Authors: Joanna Rees
The girl seemed to slump. He put his arm out to steady her, helping her from the crate. Her arms were thin, but her skin was soft. So soft. And those legs. Boy, oh boy. They kept on coming from
the crate.
Paulo glanced behind him. Time was tight, but he knew the drill. He had to get her into the baggage trolley fast. Then out to the loading dock, where he’d hide her under the tarpaulin in
the maintenance truck. He’d drive her into town later this afternoon when his shift finished.
If she didn’t have any contacts in London, as most of them didn’t, he’d take her to his second cousin, Carlos. He’d get her cleaned up at his apartment, then put her to
work. Oh yeah. This one looked like she’d do well for Carlos. And Paulo would get another kickback for that.
He rubbed his thumb across his fingertips – the international sign for money. The girl quickly delved into the pocket of her denim skirt and handed over the notes he was expecting. He
checked the money, then stuffed the notes into his overalls, before helping her get into a grey baggage trolley. He quickly loaded up bags around her. On top of her. Burying her from sight
again.
Pushing the trolley down the ramp and onto the baggage truck, he began to whistle. ‘How Will I Know?’ That Whitney Houston song had been in his head all morning.
Oh yes, she was a pretty one, this one, Paulo thought. After he’d taken her to Carlos, he’d ask his cousin for a favour. Perhaps he could be the first man in the queue to help break
her in.
Romy immersed herself in the hot water, feeling her hair seeping out into the bubbly water of the deep bath. Then she pushed herself up again, wiping the water from her
face.
No, it wasn’t a dream. She was still here. Boy, this had to be the craziest day ever. In a matter of hours her life had changed beyond even her wildest imaginings. Was everyone in London
this rich? she wondered, looking at the pink tiles around the bath and the fancy gold taps and mirror. What would she have to do to be this rich herself?
Her mind was whirring with possibilities. From what she could understand from Paulo’s heavily accented English, which was so much more difficult to understand than the language tapes
she’d listened to hundreds of times back in the clothing factory, Carlos, his cousin, was something to do with fashion. Maybe he had some kind of factory, Romy thought. Paulo had said he had
good opportunities for girls who were prepared to work.
Well, one thing was for sure: Romy was a good worker. She had relevant experience too. What if Carlos did give her a job? Wouldn’t that be something? Perhaps she could stay here in this
apartment.
Yes, she thought – picking up the bar of pink soap with the word LUX on it, and lathering it between her hands, before spreading the bubbles over her skin to wash away her horrible journey
– she could get used to this.
Conscious that she mustn’t spend too long in the bathroom, Romy got out of the bath and dried herself on the fluffy pink towel, pressing her face into the soft fragrance of it, amazed that
something so simple as a towel could be so lovely. Then she looked inside the plastic bag that Carlos had given her, pulling out the clothes that she was going to change into.
But these clothes . . . she’d never even seen anything like them. But perhaps this was the English fashion, she thought, wriggling her thin hips into the short leatherette miniskirt and
pulling the mesh top over her bra. Did it matter that the bra didn’t fit? she wondered, looking in the mirror and feeling painfully self-conscious. She towel-dried her hair and tried to style
it in the mirror. Then she slipped on the high white heels, unlocked the bathroom door and tottered into the kitchen.
Carlos stood by a steamed-up window, leaning on the cooker and smoking a cigarette. The radio was playing pop music. She smiled nervously.
‘Feel better?’ he asked and she nodded.
He was wearing black leather jeans and a leather jacket. A thick gold chain nestled in the hair poking over the V of his jumper. He had olive skin, like Paulo, and from the look of his stomach,
he liked his food and drink. But he seemed friendly enough.
‘Eat,’ Carlos said, nodding down at the table. ‘You must be hungry.’
Romy smiled and pulled the bowl towards her. She didn’t know what it was. Some kind of pasta. Long and thin, in a rich red, meaty sauce. But it smelt good. So good.
She started to shovel it into her mouth, but it kept slipping and sliding from her fork and spoon. She twisted in her chair so that Carlos could not see. She was ashamed of her manners,
embarrassed in front of him, a sophisticated man from the West.
