Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade Read Free

doing anything else specifically for any of us, and I often wondered why my mother stayed with him.
    When she finally filed for divorce, protecting her children and escaping from my father’s relentless denigration were Mum’s main concerns. However, because money mattered so much to Dad, he couldn’t believe she wantednothing from him and he used to send her vicious text messages telling her he’d break her legs if she came after him for maintenance. He was angry with me as well – he always had been, for reasons I didn’t understand – and one of the last things he said to me, with his characteristic turn of phrase, was, ‘You’re dead to me. You can rot in hell for all I care. I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.’
    When our parents divorced, Jason continued to try to win Dad’s approval and was so full of hurt and anger that he was spinning dangerously out of control. Until quite recently, I’d have said that my father didn’t have any significant effect on my life – I told myself that as I didn’t really like him, I could live with the fact that he didn’t seem to love or care about me. I realise now, though, that being unloved by my own father not only made me feel unlovable, but also made me unsure about what loving someone really means, anxious about trusting anyone, particularly men, and afraid in case, like my father, I wasn’t able to form loving, stable relationships. I had an image in my mind of living in The Little House on the Prairie, where everything was perfect and people were always kind to each other, and I decided that if I couldn’t have that , I didn’t want anything at all.
    So perhaps it was surprising that I had any long-term relationships over the next few years. But I did – one with a man I loved and one with someone I thought I loved but who was really just a good friend. And then there was Kas, who, in time, became my best friend – not least, perhaps,because he was the opposite of my father in every way. Whereas Dad was loud, vulgar, self-engrossed and aggressively cruel, Kas was caring, charismatic and effortlessly polite. But even with Kas, who I first met when I was 18, it was a long time before I allowed myself to trust him. Once he did become my friend, however, he became quite an important part of my life and it felt as though he was the one person on whom I would always be able to depend.

Chapter 2
    For a couple of years after my parents divorced, Jason was so angry about what had happened that he was in freefall. He still desperately wanted Dad to notice him and he turned against Mum, particularly later when she met Steve – the man who helped her return to being the person she used to be, who subsequently became our stepfather and who I wish had been my real father. Jason moved into a horrible, hostel-type flat miles away from where we’d grown up and, because he was determined to ‘stand on my own two feet for once’, he refused to let Mum help him in any way. Fortunately, though, he did eventually accept help from our grandmother and slowly started to sort himself out.
    When I left school at 18, I was offered a really great job in Leeds. Dad had always been on at me about going touniversity, but I decided I wanted to stay near Mum and my young sister and brothers. So I took the job and moved into a flat in the city. I hadn’t realised, though, how lonely living somewhere like that can be when you don’t know many people, or how difficult I’d find it to move away from home and from the security and cocoon-like protection of my childhood. Apart from the friends I made at work, I didn’t know anyone in Leeds, so I sometimes felt as though I was totally alone – until Serena got a job there too.
    Serena and I had been friends at school and people always said we were like two peas in a pod. I loved having her close by again, and we soon became inseparable,