My name is "Mobi"; I'm an alcoholic

7. “A Lustful Gent” Part 1 – ‘Na’

A Lustful Gentleman

 

PART ONE – ‘NA’

CHAPTER I

Na parked her Honda motor cycle at right angles to the kerb, next to three other bikes which were similarly parked, and then lifted her weary little body off the warm machine to join the short, roadside queue for her nightly ‘fix’ of somtum. It was 4 am and she had parked in Second Road, in the heart of ‘Sin City’, Pattaya, but despite the hour, the town was still wide awake – buzzing with life. The streets, restaurants, bars, massage parlours and whore houses were still bustling with frenetic activity.

The night was still alive with punters: foreign tourists out for a night on the town, unwavering in their desire to squeeze every ounce of elicit pleasure from this most infamous of red-light metropolises. Then there were the Thais: thousands of them – of which Na was one – mostly ‘temporary’ residents in this ever expanding city, who were also out in force and equally full of unwavering determination; determination to squeeze every hard earned dollar and cent from the mainly inebriated, sex-crazed punters.

She was moderately drunk and very hungry. Four in the morning may not have been particularly late by Pattaya standards, but it was late for her. She usually clocked-off from her job as a ‘hostess’ at Kismet, one of Pattaya’s more discerning Gentlemen’s Clubs, usually finished around midnight. But on this particular night there had been a group of high rolling, very drunk customers who had been reluctant to leave. So her American – farang – boss had prevailed upon her and a few of the remaining ladies who had not been ‘bought out’ for the night, to stay past their normal finishing time and provide the late night entertainment.

At first, she had welcomed this request, as she was very short of money and she hoped that one of the kaacks from the group would decide to take her with him back to his hotel. The thousand baht or so she would earn from a ‘short time’ fuck would come in very handy. In the event, she had permitted the drunken, pot- bellied slobs to paw her for the best part of three hours and all that she had to show for her personal degradations was a lousy two hundred baht: her cut from the few overpriced drinks they had reluctantly agreed to buy her.

Na was almost broke – she hadn’t had slept with a customer in days – her rent was overdue and her mother and her two kids were waiting patiently in her room for her to return home with some food. She looked in her purse and counted two hundred and thirty Baht. By the time she had bought her somtum, there would be less than two hundred baht remaining to feed her mother, her five year old daughter and six month old baby son.

It was already September, and the tourist ‘low season’ seemed to go on forever. This, together with the ever upward spiral in prices for basic necessities meant that her family would be very hungry long before she had a further opportunity to earn some money when she clocked back onto work the following evening.

She wasn’t overly worried – it just wasn’t in her nature to worry too much about tomorrow. Her main thoughts at that moment were centred on satisfying her craving for somtum pala, which was at that very moment being pounded out in the chipped mortar in front of her by an ancient Issan woman. She could worry about feeding the family later. She was a typical Thai; if she allowed herself to worry about all her problems at the same time, she would never be able to laugh and joke her way through the day, never be able to ‘bai tio’ – go out and enjoy herself with her friends – and most of all, she would never be able to smile her beautiful smile and work her wicked wiles on the stupid kaacks who came looking for cheap sexual gratification at her place of employment.

No, tomorrow would take care of itself – it always did. It was the Thai way; just live for today and not worry too much about what may happen tomorrow. But even the irrepressible Na started to feel weighed down with life’s misfortunes as she sorted out her bank notes and coins to pay for her food. If things didn’t improve soon, she may have to pay a visit to one of the dreaded money lenders. She knew that once she allowed herself to get into the hands of the local Chinese loan sharks, it would be the start of a very slippery and dangerous slope. She had been there before and she knew only too well.

This had been her first stable job for quite a while, having just chalked up three long months as a ‘hostess’ in one of the newer ‘Gentlemen’s clubs’ that had recently sprung up in Pattaya’s suburbs. They operated from noon to midnight, catering for well-off, married farang residents, who were looking for a bit of day time distraction and also, for the occasional up- market tourist group who were brought there by commissioned tour guides.

