given us a brief explanation of the script we were to follow, Lexi and I sat at separate tables and waited.

  It was only a few minutes before a man approached Lexi and sat down opposite her. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he obviously spoke good English, because Lexi was laughing and they seemed to be getting on well.

  By the time Christoph picked us up late that night and dropped us back at the apartment, both Lexi and I had done good business for the bar. To Lexi, it had simply been like a game and she was pleased with the way the night had gone. For me, it had been a struggle as I tried to concentrate and listen to what the men were saying to me, because I knew that, at some point, I was going to tell Lexi the truth.

  I couldn’t pretend to myself any longer that everything would be all right, that Lexi would work in the bar for a few nights and then catch her flight back to England. I had wanted to believe that was what would happen, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t and that I had to try to help Lexi before it was too late.

  So in reply to her question about when we would get the money we had earned that evening, I told her we wouldn’t get any money, that Christoph wasn’t ‘my friend’, but someone who bought and sold girls and made them work as prostitutes, and that everything I had written in my message to her about my life in Greece had been a lie.

  She stared at me for what seemed like a long time before saying, very quietly, ‘I don’t understand.’ Then she burst into tears. ‘But what if that’s what he’s planning to make me do?’ She sounded frightened and child-like. ‘I can’t work in a brothel! And you can’t stay here either. Oh God, Meg, what are we going to do?’

  I was grateful that she didn’t turn on me and blame me for the appalling situation she was in – although she didn’t have to, because I already blamed myself.

  ‘I know!’ She started pulling things out of her backpack. ‘That first guy who came into the bar, the guy who stayed so long, he gave me his phone number and a top-up card for my phone. I really liked him, Meg. I think we can trust him.’

  ‘I don’t think we can trust anyone,’ I said. But I knew that if Lexi was going to have any chance at all of getting away, we were going to have to take the risk.

  The guy she phoned was an Albanian called Petros, and when she explained, briefly, what had happened and asked him to help us, he said, ‘I’ll come to the bar again tomorrow evening. When I get there, just do what I tell you and don’t ask any questions.’

  Neither of us slept much that night. I told Lexi a bit more about the life I had really been living. Then I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about the trap we might be walking into. Lexi was certain that Petros would help us – as certain as I would have been if I had asked Jak for help when I first met him in a bar five years earlier. My main anxiety, however, was based on my belief that Christoph saw everything. I didn’t really think I would ever escape.

  We stayed in the apartment throughout the next day, until Christoph came in the evening to take us to the bar. I’m surprised he didn’t suspect something was wrong. I had told Lexi several times during the day – until I could see she was starting to get fed up with me – that, whatever happened, we had to act normally and not do anything that might raise Christoph’s or anyone else’s suspicions. But I was acutely aware as we drove with him to the bar that our silences were tense and our chatter falsely cheerful.

  Within minutes of arriving at the bar, a man sat down at Lexi’s table. I could see she was trying at least to appear to be concentrating on what he was saying, but she kept inclining her head slightly so that it was obvious to anyone watching her that she was looking past him to the door that led out on to the street. I was trying to think of some way of attracting her attention so that I could warn her when the door opened and Petros walked into the bar.

  My heart had already been racing and now I gripped the edge of the table tightly with both hands. This was the moment when we would find out whether Petros really could be trusted or whether he had come back to the bar for the sole purpose of betraying us.

  Lexi was sitting at the table next to mine and as Petros passed between us, he said, quietly and without looking at either of us, ‘Don’t say anything; don’t ask me any questions. Just get up, follow me out of the bar and get into my car.’

  I had to force myself to do what he had said and not run out ahead of him into the night. It was the same feeling I’d had when I had shoplifted in England, a whole lifetime ago – when I had been certain that the eyes of every single person in the shop were focused on my back, every fibre of my body was telling me to run, and I was just waiting for the moment I knew would come when someone would shout ‘Stop!’ But no one did try to stop us that night in the bar. And what was even more amazing than that was the fact that Petros had kept his promise and come back for us.

  That night, Lexi and I stayed with Petros and his friend in their hotel room. Although the two men gave us their beds, I don’t think any of us slept very much. Christoph called my phone almost constantly and sent me texts saying, ‘I know where you are. I’m on my way to get you. You and your mum are in BIG trouble.’

  With every text, I became more convinced that he had some way of tracking my phone and that he really did know where I was. By the early hours of the morning I was a nervous wreck, but I had come to a decision. ‘I’ve got to leave,’ I told Lexi. ‘I think Christoph knows where I am and if he comes here, he’ll find you too. Even if I’m wrong and he doesn’t know that we’re here, he’ll go after my mum, and I can’t let him hurt her. I’ve got to go back to him.’

