Bought and Sold Read online

  I hated leaving my sister behind in England when Mum and I went to Greece. I would have been glad that she wasn’t coming with us if I had known what was going to happen when we got there. I had never been abroad before. I was so excited I could hardly sit still on the plane. When we arrived at the airport in Greece, we got a taxi to the small, basic but clean apartment Mum had rented. As soon as we had dumped our bags and done a little dance around the room, we went to the beach. The sand was golden, the water was warm and crystal clear; in fact, everything about the place we were staying was just the way I had imagined it would be, but better.

  That first evening, we went to a bar right next to the beach, and as Mum and I sat laughing and talking, I felt more relaxed than I had done for a long time. I still didn’t drink alcohol, but that night I had a couple of Bacardi Breezers – and then went back to coke when Mum realised I was getting a bit tipsy. We danced and chatted to other tourists and to the bar owner, who spoke really good English and entertained everyone by mixing cocktails and telling jokes.

  There were three guys sitting at a table near the back of the room and whenever I glanced surreptitiously in their direction, one of them seemed to be watching me. He was the best dressed and the best looking of the three, and when he caught my eye I got a fluttery feeling in my stomach. It was one of the other two who came over and asked Mum and me to dance. In fact, he didn’t really ask us; he was Albanian and didn’t speak any English, so he just kept repeating the word ‘Hello’ and then did a sort of mime that made us laugh. We did dance with him – by that time everyone in the bar was dancing and chatting with everyone else – and he seemed like a nice guy. But I was more interested in his friend.

  It was late by the time Mum and I went back to the apartment. I fell asleep thinking about the guy I hadn’t spoken to, and maybe Mum dreamed about the bar owner, who had clearly been attracted to her and whose attention had made her giggle like a schoolgirl.

  The next day, we went to the beach again, ate our lunch sitting in the sun outside a café, and then returned in the evening to the same bar, where the same three guys were sitting at the table they had been sitting at the night before. As soon as we sat down, Zef, the guy who had danced with us the previous evening, came over and asked me – again by the use of mime – if I wanted a drink. And after he had bought me a coke, he introduced me to his two friends.

  All three of the men were in their early to mid-twenties. One of Zef’s two friends was called Veli; the other shook my hand and then held it for a few seconds while he looked directly into my eyes and told me, in broken English, that his name was Jak. Although I didn’t think for a moment that someone like Jak would ever fancy someone like me, I felt my knees go weak.

  Mum had also had a reason for wanting to go back to the bar that night, and while I was sitting with Zef, Veli and Jak, she was talking to the Greek bar owner, Nikos. In fact, she was having such a good time I think she barely noticed when we left the bar at around 2 o’clock in the morning to go down to the beach. I knew Zef wanted me to go on the back of his motorcycle, but although he was obviously a nice guy, his faltering eagerness didn’t appeal to me the way his friend’s self-confidence did. So I went with Jak.

  For the next couple of hours, we sat on the still-warm sand smoking cigarettes and talking. Then they dropped me back at the bar and Mum and I walked together up the road to the apartment. The chaotic life I had been living in England suddenly seemed a very long way away.

  The days and nights developed a pattern after that. In the morning and afternoon, Mum and I would swim and lie on the beach. Then we would go back to the apartment to shower and get changed before having our dinner in a café or at one of the restaurants that lined the square in the centre of town. And then we would go to Nikos’s bar. I loved spending time with my mum, lying on the beach, laughing, talking and relaxing as the warmth of the sun eased all the tension out of my muscles.

  Mum had made quite a few friends at the bar among both local people and tourists. So she was happy to leave me to do whatever I wanted in the evenings, which was mostly to sit on the beach with Jak and his friends. She did have one concern though. ‘I don’t like Jak’s eyes,’ she told me. ‘There’s something dead and cold about them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile, have you?’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ I replied, groaning and raising my eyebrows.

  ‘Well, I’m just saying,’ she said. ‘There’s definitely something dodgy about him – whereas Zef seems like a really sweet boy, and he’s obviously keen on you. I’d stay away from Jak if I were you, and think about Zef instead.’

