Chapter 45 #2
‘OK, I’ll tell you, but just you,’ she said firmly. ‘And I ain’t making no statement.’
‘That’s fine,’ Sarah said quickly. ‘I won’t ask you to do that.’
‘Turn your phone off.’
Sarah took her phone out of her pocket and pointed it so that Phillipa could see there were no open apps.
‘I can switch it off if you want me to, but I don’t like doing that in case my partner calls.
You mind if I put it on DND instead? He knows to call three times if it’s urgent, then the call gets through.
Ben used to have fits,’ she explained. ‘I had to rush him to hospital more than once.’
‘It’s OK,’ Phillipa said gently. ‘Leave it on.’
Sarah slid the phone across the table. Phillipa picked it up, inspected it, then slid it back.
‘What’s his name?’ asked Sarah.
‘We all knew him as Mitch. I honestly can’t tell you his real name. We hated him. All of us. He was an arrogant piece of shit. He was known for smacking the girls about.’
‘You mean … he used prostitutes?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And he hurt them?’
Phillipa nodded.
‘And he hurt you?’
‘Not me. Not then. Not like that.’ There was a moment’s silence while she studied her fingernails.
‘But yes, I was on the game. At that time, I wasn’t doing well.
I was on the street for the first time and I was smoking a lot to deal with it and so I needed the money, but I never went with him, especially not after I heard about what he was into.
I was only twenty-two at the time. I was the baby of us all, you could say.
I was pretty then, too, believe it or not.
I had the face, I had the figure, and there were better options for me. ’
‘Did he ask for you?’
‘Oh yeah. All the time. But the other girls, they looked out for me. Geri … she was this gorgeous woman. She always stepped in and told him I was unavailable, or that I was already taken. She was like a mum to me. They all were, all them girls, to be honest. We were like a family.’ She looked wistful.
‘Anyway, it was really late one night.’ She glanced up at Sarah.
‘Or early, depending on the hours you keep. About five, I think it was. I met with a punter who liked to do it before he went to work. Worked in the City or something, said it set him up for the day. Anyway, he took me somewhere near that road.’
‘Blenheim Road?’
‘Yeah. And then he refused to pay me. He gave some excuse, I can’t remember what it was.
All I remember is that I was in a state.
I told him I needed my fix and we got into an argument, and he drove off.
I started walking home. I was proper clucking.
I had a screwdriver on me, which I used to take for protection and partly for … well, you know. Just in case.’
‘In case?’
‘In case I needed money. Cars, mostly. That’s what I did. You just looked to see what was there. A wallet or a pair of sunglasses or something you could sell. Sometimes the radio, if it was a good one.’
‘So why that house?’
‘Completely random,’ she said. ‘It was a nice street and they hadn’t closed the curtains, and I got curious.
I went down the path and looked in. I was on the eye out for a handbag or a wallet, but then I saw the TV.
It was just a small one, a twenty-six-inch, not like the huge ones you get now, but it was a flat screen, so it was worth something and I knew it weren’t going to be heavy.
At the time, I knew a bloke who could shift them, so I went down the path and round the back and … well, you know the rest.’
‘Except you got caught?’
Phillipa made a sorry face. ‘It was the TV. Sold it to my mate, got my fix, next thing I know my mate got caught and they traced it back to me. It had my prints all over it, of course.’
‘They had hard evidence it was you?’ Sarah felt a jolt of pure shock.
‘I was quick, but I weren’t no professional. When you’ve got a habit, you’re not thinking about what happens if you get caught. You’re just hoping you can get your next fix before they catch up with you.’
‘But you were never arrested?’
Phillipa took her tobacco pouch out of her pocket. ‘Well, that depends on what you mean by being arrested.’
Sarah stared at her, confused.
‘I bet he couldn’t believe his luck when he found out whose prints he had,’ Phillipa said.
‘Mitch?’
‘I bet he thought it was his lucky day. He’d been asking for weeks for me to go with him, and I’d always made an excuse.
’ Phillipa sighed. ‘Anyway, he came and found me, made sure he got me on my own. I was outside the public toilets off Streatham High Road when he turned up, said he was going to have to arrest me. I asked him what for. He said, “You know what for.” And then he reminded me that I was already on a suspended sentence, I think it was, or that this burglary was my third strike, or … I can’t fully remember which, but then he said it was going to the Crown Court and I wasn’t getting out for a couple of years, and I knew he was right.
