Bought and Sold Read online

  At every mealtime, everyone would sit down at the table while Jak’s mum served the food and then stood up to eat hers. When it happened the first time, I jumped up and offered her my chair. She glared at me as though I had done something contemptible, and glanced anxiously at her husband, who muttered something angry, and Jak almost shouted at me, ‘What do you think you’re doing? She stands up.’ I seemed to have done something insulting in some way I didn’t understand and I felt really embarrassed. So I asked Jak later, ‘Why do you let your dad treat your mum like that? I don’t understand why a man would make a woman stand up to eat. That doesn’t happen in England. Everyone sits at the table together.’

  ‘It’s the Albanian culture,’ he snapped at me. ‘In Albania, wives love their husbands and husbands love their wives. Perhaps that’s something that doesn’t happen in England either. In Albania women do everything for their men. That’s what we call family.’ I realised I didn’t have enough normal family experience to be able to argue with him. But it seemed to me to be a very strange way to treat someone you loved.

  As the days passed, I became more and more miserable, until eventually I told Jak I was unhappy living with his family and asked him if we could get a place of our own. It felt like proof of his love for me when he agreed, and a couple of days later we moved out. The one-room apartment Jak rented for us was tiny, although I think by that time I would have been happy living in a shed or a tent as long as it meant not having to put up with his family’s disapproval and the constant feeling that I wasn’t good enough in almost every way.

  It was shortly after we moved into the apartment that I began to see the first glimpses of another side of Jak. Perhaps it was the side of him my mum had thought she could see in his face and in the ‘hardness’ in his eyes that prompted her – and Dean – to try to persuade me not to fall for him.

  Jak and I had had some loud, shouted arguments, but nothing worse than the sort of rows I used to have with my mum and sister. After we moved into the apartment, however, he would sometimes be moody when he got home from work and would get angry about apparently trivial things – for example, if his dinner wasn’t on the table as soon as he walked through the door. ‘That’s the Albanian way,’ he would tell me. So, because I loved him and because I wanted him to love and approve of me, I told myself he was right and that ‘the Albanian way’ was indeed the best way of doing things.

  During the time we were living with his family, Jak’s mum used to tell me to ‘watch and learn’ while she cooked, and after we moved out I tried to remember how to make the meals she made. One day, I decided to make a sort of soup-stew she used to make out of rice, spinach, boiled chicken and lemon. There was no kitchen in the apartment, just a sink and a small, two-ring electric hob in one corner of the room that was also our living-room/bedroom.

  I was stirring the food in a pot on the hob when Jak got home from work. I could see he was tired and hungry. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. I had just picked up a ladle and was about to transfer the soupy stew into two bowls when he said, with a terseness that took me by surprise, ‘Leave it. I’ll do it myself.’ Dipping a spoon into the pot, he tasted the food and then stood there for a moment, still holding the spoon to his lips. It was as if every muscle in his body had frozen and when he did finally turn his head to look at me, there was a horrible expression on his face I had never seen before and couldn’t interpret. I had expected him to be pleased because I’d tried to make something his mother used to make, something I knew he really liked. I couldn’t think of any reason at all why he might be as angry as he clearly was. But suddenly my palms were sweating and I felt sick.

  Turning very slowly away from the little stove, Jak shouted, ‘You don’t even know how to cook! Have you learned nothing from my mother?’ And he picked up the pot and hurled it across the room.

  It smashed against the wall just above my head, its boiling contents spewed out in every direction. As I pulled off the stew-spattered cotton top I was wearing, I screamed at him, ‘What are you doing? Are you crazy?’ I was so shocked that although my whole body was shaking, I didn’t cry at first. Then, like a child suddenly realising she’s out of her depth in some way she doesn’t understand, I began to wail, ‘I want to go home. I want my mum.’

  It was as if a switch had been flipped inside Jak, shutting off his fury and turning on his anguished tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I shouted at him. ‘I want my mum.’

  ‘No, please, I’m sorry.’ He took a step towards me with his arms outstretched. ‘I will teach you how to cook. It’s all right. I’m not like that. It’s just that I’m so worried about my mother. I’m upset because I can’t do anything to help her.’

  Fortunately, apart from a few patches on my back, I wasn’t badly burned. After I had washed all the chicken, rice and spinach out of my hair and changed my clothes, Jak took me out for a meal. When we had eaten, we drove up into the mountains on his motorbike, where we sat together on a rock at the side of the road, talking and looking down on the flickering lights along the coast. Jak pointed at a cluster of stars and said, ‘Those are our stars. Whatever happens in the future, wherever you are, you can look up at those stars and know that I am looking at them too, and that I’m thinking about you.’ And by the time we drove back down the mountain in the darkness, he had soothed my anxieties and reclaimed my trust.

  Chapter 4

  A few evenings after my attempt to make a nice meal for Jak had ended so badly, we were sitting outside a café drinking coffee when he asked me, ‘How would you feel about working? If you were earning money, we could pay for the treatment my mum needs, then buy a car and start saving for our own house. We’ll need a place of our own if we’re going to have children.’

