I started shaking from head to foot as he led Charlene out of the bedroom then came back on his own. ‘What are you going to do to me?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything.’
I turned the other way so I didn’t have to look at his pasty white skin and sticking-out ribs. His willy was sticking out as well and I certainly didn’t want to look at that.
‘You shouldn’t be scared of me,’ he said, sitting down beside me. ‘I’ve got lots of friends your age who come to visit me at the flat here and we have a great time. They play computer games and tell me about what they’re doing at school. Maybe you could play on the computer later. Would you like that?’
‘OK,’ I said quietly.
‘There’s one girl who used to come round most days and I really love her. She’s very pretty and such a nice girl.’ He stroked the side of my face with his fingers. ‘You’re pretty too. In fact, you’re beautiful.’ I pulled away but he just moved closer and carried on stroking my face. ‘So you see you shouldn’t be scared of me. You’ll have a very nice time here. All the children like playing with me.’
‘Charlene and I just want to go home,’ I told him.
‘You will. I’ll take you home later. I just want to get to know you a little better first.’
He started stroking my hair and then he untied my hands. I sat up and rubbed my wrists to get the circulation back. ‘Why don’t you lie down? You’ll be much more comfortable.’
‘I don’t want to lie down.’ I wriggled with unease, trying to get away from his stroking hand.
‘Go on,’ he urged, and he pulled me up the bed, then pushed me down onto the pillows and lay beside me. I could smell his stale, horrible breath and the stink of his armpits.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked him. ‘It’s not nice to kidnap people and stop them from going home.’
‘It’s not my fault,’ he said. ‘If your parents would just pay the ransom you could go straight away.’
‘Have you really asked them? Who did you talk to?’
‘I talked to your mum. She said it was OK if you stayed here for a while.’
‘That’s rubbish.’ I knew he was lying now. Mum had always told me about not talking to strange men or getting in their cars or anything like that. ‘You’re lying!’
He was stroking my back. ‘Stop it! No!’
‘Come on, Lisa.’ His hand started to move further down. I pressed my legs firmly together, scared he was going to try to do what he had done to Charlene.
‘Please leave me alone,’ I begged, trying to wrap myself up in the quilt. Suddenly I started thinking about Nan and Granddad. I wished with all my heart that they were there. They were the people I felt safest with in the world. Even though they had divorced years ago when my mum was a baby, they still got on well and Nan would sometimes pop round to his house while I was there. She was a taxi driver and if she needed a wee when she was out on duty she would just come in to use his loo. I liked it that they were still so friendly.
Alan had got under the quilt and he caught hold of my hand and put it on top of his willy. ‘Hold me,’ he instructed, but I jerked my hand away, revolted. I couldn’t believe he wanted me to touch that thing.
‘No, I don’t want to.’
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he started telling me again. ‘I could really fall for you.’ Then he grabbed my hand and tried to force it onto him. We tussled like that for ages, with him grabbing my hand and me saying ‘No!’ and pulling away and for a while he seemed so pathetic that I almost wasn’t scared of him any more.
Then he leaned over for a pot of Vaseline or something and at once I felt scared. I knew what he was going to do now – Charlene had warned me. I was horrified at the thought that he might try and push that thing in me. He smeared the grease over his fingers and then started rubbing it between my legs. I struggled to get away. ‘Leave me alone!’ I shouted, wanting to cry. ‘I’m not going to do it with you. I’m not going to let you rape me.’
It was useless resisting because he was just too strong for me. He rolled on top of me and my nose was squashed up against his chest just near his horrible armpit smell. His skin was all hot and clammy. When he forced my legs apart and put his willy in between them, I screamed blue murder and struggled with all my strength.
‘You’re hurting me!’ I yelled. ‘Stop it!’
He paused for a moment and put on more Vaseline.
‘Doesn’t it hurt you too?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. A bit,’ he said.
‘So why are you doing it? Just stop.’
He ignored me and started trying to push it in again so I started screaming the place down. He put his hand over my mouth to shut me up and that was even more terrifying because I really couldn’t breathe. I soon realised that I would have to stop struggling and screaming and let him do what he wanted because otherwise I might suffocate. I didn’t want to die.
I lay very still after that and kept quiet except when I couldn’t stop myself from crying out with pain. He went on trying to force himself into me. Tears were streaming down my cheeks but he completely ignored that. He didn’t care about me at all. He wouldn’t care if I suffocated. I meant nothing to him.
I made all sorts of promises in my head while I was lying there. If only it would stop and he would let us go, then I wouldn’t fight with my brother and sister any more. I’d just let them take my money if they wanted to. I’d never be mean to anyone at school and I’d do all my schoolwork without complaining. I’d stop talking in class. I’d be the perfect daughter and granddaughter and sister and friend. I’d do anything it took just to get out of there.
When he had finished, I could feel sticky stuff all over my tummy. What on earth was that? It didn’t feel greasy like the Vaseline. He lay cuddling me and suddenly I felt more angry with him than anything else. I think I could have killed him at that moment if I’d had a gun in my hand. He started telling me I was beautiful again and I completely ignored him, pulling my head away when he tried to stroke my face. At last he let me get up and pull the t-shirt on again and took me back through to where Charlene was sitting on the sofa. When he untied her hands, they were purple with great big grooves on her wrists that looked very sore.
‘I’m going to have a bath,’ he said. ‘You girls stay right there and don’t move.’
As soon as he left the room Charlene whispered, ‘Are you OK? Did he do it?’
‘He tried to. I don’t know if he did or not.’ I was still a bit puzzled about what exactly happened in rape and unsure about whether that’s what he had done to me. ‘It really hurt, like you said.’
‘Guess what?’ She couldn’t contain her excitement. ‘We were on the telly!’