The door buzzer went. Carlos looked at his chunky gold watch – worth enough by itself, she thought, to have paid for Ursula to have crossed the border too – and stubbed his
half-smoked cigarette into the metal ashtray on the table in front of Romy. He glanced at her as he exhaled. Then he went into the hall to open the door.
Romy looked at the cigarette, then sat on her hands. Every instinct told her to steal the cigarette and put it in her pocket. That was far too much tobacco to waste. But what if Carlos wanted to
relight it? Then she’d be caught out and, if she made him cross, he might ask her to leave.
A moment later Carlos came back, jangling a set of car keys in his hands. Three other girls were in the corridor behind him. One of them had a black eye, which she’d tried to cover up with
make-up. They all stared at Romy in silence. She froze, the pasta dangling from her mouth.
‘Time to go,’ Carlos said, swinging the car keys around his finger and catching them in his hand.
Realizing that he meant right now, Romy reluctantly left the pasta, wiping her mouth on a towel on the cooker rail, and followed the girls along the corridor and down the front steps to a big
car with blacked-out windows. Carlos held open the door for her, looking nervously up and down the street.
Romy got in the back with the girls, who were all chattering in an Eastern European language she could only make out the odd word of. Where were they going? Who had given that girl a black eye?
Why didn’t she seem to care? And why did another one not mind her dimpled thighs showing?
But they all ignored her and instead Romy looked out of the window, her eyes feasting on all the London sights she’d been longing to see – the red buses, the phone boxes, the tall
plane trees. There was even a royal horse . . . Oh, and that must be Buckingham Palace, she thought, twisting in her seat as Carlos drove down a wide avenue. If only Ursula could see
this
.
Everything was so shiny here, Romy thought, staring out at the colourful hoardings advertising gorgeous Max Factor lipsticks. If only she were rich enough to buy one of them. Or to shop in the
stores, she thought, her hand going to the glass window as they passed a huge music store, the windows filled with pictures of Whitney Houston and Prince.
Soon they crossed a river and, just as she was expecting more sights, the city seemed to change. The tall buildings gave way to streets of shabby-looking crammed-together houses and grim-looking
tower blocks. Litter was piled up in the gutter and soon there was a row of boarded-up shops covered in graffiti. Two African-looking black children were fighting on the street.
By the time they’d stopped, ten minutes later, Romy’s nails were digging into the car seat. They pulled up on the kerb outside a house with a bump. A grey mesh grille covered every
window. The door was steel and heavily bolted.
‘Your first time?’ one of the girls asked her, in English as heavily accented as Paulo’s and Carlos’s. Romy stepped, shivering, onto the pavement and nodded, wrapping her
arms around her mesh top.
‘Don’t talk to her,’ Carlos said from the front.
Inside was a large open-plan sitting room with chunky black-leather seats filled with men. Romy coughed. She was used to smoke, but nothing like this. The air smelt acrid. She looked across at a
black man in a hat sitting by a table. He had a yellow plastic frisbee in front of him piled high with what looked like green weed. He nodded, as if he knew her, and Romy quickly turned away,
watching as the girls arrived, their high heels clicking against the steel-capped stairs.
Carlos smiled at Romy, but his eyes were no longer friendly, giving her no choice but to move ahead and follow them. At the top of the first flight of stairs he grabbed her arm. ‘You. In
here. Room two.’
There was a door reinforced with plywood. A green light shone above it.
He pushed her inside. He closed the door and Romy felt as if prison bars had clanked shut.
Panicking, she backed up against the wall.
How could she have been such a fool? She should never have got in that car with Carlos. What other kind of work did she think was available to penniless illegal immigrants? So what if Carlos
been kind to her? He’d just assumed her to be a prostitute all along. From the second Paulo had dropped her off at Carlos’s flat.
She clawed at her hair, a growl of frustration escaping her.
After everything . . .
everything
she’d been through, she’d walked into
this
? She’d killed Fox to defend herself and Claudia, she’d lied to Ursula, escaped
to Britain, putting her life at risk, enduring a horrendous journey, and now she’d walked in here?