Her personality and good looks had made her a popular hostess and three months ago, as a ‘newbie – hooker’, she had been in much demand by the elderly patrons. The problem was, not many of the customers were interested in having a quick fuck in one of the beautifully furnished, specially equipped rooms that were provided for this purpose.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford it – after all, the going rate was pretty much the same as anywhere – four hundred Baht for the room and one thousand Baht or so for the girl. No, it was just that they were of a certain age where the testosterone levels were no longer raging as they once were and most of the punters were quite happy to sink their generously endowed bottoms into the deeply piled couches for an hour or so, get moderately pissed and savour the cuddles and fondling of pretty ladies, a third of their age. They weren’t averse to a heavy dose of groping, but for many, full sex in a private room, or even a blow job, was simply not on their agenda.

Often, these men would spend more than their younger, sex-mad counterparts in the down-town area of the Walking Street bars who always paid for and got their dose of sex. The old farts’ drink bills alone, plus tips to the ladies, often ran to several thousand Baht.

But for Na and the girls who worked at these establishments, they had to sweat very hard for their cut of the drink money – and hoped for tips – which were not always forthcoming. Occasionally they got lucky and landed a younger man who was up for a proper sexual encounter and was happy to pay for it, but more often than not, Na had to rely on drinks and tips.

By now, after a mere three months at Kismet, most of the regular customers knew her. For some reason, their familiarity with her seemed to reduce her ‘drawing’ potential. Everyone greeted her warmly but then made a beeline for one of the newer, younger ladies. She was fast becoming ‘part of the furniture’ and was grimly contemplating the need to move on – yet again.

The old woman snapped Na out of her reverie as she handed her the completed dish of somtum pala. Na needed both hands to carry the spicy dish of papaya salad laced with tiny black crabs and the second dish of vegetables to the kerbside table; but she was still a good meter away from the waiting stool when her weary senses were assaulted by the portentous sound of metal crunching against metal – that terrifying, deep, metallic thud that occurs when vehicles collide. She instinctively spun around in time to see a low-slung, black saloon vehicle careering into the side of a second moving vehicle after having previously bounced off a parked vehicle.

The second vehicle was one of those ubiquitous ‘Baht buses’, a converted pickup truck that transported paying passengers in the back on specially fitted bench seats. It was hit with such force that it tumbled over onto its side, spilling its helpless occupants out across the road.

The smoke in the air was palpable, and the black sedan buried its nearside front wing into a third, parked car and finally ground to a shuddering halt. A sudden, eerie silence descended over the scene of the carnage. For a fraction of a second, it seemed as though sin city had ceased to function. For a brief flash of time, no-one moved and no one uttered a sound.

The plastic dishes of food that Na had been carrying spun out of her hands and bounced on the hard surface of the road scattering their contents hither and thither.

As she recovered from her initial shock, she started to take in the enormity of the scene of carnage that lay in front of her.  Some of the passengers had been thrown completely clear of the pickup truck and lay on the ground in unnatural, twisted heaps. Two more victims were hanging half in and half out of the overturned vehicle and she noticed that one of the hanging bodies was rapidly turning a bright shade of crimson.

Then she glanced at the car. It was somehow familiar to her – it was a BMW – a car she had seen before somewhere. Yes, she knew that black BMW – she recognised the number. She closed her eyes in a vain attempt to obliterate the bloody scene from her consciousness. Obliterate the scene and the realisation of who had caused it.

‘My God,’ she shouted, ‘I know that car! I know that fucking car!’

PART ONE – CHAPTER II

The skinny, pock-marked little girl was very hot, very dirty and very hungry. She was sitting on the hard, deeply rutted earth that surrounded the one-room, wooden shack, barely six feet square, which was the only home she had ever known. The single, low room, with its rotting, wooden walls, its rusting, leaking corrugated roof, no windows and a large gaping hole in the front where the door should have been, had been home to Na, her mother, her two younger brothers and younger sister for the entire 3 1/2 years of her sad life.

It was April in this impoverished village, about twenty kilometres from Khon Kaen’s provincial capital, and the weather was insufferably hot, with daytime temperatures creeping into the low 40 degrees centigrade and with barely any respite at sundown, when the humidity still remained stubbornly high. Even in the early morning hours, when sleep for many still proved nigh impossible, the temperatures remained in the mid-thirties.

The entire North-Eastern part of Thailand, or Issan, as it was known, had seen no rain for months and the rivers and irrigation canals had long since run dry along with the rice paddies which the villagers relied upon to sustain them.

