I was happy that year. I’d been living with Dad for eight months, and had settled down well. Philomena was very sweet to me at first, even though she grumbled all the time about Dad spoiling me. Then I think she began to resent the fact that she didn’t get as much time on her own with him. Instead of him taking her out to do adult things when he had time off, they had to choose days out that I would enjoy, such as theme parks or fairgrounds. Sometimes I heard them arguing, and Phil would tell Dad that he was spoiling me, and I’d hear him say to her, ‘Have a heart! Think of what the kid’s been through, for Christ’s sake!’
Ceri-Jane was so much older than me that we didn’t become close, and I annoyed her by sometimes sneaking into her room and trying on her clothes and make-up – I was fascinated by all her big-girl things and wanted to try them out myself, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
It was always going to be difficult, Dad’s real daughter moving in with his new wife and teenage stepdaughter, but on the whole it wasn’t too bad. I was happy because I had my dad, and I had my new best friend, Lisa. If I wanted anything, I only had to ask Dad and he’d get it for me. Phil hadn’t wanted me to get a hamster because she said they were smelly but I insisted I would look after it all by myself and keep its cage clean, so Dad let me have one. It was a beautiful white and beige long-haired hamster, which I called Fluffy, and I took care of her, just like I’d promised.
I was enjoying school as well. We had a new teacher that year, a Canadian man called Mr Okrainetz. He was on an exchange scheme, and seemed much more enthusiastic and caring than our usual teachers. I liked him a lot. My favourite thing at school was when we were read stories, and he was especially good at that, putting on all the voices and making it sound more interesting with his funny accent.
On that Tuesday morning, it was quite cold and gloomy so I was wearing a black quilted coat over my school uniform. Actually, it was black on one side and blue on the other and you could wear it either way. I’d just got it for Christmas and was very pleased with it. Philomena was busy and couldn’t walk me to Lisa’s that day and I was running a bit late, so I phoned Lisa and asked her to walk up to meet me at the end of our close. When I hurried out, I could see her standing there in her orange quilted jacket and her little black school skirt, clutching her pink Spice Girls schoolbag.
‘Hiya!’ I called. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said, linking her arm through mine. A car went by us, and Lisa frowned. ‘I think that car’s following me. I’m sure I saw it before, outside our house.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I said, rolling my eyes. Why on earth would anyone want to follow Lisa? ‘Why don’t we take the short cut past the garage and we can get some sweets?’ I suggested. It wasn’t much of a short cut; the distance was probably much the same, but once we’d got onto Cornfield Terrace, just past the garage, we only had to walk all the way down it and we’d be at the school.
‘OK,’ she agreed.
I bought some Haribos, which I loved, and Lisa bought a Creme Egg and we were both munching them as we turned into Cornfield Terrace. The pavement there is quite narrow, and on the left side there are the backs of all the houses from the street one further down, with gates leading into the back gardens. On the right are the front gardens and front doors of the houses in that road. We walked past the church and the pub at the top of the road, then we had to walk in single file to fit onto the narrow pavement. Lisa was in front.
We’d gone about ten steps down the road when we came upon some black bin bags that had been ripped open, probably by seagulls. Smelly rubbish was scattered all over the ground: used teabags, bashed-up tin cans, cardboard boxes, scrunched tissues, mushy food leftovers that looked like sick. We tiptoed around it, holding our noses and giggling. Lisa turned to say something to me and I noticed she was about to stand on a squashed potato that had gone all green and mouldy so I shoved her out of the way and she stumbled onto the road just as a car came along. A turquoise car. The driver braked and swerved slightly to avoid hitting her, and I thought he looked a bit annoyed with us, although he didn’t beep the horn or anything.
‘Sorry!’ I said to Lisa. ‘But look at that yucky potato you nearly stood in.’
‘Eww, disgusting!’ she exclaimed and we both started laughing as if it was really funny.
‘What’s worse?’ I giggled. ‘Getting run over by a car or stepping on a mushy green potato?’
Further down the road, the turquoise car stopped and the driver got out. It crossed my mind that he might be coming back to tell us off but instead he walked around and opened his boot, peering inside it as if he was looking for something. He was very tall and seemed quite old. That must be his house, I decided. He lives there and he’s just getting something out of his boot to take inside.
Lisa and I were still giggling a bit as we reached him, but we stopped as he turned and came towards us.