Desperately she looked around. There was a bed with a stained purple cover, a cracked basin next to it and a red scarf over the lamp. A joss-stick burnt on the bedside table, filling the air
with the sickly smell of patchouli. There were thick bars over the window and the frame was bolted. She flung open the door next to her and saw a small windowless bathroom with a toilet and little
shower cubicle. No way out there, either.
Suddenly the door opened and a man came in. He was tall, with a tattoo of a bird on his neck.
‘Carlos says you’re new. The German chick, right?’ he said, baring crooked brown teeth. ‘I’m Jimmy.’ He pulled a note out of his pocket, put it on the bedside
table and tapped it with his finger. ‘So come on. Let’s see what you’re made of.’
He grinned at Romy and cast his eyes down at the bed and then back at her.
She glanced at the door, then back at Jimmy. Then she looked at the bin. Could she swing it at his head? But Jimmy was too big. And he was moving towards her.
Later, sore and sickened, Romy stumbled through the dark streets. All the girls had left the house barely two hours after they’d arrived. No one had said anything to her,
or acted as if anything important had happened at all.
She’d taken her chance, telling Carlos she was going to be sick so that he’d unlock the car doors. As soon as he had, she’d made a break for it, jumping out of the car by a big
set of traffic lights near the river. The other girls had screamed as Romy had leapt from the car, dodging through lanes of traffic to the central reservation, where she’d tripped over the
kerb, skinning her knees. She hadn’t cared if she’d been run over – only that she got away.
Carlos had shouted after her, and for a second she thought he would run her down, but the other traffic had been blaring its horns at him. She’d watched the car roar away into the
distance.
Now, as she stumbled along the kerb in her high heels, her bruised knees smarted, and her palms were bleeding and gritty. She ached to be back with Ursula. Ursula who had loved her.
Shivering in the cold night, she followed the meandering path of the river. Several times cars slowed down and pulled alongside her as she stumbled along the pavement. Each time Jimmy’s
face loomed in her mind. She thought about that creaky bed and his heavy weight on top of her. How she’d closed her mind, shut herself away in a tiny place, imagining that she was back in the
crate, as he’d thrust inside her. How he’d laughed afterwards, and Carlos had come in and taken the money from the bedside and told her they were leaving for another house. How Romy had
known then that she’d rather kill him than let him make her do that again.
Romy turned south away from the river, her eyes scouring the ground for coins, but before long she was in some sort of concrete underpass. In the middle of it, a fire in an oil drum illuminated
people warming themselves around it. Romy stared at their hollow, hungry faces.
How could this be? People in London didn’t starve, did they? People were rich. Why were all these people here? Living in cardboard boxes? It was like the kind of post-apocalyptic scene
everyone had been dreading since the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl had released its radioactive cloud. She thought she’d escaped all that when she’d left Berlin. But here . . . this
was horrible.
Her heels echoed through the tunnel. Jeers and whispers prickled her from the darkness as she stumbled past the people. She felt terror rising up in her as she hugged her arms around her thin
mesh top. Terror that her bravado had deserted her. That her luck had finally run out. She had no means of survival. She was in a strange city, where she knew nobody and had nothing. She’d
starve on the street. She’d have to live rough, like those people in the underpass. Or freeze to death. Whichever came first.
Maybe she should go back to Carlos. Say sorry. Tell him she’d work for him. Maybe that was the only choice. Maybe she couldn’t escape her fate. Maybe those photos in Lemcke’s
office were where she’d been heading all along.
Shivering uncontrollably now, she half-walked, half-ran out of the underpass towards a big building with a clock above its wide-open entrance. She headed up the steps and inside into the comfort
of the brightly lit train station. The black boards above her head clattered as the destinations changed.
She walked on, looking at the commuters, and stopped by the entrance to some sort of underground train system. She saw that to reach it you had to first pass through a row of electronic gates
with some kind of ticket that she didn’t have. Not that she had an idea where she would go, if she did. But the thought of being on an underground train, like the one she’d seen on that
TV show
Hill Street Blues
in the guards’ office back at the factory, was tempting. She could ride round and round and fall asleep. At least it would be warm.