  ‘You can’t!’ Lexi began to cry. ‘Please, Meg, there must be some other way. You can’t go back to the life he’s been making you live. We’ll be all right. Petros and his friend will help us. I know we can trust them.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘But I know Christoph and I know the sort of people he works with. If I don’t go back to him, he will hurt my mum – or worse. I’m sure Petros will get you a flight home. I’ve got to go back.’

  It was the second time I had tried to imagine what it would be like to be on a flight back to England. The truth is that I couldn’t imagine it and I was afraid, in the same way, perhaps, that a wild animal that’s been kept in a cage for years would be afraid if you suddenly opened the door and gave it the chance to be free. I thought I had the life that, for some reason, I deserved and that what had happened to me was my fault. It was certainly my f
ault that Lexi was in Greece and in the position she was in. I didn’t want to have to blame myself for something terrible happening to my mum, too. So I hugged Lexi and made Petros promise again that he would take care of her. Then I left the hotel and started walking down a deserted road with my back to the rising sun.

  I kept walking along the same road until I was some distance from the hotel, not far from what looked a small farmhouse in the middle of dusty, stony fields, and then I phoned Christoph.

  He answered immediately. ‘Where are you?’ he asked, the cold quietness of his voice more intimidating than angry shouting would have been.

  I told him what I could see ahead of me and described various landmarks I had just passed.

  ‘Keep walking, and stay on the phone,’ he said.

  I must have gone almost another mile by the time he told me to sit down at the side of the road. And that’s when I knew he could see me.

  ‘Don’t hurt me, please,’ I whispered into the phone. ‘I’m sorry. Please.’

  When his car pulled up beside me, his icy control had given way to screaming fury and he shouted at me to get in. I was crying and shaking so much that I fumbled with the handle for what seemed like an eternity before I finally managed to open the door. As soon as I was inside the car, Christoph hit me across the head with a gun with such force that I thought I was going to pass out.

  ‘Where’s the girl?’ he shouted, striking me again with the gun and this time knocking me sideways so that the other side of my head smashed against the window. ‘Did you really think you could just walk away? Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I sobbed. ‘Really, I don’t know. She ran off with a man she met at the bar. I don’t know where they went. Honestly.’

  ‘I thought I could trust you.’ For a moment, I thought he was crying. It was if he had completely lost control, and suddenly I was more afraid of him than I had ever been. ‘Why did you run away from me?’ he demanded. ‘Wait and see what’s going to happen to you now! Did you not understand what I told you about your mother? I can get rid of someone just like that.’ He snapped his fingers in my face. ‘Give me your phone.’

  When I handed it to him he took out the SIM card, snapped the phone in two and threw the pieces out of the window.

  ‘Don’t fuck with me!’ he screamed. ‘I’m a very dangerous person. I am going to chop you up into little pieces and bury them.’ He reached across the car to where I was cowering against the door and hit me again. Then, as if at the flick of a switch, he stopped shouting and said very quietly, in a voice full of ominous threat, ‘I don’t care about the girl. The stupid bitch has caused me nothing but trouble since the moment she arrived. And then she tried to steal you away from me.’ I had spent five years believing things that couldn’t possibly be true, but even I could see that was a bizarre interpretation of what had happened. It was one I was happy to encourage, however, if it meant that Lexi would be safe and it took some of the heat off me.

  Christoph didn’t take me back to the apartment to pick up my stuff before driving me back to Athens. It wasn’t the first time, or the last, that I had to abandon my suitcase and its contents. But it didn’t matter; I didn’t own anything, so all I lost each time were a few cheap items of clothing, which were easily replaced. When we got back to the city, he took me to a posh hotel, booked a double room and had sex with me. Then he turned on his side and went to sleep.

  Living in a world where all the normal rules and expectations don’t apply really messes with your head. I wonder now if Christoph – or any of the other men who controlled me at different times during the years I was in Greece – ever did anything that was spontaneous and without some underlying purpose. I think the answer’s probably no, and that every single thing they said and did was deliberately intended to confuse and destabilise me, so that I no longer knew what ‘normal’ was. That was certainly what happened. One minute Christoph would be raging at me, saying terrible things; the next minute he would praise me and tell me I was special. Because I couldn’t ever predict what his reaction would be and never knew if something I was doing was right or wrong, I became incredibly insecure and full of self-doubt.

  He even did it when we were having sex. ‘Your legs are closed too much,’ he might say. ‘Next time, make sure they’re that far apart,’ and he would indicate the ‘right’ distance with his arms. Sometimes he would complain that my make-up was all wrong, my hair was a mess, or I was putting on weight – which was certainly never true, because I had no appetite and had to force myself to eat anything at all. I was programmed to believe it all though, and I believed it was my fault that, however hard I tried, I always seemed to get things wrong.