‘Really? What did it say?’ I was suddenly filled with hope.
‘It was on the news. It said we’ve been missing since yesterday morning and the police and the army are looking for us. But some idiot at school told them that we were talking about running away to London to go to my mum’s grave so they’re looking up there.’
‘Who would say that? You’ve never talked about going to your mum’s grave.’
‘That’s because she doesn’t even have one.’ Charlene rolled her eyes. ‘But I’m just worried that they’re looking for us in the wrong place so they won’t find us. They said there was a sighting of us on a bus in Plumstead.’
‘Maybe we could be in London,’ I suggested. ‘Not on a bus, obviously, but he was driving for ages so we could be.’
We both thought about that for a while. Charlene got up to have another look out the window but there was nothing to see except bare tree branches and high-rise apartment blocks against a cloudy grey sky. ‘If it is London, it’s not a bit of London I know,’ she said finally.
‘I wonder if there’s something with his address on it somewhere.’ I got up and we both started poking around in all the junk he had left lying about, trying to find a letter or an official form or something that would tell us where we were. There were all kinds of ornaments made out of wood and glass, of little people and animals. Not nice ornaments, though; you wouldn’t want them in your own house. They were just junk like you’d find in a jumble sale.
‘Let’s go and have a look in the kitchen,’ I suggested. ‘If he asks what we’re doing, we could just say we wanted a drink of water.’
‘OK, but quietly,’ Charlene said.
We crept through to the kitchen, which had beige Formica units, a sink and a cooker and fridge. She started looking in all the drawers while I got two glasses out of a cupboard and ran water into them.
‘Look! All the cutlery’s gone.’ She pointed into the drawer. ‘There’re only a couple of spoons. He must have hidden the knives and forks in case we attacked him with them.’ She opened the drawer below the cutlery one and pulled out a letter. ‘Hah!’ She showed it to me. ‘Alan Hopkinson is his name, and the address is Kingfisher Drive, Eastbourne.’
I went to have a look. Charlene was repeating it to herself quietly, over and over. She whispered, ‘I’m memorising it so we can tell the police.’
‘Eastbourne’s not so far,’ I said hopefully. ‘It’s not even half an hour away in the car.’
I opened the fridge but there was nothing at all inside it. All I found in the cupboards was one sachet of Hot and Sour Cup-a-Soup. It didn’t look as though he was planning on feeding us.
There was a splashing sound from the bathroom then we heard the plug being pulled out. He must be getting out of the bath. Charlene put the letter back where she had found it and, clutching our glasses of water, we scurried back through to the sitting room. We were sitting quietly on the sofa when he came in, dressed in a shirt and trousers and those moccasin slippers, his hair all wet and combed down neatly.
‘I’ve decided I’m going to take you home later,’ he announced, ‘but not until it starts to get dark. What do you want to do this afternoon? Do you want to play a computer game?’
‘OK,’ I said hesitantly. I didn’t want to accept any favours from him, but I thought that maybe there might be more clues in the computer room about who he was and why he had taken us.
‘Come on then.’ He held out his hand to me. Charlene stood up as well but he said, ‘No, you have to come through one at a time.’
I didn’t want to go on my own but he took my hand and pulled me out through the hall to the computer room. It was tiny, like a box room, and it was full of cardboard boxes and piles of papers and junk. I was peering around trying to see if there was a telephone – surely he must have a phone somewhere in the flat – but I couldn’t see one. He switched the computer on and it flickered to life but it was a very old one with a black-and-white screen and the keyboard was filthy. He sat down in front of it then lifted me so that I was sitting on his lap, which I hated. I squirmed to try and get off.
‘We won’t be able to play together if you don’t sit on my lap,’ he said, ‘because I don’t have another chair. I’ve got a Tarzan game. My son loves playing Tarzan with me.’
‘Are you married?’ I asked timidly.
‘Yes.’
‘Where’s your wife?’ I had this sudden flash of hope that if his wife came home, she would be sure to set us free.
‘She doesn’t live here. We’re separated and she lives with my son.’
‘Oh,’ I said, disappointed.
He set up the game and I started playing with him but all the time I just wanted to get off his lap and go back to Charlene. It was a boring game where a little man was climbing trees collecting things. I looked around at the papers on the floor and on the shelves beside us but couldn’t really read anything. There were pages from maps, and some hand-drawn diagrams with arrows. He saw me looking at the maps and pulled a piece of paper on top of them.
‘I know where you live,’ he told me. ‘I’d been watching you before.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re so pretty.’ He stroked my face again and I wriggled to try and get off his lap.
I felt creeped out by the idea he had been watching me when I didn’t know he was there. I found him utterly disgusting and couldn’t bear being close to him. ‘I don’t want to play any more,’ I said.
He sounded a bit disappointed but he let me go. ‘OK. Go and ask Charlene if she wants to play instead.’
I went to the sitting room door and asked her, but she shook her head. I relayed this back. ‘Are you still going to take us home when it gets dark?’ I asked.
‘I said I would, didn’t I?’
I went back to pass this news on to Charlene. ‘I think we’ll be home for tea tonight,’ I whispered, and we grinned at each other. Supermarket Sweep was on the TV and we watched the contestants trying to fill their trolleys.
‘I’m going to have loads of sweets later,’ I said. ‘Maybe we could go and get Pick ‘n’ Mix.’
We giggled, both cheered up by the news that we were going home. I don’t know why we believed him after he’d lied to us so many times before, but we did. It made us feel happier; the thought of spending another night in that dark, smelly flat was too awful to cope with. I had a big lump in my throat, as if a stone was lodged in there and it made me want to cry all the time. I decided to try and save my tears until I was bursting in my front door at home and running up to give my dad a big hug. Until then, I had to be strong. I had to try not to break down. Surely it wouldn’t be much longer.