The only sustenance Na had partaken of in the past two days was a small bowl of warm water and some partly stewed, barely edible vegetables and no-one could tell her when she would get to eat again. It was bad enough before, but the last three months had been truly hell on earth, ever since her father had disappeared, and with him, any hope of a half way decent daily meal.

And today, as young as she was, she somehow understood that yet another terrible calamity had overtaken her family. She had awoken from a brief sleep, early that morning to hear her mother screaming and wailing. She had looked across the crowded floor and saw the lifeless form of baby Nuhm, just three months old, lying in her mother’s scrawny lap. She didn’t really comprehend what death was, but she could see well enough that Nuhm was gone and he would never wake again.

 Na felt glad he was gone. Nuhm had done nothing but cry and scream since the day he was born. As if life wasn’t hard enough already, he had made everyone’s daily existence even more wretched with his incessant bouts of sickness and his demands on the family, particularly, her mother. She also knew that Nuhm was the reason that her father had deserted them. He had disappeared the very day that her mother had given birth, so it wasn’t difficult, even for a three year old, to make the obvious connection.

Maybe now she could have some peace and be able to sleep a little, if that wasn’t already hard enough, what with the hunger pains that forever racked her distended stomach and the unbearable heat that seemed to permeate her very existence.

She lay down on the dry earth, shaded from the sun by the meagre shelter of the family hovel, and closed her eyes for a few brief seconds. The silence was broken by the sound of her tearful mother coming out of their room, carrying her lifeless baby, followed by two women from the nearby village. The three villagers were muttering to each other and Na watched as they crossed over the dirt track that served as a road and then disappeared into the undergrowth on the far side of the road. A few minutes later a group of men came along the track and followed the village women into the jungle.

She couldn’t see what was happening but she could hear the sounds of people digging and mumbling under their breath, complaining of the heat and how unrelenting the hard earth was. She lay there listening and wondering and half guessing what they were about. Eventually, some thirty minutes later, the group emerged from the jungle and dispersed to their various homes, all looking very glum and still muttering sadly in their sing-song Laotian dialect.

Peace returned to the clearing and Na lay down once again onto the ground and stared up at the sky. All who had entered the jungle half an hour earlier had returned – with one notable exception – Nuhm, her baby brother. She felt a little sad, but also glad that her tiny brother was now truly gone. Maybe now they could all get some respite from his incessant wailing. She rolled over, closed her eyes and was soon in a deep, but troubled sleep.

***

She was awoken by her mother, Dow, and saw that Nid, her two year old sister, and Tom, her tiny, one year old brother, were both squatting on the ground, eating some kow neo, together with what looked like some meat – the first meat she had seen in months.

Her mother quickly gave Na her own plate of food and the four of them squatted on the earth and ate in silence. They were so hungry; there was nothing they wished to say to each other. Nothing was going to distract them from their primary purpose; filling their desperately empty stomachs. They were just content to savour the best-tasting food they had eaten in a very long time.

Na’s tiny stomach, empty for so long, soon became full, and once eating was no longer her sole preoccupation, she took a brief look around her. She was surprised to see that a number of the local villagers had been standing around, watching her and her family eat. There was an air of obvious concern on their prematurely craggy, sun-blackened faces, but the odd wisp of a smile formed on some of the women’s faces as they watched the starving family eat their fill. As soon as the young family had finally eaten every scrap of food their plates, the villagers, satisfied that they had done the right thing by their even more desperate neighbours, quietly went their separate ways, back to their own homes and left Dow and her children alone once more.

Dow bent down and picked up the frail Na into her arms and carried her into the room; the other two children scrambled along behind.

‘Try to get some more sleep’, her mother said to Na. ‘Tomorrow morning we will rise very early. We are all going on a long journey.’

‘A long journey?’ Na asked. ‘Where to? Where are we going Mama?’

‘We are going to a place called Pattaya, my love. Life will be much better for us there and you will never have to starve like this again. We are going to have a new life in Pattaya.’

‘But Mama, how can we go to…Pattaya. We don’t have any money. Are we going to walk?’

‘Walk! No, my love, we’re not walking. It is much too far to walk. We will take a bus. One of your uncles in the village is lending me the money to buy the bus tickets.’

‘Pattaya,’ Na, mused, ‘I wonder what Pattaya will be like? I hope it is better than here….’

