Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade Read Online Free PDF

excitement to notice.
    â€˜He’s from Albania!’ I exclaimed.
    â€˜So?’ Kas seemed almost angry. ‘Why would you think that it would make me glad to know you’re going out with someone and that he’s from Albania?’
    He had never spoken to me in such a sharp tone before and for a moment I was taken aback, and then disappointed by his coldness and lack of interest.
    â€˜But I thought you’d be pleased for me,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be as amazed as I was that he’s the same nationality as you are. How many people in England know anyone from Albania, let alone have a best friend and a boyfriend from there? Kastriot? Are you still there? I don’t understand why you’re not happy for me. You’ve always told me I can talk to you about anything and I thought you’d be happy because I’m happy.’
    And then it struck me that maybe he was jealous. When he’d said he loved me in the text he’d sent me at the start of our friendship, I’d been certain he was joking – for humorous/dramatic effect – and I’d never taken it seriously at all. But now I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment at the thought that perhaps there’d been at least a bit of truth in what he’d said.
    It was an idea that was confirmed a moment later when he told me, ‘I do want to see you happy, but not with another man. I do not want you to rub it in my face that someone else is taking you out and sleeping beside you in your bed.’
    But for some reason I didn’t seem able to absorb what Kas was telling me, perhaps because I didn’t want to believe it was true. I didn’t think about him like that at all; he was my best friend and I didn’t want to accept that he might care about me in any other way because that would mean we’d lose the friendship we had. I was like a child, so focused on myself and on my own little world that I simply closed my mind to the fact that he might be hurt by mynews. Because I was irritated with him for not reacting the way I’d wanted and expected him to, I didn’t text him for the next few days. When he phoned me again and was his usual cheerful, supportive self, he was the first to mention Erion, and I felt an enormous sense of relief at the idea that, having thought about it, he’d realised our relationship was purely plutonic and that we were just good friends.
    If I’d tried to imagine the man I’d fall in love with, I don’t think I’d have come up with someone as wonderful as Erion. He was amazing, and when I look back on that time now, I can’t believe I didn’t recognise exactly what I had and that, instead of doing everything in my power to make him happy, I was sometimes unkind to him.
    I know it sounds like a pathetic excuse to say I blame my father for the way I sometimes treated Erion, but in some respects I do. Every child wants – and has a right to expect – parents who love them, but when I was a child it seemed there was nothing I could do to make my father love me . So, eventually, I gave up trying. I told myself I’d accepted the fact that he didn’t care about me and I stopped attempting to win his affection and approval. In reality, however, I never really came to terms with the way he let me down – and I still haven’t, if I’m honest. It was more than just letting me down, though: he hurt me deeply, and then he abandoned us all and showed very clearly by his words and actions that he had never cared about any of us.
    So, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I think I was always testing Erion’s love for me, stretching the bond that tied us together until it almost reached breaking point. Poor Erion must have wondered what on earth was the matter with me and why I kept pushing him away when it was clear to him – as it should have been clear to me – that what we had together was