Ana kept her eyes off Victor as he stepped from the bed and into his boxers and jeans. Just looking at his out-of-shape body was enough to cause revulsion to rise from within her, never mind when his sticky skin was pressed up against hers. She grabbed a cigarette from the bedside table and lit it up and took a huge inhale that sent her brain swimming – pleasantly – and which took just a tiny edge off her mood.
‘You remember how to do this?’ Victor said to her as he buttoned up his shirt.
She only looked back to him when she was sure he was properly dressed.
‘I remember,’ she said.
‘And no games. You’re there to make them feel comfortable. You do anything I don’t like… you know how it ends.’
She turned away from him. Yes, she knew what would happen. In the end, it always did.
Victor opened the front door and a blast of icy air smacked into Ana’s face. She didn’t even flinch. The pills dulled pretty much everything. Still, as she stepped outside she found herself pushing her head down into the fake fur collar of her coat – an instinctive reaction, and there was no doubt the soft fabric felt comforting on her skin.
Across the road, the front door of one of the houses opposite opened and the old woman who lived there – old? She was probably in her sixties, which to Ana, at least, was old – came out with her little yappy dog-cum-rat.
‘Morning,’ Victor shouted over as he and Ana made their way down the drive to his car. The lady – what was her name, anyway? – gave an unfriendly nod in return but said nothing. Her eyes locked with Ana’s. She saw nothing but contempt.
‘Good morning,’ Ana said when the woman reached the end of her drive.
The woman glowered, and muttered a response, then looked away and yanked on her dog’s lead. ‘Come on, Biffy.’
Ana clenched her teeth. She opened the back door and sat down in the seat. She guessed they’d be picking up Alex on the way and she knew her place.
‘Don’t let the old bitch bother you,’ Victor said as he fired up the engine and pulled out onto the road.
Ana didn’t reply.
‘She’s probably just surprised to see you back here after so long.’
No. It wasn’t that. Not exactly, anyway. When Ana had first come here, under Victor’s watch, she’d hated the locals. The sly looks, the dubious comments under their breaths. She’d felt unwanted, despised, targeted. But it was never about her, she now knew. It was never even about the fact that she was a Romanian. She’d soon realised this when she’d finally broken free; when she’d started a new life for herself in the North. Even in her short time there she’d found kindness, acceptance. Normality.
No, the ill-feeling here was all down to one thing, and one thing only. Victor.
That old woman… yes, it riled Ana that she still received such a cold reception, but then how many other women had towed behind Victor out of that house these past few years? Ana wasn’t the first, and she wouldn’t be the last, whatever her fate from here would be.
‘Your lack of communication is really starting to annoy me,’ Victor said, catching Ana’s eye in the rear-view mirror.
‘Sometimes I have nothing to say.’
‘Then you could at least look at me like I’m a normal person, and not some monster.’
But he was a monster. Did he really not see that?
‘I’m sorry for upsetting you,’ she said.
‘I never brought a girl back before.’
Ana was looking out of the window now as they drove along, the endless rows of featureless bricks and mortar passing by in a blur.
‘But then, I never had a girl before who I was actually happy to set free.’
Set free? Like she was a wild animal in captivity. And it wasn’t as if he’d open the door and let her leave. There’d been a bit more to it than that when she’d packed her bag and jumped on a train and somehow ended up in Liverpool. She’d begged and pleaded with him for weeks for a chance to lead her own life. When she’d first arrived in England, she’d just been another of Victor’s playthings. That had lasted for more than two years: Ana passed around like a piece of meat. But she’d become more than that. Victor had seen something in her. She’d become his girlfriend. Or at least his vision of a girlfriend. Because of what he called her savviness she’d even begun to help him organise the other girls. Not entirely against her will, either. Part of her hated herself for that, but being his sidekick was little more than self-preservation.
But he had let her go. After she’d caught him fucking other women for the… no, Ana couldn’t remember how many times. Too many times. She’d used that against him. He’d claimed he loved her, that he would do anything to keep her. She said if he truly loved her he’d let her be happy.
Eventually she’d left for Liverpool, not with a blessing but with some sort of acceptance.
At least for a few months.
‘I was never truly free.’ She could feel him, always. ‘You tracked me down and brought me back.’
‘I tried, Ana. I really tried. For you. I tried to give you what I knew you wanted.’ Victor pulled the car to the side of the road and Alex stepped from his house and headed towards them. ‘But I couldn’t do this without you, Ana. You belong with me.’
Victor held Ana’s arm so her heels didn’t slip on the icy tarmac as they walked from the car towards the front of the warehouse. When they stepped into the warm interior she saw that the large and mostly empty space was all set, with four of Victor’s men already hanging about, each standing casually by a parked car.