PART ONE – CHAPTER III

Na was sitting atop a huge pile of putrid rubbish, scraping and digging with her tiny hands, trying to find something that might be worth a few stang to the itinerant trash collectors who came by on their ramshackle motorbike sidecar combinations. Every afternoon, the private refuse collectors would roll into Soi Kophai in the heart of Pattaya, to see what the starving occupants of this miserable stinking slum had been able to recover.

As ever, it was stiflingly hot and there was not even the slightest wisp of a breeze to moderate the effects of the suffocating temperature. She used to think that the heat was unbearable at her previous home in Issan, but nothing had prepared her for the energy- sapping humidity that had settled in Pattaya for many weeks; for it was at the height of the summer hot season. The filthy slum was barely a mile from the coast and the air was full of steamy moisture which had been sucked up from the Andaman Sea beyond.

It was two years since the family had taken the long journey from Khon Kaen, to Pattaya and it was a journey that Na would never forget, despite her young age. She had learned that although the cost of the bus tickets had been loaned to them by a kindly village ‘uncle’, all they could afford was the very cheapest of busses. It had taken them almost two days to make the journey, in a succession of ancient, bone shaking, dilapidated old busses and pick-up trucks that seemed to run more by the grace of the Lord Buddha than by any worldly, mechanical device.

Upon arrival, they had lived in the open for three days, before they managed to put together a rude shelter. Their home consisted of  a rusty, corrugated lean-to, held up by rotting wooden posts  with a floor of cardboard which disintegrated every time it rained, necessitating replacement when the next consignment of filthy cardboard boxes were dumped nearby.

They squatted with other, similarly impoverished families in the centre of a stinking slum where they eked out an existence, sorting recyclable rubbish from the putrid piles that were dumped daily on the vacant land that surrounded their makeshift shelters. Life was unbearably hot, very hard, and the hunger pangs rarely left their weary, skeletal, skin-diseased bodies.

In spite of the sun blazing down on her blackened, pock marked body, Na was starting to drift off to sleep when her reverie was rudely disturbed by the sounds of police sirens as two police cars followed by a number of police motorbikes drove into the slum at speed.

Na watched transfixed from the top of the rubbish heap as the police disembarked from their vehicles and started to spread out throughout the slum. As the police approached the tumbledown shacks that housed the inhabitants, it was almost as though a plague of monster rats had suddenly decided to desert a sinking ship. But they weren’t rats at all; they were human beings:  young, half-starved young men who emerged from the hovels and started running in all directions in desperate attempts to escape the advancing arms of the law. Some made good their escape, but others were caught in the police cordon that was now encircling the slum and they were frogmarched off the waiting vehicles, where Na could see that they were being beaten and kicked by the brutal cops.

Then the brown uniformed thugs approached the shacks and Na was horrified to watch as they tore down the walls and ceilings and exposed the insides of the wretched hovels to the sun and sky. The inhabitants, mainly women, children and elderly started shouting and crying but they made no impression on the boys in brown as they proceeded to fling all the meagre belongings across the litter strewn ground.

Na’s own home wasn’t spared this frightening treatment and she stared with fear as her family’s home for the past two years was ripped apart and her mother and two younger siblings were roughly pushed onto the ground as the police rifled through their possessions.

Then, in a recently destroyed and ransacked shack, not far from Na’s own home, she watched as the police surrounded a tall, well-built man in his forties, who Na immediately recognised as ‘Uncle Piak’, one of the few kindly men that her family had met since they had been in Pattaya.  Indeed, it was Uncle Piak who had helped them to settle in when they had first arrived. Without him, God only knows what fate may have befallen them.

 For some unaccountable reason, the police seemed to be delighted to have cornered this man, and before long there must have been a dozen police surrounding him, with the inevitable result. They jumped on him, beat him to the ground and took it in turns to kick him violently.

It seemed to Na that surely poor Uncle Piak would die very soon if they didn’t stop their merciless beating, but as if on cue, a senior officer suddenly appeared in the group and shouted at his men to desist. Na could hear the officer telling the men that they mustn’t kill him; that they must arrest him and take him to the police station to be charged.

It seemed that the police had found what they had been looking for, and they stopped their destruction of the shacks, although by this time, very few remained standing. They hauled off poor Uncle Piak to one of the waiting police vehicles, threw him in the back, and then took off almost as quickly and as suddenly as they had arrived. The young men who had been caught in the cordon and had been mercilessly beaten, were now free to return to their newly demolished homes.