‘Sorry about that, girls,’ he said, as he approached. ‘I’m really glad I didn’t hit you,’ he said to Lisa. ‘It wasn’t your fault, don’t worry about running into the road.’
‘It’s fine,’ she said.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
She nodded, then asked, ‘Do you have the time?’
He looked at his watch. ‘Twenty-five to nine.’
Something about him made me feel uneasy. ‘Come on, Lisa. We’re late,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to hurry up.’ We were supposed to be at school for quarter to nine and there was still quite a way to go.
I was starting to walk off when the driver put his arms around our shoulders. I didn’t like his arm on me but it seemed rude to push it off. I gave a weird little laugh and Lisa said ‘Yeah, OK,’ and then I felt his grip tightening.
‘Get in the car and do as I say,’ he hissed, his fingers digging into my collar.
Lisa started screaming and he clapped his hand over her mouth, still holding onto my shoulder. I just stood there, frozen. I didn’t do anything. I looked at Lisa and her face was going bright red from the effort of trying to scream with his big hand over her mouth, and she was struggling and kicking to get away. I didn’t kick or scream. I just stood there in complete shock.
He picked Lisa up easily because she was so little, and he threw her into the boot of the car. I could have run away at that point because he was only holding onto my coat, but I was stunned, like a rabbit in headlights. I couldn’t react. The only thought in my head was that I mustn’t abandon Lisa and leave her on her own with him. I had to stay with her and try to protect her.
I looked up and down the road. There were houses all the way along. Why hadn’t anyone come running out when Lisa screamed? Where were they all? Surely someone must be around at that time in the morning?
She was lying, stunned, on a tartan rug on the floor of his boot, staring up at me with big, terrified eyes.
‘Get in!’ the man urged, tugging at me, and I automatically lifted my leg and stepped into the boot. I just did it to stick with Lisa. I couldn’t leave her on her own like that.
‘What are you going to do with us?’ I asked.
And he said, ‘I want you for money. Do as you’re told,’ then he pushed me down and slammed the lid of the boot.
It was pitch black inside and we were crushed up against each other, side by side, with our faces touching. She was crying really hard, asking me over and over what was happening to us, her whole body shaking, and I could feel the wetness of her tears and snot on my cheek. I was still in shock, my heart beating hard and my head buzzing. We felt him getting into the car and heard the door shutting then the engine started and we were moving. Where on earth would he take us?
I lay still, frozen with shock for quite a while longer. I get asthma attacks sometimes but I’d left my inhaler at school the day before. What would I do if I had an attack in that boot?
Finally I spoke. ‘I know what he’s going to do,’ I said.
Lisa struggled to control her sobs and stammered, ‘Wh-what?’
‘He’s going to rape us and murder us,’ I said, and she gave a little scream and started crying even harder than before. I hadn’t meant to upset her. I just knew for sure that’s what it was all about. That’s what was going to happen.
I’d seen a turquoise car in my road that morning. It had been driving past when I came out of my house and I noticed the colour because it was quite bright and not a normal car colour. When I went up to meet Charlene I saw the same car again, this time going the way I was walking. But when I told her that I thought the car was following me and she dismissed it, I forgot about it. Charlene was right: that kind of thing only happened in films, not in our world. It was early morning and broad daylight and no one would ever dream anything bad could happen, especially in a tiny seaside resort like Hastings.
We walked up Church Road to the garage and turned down Cornfield Terrace and the car was still behind us, but I didn’t click that that was unusual. Now I realise that he must have been driving really slowly, waiting round the corner, watching us the whole time. It must have suited him right down to the ground when we turned into Cornfield Terrace, which is a quiet one-way street. He saw his opportunity and knew it was then, or never.
When Charlene pushed me into the road to avoid the potato and the turquoise car had to swerve to avoid me, I watched it continue down the road and I thought, Thank God that car’s gone. But then he pulled into a parking space up ahead and got out to open the boot, so I assumed he lived there. Char and I were still chattering and laughing about the potato and how disgusting it was so we didn’t say anything to each other about him.
As we got closer, he came over to us and apologised for nearly hitting me. My parents had always taught me to be polite, so I said that was OK. Then I asked him the time, just as a way to end the conversation, so we could say ‘We’d better go now.’
