Ring Around Rosie (13 page)

She heard her breath rasping through her
chest and her heart panting to keep up. Or was that someone else panting? Heavy
footsteps pounded the tarmac behind her. Was that Griff? Could it be the owner
of the café? Rosie didn’t dare look back to see as she ran over an iron bridge
that straddled a stagnant canal, and then past an aviary. She could see
brightly-coloured birds fluttering in the run-down cages; they looked so out of
place with their beautiful bright plumage against the dreary grey backdrop of a
London sky. Her dash past seemed to send them into a flurry of feathers and
squawks, their cries echoing her wheezing breath.

In front of her was a fountain surrounded
by pigeons that flew into the air as she ran through, scattering like rice at a
wedding. Rosie instinctively put her arms up to protect her face, momentarily
blinded and slowed by their awkwardness. She wanted to stop, catch her breath,
and work out where she was going, but there was no going back as the birds
returned to earth, closing the curtain behind her.

Up ahead, Rosie caught sight of a bus and
realised there was a road right in front of her. If she could just make it to
that gate and out into the road, someone would have to notice her. The thought
that this might be it, the end to it all, whatever that may be, gave her the
final push she needed.

Racing through the gate, she closed her
eyes and launched herself into the road. There was a screeching of brakes and
then all went quiet.

Rosie wasn’t sure how much time had gone by
but she was definitely lying on something very hard and there were voices all
around her.

“Mum, dad,” she whispered.

“I’m here darling,” came a man’s voice.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

It didn’t sound much like her dad’s voice
but all the sounds seemed distorted. Rosie smiled as the relief washed over
her. Her dad had found her.

It was morning by the time Ted and Martha
had finished exchanging stories, and the copious cups of coffee coupled with
the lack of sleep had started to make vision and speech challenging, so they’d
decided to part company and meet up again after some rest.

Ted now stood on the tube, squashed between
the door and a commuter’s rucksack, his eyes barely focussing. His face felt
horrible underneath the makeup and he was dying to take it off. He hadn’t dared
to try in the café in case it didn’t all come away, and then he’d have had half
a face hanging off him like something from a horror film.

Ted had been disturbed by what Martha had
told him about trafficking, how she’d said it was the second largest form of
illegal trade in the world, after drugs, and that the authorities really had no
clue how to stop it happening. She’d said that about half of the people
trafficked were children, mostly from poor, third world countries, but
sometimes not; it was nearly as common for children to be trafficked internally
in a country like Britain, especially if no one cared that the child had been
taken, or had profited from it. And, often, children travelling abroad with
their families were targeted.

Ted was aghast that something so evil and
so prevalent wasn’t headline news all the time. He kept asking Martha why there
weren’t more shocking stories in the newspapers and on the news, ones that
would frighten people into doing something about it, but Martha had just
shrugged and said that was what she was hoping to achieve with her research, or
at least to raise awareness.

  Ted looked around him on the tube, at the
faces that wouldn’t look back at him. He tried to imagine what each person was
going to do that day by the clothes they were wearing: the suits usually meant
a business office job of some kind; the more casual and trendy could be for the
more creative jobs. Then there were the downright scruffy who could only be the
labourers. Or maybe not. Perhaps the suits were the unemployed going for
interviews. The casual trendy ones were merely shopping using their fathers’
credit cards, and the scruffy could all be going into the office for dress-down
Friday. Ted decided there was no way to tell. And any of them could be hiding
Rosie or exploiting other children and that was what he was really trying to
work out.

The tube screeched to a halt and Ted
tumbled out, unaware his legs had gone to sleep. Commuters grumbled and groaned
at his clumsiness, and Ted wondered if they’d have been so rude if he wasn’t a
fat, ugly, balding dude in a badly-fitting suit. He suspected they would have
been more afraid of upsetting the angry teenager that he was underneath, if
only they’d known.

As Ted walked in through the door of
Dillon’s house the familiar smell of a fry-up hit him and he realised how
hungry he was. Fortunately Mrs M was privy to the William Hungerford operation,
otherwise seeing a dishevelled fat man walk through her door uninvited at seven
in the morning might have given her a small heart attack, but as it was she
simply laughed, as she always did when she saw Ted coming home looking so
completely out of character.