As soon as the police had departed, Na scrambled down from the rubbish pile and ran over to her two younger siblings and her mother who was trying to sort out their meagre possessions and were already making a start on re-building their humble abode. A young man, the brother of the arrested Piak, came over and lent a hand as Dow desperately tried to sink one of the wooden support posts back into the ground.

‘Mama! Why did the police take Uncle Piak away?

‘They arrested him,’ replied her mother.

‘Arrested him? What does that mean Mama?’

Piak’s younger brother looked at the pathetic young girl asking stupid questions. He was upset and very angry.

‘He was arrested for the murder of a fucking farang!’ he snapped venomously.

 ‘What’s a farang, mama?’

‘A farang is a foreigner. A foreigner – a farang – was killed in Pattaya two days ago,’ her mother explained.

Did Uncle Piak kill the farang, Mama?’ the child asked innocently.

‘Kill the farang!’ the young man replied. ‘No child.  Piak did NOT kill any fucking farang! The murder has been all over the newspapers and television and the fucking cops were under the cosh to find the killer. So what do they do? Same as they do every time they can’t find a farang killer or rapist, they come to the slums and arrest someone they don’t like. It’s the only time they ever come here!’

Na tried to absorb this information. She barely comprehended what was being told to her, but she understood enough to ask: ‘Mama, why don’t the police like ‘Uncle Piak? He’s been so kind to us.’

Piak’s brother answered for Dow. ‘They don’t like him because he stands up for all the people here and tries to protect them from all the pimps and thieves that come to take money from us. The police hate him because he interferes with their ‘tea money’ that they collect from the local mafia, of which they are a part. So they’ve ‘killed two birds with one stone’. Now they’ve got him locked up, he won’t be bothering them anymore and they’ve solved a high profile murder. He will stay in prison for a very long time.

Na followed what he was saying enough to ask: ‘But if he didn’t kill the farang, how can they lock him up?’

The man looked at the naïve young girl and a rueful grimace spread across his face.

‘You’re too young to understand, child. This world is full of very bad people. Yes, Piak didn’t kill the farang, but the police will beat him and torture him until he confesses. Then they will parade him before the press and television cameras, and my brother will confess to the world that he is the murderer, and he will even show them how he did it. The fucking cops are very good at teaching innocent people how they committed crimes.’

Na looked at the angry man, scarcely grasping what she was being told. It can’t be true, she thought. Surely not; he must be joking with me. But deep down, even at the tender age of five, she knew that he wasn’t.

PART ONE – CHAPTER IV

Na was playing with Nid, her younger sister, next to the huge rubbish heap. They had found a broken, plastic toy bucket in the trash a few days ago and the three young emaciated girls were taking it in turns to fill it full of mud and make little mud pies on the ground.

Nearly three years had passed since Uncle Piak had gone to prison for the murder of the farang and since then, life had continued much as before , although since his incarceration, the presence of yet more disreputable elements: drug dealers, thieves, rapists and other degenerates from the dregs of Thai society had become ever more prevalent.

Na had grown to understand that the existence of slums such as the one where she lived, in the middle of thriving Pattaya, was an embarrassment that nobody in authority wanted to admit to.  It had even become a more or less no-go area for the mafia cops of sin city, since that terrible day when they came in force to arrest poor Uncle Piak.  They generally kept their distance, as there was nothing much there to interest them – few of the residents had sufficient money to justify police efforts to extort any from this destitute populace.

She was now barely eight, but she was smart and streetwise. She had to be – to survive and take care of her younger brother and sister in a place where there were daily deaths from drug overdoses, HIV-AIDS related illnesses, drunken and drug induced fights. Robberies were so common-place that nobody really cared. It really was a place where ‘dog ate dog’ and only the smartest and toughest survived.

But as the tropical sun set swiftly behind the pile of rubbish, she and her sister walked back the short distance to their pathetic corrugated lean-to, to see what her mother had managed to scrounge for their evening meal, she instinctively knew that something was very wrong.

 For starters, the evening meal laid out on the mat in front of her, was food fit for a king -well at least a king of the slums. There was white, soft grained rice instead of the brown, weevil ridden muck they were usually served, and the plates of food were beyond belief. Fried chicken, omelette, vegetables, pork soup and goodness knows what else. Na could never recall having seen such a feast in the entire eight years of existence.