When he first put his arms around us, we gave each other an odd little grin, thinking it was some embarrassing grown-up joke and he was messing around with us. Then he suddenly said those terrifying words ‘Get in the car and do as I say,’ and everything changed. I started screaming and immediately he put his hand over my mouth. It was heavy and horrible, and shut off my screams and my breath. An instant later, he’d lifted me up without any trouble – I only weighed about four stone and he was a big, tall man so it was pretty easy for him – and went to throw me into the open boot of his car. I struggled hard, trying to kick my feet off the back of the car, but it did no good at all. He tossed me into the boot as if I was a bag of feathers. The shock made me stop screaming.
I stared out of the boot in utter panic. Charlene was standing there, looking back at me; she wasn’t doing anything and I couldn’t understand why. She seemed to be frozen to the spot, her eyes wide and staring. He yanked her coat and ordered her to get in, so she just got in beside me without a struggle. I heard him tell her that he wanted us for the money before the boot came down and we were trapped in total blackness.
The whole abduction probably only lasted thirty seconds.
In the darkness of the boot, I was completely hysterical, just sobbing with fear as the car started moving. Charlene wasn’t making any sound at all. She lay still beside me, with her arm around me and her face pressed against mine.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked her over and over again. ‘What’s going on?’
I was terrified but I didn’t know what of. I didn’t have a clue why he had grabbed us or what might happen. I was a naive little innocent, so when Charlene replied ‘He’s going to rape us and murder us’ I genuinely didn’t know what she meant. I knew what killing was, of course, but the word ‘rape’ meant nothing to me.
The worst things that had happened to me were my brother and sister stealing money from my penny pot or borrowing my clothes, or messing up my bedroom, which I hated. Whatever rape might be, I knew that I didn’t want to be murdered. I sobbed my heart out, scared and panicked. Charlene tried to calm me down.
‘Just keep quiet,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be okay.’
She stroked my hair then she started singing to me, a Sade song called ‘Your Love is King’. It was very stuffy in the boot and it smelled of petrol and old rubber. There was a picnic rug beneath us with a scratchy texture. The man who had grabbed us put the car stereo on at some point and we could hear a DJ nattering away, but Charlene still kept singing quietly to me until my sobs subsided into a kind of hiccupping. I clung on to her, and I clutched my schoolbag and I began to wonder what everyone at school would think. What would they say when our names were read out at registration and we weren’t there?
‘I just wanna go to school,’ I moaned.
‘We’ll be back there soon,’ she comforted me in a whisper. ‘It’ll be fine.’
But wherever the man was taking us, it certainly wasn’t to school. The journey went on for ages and soon it seemed as though we had been driving for hours and hours. I became worried that there wasn’t enough air and we might suffocate. We were cramped together very tightly and my leg began to go to sleep. We were shunted around every time the car turned left or right, or braked and came to a stop then started up again. After a while there was a different sensation, a feeling as though he had driven off the smooth road and onto a crunchy surface like gravel. I started to moan with fear and Charlene said ‘Shhh’.
The car stopped and we heard his door slam then seconds later the boot opened and daylight flooded in. Charlene and I cowered away from him, blinking hard. He grabbed hold of her coat and yanked her upwards.
‘Out you get!’ he said. ‘I need to have a chat with you.’
She climbed out of the boot, with him holding tightly onto her. I lay still, completely terrified, unable to utter a word.
‘You stay there,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’ Charlene caught my eye and gave me a worried look then he slammed the boot closed and I was back in the pitch dark again.
I began to moan to myself, tears streaming down my cheeks. Being left on my own was the worst thing I could imagine. If I had Charlene there, I could just about cope but without her I knew I would fall apart.
‘Please, please, please let her come back,’ I said over and over again in my head.
I heard the car door opening and felt the car sink down as they both got in, then I heard the murmur of their voices inside. His voice was louder. He was asking her questions but I couldn’t hear the answers because she was speaking very quietly.
At one point I heard him asking her address. Maybe she’ll talk him into taking us home, I thought. Or we could ask him to drop us off at school.
Then I had another thought. Perhaps he would let her go and hang onto me. It was me he had been following that morning before I even met up with her. It was me he’d been after. If I was left on my own with him, I didn’t know what I would do. I began to cry even harder, my whole body shaking and my eyes stinging with the floods of tears.
‘Please come back, Char,’ I sobbed out loud. ‘Please don’t leave me.’