  I wasn’t yet 15, and Jak and I still hadn’t had sex, but the thought that he loved me and wanted us to have a family made me incredibly happy. Because of Jak, I was going to be able to put my own turbulent childhood behind me and, in effect, start my life again.

  ‘I would love to work,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know what I could do, but, yes, definitely.’

  ‘Oh, there are lots of jobs you could do,’ he said. ‘You could do cleaning, or waitressing, or …’

  ‘I’ve always thought it would be fun to be a waitress,’ I interrupted him.

  ‘Good.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll call my cousin Mergim now and see what he can set up for you.’

  While Jak was talking on the phone to his cousin, I drank my coffee and tried to picture in my mind the café or taverna where I would soon be serving food to friendly, cheerful customers who left me large tips.

  ‘It’s done,’ Jak told me a few minutes later. ‘Mergim can arrange a job for you in Athens.’

  ‘Really? Oh Jak, that’s so exciting! I can’t wait.’

  ‘In fact, there are a few jobs you can choose from,’ he said. ‘We can decide when we get there. Then we can get an apartment …’

  I couldn’t believe we were really going to go to Athens! It would be like stepping out of the past into a future that would be different in almost every respect. The next morning, Jak packed a suitcase with his own things and with the clothes he had bought for me after almost everything I owned had gone back to England with Mum. Then we got a taxi to the coach station, where we sat together drinking coffee and waiting to get on the bus that would take us to our new life.

  The journey to Athens took several hours. Jak’s cousin had said he would pick us up from the coach station. But he phoned while we were en route and said he had some business to tie up and that Jak should get a taxi to his apartment, where he would meet us.

  Mergim lived in the centre of the city, in a large apartment that seemed to be full of members of his family, who all fussed over me when Jak introduced me to them. Although none of them could speak English, it was clear that most of them had opinions about me that th
ey were discussing with each other. I was nervous and found their attention a bit overwhelming. So, after a while, I asked Jak if we could go out somewhere to have a coffee.

  Mergim came with us to a café in a square near the apartment. He and Jak seemed to have a lot to talk about, but they didn’t leave me out of the conversation entirely, and every so often Jak translated for me. ‘My cousin thinks you are very beautiful,’ he said at one point. ‘And that I am very lucky to have you. I told him that he is right.’ I could feel myself blushing with pride. In just a few short months, I had gone from being a bullied, miserable, truant schoolgirl to being on the verge of starting a new life in Greece with someone who loved me. I thought I had every reason to feel happy and optimistic. When I look back on it now though, I think the day I arrived in Athens was one of the saddest of my life.

  After we had drunk our coffee, Mergim made a phone call. ‘He’s phoning about a job for you,’ Jak told me.

  ‘Where is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet. But I don’t think it’s far from here.’

  We left the café a few minutes later and walked to a bar where the short, black-haired man who was standing outside the door greeted Mergim and Jak with a handshake. The three men talked for a few minutes, then Jak turned to me and said, ‘It looks like you’re going to get the job.’

  ‘Aren’t I too young to work in a bar?’ I asked him. ‘I was expecting it to be a café. Don’t you have to be 18 to work somewhere like this?’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ Jak assured me. ‘He knows how old you are, but you look old enough, so it’s okay. Don’t worry.’

  It seemed like an odd way to conduct a job interview; but as I had never had one before, I didn’t have any experience to judge it by. And at least the man hadn’t taken one look at me and said ‘No’.

  We went inside and Jak ordered drinks – whisky for himself and Mergim and a coke for me. It was still quite early in the evening and the only other people in the bar were four men and two semi-naked girls pole-dancing on a small wooden stage in the centre of the room. None of them seemed to be taking much notice of each other.

  We must have been sitting there for about half an hour when a man came and joined us. He spoke very good English and after he had ordered another round of drinks, he introduced himself to me as the manager of the bar. Then he asked me some questions, including, oddly I thought, ‘Do you like dancing?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him, remembering almost wistfully for a moment the dance routines my friend and I used to make up and practise in her garden when we were young. ‘But I’ve never danced like … that.’ I glanced at the two topless girls and felt the heat of a blush suffusing my cheeks.

  ‘Oh, it’s easy,’ the manager said. ‘And don’t worry, you won’t have to do what they’re doing. You’ll just do some basic stuff.’

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘basic stuff’. In any case, there was no way I would dance almost naked in a bar. Even the prospect of doing it fully clothed made me feel sick with embarrassed anxiety.

  ‘Well, the job’s yours if you want it,’ the manager told me. ‘I’ll leave the three of you to talk it over.’

  ‘I would be much too nervous to dance in front of people,’ I told Jak as soon as the man had gone.

  ‘You’re going to be brilliant at it,’ Jak said, as if it was already a done deal. ‘There’s no need for you to be nervous: they’ll show you exactly what to do. You’ll be fine. You’re so beautiful.’

  I knew what pole-dancing was, of course. I didn’t think it was ‘wrong’ in any way, just weird, and I didn’t for one moment link it to sex. Sometimes, I wonder how anyone of almost 15 years old could have been as naïve as I was. I could be stubborn when I had decided I wanted to do something – which was why I had clashed with Mum so often before we left England. In reality, though, I had no self-confidence. And as there was no way I was going to start arguing with Jak and Mergim and then have to tell the manager of the bar that I wasn’t going to take the job, I agreed.