  I wonder if any parent has ever managed to persuade their son or daughter to ‘stay away’ from someone they’re attracted to and to transfer their affections to someone the parent thinks is more suitable. Somehow I doubt it! And I wonder how many of those sons and daughters look back later on a specific piece of advice their parents gave them and think, ‘If only I’d listened.’ But you don’t listen to anyone when you’re young – expect perhaps to your friends, whose ideas are likely to be as half-cooked as your own – because you think you know it all. For me, in this particular instance, it was too late anyway: I was already smitten with Jak and I completely ignored what was probably the best piece of advice my mum has ever given me.

  By mid-week, Jak had started coming to find us on the beach during the day. He only spoke half a dozen words of English, so we communicated – surprisingly well – using a sort of sign language. What he did say quite clearly one day though was, ‘Baby, I love you,’ and when he kissed me I thought I was going to pass out. We were together almost constantly. He had already told me several times that he didn’t want me to leave, and when he cried on our last evening, it almost broke my heart. The thought that he even ‘approved’ of me, let alone might be attracted to me, made me believe that there might just be a possibility that my life wasn’t to going to end up being the disaster I had begun to think it might be.

  At the airport the next day, both Mum and I were very quiet. Things had been going really well between her and Nikos too, and I knew she was as miserable as I was. We had checked in for our flight and were walking across the concourse towards the entrance to the departure area when I stopped, put my hand on her arm and said, ‘Please Mum, can’t we stay? I don’t want to go home. What have I got to go back for? Please, just think about it.’ I began to cry, but Mum just sighed and said, ‘I know, Megan. I feel the same way. But we don’t have any choice. Come on, love. We’ve got to go.’

  ‘But, Mum …’ Not many days earlier, I would probably have thrown a full-scale tantrum and have had to be dragged to the plane kicking and screaming. This time though, the thing I wanted – which was not to have to leave Jak – really mattered to me and I knew instinctively that a fit of teenage temper wasn’t the way to get it.

  ‘But, Mum …’ I sniffed pathetically and looked at her with what I hoped was a sad and at the same time sympathetic expression. ‘How can you even think of leaving Nikos when he loves you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She sounded almost embarrassed, and there was a wistful look in her eyes as she added, ‘Nikos doesn’t love me.’

  ‘Yes he does!’ I said, feeling like a fisherman must feel when there’s a small but definite tug on his line. ‘He told me so last night. He said he didn’t want you to go, but he didn’t know what to do to stop you.’

  ‘Did he?’ When I saw the tears in Mum’s eyes, I don’t think I could have felt any worse if I had actually hit her.

  ‘Yeah, he was really upset.’ I couldn’t look at her as I said the words.

  How could I have lied like that to my mum? It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times and it still makes me cry when I think about it today. It was selfish and, as it turned out, incredibly stupid from my own point of view. Because if I hadn’t said what I said to her as we stood in the airport in Greece that day, we would have gone home, my broken heart would have mended itself in time, and although the rest of
my life might not have been particularly happy or exciting, I wouldn’t have had to endure the six years of hell I had just opened the door to.

  I could tell that Mum had made a decision – she had that look on her face children have when they’re going to do something naughty. And when she said, ‘Come on then,’ and started striding purposefully back towards the check-in desk, I scuttled along behind her with my heart racing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told the woman at the desk. ‘But we’ve decided not to go on this flight after all.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said, ‘but it’s too late. Your bags have already gone through.’ She flashed a frosty smile at Mum that said quite clearly, ‘I’m exerting a huge amount of self-control to prevent myself addressing you as “Stupid”.’

  ‘Please.’ Mum appeared oblivious to the woman’s disdain. ‘Isn’t there anything you can do? My daughter and I need to stay here, just for another week. Please.’

  I don’t know what it was that made the woman change her mind. Perhaps she wasn’t really as tough and indifferent as she seemed and she felt sorry for us, huddled there, tearful and pathetic, at her check-in desk. Whatever the reason, she did manage to stop our two large suitcases being loaded on to the plane, and a few minutes later we were standing in the heat outside the airport wondering what to do next.