She looked at her mother, but Dow wouldn’t meet her daughter’s enquiring eye. By rights, whatever good fortune had brought this veritable feast to their lives should have been sufficient to bring out a huge smile onto her mother’s face. But all Na could detect was a sad, almost scared, prematurely aged woman who would not meet her stare.

And the most telling evidence that something was very wrong, was the conspicuous absence of Tom, her beautiful, adorable, six year old brother.

Some of Na’s friends had told her of the monstrous things that went on around them, in particular, the activities of Thai pimps and paedophiles who sought out children – of almost any age – to sell to their mainly farang customers.

Deep down, she knew that her own family were at risk from these perverts, but she kept it from her mind and convinced herself that it would only happen to other children, for even here, in the lawless slums, kids would rarely be taken away unless their parents or guardians permitted it. And Na knew that her Mother loved them all far too much to allow such a terrible thing to happen.

Now, all of her sudden, her faith in her mother was rapidly falling apart. ‘Mama! Where is Tom?’

Dow continued to avoid her daughter’s eyes. ‘Tom has gone away, darling.’

‘Gone away! Where has he gone Mama? Where? Where?’

‘He’s gone to a better place, Na. he will be looked after and will be much better off. He will have a good life, my love, please believe me.’

‘Believe you! Believe you! What is there to believe? You have sold Tom to a farang – to be his sex toy – I know all about it!’ she screamed angrily.

‘Sold Tom! Sex Toy! What are you talking about, you silly girl. It’s nothing like that. Tom has gone to live with a nice family who will take care of him. He will get proper food and he will be fine, don’t worry about him.’

‘Mama! You are lying to me. I know! I know what goes on. You have sold him, haven’t  you!’

‘Don’t be silly, it wasn’t like that!’

‘Then what was it like? Where did the money come to pay for all this food? If you didn’t sell Tom, how did you buy all this?’ she shouted, waving her hands at the feast on the ground.

‘Well they might have given me a little bit of money, but I thought you’d be happy – look – now you can enjoy a proper meal.’

‘Happy! Happy! – How can you say that Mama. You have sold little Tom to a farang monster and you want me to be happy…. What have you done Mama??’

Na wouldn’t be reassured and collapsed on the ground in a paroxysm of tears. She was inconsolable. Her mother begged her to eat, but that only made her cry even more. ‘Oh Mama, what have you done…’ she kept mumbling between her tears.

Na’s younger sister Nid, barely comprehending what had happened, but realising that her little brother had gone somewhere bad, also started to cry and Dow could stand it no longer. She gathered the two young girls in her arms and started crying herself.

‘I’m so sorry my darlings… so – so sorry. I had to do it, I had no money for food and I didn’t know what to do. I already owe money to some nasty men down the road and I had no way to pay it back.  I had to get some money from somewhere and this man cane to see me and told me that Tom would be looked after very well. I thought it was for the best, I am so sorry….’

The three of them lay on the ground, holding each other close, with their tears intermingling on their grime laden faces, leaving dirty brown streaks that slid down towards their chins.

At length, it was little Na who stopped crying first, wiped her tear- streaked face with the back of her hand and tried to make some semblance of sense of the desperate situation.

‘Mama, it’s OK, I understand, but please promise me one thing?’

‘What do you want?’

I want you to find the man who took Tom away and ask him how much it will cost to get my brother back again. I don’t care how much it is, somehow, we must try to find the money.

‘We could never afford it, Na.’

‘Mama, please don’t say that. Just find out how much, and then we can work it out from there.’

‘But…’

‘Please, Mama, promise me.’

‘Ok my love, I will try.’

‘Secondly, Mama, no matter what happens, no matter how desperate we are, promise me – promise me  – in the name of The Lord Buddha, that you will never, ever, do such a thing again. Promise me that you will never try to sell Nid or me. Promise me, Mama.’

Dow looked at her eldest daughter, wise, way beyond her eight years of age. ‘I promise, Na. I swear I will never try to sell you – or little Nid.’