‘They’re only a minute away,’ one of the men called over. Ana didn’t know him. Other than Alex she didn’t know any of their names, even if some of the faces were vaguely recognizable. Quite frankly, she didn’t want to know, and actively sought to pay them as little attention as she could.
‘Come and stand with me,’ Victor said to Ana and the two of them set themselves up alongside Alex in the middle of the warehouse floor, facing towards the still closed loading doors.
Moments later Ana heard the rumble of a clattering diesel engine, and then there was a knock on the metal doors, hard enough to make the material rattle, the echo carrying around the large space.
The doors were pulled open and the minibus drove in, parking side on, facing towards Ana and Victor. The driver and front passenger both stepped out. The driver slid open the side door and one by one the bewildered-looking young women were shepherded out, huddling together.
Twelve in total. Ana looked over their faces. There wasn’t any real sign of fear yet. They were too young, too naïve, and had seen nothing to be fearful of thus far in their journey, though it was clear they were starting to question just what was happening.
Ana stepped forwards, tottering gracefully on her heels, hips swaying, her overcoat still on, but opened up to show off her long, slender body.
‘Welcome to England!’ she said, beaming a smile. That was enough to get the girls’ attention and they all turned towards her. ‘If you straighten yourselves into a line, we’ll take a look through your details and get you to your final destinations as soon as we can. My friends here will bring you a drink and a snack while you wait.’
As if on cue, two women who could well have stepped from a minibus like this one just a few days ago, came from the stairs carrying trays of juice and biscuits. A few of the women refused, most didn’t.
‘As you know we’ve already matched you to a job to suit each of you, and we’ve arranged your accommodation,’ Ana said. ‘From you now, we’ll need your passport and your mobile phones. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you were told, but your phones will be useless here.’
She gave the women the usual bullshit about how their phones from home would be cripplingly expensive. How the prepaid phones they would soon be given would be charge-free for them, as part of their work. A lie.
Ana went along the line with a big plastic box, and one by one took the phones, while alongside her the two women who’d brought the refreshments took passports and crossed the names off the bogus job lists in their hands.
With each phone Ana took, her heart rate ramped up a little more. Her eyes darted left, right. She risked a sneaky peek over her shoulder, too. There were plenty of eyes looking in her direction, but were Victor and the others really paying attention to Ana? No, she didn’t believe so.
Ana was standing in front of the third to last woman when she finally worked up the courage. She took the phone from the woman’s hand and clanked it down against the other phones in the box. But she didn’t release it. Instead she quickly scooped her hand out as she moved along to the next woman, and then sank it, and the phone, into the inside pocket of her coat.
She reached the next woman and their eyes met.
Had she seen?
Ana tried her hardest not to but she couldn’t resist looking behind her again. Victor was glaring at her coldly. But he said nothing, and was soon laughing at something Alex said to him.
Ana carried on with the remaining two girls then took the box of phones away and set it down on a table at the side of the warehouse. She walked back over to the women; they were looking far more apprehensive now, but wouldn’t do anything about it. Not so soon. They never did.
It was time to give them the biggest lie of them all. The one designed to make them forget all about the fact they’d just handed their freedom over to people they’d never met before.
‘As you know, you’ll be starting your new jobs very soon, but we don’t want you to have to worry about a thing here. That’s why each of you is getting a welcome bonus… one thousand pounds.’
The women looked stunned by that. They were muttering and chattering to each other as Ana carried on her patter and the wads of cash were handed out. Of course, the bonus was a smokescreen too. A sweetener to keep them onside, at least until they reached their final destinations. The money was real enough. What they didn’t know was that virtually every penny would be siphoned from them within the next twenty-four hours – accommodation, taxes, food, electricity. From then and thereafter, they’d never be left with more than a few paltry notes to their name. Within days they’d be desperately poor, even more so than they’d ever been back home, and entirely dependent on their handlers, but right now they still genuinely bought into the idea that they’d just arrived in some sort of paradise.
The whole process took less than thirty minutes. Ana continued as the perfect hostess, chatting individually to some of the newcomers, talking about why they’d come, where they’d come from, what they wanted to be when they were older. And giving in return an almost entirely fabricated version of her own life in the six years she’d been in England.
Before long, the by now even more nervous-looking women had been split into four groups, and each was with their chaperone by one of the parked cars.
Minutes later the warehouse was empty except for Ana, Alex and Victor.
Within a couple of hours the new women would all be at their new ‘homes’. Within a few more hours the reality of their new life would finally be sinking in, along with the first of the drugs, the first of the alcohol, and the first of the men.
Within a few days the women would wish they were dead.
‘You were amazing,’ Victor said to Ana with a devilish look in his eye.
‘That’s why I’m here after all,’ she said to him with a coy smile, and even though her words had sounded confident and playful, she felt nothing but wretched emptiness inside.