“Just in time for breakfast, my love,” she
grinned. “Perhaps you’d like to change first?”

Ted nodded and staggered up the stairs. He
could hear the shower running as he peeled off his face and chucked it on the
table in Dillon’s room. It was so surreal to be removing his face but he’d
begun to get used to it and now found it hard to remember who he was at any one
time. And although they had had no luck finding Rosie he was pleased to be rid
at last of what he feared was becoming his alter ego.

Dillon walked into the room with just a
towel on and smiled at Ted.

“You missed a bit,” he said, pointing to
his eyebrows.

Ted tried to smile and peeled them off,
tossing them on the side with his fat face.

“So how’d it go last night?” Dillon asked.
“You’ve never been out all night before, is that a good sign?”

Ted shook his head. “Unfortunately not,” he
sighed. “Still no sign of Rosie, but I did meet a girl…”

“Oh yeah?” Dillon interrupted, his eyebrows
raised suggestively.

“Not like that you muppet. She was a
reporter actually. Turns out she’s been following Rosie’s case, off the record.
She’s actually a student and her brother’s a copper and he tips her off about
cases, and she was doing an assignment about child trafficking and he told her
about Rosie.”

“So she could be helpful?”

“Dunno. Apart from knowing more about the
child trafficking world than I do, she hasn’t any more leads that we did.
Although she had heard about
The Lock
, but only because she’d been
following me, so she’s about up to the same place as we are.”

 “But now that she knows about
The Lock
she can tell her brother and they can bust the place can’t they?”

“Apparently not. Remember Trig said it’s
owned by some ‘influential’ people? Well, it’s kind of untouchable at the
moment, but Martha said she reckoned once her story was finished and out there,
and the public got involved, that the police would have to react.”

“God it’s a pile of shite this country
isn’t it? What are we meant to do in the meantime?”

“I don’t know mate,” Ted shrugged. The
feeling of hopelessness was threatening to overtake him again so Ted forced a
smile, dressed quickly, and headed down for breakfast.

Just as he’d shovelled the first forkful
into his ravenous mouth, his phone rang.

“Rosie’s been found!” said Martha’s excited
voice on the end of the phone.

“What?” said Ted, practically spitting his
food across the table.

“She’s with your dad.”

“What? But he didn’t call me.”

“Well I’m sure he’s going to. He had to
take her to the hospital first so he probably got caught up doing that.”

“The hospital? Is she ok?”

“As far as I know, yes. She was hit by a
car, but apparently she wasn’t badly hurt. And your dad was there and he took
her to the hospital.”

“Dad was there? But…”

“I don’t know the full story, Ted. My
brother literally just called me and said that one of the witnesses had called
the police when they recognised Rosie and said she’d been in an accident but
that her dad was with her. That’s all I know. Why all the questions Ted? I
thought you’d be pleased and want to go and see her straight away.”

Ted shook his head. “Yes of course, I’ve
just got so used to asking questions all the time, I guess,” he laughed. “I’ll
call dad straight away and find out where they are. Thanks, Martha.”

“No problem, speak to you later.”

Ted hung up the phone and beamed at
Dillon’s smiling face.

“She’s been found! Dad has her, apparently.
Not sure how but I’ll give him a call,” he said, suddenly laughing out loud and
punching the air at the realisation that his little sister was safe at last.

Ted grinned at Dillon’s mum as he dialled
and saw tears glistening in her eyes.

“Dad? It’s Ted! How’s Rosie?” he rushed.

“What?” came his dad’s surprised voice down
the phone.

“Rosie! They said you found her.”

“What? Who said that?”

“My friend Martha, whose brother is a
copper…”

“Who’s Martha?”

“A journalist I met…”

“A journalist? You talking to the press
now?”

“No, no,” said Ted hurriedly, “I’ll explain
when I see you.  Listen, she said that Rosie had been hit by a car and you’d
been there,” said Ted, his voice rising with anticipation. He couldn’t
understand why his dad was asking so many silly and irrelevant questions.

“I haven’t left the house since yesterday
morning, Ted.”

