I was eight when it started. My uncle had moved in with us, my dad had moved out. Mum had already started her enthusiastic scramble into alcoholism. She embarked on her wine-drenched journey with relief, almost as soon as Dad’s car pulled away from the house. Anyway, she never gave a shit about me, and when Uncle Alf started taking me ‘out to play’ she barely looked up from her bottle.
It took a few months, and as I grew older, wiser, I recognised that it was that classic cliché of grooming.
He bought me new clothes – he bought me the princess dresses I craved, and gave me the brightly coloured sweets. He sat me on his knee to watch movies. Later he would show me his photography studio that he’d rigged up out the back, converting one of the run-down, rusty sheds behind the bungalow into a state-of-the-art facility.
I did what I was told under the bright lights, trying not to blink at the flash of the camera. I knew it was wrong – the way he looked at me, even before he started asking me to ‘model’. The vague sense of unease, the sick feeling in my stomach when he touched me became full-blown terror when he started making me undress for his ‘films’.
‘You’re special. People love you, and this will make the boys happy. You want them to be happy, don’t you? Because the boys will pay lots of money for these photos and films, and I’ll buy you more new dresses. Now just slip that dress over your shoulder and pull up the hem a bit more…’
On the outside, I managed to go to school, to play with my friends, to eat and drink, and occasionally sleep. Inside, the sick terror was replaced over time with a familiar, dull ache. My body was down below, under the heat and the lights, but I was soaring overhead, flying up, safe and untouched.
I found out later, that he used to drug me at first, just until he was sure I was obedient. By that time, he was taking me out on ‘trips into town’. He had business contacts in Cardiff, and we’d go up on the Friday evening, spend the weekend, and then come back late Sunday night.
He always had a lot of money for a part-time slacker who ‘did something in IT’, and I wanted so badly for someone to question it, to question me. But it never happened. Hell, Uncle Alf was a nice bloke, tall, burly and bearded, with a deep reassuring voice, and big rough hands. He even found time to coach the local football team, and he was on the Parish Council. Nobody would ever have suspected he led a double life as a paedophile.
Occasionally he would head down to his studio without me, and sometimes he took my friends. They would come back for tea, he’d give them a glass of squash, and they’d become all dreamy and cooperative. I’d sneak down after them and watch. I’m not sure why. I didn’t dare interfere, but I felt in some part of me that, if I was watching, I was looking out for them.
His business expanded, and I learned more. In Cardiff, we had secret meetings in grubby hotels. I learned that there are men and women who pay huge amounts of money for photographs and films of children, and Uncle Alf would introduce me as his special ‘golden girl’. Those present at these meetings would look at me with the same predatory hunger as he did. The sickness swirled, but I headed up to my safe place on the ceiling.
Hard copies of photographs or DVDs would be exchanged in sanitary white envelopes, but as time went on, and more opportunities presented themselves, I could see that very soon much of the actual trading was done online. The internet quickly became an integral part of the business growth. I watched, did what I was told, and waited.
‘Byddwch yn amyneddgar, Ava Cole, dwi bron wedi gorffen.’
‘Be patient, Ava Cole, I’ve nearly finished.’