Jay had looked after her, he had sorted her out when that nutter raped her, he had cleaned the place up for her, spent a bit of time with her, and he had been nice to her. She had begun to think that he might have feelings for her. One night he had given her so much gear, she felt as if she was flying. He had told her that they were going to a party and that he had some special friends that he wanted her to meet. He had even brought her a new outfit, a very slutty looking one, a black silk babydoll with lace around the plunging neckline, it looked more like lingerie, but she just thought that that is what a typical red-blooded male would chose, and she was happy that he wanted to show her off. She had made a real effort, looked really sexy for him.

He had taken her to a dingy little flat, which she really didn’t think much of, the things he had told her about these “friends” of his didn’t add up to a pokey little flat in Vauxhall. They had money, they were supposed to be high flyers, men who knew what they wanted and got it; it just really didn’t make sense.

As soon as she walked through the door and saw the five men, she had known. She was at a party all right, only she was the main source of entertainment. Emma had felt scared, and had kept looking to Jay thinking that even though he had set this up, he was going to be her saviour.

Someone had given Emma a whiskey, and then she had a few lines of coke, or what she thought was coke. It helped, as she began to relax a little, helped by another whisky. The men were smoking: gear, cigars. She was feeling out of it, she had only had a few drinks but then she suddenly felt as though she were losing consciousness.

She had slipped in and out of what had happened next. She recalled lying on a big bed, faces near her, bodies on her: touching, pawing. She couldn’t stop them, she was too weak. She felt as though she were floating, like she were asleep, but she could hear them laughing around her; strangely, they sounded far away.

Even the next day, when she had woken back in her own bed in her own flat, she had no real memory of what happened, or how she had got home. She was sore between her legs and felt sick with fear, used and dirty. She didn’t have to wait long to find out what had happened.

Jay had been sitting in her lounge with two spotty boys, who looked no more than fifteen. She didn’t recognise them, but that was nothing new, there were more people in and out of there on a daily basis than Emma could keep up with. She saw that they were looking through some paperwork or something. They sniggered as she stumbled past them to get a drink of water. Jay glared at her; she had a miserable expression on her face and this riled him.

              “Morning!” he had chirped sarcastically. “What’s got your knickers in such a twist?” He smirked at the two lads, and they both laughed as if sharing some kind of private joke between the three of them.

              “I’m fine, just need a drink.” She fought back the tears; she felt humiliated, she couldn’t understand why he was acting so nastily.

              “We’re just going through a few photos, Emma,’ Jay said, ‘you should have a look, there’s a few gorgeous ones here, bet your mum and dad would love a few of these for the family album.”

Her heart pounded in her chest. She knew even before she looked down at the coffee table what she was going to see, although never in a million years could she have imagined that the images would have been so graphic. The pictures were sickening. She looked at a photo of three or four men groping her, doing horrible things to her, including having sex with her. It was like looking at somebody else in the photos, the girl in the images had a blank expression and glassy eyes; she looked like a hollow shell, someone who wasn’t really there. Emma knew, looking at the photos, that she had been drugged last night. Running to the bathroom, she threw up. The vomit burnt her throat. She dry-heaved for a few minutes. When she looked up, she saw Jay in the mirror; he was standing behind her.

              “Don’t ever try and blackmail me again, do you hear me?” His voice was low and heavy, and Emma knew he meant it; he could cause her a serious amount of grief.

              “You think I’m going to feed you the best gear going for the last few months for nothing? You’re having a fucking laugh. You’re nothing but a dirty slag, love; you owe me, and you’re going to start paying me back. Any grief from you, and I think Mummy and Daddy may stumble upon these.” He tapped the envelope in his hand and looked at Emma in disgust, as he left her to cry her tears to herself on the bathroom floor.

That had been a few weeks ago. Now, she was desperately lonely; she had no-one to talk to or to help her. He had her now, she knew that. She had thought she had it all under control, sure that if she played it right Jay would see that he would be lost without her. He had just been using her, like the rest of them. Firstly, for his own dirty needs, and now he was done with her purely to line his pockets.

She hadn’t heard from Kate in months, and couldn’t bring herself to call her. What would she say; where would she start? It was all too much. She was ashamed of what she had become.

Her parents had called a few times, and she had made up a lie about landing a good job as a flight attendant. Emma made up stories to tell her mum on the few occasions that they had spoken since then. She had described the glamorous locations to which her job was taking her, and her mum had hung on to her words, glad that her little girl was making her own way in the world at last. As Emma made up lie after lie about the hotels she stayed in and the people she had met, she had almost started believing it herself. Her own fantasy world sometimes had herself convinced, letting herself float away in the pretence of it all, even if it was just for a few minutes. Emma had almost convinced herself, and her parents had seemed to buy it completely.

24

Kate was beaming. She had made it to the end of her first week in her job, and was actually looking forward to the next one. She had really got stuck in; busying herself with sorting out the office for Paul had been her main challenge to start off with and after spending hours putting contacts into his database and filing paperwork and invoices and making things a whole lot easier to find, she had been over the moon to see Paul look impressed with her efforts. Then she had sorted out the rotas for the staff; she could see straight away that there were a few shifts not covered well enough by the bar staff, and then as if that wasn’t enough she had even suggested a few promotional evenings to Paul to bring in more money.

Paul had been very impressed. Kate was a breath of fresh air; he was surprised at how she had thrown herself into the job. It wasn’t a glamorous high-profile career, but that was how she was treating it, she was putting in one hundred and ten percent. He liked that about her. She was a diamond. He found that he enjoyed being in her company, too.

They had sat in the office together several times over the week. He could have been doing other things but found himself drawn to her. Kate often sat on the floor sorting through piles of paperwork, and chatting away about anything and everything, while he sat at his desk, not really doing much, looking up stuff on the Internet, just so he could be around her.

Paul had been shocked when Kate had said that her boyfriend was an ex-employee of his, he hadn’t realised initially that she was Jay Shaw’s girlfriend. Kate was obviously kept in the dark about her boyfriend’s dealings, she seemed to have no idea that there was any bad feeling between Jay and Paul, in fact she had even said that Jay had no choice but to give up working at Goldie’s, as he was so busy with his own business.