Ted’s hand dropped from his ear and hung
limp at his side as what his dad said sank in. He couldn’t believe he’d let
himself hope without seeing her with his own eyes. He looked up and caught
Dillon’s look and then broke down. He felt Dillon take the phone from his hand
and speak to his dad but it was just a murmur in the background. Ted’s head was
swimming and he felt like he was going to throw up. He sat on the chair, tears
stinging his eyes as he began to sob uncontrollably. He felt like a baby but he
didn’t care. How could Martha have been so cruel as to tell him that Rosie had
been found when she hadn’t? Maybe she wasn’t his friend after all.

He suddenly felt furious with her as he
roughly wiped the tears from his eyes. Dillon had his arm around his shoulder
and was telling him that his dad would call him back in a while, but he grabbed
his phone from Dillon and dialled Martha’s number. Fury gripped him as he
waited for her to answer.

“Hello?”

Ted was surprised to feel a yearning at the
sound of her voice but he tore into her anyway, asking her how she could get
his hopes up like that when she hadn’t checked her facts. How it was worse than
not saying anything at all.

All Martha could do was stammer surprise at
the other end, but there was no forgiveness in Ted’s voice and he didn’t care.
He never wanted to speak to her again and he told her so as he slammed the
phone shut and tossed it across the room.

Mrs M wrapped her huge mass around Ted as
he sobbed again. He let it flow from him like water through a dam and he didn’t
stop until he felt her laying him gently down on the sofa where he finally
slept.

Rosie’s body felt like it would pop and
snap under the weight of Gabriel’s grip around her as he half pulled, half
carried her across the park and away from the accident. Her head was pounding
as she tried to remember what had happened and how it was Gabriel and not Griff
that had chased her. How he’d peeled her off the road whilst his hand was
clamped down on her arm aggressively, whispering threats in her ear so that she
knew if she uttered one word about him not being her dad he would kill her. And
apart from a few suggestions from people at the scene that she should perhaps
go to the hospital, no one even challenged him. 

Anyway, it was her fault. If she had timed
her run into the traffic right she might have been actually
hit
by a
car, as was her intention, rather than merely bumping her head on the road. And
then her injuries would have warranted an ambulance and she wouldn’t be being
dragged, as if in rewind, along the path she had run only a few moments ago as
a free woman.

They arrived back at the flat where Zaydain
was pacing angrily along the balcony outside the door. He lunged at Rosie but
Gabriel put his arm in the way.

“Not now!” he hissed.

“I knew it was a mistake to keep her. She’s
been more trouble than she’s worth. I vote we get rid of her right now,”
snarled Zaydain.

Rosie shrank back behind Gabriel’s bulk,
away from Zaydain’s red-eyed stare.

“She’s only been a problem because you’re
incapable of keeping her in check! How could you leave that halfwit in charge?”
shouted Gabriel.

“I had no idea he would be stupid enough to
let her out. Anyway, if you’d been here I wouldn’t have had to leave her with
him. What took you so long?”

“I was delayed, that’s all. Get ’er
inside,” Gabriel said, shoving Rosie towards Zaydain.

Rosie fell as she was pushed roughly
through the door of the room. Baduwa, Utibe and Lo rushed to her side,
questions pouring from Baduwa’s mouth. Rosie could still hear Zaydain and
Gabriel arguing outside the door and hushed Baduwa into silence as she strained
to hear through it.

“She can’t stay here, someone might have
recognised you or her. It’s getting too risky. I
told
you it was a bad
idea to deal in white meat!” shouted Zaydain.

“Calm down, we will get rid of her but not
without making something back. Leave it with me; I’ll speak to a few people. In
the meantime, keep your head down for a couple of days in case anyone’s
sniffing around.”

Rosie heard Zaydain grunt and then all went
quiet. She turned her attention back to the others who were all waiting
patiently to hear what had happened. As Rosie was telling them she broke out in
a sweat, partly because of the opportunity she knew she had missed and partly because
she realised she had made things so much worse for herself, if that was
possible. She hadn’t considered what would happen if she got caught, but of
course they’d want to move her, and as quickly as possible. So even if Ted
somehow ended up in the area, and then by some miracle spotted the picture in
the window, she would no longer be at number fifty-five, and all it would
succeed in doing was getting his hopes up, only to slam them into a wall when
he found she wasn’t there.