  Mum had spent all the money in her bank account in England, and wouldn’t have any more until her last wages were paid into it. So we couldn’t even afford to get a taxi. In the end, we walked a short distance down the road, hid our suitcases in some bushes – having agreed to work out later how we were going to get them back – and then tried to hitch a lift. It wasn’t much of a plan, but we couldn’t think of a better one. And we were lucky, because someone did stop to pick us up and even agreed to take us back to the town on the coast where we had been staying.

  The man dropped us outside a restaurant we had eaten in a few times, which was on the same road as Nikos’s bar. When we got out of his car, Mum straightened her skirt, took a deep breath and said, ‘I feel so nervous. What am I going to say to him?’ I had hardly said anything all the time we had been in the car because I felt so bad about what I had done. Now, I started to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told Mum. ‘I lied. Nikos didn’t actually say he loved you.’ She just stood there for a moment, completely still, as if her whole body had frozen. ‘But I really think he does,’ I added hastily. ‘I could see how upset he was whenever you talked about leaving.’

  When she did finally look at me, she had an expression on her face as if she didn’t recognise me. She burst into tears and sat down heavily on a chair outside the restaurant, and still didn’t say anything until she had ordered a drink and swallowed a large mouthful of it. Then she said, ‘Oh Megan, what have you done?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I just panicked at the thought of going back to England. Everything’s been so different – for both of us – since we came here. I’ve had the best time I’ve had for years. And I know you have too. I know Nikos really likes you, and he’s such a nice guy. So why go home to nothing when you’ve got someone like him here? I’m sure it’ll be okay.’ I sounded certain, but in reality the doubts had already crept in and I wasn’t at all sure that things would turn out well for either of us. Fortunately, Mum was too shocked to be angry with me, and after we had finished our drinks, we walked together down the road to Nikos’s bar.

  Mum stopped outside the bar and stood for a few seconds, just breathing. Then she made a sort of gulping-sob sound and walked through the beaded curtain that hung in the open doorway. Nikos was setting up the bar ready for the customers who would come that evening. When he heard the rattle of the curtain, he turned towards the door with a bland smile and I think my heart stopped beating. Then suddenly, as he realised it was us, he threw down the cloth he was holding and almost ran towards us, enveloping first my mother and then me in a huge hug.

  ‘We decided to stay another week,’ Mum said nervously when she could breathe again.

  ‘I’m so happy,’ Nikos kept saying. ‘I’m working in my bar wishing you hadn’t had to leave and now here you are! Where are you staying?’

  ‘We haven’t got anywhere yet, but …’ Mum sounded embarrassed.

  ‘It’s no problem,’ Nikos interrupted her. ‘I will sort it out.’

  He poured a drink for Mum, flipped the top off a bottle of coke for me and then made a phone call. Within minutes, everything was arranged. Mum and I would be staying in an apartment that was owned by one of his friends – and which turned out to be large and spacious with a sea view. When Mum told him what we had done with our suitcases, Nikos laughed and then he drove us back to the airport to retrieve them from the bushes. For the next few days, until Mum’s wages were in her bank account in England, he also fed us and paid the rent on our apartment.

  Having seen Nikos’s reaction to Mum’s return, I was very nervous, as well as excited, at the prospect of seeing Jak again. I didn’t have to wait long: he came into the bar that evening and was as surprised and happy to see me as I could have hoped.

  Over the next few days, Mum’s relationship with Nikos and mine with Jak developed so well that she didn’t book a flight back to England for us the following week, as she had intended. In fact, it was another six weeks before she made any plans for us to go home.

  A couple of days after we had hitch-hiked back from the airport, Jak picked me up from the apartment and took me to meet his family, who lived in a small house in the countryside. None of them spoke any English, but as his mother fussed around me, clicking her tongue and poking me with her bony fingers, I learned the Albanian words for ‘too thin’. What I hadn’t understood, however, was that she intended to set about the task of fattening me up immediately.