And I really didn’t want to go back inside.
But then he started smiling, and he leaned forward and said in my ear, “Of course, you could just play nice.” He said he could make it all go away, “as long as we’re friends”, he said. ’
She began to roll another cigarette and Sarah could see her hands were shaking.
‘I couldn’t speak at first. I didn’t want to go back to prison, but I didn’t want his hands on me neither. I’d heard the stories about him. I’d seen the bruises. I had heard he liked to choke you when he was doing it.’
Sarah felt her pulse quicken. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Well, I was too scared to say much. And then he said, “I’m being nice to you. You could at least thank me.” And so I said, “Thank you,” and he said, “Not like that.”’
‘So …?’ Sarah prompted.
‘So I told him I’d rather eat shit. And that’s when his face turned like …
like I’ll never forget. Dark. Angry. Like …
well, like he wanted to kill me. He said, in this horrible, nasty voice, “Well, that can be arranged.” Then he took out his handcuffs and he grabbed hold of me and he put one cuff on and then he yanked me hard and smashed my face up against the wall of the toilets and then he handcuffed me from behind.
And then he did the police caution and everything, like it was all official or something, and for a moment, I thought it was.
I started to go with him, thinking we were going to his car, but then he suddenly turned and dragged me in the direction of the toilets and before I could even scream out, we were inside and he had locked us both in a cubicle.
Then he pushed some kind of rag into my mouth and then he shoved my head down the toilet and flushed it until I was soaking and could hardly breathe, and then he yanked my trousers down and he raped me.
And …’ She paused, visibly shaking, and Sarah reached out a hand and touched her arm.
‘And then … the rest,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to know the rest. But suffice to say, it’s what people do in toilets. ’
Sarah closed her eyes.
‘And then he made it all go away. Not sure how. Didn’t ask. Didn’t care, if I’m honest. By then, he’d hurt me so badly, it was all I could do to stay alive, to put one foot in front of the other.’
‘And no one witnessed this?’
She shook her head. ‘One or two of the smokers came in as we were coming out and he made it seem legit, like he was arresting me. He took me to his car, and then he looked over both shoulders and he took the cuffs off and said if I told anyone, he would come back and finish me off. He said he would make it look like an accident. He said that accidents happened to smackheads all the time. He said no one would believe me, anyway. He said I was just a dirty little junkie whore and who were people going to believe, me or him?’
‘Did you tell the girls?’
Phillipa shook her head. ‘I didn’t tell a soul.
I was petrified of him. They all saw the bruises on my forehead and I just said I’d picked a bad punter, and I think they wondered who it was, but my business was my business.
That’s how it was. As time went on, I realised that he’d had what he wanted and that as long as I kept my mouth shut, he wasn’t going to bother me no more.
It took a long time, though. For months, I couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time. ’
Sarah swallowed. ‘I understand that your word would mean nothing against his. I understand his power. I know how these things work. But the problem we’ve got is that twenty years on, he’s still out there, and, Phil, you won’t be the only person he’s hurt.’
Phillipa heaved a long sigh. ‘If there’s other girls, then why haven’t they come forward?’
‘Same reason as you, I expect.’
‘Well, there you go. And if you’re looking for a statement, you’ll have to find someone else, someone with more credibility, because you know as well as I do that he was right about one thing. No one is ever going to believe me.’
‘I believe you,’ Sarah said.
Phillipa shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I’m not putting myself through that again.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’
‘I do. And I’m so, so sorry for what you went through. For what it’s worth, I think you’re incredible.’ She reached out a hand and touched Phillipa’s arm. ‘I just wanted to tell you that. And I wanted to tell you how amazing it is that you’ve managed to get off the crack.’
‘Got to admit,’ Phillipa said. ‘It ain’t been easy. Especially at times like this.’
Sarah heaved a sigh. ‘I know.’
Phillipa raised a brow. ‘Do you?’
‘Well, I know how much I want a glass of wine when I’ve had a hard day,’ Sarah said. ‘If I had your life, well … I think I’d want whatever it was that would make it all go away.’
‘I bet it’s hard with your kid,’ Phillipa said.
‘And that is what’s special about you. Even in the middle of everything that’s going on … even in the middle of what you’ve just been telling me, you can still imagine what it’s like for me. That’s why you’re going to stay off it this time and fight for your kids.’
Phillipa shrugged. ‘I’m trying. One day at a time, right?’
‘Yeah. One day at a time.’