Bought and Sold. Megan Stephens

wasn’t doing any gardening jobs now, but he had worked long hours before we came to Athens, for considerably less money than I would be earning. And when I really thought about it, I couldn’t justify looking forward to the future we were going to have together while making a fuss about doing something that would help bring it a little bit closer.

      Jak stayed at the bar that night, drinking whisky while I danced topless for men whose faces I avoided looking at. And when the manager gave me the 80 euros I had earned, Jak held out his hand and said, ‘Why don’t you give that to me? I’ll look after it for you.’

      For the next few nights, Jak and Mergim dropped me off at the bar and then went to a café in a nearby square to wait for me to finish work. When they came back to pick me up, I handed all the money I had earned to Jak. One night, when I kept some of it back because there was something I wanted to buy, his anger really shocked me – until I thought about it and realised I was being selfish and that it was only fair he should take it all, to pay for the food we ate and to save for our future. It was hard-earned money though, because I hated every minute of every night I danced at the bar, and I could never look at the faces of the men who were looking at me.

      I had been working there for almost two weeks when Jak told me, ‘We’ve got a meeting tomorrow about another job.’

      ‘Oh, that’s great,’ I said, feeling as though I had breathed out after holding my breath for just a bit too long. ‘What is the job?’

      ‘Wait and see,’ Jak said.

      The next morning, he seemed distracted and barely spoke to me. When I asked him if there was something wrong, he said, ‘No. It’s okay. Everything’s fine.’ But he was still quiet and uncommunicative in the taxi that took us to a burger bar in the city centre. Jak led the way up the stairs to the second floor, where the only other customer was a large, overweight man who waved when he saw Jak and then beckoned us over to his table. As we walked towards him, Jak said, ‘This is your new boss. He’s French and his name’s Leon.’

      Once the introductions had been made, Leon narrowed his eyes as he looked at me closely for a few seconds and then said something in Greek to Jak. A few minutes later, he leaned forward and passed something under the table, which Jak took and slid into his pocket, although not before I had seen that it was a wad of folded banknotes. I don’t think it even crossed my mind to wonder why Leon was giving him money. I didn’t understand Greek, so I didn’t know what they had been saying to each other. But I trusted Jak. And, after all, he’d had a life before he met me.

      ‘So, you know what you’re going to be doing, don’t you?’ Leon spoke to me in English. ‘And you’re happy with it?’

      I glanced at Jak and he murmured, ‘I love you. It’s all right.’

      ‘Yes, I’m fine with it,’ I told Leon.

      I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I had asked, ‘Happy with what? What is the job you’re offering me?’ But I didn’t. Jak told me it would be ‘all right’ and I believed him. So Leon stood up, shook Jak’s hand, nodded at me, and then walked down the stairs and out of the restaurant. Jak and I followed him a little while later and took a taxi to another part of the city centre.

      On almost every street corner in Athens, there are kiosks selling newspapers and magazines, postcards, sweets, chocolate, cigarettes, even souvenirs and clothes. When we got out of the taxi, Jak told me to wait while he went to one of them. When he came back, he handed me what felt like a flimsy cardboard box in a brown paper bag, pointed to an office building on the other side of the road and said, ‘Go up the stairs to the top floor. Knock on the glass door and give this to the guy who opens it.’

      ‘What is it?’ I asked him.

      ‘Just do it,’ he snapped.

      Although Jak’s anger always took me by surprise and shocked me, I wasn’t really frightened of him. But I hated it when he was annoyed with me. So I took the package and turned to cross the road.

      ‘I’ll wait for you here,’ he called after me, pleasant again now that I was doing what he had wanted me to do.

      The woman at the reception desk glanced up when I pushed open the door from the street, and then looked away again as I started to walk up the stairs. The shoes I was wearing had pointed toes and stiletto heels, and long before I had reached the top floor my feet were sore and my legs were shaking. As I stumbled up the last two flights of stairs, I was breathless and, for some reason, had begun to feel uneasy.

      The brass plaque on the wall beside the glass doors at the top of the building announced – in both English and Greek – that it was the office of a lawyer. The man who opened the door when I rang the bell was fat and old – at least, he looked old to me.

      Snatching the package out of my hands, he told me, in English, to ‘Come in and stand over there.’ I wished I had the confidence to tell him I had done what I’d been asked to do and now I was going to leave. Instead, I did a sort of nervous side-step across the marble-tiled floor and said nothing.

      When he locked the glass doors, I felt a sudden rush of fear. But before I could react in any way, he had opened another door and pushed me through it. In the middle of the small, windowless room he had thrust me into there was a single bed and, at the foot of it, a video camera on a tripod. The only other bit of furniture in the room was a television, playing silently in a corner.

      I was so frightened and convinced that he was going to murder me, that I just stood there making little whimpering noises like a defeated and submissive animal. When the man grabbed hold of my vest top and shoved me down on to the bed, I was so shocked my mind went completely blank and I think I barely struggled as he flipped me over on to my back, pulled up my skirt, ripped off my pants and forced himself inside me. The pain was excruciating, but I was too traumatised even to cry.