She also dreaded to think of the trouble
Griff was in, or what it would all now mean for Baduwa, Utibe and Lo. And her
family, what would happen to them? The guilt soaked through her like water
through a sponge, leaving her body heavy as she lay down on her mattress. Lo
sat next to her and rested his head on her thigh; poor guy, she thought, he had
no idea what she’d done.

Baduwa hummed quietly as she stroked
Rosie’s hair. She seemed so distant nowadays, just a shell of who she once was.
Her hair hung in dreadlocks, her dress was creased and stained, and she no
longer looked at herself in the windows. Rosie wondered if she too was a shadow
of her former self; despite what she’d been through she thought not, there was
still hope, she still had something to fight for, a purpose; a family that was
waiting for her and missed her. There was no hope for the others, nowhere for
them to go, no warm and loving arms to run into; they had everything to fear
and no one to trust.

Rosie still had no idea what had happened
to Utibe as she’d never broached the subject again with Baduwa, and she
couldn’t imagine how Lo had ended up here and he was unlikely to be able to
tell her, but whatever the reasons, they couldn’t be good, and Rosie wondered
how many other thousands of children might be in the same situation, or even
worse. What had happened to those other kids that had been in the back of the
truck with her? Did they even make it onto lamp posts and notice boards as
missing persons or were they quickly forgotten like so many other inconveniences?

Rosie must have fallen asleep because the
door bursting open jolted her awake. Gabriel’s vast size was filling the entire
doorway and Rosie felt the others shrink back. But she sat up defiantly and
stared him in the eye, hatred pouring from every inch of her.

“Get up, you’re coming with me,” he
growled, pointing at Rosie.

Rosie held her ground and didn’t move. She
didn’t want to go anywhere, it would be like starting over again. She’d made a
mark, left a trail; it would turn cold if she was moved.

“Now!” he boomed, his voice making them all
jump.

Rosie shook her head.

“I’m not leaving,” she whispered.

“Why? Because you’ll miss all this?”
Gabriel indicated around the room, his laughter rattling through his cavernous
chest like ball bearings in a tank.

It wasn’t as ridiculous as it sounded.
Rosie wasn’t going to miss it as such but if she couldn’t go home she didn’t
want to go anywhere else. Baduwa, Utibe and Lo were here and they’d all become
close, and who would look after them if she left? Who would make sure they were
ok? Plus she knew Griff, Zaydain and Rusty enough to know that although they
had put her through what they had, she was sure they weren’t the worst of what
was out there. And if her reputation preceded her to the next place, the new
people would keep her firmly locked down.

“I want to stay here. I promise to be
good,” assured Rosie searching Gabriel’s eyes for an ounce of compassion.

“Well that’s touching but you’re
practically bought and paid for so up yer get,” he said, reaching forward and
pulling Rosie to her feet. She struggled against his grip but it was no use.
Rosie looked back at Baduwa, Utibe and Lo as she was dragged out of the room;
each sobbing, they ran towards her.

“Let me say goodbye, at least,” screamed
Rosie.

But Gabriel slammed the door behind them,
and they were gone.

Rosie cried uncontrollably. If she’d only
kept her head down and done as she was told none of this would be happening;
she shouldn’t have run, she should have trusted that Ted and her parents would
still be looking, and been patient. Fear raced through her veins as she was
pushed into the backseat of a car, her head banging against the window as it
sped away.

She caught Gabriel’s eye in the mirror and
the hatred she saw in them took her breath away. No one had ever looked at her
with that much revulsion, not even her parents after she’d been arrested for
being drunk and disorderly, or any of the other times she’d let them down. How
could she have acted like that towards them? They loved her and wanted the best
for her and all she could do was resent them and her life. But how perfect it
looked from where she was now sitting.

Rosie tried to keep track of where they
were driving. Certain places they passed she recognised; some she’d been to
with Ted, most of them with her so-called mates. She recognised enough places
to know they were crossing London from the North to the South, though, and
hoped they would end up somewhere she had been before, at least then she
wouldn’t feel so lost.

The level was low as they crossed the
Thames. Lights were starting to reflect on the water, and she realised yet
another day had passed and she was still no better off than the day before.

Cyclists pedalled past as they sat in
traffic and Rosie could have opened her window, reached out and touched them,
but they seemed as far away from where she was as the moon from earth; a whole
other world away.