  Christoph slept for about an hour in the hotel that day. When he woke up, he gave me my old SIM card and a new phone, put 50 euros on the table beside the bed and told me he would be back the next morning. After he had gone, I went downstairs and spent the money he had given me on alcohol, which I drank alone in the room.

  That night, I had a text from Lexi saying that Petros had kept his word and booked a flight for her back to England. ‘You should have been on it with me,’ she wrote. I read the text maybe 20 times before I deleted it so that Christoph wouldn’t find it. Each time I read it, I tried to imagine where I would be and what I would be doing if I hadn’t been too afraid to fly back to London with my friend.

  I still feel incredibly guilty about what happened to Lexi. I invited her to visit me in Greece because I wanted so badly to believe what Christoph told me. I did what I had done a thousand times before and closed my mind to the possibility that he might have reasons other than the ones he told me about – in this case, that I deserved to have a break with a friend. I had got involved with Jak because my judgement was bad; by the time Lexi came to Athens, it was ten times worse. As a result of my immense stupidity, she came very close to being trapped into becoming a prostitute.

  I didn’t ever hear from Lexi again. I’m sure that when she thought about it, she did blame me for what almost happened to her. I know I blame myself. Despite what I told her, she must have thought I really had chosen the life I was leading; otherwise, I would have escaped with her. In a way, she would have been right, because although I didn’t choose it, I had learned to accept it because I didn’t think I deserved anything better.

  Lexi had a ‘normal’ reaction to fear: she tried to get away. So it would have been difficult for her to understand why I didn’t. But there’s another type of fear that perhaps you can only understand if you’ve experienced it. It’s a fear of nothing and of everything, of things real and imagined, and it’s so overwhelming that it prevents you doing anything except what you’ve been told to do.

  When Christoph came the next day, he took me to an apartment that, although pretty basic, was quite spacious compared with all the other places I had stayed. There was a small living room with a bed and sliding doors that opened on to a tiny balcony, an even smaller bedroom, a bathroom and a galley kitchen with just enough room for a sink, a cooker and a filthy, mould-encrusted, under-the-counter fridge. I had lived off takeaways for the last five years, and I really liked the idea of being able to cook for myself. So, after I had dropped off my bag at the apartment, Christoph took me to a supermarket and bought me some food.

  Once again, the only thing that had changed was the place I slept. Everything else continued pretty much in the same way it had done before. Christoph picked me up every morning, took me to a brothel or to do escort jobs, and then dropped me off again in the early hours of the next day. The fact that I’d had syphilis didn’t seem to matter from any practical point of view, except that now all the men that had sex with me had to wear condoms. When I wasn’t working, I was in the apartment, with nothing to do except sleep or eat. In fact, the only thing that ever varied from day to day was the way Christoph treated me. Sometimes, he would arrive at the apartment and, without any warning or apparent reason, start punching me in the head. Or he would grab me by the neck,
lift my feet off the floor and slam me against the wall, shouting into my face, ‘Your time’s running out now. You’re not earning enough money. You need to start acting more innocent. What’s the matter with you? You’re like a smackhead. Men want fresh meat and you’re getting old.’ I was 19; I felt much older, and incredibly tired.

  One day, after Christoph had been shouting at me and punching me repeatedly until my ear had begun to bleed, he got some scissors from the kitchen and cut up all my clothes. Then he grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head to one side so sharply it felt as though my neck was going to snap, and cut out all my hair extensions.

  Later, when he had calmed down, he took me to get my hair cut properly. He told the hairdresser he was my dad and that I had thrown a bit of a wobbly and hacked at it myself. ‘I’ll come back for her in about an hour,’ he said, patting my shoulder and raising his eyebrows at her as if to say, ‘What is she like?’ I felt really embarrassed, like some spoilt brat of a girl who’d had a tantrum. And although I spoke Greek well by that time, the hairdresser could tell that I wasn’t actually Greek. So I don’t know what she thought.

  When someone shouts at you and is violent, and you just have to stand there and take it because you can’t turn away and there’s nowhere to hide, you feel like a very frightened, vulnerable child. The worst thing of all, though, was knowing that Christoph was right and I was no longer ‘good enough’ to be a prostitute in a sleazy brothel. And if I wasn’t good enough for that, what was I good enough for?

  One evening when I had my period and wasn’t working, Christoph came to the apartment anyway. As soon as I had closed the front door behind him, he started slapping me and shouting really horrible things. Then, suddenly, he stopped, turned around and stormed out again.