PART ONE – CHAPTER V

Na was squatting on the hot earth, in the sparse shade of her hut, watching the two figures in deep conversation on the other side of the ramshackle building. They couldn’t see her, as she was perched very low on the ground, but when she peaked around the corner of the hut, she could see her mother and a strange, scary looking Thai man very clearly. He was a tall, very thin young man, and his expensive looking, blue designer jeans hung very loosely from his slim hips, above which, he wore a long-sleeved, body-hugging shiny black shirt, which must have felt very uncomfortable in the midday sun. But it was his scarred face that commanded Na’s attention. He had a long, vivid scar running down his right cheek and another smaller but more pronounced horizontal one on his forehead, just above his right eye.  The second scar was so close to his eye that whatever sharp instrument may have caused it, must have also penetrated his eye, as the man seemed to have a permanent, eerie squint. To little Na, peering at him from the other side of the hut, his overall countenance sent a little shiver of fright and apprehension down her skinny frame.

He wore a very thick gold necklace from which dangled several ‘Buddha’ amulets. ‘‘Nobody wears gold around here’ she was thinking, ‘It’s far too dangerous.’ Any one of a dozen desperate and starving wretches could appear at any moment and rip it from the young man’s neck. She looked around, but there was no one in sight – nobody seemed to have spotted him – not yet at any rate. Then she caught sight of the large, gleaming white car, parked a few meters away in the soi. She could see that the engine was running and then she saw a second man, sitting in the driver’s seat, and deduced that the young man must have arrived in that car.

She realised that the man must be someone special – someone powerful, or he wouldn’t dare to stand there dressed like that with so much gold on display for all to see. But what was he talking to her mother about? A sudden sinking feeling hit her stomach like a hammer blow. Oh no…this time it would be her turn….

‘No! Not again! No Mama! No…’ she forlornly muttered to herself. But Mama promised me – she promised she would never do it again. Why she was doing it? Ever since little Tom had gone, they had been eating quite well and life had been just a bit more tolerable. So, why the need to sell her? Why?

But as she squatted there, terrified, she actually knew, deep down, why her mother was doing it. For the last week or so, the already meagre fare had been getting less and less and the quality of the food had taken a distinct turn for the worse. She grimly concluded that the money that her mother had received for Tom was now at an end and that her mother was desperate, yet again.

Na considered briefly the notion of running away, but soon dismissed it. She had nowhere to go, and she doubted if she would get very far before she was caught and returned to her mother. Bravely, she realised that she would have to go with that man and do those unspeakable things that her friends had told her about if it meant that her dear younger sister, Nid, and her mother, were to have enough food to eat.

‘Who knows?’ She wondered whimsically, ‘Maybe if I go with the man, Mama will get enough money to get little Tom back’.

But something told her that it was not going to be like that. She watched them still in earnest conversation. Suddenly, her mother called her name.

‘Na, where are you? Come here!’

‘This is it,’ she thought to herself, ‘Be calm, Na and be brave.’ She stood up and walked around the hut towards the two adults.

‘Na,’ her mother started, her face seemingly devoid of all emotion, ‘Na, I have something to tell you.’

‘It’s OK Mama, I know.’

‘You know? How do you know?

‘Mama, I’m not stupid. I know your money is all gone.

Her mother stared guiltily at her.

‘It’s all gone isn’t it, Mama?’

‘I am sorry, my daughter, I have to do what I must do…’

‘Na looked at her mother and said resignedly, ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about, Mama, don’t worry. I am ready. Can I take some of my things with me?’

‘Ready? Take some of your things? What are you talking about?

‘Mama, I know I have to go with this man.’

‘No! No! You’re not going with him!’

‘Not going with him? Then what the…?’

All of a sudden, with yet another sickening jolt in her stomach, Na realised what was happening. She looked at her mother who was trying to avoid her daughter’s searching gaze. As the truth dawned on her, she shouted louder that she had ever shouted in her young life.

‘No Mama! No Mama! Not Nid! Please tell me it’s not Nid!’

Dow looked at her elder daughter, ‘Nid has to go with the man,’ she said matter of factly.

‘But why Nid? Send me, Mama, Let me go – Nid is too young – she’s only seven years old.’

‘It has to be Nid. The man only wants Nid. He says you are too ugly and in any case I need you to stay with me and look after me. I’m sorry, but it has to be Nid.’

‘But she is very young!’

‘So was Tom. Don’t worry; they will look after her, won’t you? She said to the young pimp who was fast becoming tired of all this family drama that was playing out in front of him.