Rosie wasn’t certain of the exact location
when the car pulled up outside a large house. She figured it was somewhere
south of Brixton, possibly Streatham, but it wasn’t familiar territory to her.

The eerie house stood on the edge of a busy
road. It looked completely out of place nestled amongst some trees with a dirt
garden where the car had parked. To Rosie it looked like a run-down, haunted
house that had been dropped in the wrong location, like the house that fell on
the witch in the
Wizard of Oz
. Opposite, on the other side of the road,
was a large housing estate that blocked out any remaining light that the trees
had allowed to pass.

Gabriel opened her door and she looked up
at the house that loomed over her. Good things could not possibly happen here,
she thought, but then what was she expecting?

Three stone steps led up to the door and
Rosie tripped up all of them landing in a heap at the top. She couldn’t work
out why her legs refused to function, unless it was the paralysing fear that
lay agonisingly in her gut. Gabriel didn’t pay her any attention as he rang the
doorbell, and Rosie scrambled to her feet just as the door opened.

A small man, not much taller than Rosie,
stood in front of them, his hair barely covering the top of his head and a
moustache lying menacingly above his top lip. Moustaches had always given Rosie
the creeps and on this man it just added to his frightening demeanour. It
didn’t surprise Rosie, therefore, when he wrung his hands and licked his lips
as he looked her up and down.

Rosie felt a hand on her back as Gabriel
pushed her into the house, the creepy man hurriedly shutting the door behind
her as if he thought Gabriel might change his mind.

There was silence as they both stood there,
the man’s eyes glinting in the semi-darkness, his breath coming in short,
sharp, excited blasts.

“Your room is upstairs, I’ll show you,” he
said finally. His voice, nasally and high pitched, echoed through the hall.

He led her slowly up the wooden stairs and
onto the first floor, unlocking the first door they came to and swinging it
wide. There was a bedroom in front of them, which, to Rosie’s surprise,
actually contained beds rather than just mattresses, two of which were occupied
by bodies and two that were empty. The bodies stirred and looked up at Rosie;
she saw that they were both girls and both white; not British she didn’t think
but definitely European. They quickly turned away, disinterested, and the
creepy man pointed Rosie towards one of the beds.

“You make your own food in the kitchen,”
said the man, pointing to the next door room. “And you clean up after
yourselves. Showers are only between the hours of six and seven, AM and PM.
Laundry you must do in the basin. You stay in here until I come and get you.
Make no noise or there will be trouble.”

The man finished his spiel almost
triumphantly, as if job well done, and strode out of the room, locking the door
behind him.

Rosie perched on the bed. She had no
belongings so she couldn’t busy herself with unpacking. Neither of the girls
turned around to face her again, they just lay there, so Rosie decided to
explore.

In the next door room, that the creepy man
had indicated towards when mentioning the kitchen, was a small cooker, a
fridge, a kettle and a few pans and plates, all of which looked like they had
seen better days. There was also a table and four chairs. The lino barely
covered the floor anymore, and where it had once been, the floorboards looked
damp and rotten. Rosie made a mental note not to stand on anything but the few
remaining bits of lino in case she ended up back in the hall downstairs; it
meant the lino would be a little like stepping stones across a fast-flowing,
shark-infested river, but it kept her mind busy as she navigated around the
kitchen.

She noted porridge, rice, and tins of
lentils, pasta, tinned tomatoes, and bread, then long-life milk and cheese in
the fridge. This was positively gourmet compared to what she’d been used to,
but she hoped one of the other girls knew how to cook because she had no idea
what to do with the ingredients they had to work with.

Rosie assumed that as it was getting late
the girls would have eaten already so she pulled herself off a chunk of bread
and a piece of cheese and contented herself with that for her supper.

As she was eating she heard movement coming
from the bedroom. There was no talking, just knocking and banging and
shuffling. She heard the loo flush. Just then there was the sound of a key
turning in the lock and the creepy man entered. He didn’t say anything, just
stood in the doorway as if waiting for something. Then both girls walked out of
the bedroom, their high heels clacking on the floor, their legs bare but for
very short skirts. They turned in Rosie’s direction, their faces
expressionless, and left the flat, leaving Rosie bathed in silence and terror.