“Did you believe him?”

“How could I know any different? Besides, I was well wasted. I’d been drinking vodka and taking phets. Then Faisal reminded me of all the stuff he’d given us and said it was just a little thing I could for him, like returning a favor.”

“So what happened?”

“Namal and I went in the bedroom and . . . well . . . you know.” She paused for a few moments, being remarkably coy, Gerry thought, given her experiences. Gerry could hear her breathing. “It was all right at first. It didn’t hurt all that much.”

“Then what, Jade?”

“Then the other one, Kerim, he came in . . .”

“You had sex with both of them?”

“Yes.” It was a small voice. “How did you feel about that?”

“Feel? I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t feel anything. It’s life, in’it? You don’t get anything for nothing. The day after, Faisal took me shopping in town and bought me some cool trainers. Nikes. Mimsy, too. And Becca, I think. She got a new dress. She must’ve done something, well, special.”

“Does that mean they’d performed the same service as you?”

“Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe he just wanted to include them.”

“Did you tell the other girls what you’d done with Faisal’s cousins?”

“Mimsy and I talked about it. That’s when she said it had been the same with her. Different blokes, of course. They seem to have a lot of cousins. With her it was some garage owner who’d serviced Ismail’s taxis, she said. A service for a service. We just thought it was the way they were, you know. A different sort of culture. Sunny said it wasn’t unusual or weird to share where they came from.”

“But they came from Wytherton.”

“You know what I mean. Besides, not all of them did. Faisal wasn’t born here. He came over later. Both his parents got killed by suicide bombers. And there were others.”

“Others?”

“It was like some kind of network. I think some of them might have been illegal.”

“Were they all Pakistani, the men?”

“Most of them, but there were one or two white blokes.”

“Here?”

“No. Just all over the northeast and down in West Yorkshire. Mostly Dewsbury. Some in Bradford. Like I said, they were linked up with other blokes and other girls like us.”

“Every night?”

“Most nights.”

“OK. What happened after that time with the two men?”

“After that it got easier. More often. Sometimes Sunny or Faisal needed to pay back a debt or keep someone happy. They’d drive us all over the place. Stockton, Gateshead, Sunderland, Carlisle. Sometimes we had to stay for days and there were lots of blokes, one after the other.”

“How many men?”

“I dunno. Some nights, you know, like . . . you’d stop counting.”

“That must have been unbearable, Jade.”