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

extraordinary. I was like a spoilt child, forever getting into huffs about things and telling Erion it was all over, although they never lasted longer than a day; then he’d come back and I’d cry and tell him I loved him and was sorry. I should have realised, though, that you can’t keep stamping on something over and over again and expect it not to at least change its shape, even if it doesn’t actually disintegrate into a thousand shattered pieces.
    It was during one of our day-long break-ups that I started a new job, and when my co-workers asked if I had a boyfriend, I said, like Judas, ‘No.’ When Erion and I got back together again the next day, I would have felt stupid telling them I’d lied and that I did have a boyfriend after all. And, in any case, it didn’t really come up in conversation again. So whenever Erion phoned me at work, I’d text him and tell him: ‘I can’t talk right now. I’ll phone you later.’ He must have known I was lying and he must have been really hurt and wondered why. But I couldn’t help myself: there was something perverse and self-destructive in me that made it impossible for me to accept the fact that my life with Erion was happy and he loved me, although Iknow now that I wasn’t as horrible to him as I blame myself for being and that, in reality, we were happy together most of the time.
    Although we had our own flats, Erion spent most nights at mine – letting himself in with his key after he finished work at the club in the early hours of the morning – and I slept better knowing he was beside me. He cared about me and took care of me in the way that John had tried to do in the early days of our relationship but without doing the ‘paternal disapproval’ thing I’d learned to hate. And I am ashamed that I didn’t always appreciate it at the time. For example, one morning, I had an appointment at the dentist and my mum picked me up just before 9 o’clock to drive me there. Erion had taken me to a previous appointment, but this one was early, when he’d normally be asleep after his night at the club, and Mum had offered to take me instead.
    The dental practice was in a part of town I didn’t know, and although I thought I’d remember the way from the last time I’d been, I didn’t seem to recognise any of the streets when we got there. It was a rough area and as I directed us down the same street for the third time, some of the people standing at a bus stop turned to watch us and I could sense my mother’s anxiety.
    â€˜How can you have forgotten the way?’ she wailed, reaching out her right hand as she spoke and pressing the central door lock. ‘This is a horrible area. We can’t keep driving round and round in circles. We’re already drawingattention to ourselves. For heaven’s sake, Sophie, think! Which way do we go?’
    â€˜I don’t know, Mum,’ I answered. ‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t know where we are. I’ll phone Erion.’
    He answered the phone on the second ring, his voice husky with sleep.
    â€˜We’re lost,’ I told him tearfully. ‘We’ve been driving up and down the same streets and I can’t find the dentist.’
    â€˜It’s okay, Sophie,’ he said, immediately wide awake. ‘Just tell me where you are.’
    â€˜I don’t know where we are!’ I cried. ‘I don’t recognise anything .’
    â€˜Well, tell me what you can see then,’ he said. ‘Just tell me what’s in the street around you.’
    So I described the large, square, red-brick Victorian building with its metal-shuttered windows and the litter-strewn patch of grass beside a small tarmac-covered play area on which stood a rusty swing and a battered seesaw. Erion made a small triumphant sound and said, ‘I know where you are. Stay there and I’ll be with you in 10