  ‘You won’t have to do it for long,’ Jak said quietly. ‘The money’s so good we’ll have enough for my mum’s operation in no time.’

  Suddenly I felt like a hero and I knew everything really was going to be okay.

  The next morning, Jak took me back to the bar and left me there with the two girls – one Russian, the other African – who were going to teach me to dance in a way that was very different from the dancing I used to do with my friend in her garden back in England! Both girls seemed very confident, although I wondered later if they had been acting, the way I was going to learn to do.

  I danced that evening in a dimly lit corner of the bar dressed in an outfit that was really little more than fancy underwear, but that at least covered my boobs. After just a few minutes, another girl took my place. So, although the whole thing was hugely embarrassing, it was mercifully brief and not nearly as bad as it could have been.

  The next day, when Jak dropped me at the bar again, the manager said he needed to talk to me. I followed him through a door behind the bar and into a small office, where I stood twisting my fingers nervously as he told me, ‘I had complaints about you from customers last night. They pay to see girls dancing topless and if they don’t get what they’ve paid for, I risk being prosecuted for false advertising. You’re going to have to dance like the other girls tonight.’

  Whether or not what he said was actually true, I felt immediately guilty, as though I had done something wilfully and selfishly wrong. Then I imagined standing on the stage exposing my very flat chest to a roomful of men and I burst into tears.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I snivelled. ‘And in any case, my boyfriend wouldn’t want me to.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll speak to him. He’ll be fine with it, I know he will.’ He patted my shoulder as if he thought I would be reassured by what he was saying. It was clear that our discussion was now over and I left the room feeling as though I had just been lured into a trap. I was pretty sure Jak wouldn’t want me to dance topless in a bar; my overriding concern, however, was the thought of how incredibly humiliating it would be for me.

  It turned out that I was wrong about Jak. When I saw him in the bar later that day, he had already spoken to the manager and said that he was okay with the idea of my dancing semi-naked in front of a room full of drunken, lecherous men.

  ‘It will only be for a short time,’ he reassured me. ‘I don’t really want you to stay here and do that. So I’m going to find you another job.’

  I tried to tell myself that I was overreacting and that, in the greater scheme of things, getting my kit off was a small sacrifice to make so that Jak’s mother’s could have the cancer treatment she needed. Jak wasn’t doing any gardening jobs now, but he had worked long hours before we came to Athens, for considerably less money than I would be earning. And when I really thought about it, I couldn’t justify looking forward to the future we were going to have together while making a fuss about doing something that would help bring it a little bit closer.

  Jak stayed at the bar that night, drinking whisky while I danced topless for men whose faces I avoided looking at. And when the manager gave me the 80 euros I had earned, Jak held out his hand and said, ‘Why don’t you give that to me? I’ll look after it for you.’

  For the next few nights, Jak and Mergim dropped me off at the bar and then went to a café in a nearby square to wait for me to finish work. When they came back to pick me up, I handed all the money I had earned to Jak. One night, when I kept some of it back because there was something I wanted to buy, his anger really shocked me – until I thought about it and realised I was being selfish and that it was only fair he should take it all, to pay for the food we ate and to save for our future. It was hard-earned money though, because I hated every minute of every night I danced at the bar, and I could never look at the faces of the men who were looking at me.

  I had been working there for almost two weeks when Jak told me, ‘We’ve go
t a meeting tomorrow about another job.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great,’ I said, feeling as though I had breathed out after holding my breath for just a bit too long. ‘What is the job?’

  ‘Wait and see,’ Jak said.

  The next morning, he seemed distracted and barely spoke to me. When I asked him if there was something wrong, he said, ‘No. It’s okay. Everything’s fine.’ But he was still quiet and uncommunicative in the taxi that took us to a burger bar in the city centre. Jak led the way up the stairs to the second floor, where the only other customer was a large, overweight man who waved when he saw Jak and then beckoned us over to his table. As we walked towards him, Jak said, ‘This is your new boss. He’s French and his name’s Leon.’

  Once the introductions had been made, Leon narrowed his eyes as he looked at me closely for a few seconds and then said something in Greek to Jak. A few minutes later, he leaned forward and passed something under the table, which Jak took and slid into his pocket, although not before I had seen that it was a wad of folded banknotes. I don’t think it even crossed my mind to wonder why Leon was giving him money. I didn’t understand Greek, so I didn’t know what they had been saying to each other. But I trusted Jak. And, after all, he’d had a life before he met me.

  ‘So, you know what you’re going to be doing, don’t you?’ Leon spoke to me in English. ‘And you’re happy with it?’

  I glanced at Jak and he murmured, ‘I love you. It’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine with it,’ I told Leon.

  I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I had asked, ‘Happy with what? What is the job you’re offering me?’ But I didn’t. Jak told me it would be ‘all right’ and I believed him. So Leon stood up, shook Jak’s hand, nodded at me, and then walked down the stairs and out of the restaurant. Jak and I followed him a little while later and took a taxi to another part of the city centre.