  It had already been agreed that Jak and I would stay for lunch, and we had just sat down at the table when his mother came out of the kitchen carrying a large plate. She stood beside me and held it up close to my face, and as I turned my head to look at it, she pushed her fingers into the mouth of the boiled goat’s head and pulled out its tongue, nodding her own head as she did so and making an appreciative sort of humming noise. I think being in such close proximity to the head of a dead goat would have been repulsive even if I hadn’t been brought up as a vegetarian. Fortunately, I just managed to turn my head away from the plate as I was violently sick.

  The embarrassment I already felt at being the object of everyone’s close scrutiny was nothing compared with my mortification at having emptied the contents of my stomach all over the floor. I had desperately wanted Jak’s family to like me. But by the time I had finished vomiting and retching, his sister didn’t even try to hide her irritation as she clicked her tongue impatiently and pushed me towards the bathroom.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I kept saying. ‘I’m so sorry.’ But his mother had already fetched a mop and bucket from the kitchen to clear up the mess I had made and I don’t know if she even heard me.

  After lunch – none of which I was able to eat – they seemed to get over the worst of their annoyance and we sat outside the house, drinking juice and listening to Albanian music. They spoke to me in Albanian, and as Jak could only translate the odd word into English, we communicated mostly using mime and drawings. I’m shy and quite easily intimidated, whereas they were noisily dramatic. So I was relieved when Jak said it was time to go, and took me back to the apartment on his motorbike.

  A few days after I had visited Jak’s family, Mum talked to me about sex. I can’t remember exactly what she said, except that she wanted me to wait. ‘Just leave it for now, Megan,’ she told me. ‘But when you do do it, make sure you use a condom.’ I can understand why it was a discussion she thought we needed to have, but I wasn’t planning to ‘do it’ at all. I could be stubborn and stroppy as a teenager, but I was very naïve. I was a virgin when I went with Mum to Greece, and the idea of having sex with anyone had never even crossed my mind. It was love not sex that I was so desperate for, although of course I
didn’t realise that at the time.

  In fact, I had been put off the whole idea of sex when I was 12. I had visited someone’s house and they had shown me a porn video. I had only watched a few minutes of it; it was violent and completely alien to anything I had imagined was involved in falling in love, and I found it very disturbing. After that, sex became inextricably linked in my mind to things that were traumatic and disgusting. So by the time I went to stay at my dad’s and he started saying vulgar, horrible things to me and trying to get me to sleep with his friends, I had made an almost subconscious decision to avoid having sex for as long as I possibly could.

  It was during the third week of our extended stay that Dean, my friend and our next-door neighbour in England, came out to stay at the apartment with Mum and me for a few days. I was really excited when he said he was coming and to begin with I loved having him there. Late at night, after the bars had closed, we would all go down to the beach together – me, Dean, Jak and his friends – and talk until the sun came up.

  Dean got on really well with Zef and after a couple of days he asked me, as Mum had done, ‘Why do you like Jak more than Zef? I don’t understand your attraction to him at all. He never smiles and he’s got this really hard look in his eyes. I don’t like him, and I certainly wouldn’t trust him.’ I don’t think I would have listened to anyone by that point, because I was already hooked. What was really sad, though, was that what Dean said that day affected our previously easy, relaxed relationship, and we didn’t get on so well for the rest of the week he was there. I lost touch with him after he returned to England, which is something I now deeply regret, because it meant that I didn’t see him again before he killed himself a couple of years ago.

  What human traffickers do is evil and despicable, but I suppose it makes cold, hard, financial sense to the criminals involved to trade the lives of people they don’t know or care about in exchange for monetary gain. What I really don’t understand is what the pay-off is for bullies. It seems that, for people like the ones who persecuted and tormented Dean and ultimately destroyed his life, the goal is, purely and simply, to cause distress. In some ways, that almost makes them worse than human traffickers and drug dealers, for whom ruining other people’s lives is simply a by-product of businesses that earn them vast sums of money.