‘If you don’t get the kid ready to leave in five minutes the deal is off! He retorted sharply. I haven’t got all day to spend in this putrid, steaming slum. Get her here – now!’

It was all too much for Na who broke down and fell to the ground sobbing and hysterically grabbing handfuls of earth..

‘And as for you,’ the pimp snarled, pointing at the broken hearted girl lying on the ground – don’t kid yourself that anyone would ever want you. You’re too skinny, too black and your pock marked, disease ridden skin is disgusting! Not even a revolting, mother-fucking farang would look twice at you!’

Dow went into the hut and returned almost immediately, leading her terrified sister by the hand. She was a very cute, six year old little girl. The improved diet she had enjoyed over the past year had filled her body out and, unlike her elder sister; she had been spared the skin ravages that so many of the slum kids developed. Her face was very pretty and her skin was smooth and glowing – ideal for the filthy business at hand.

The man grabbed Nid’s hand and half led and half dragged the poor, weeping girl towards the car. Her mother watched, dry-eyed, as Na, still lying on the ground realised that she was about to lose her last remaining sibling. She jumped to her feet and ran to the car where the man was trying to get Nid to climb into the back seat.

She grabbed hold of her. ‘Nid! Nid!  You can’t go! Somebody help! Somebody stop them!’ she screamed at the growing crowd of curious spectators who had now emerged from the nearby huts.

But nobody moved and the man tried to extricate Nid from her sister’s clutches and push her down into the back seat.

The two sisters hugged each other in terror and for a moment it seemed as though a miracle had happened and they would be let go. The pimp suddenly released his hold on Nid, and walked around to the driver’s door to speak to the driver. But within seconds the driver, a very large and frightening looking man, emerged from the car and the two men returned to the two girls and forcibly pulled them apart – the driver half carrying and half dragging Na back to her hut, while the pimp threw Nid into the rear seat of the car slamming the door with a steely grin of triumph on his scarred face.

Climbing in the front passenger seat, the pimp barked an order at Dow who came bustling over to him. He reached in his pocket and handed Dow a brown envelope, the driver put the limo in gear, and for a few brief moments, the wheels spun forlornly on the dry mud, but eventually they gained traction and the car sped away, out of the slum and out of Na’s life.

Na watched transfixed as her sister was taken away. As the car started to disappear into the distance, she emitted a loud, piercing wail. Her mother walked over and tried to comfort her but Na shrugged her off. She didn’t want to be consoled. She just wanted lose herself in her own anguish.

By now, a huge crowd of slum dwellers had gathered outside Dow’s hovel and even these hardened, desperate people, for whom the only thing that really mattered was where their next meal was coming from, were saddened by the plight of the pock-marked, emaciated nine year old girl. They watched in silence as Na walked slowly down the soi in the direction of the departing vehicle, her piercing wails ripping through the air and her tears seemingly unquenchable.

At least some of them understood that within the space of a single year, this traumatised kid had irretrievably lost the two people that she held most dear in her brief life.

PART ONE – CHAPTER VI

It seemed to Na that she had spent her whole life on top of a pile of rubbish, scratching around and digging for anything useful that could be salvaged and sold for a few measly baht. She was thinner and looked more skeletal and malnourished than ever, notwithstanding the fact that since her sister’s departure, food had become somewhat more plentiful.

It was six months since Nid had been driven away by the two scary men, and for the first three months Na had barely eaten anything. Her mother had to virtually force feed her with a few spoonful’s of rice every night or surely she would have starved to death.

After her sister’s departure, she had not stopped crying for two solid days and even now was she was still prone, at a moment’s notice, to burst into uncontrollable tears. She had withdrawn within herself and had no friends, seemingly content to spend her days on the piles of rubbish and half eating the meal that her mother put in front of her every night. In the late evening she would lie on her mat, staring at the corrugated roof for hours on end, before finally succumbing to a few brief hours of sleep. The scars on her face, which had prompted that horrible man to shout at her that she was ugly, had become much worse and had now spread to the rest of her body.

Dow was concerned for her daughter’s health and sanity but she had no idea what to do about it, nor indeed any real inclination to try. She was a simple, superficial soul, of limited intelligence, old before her time – worn out by the efforts of trying to keep herself and her children alive these past nine years. She truly lived day by day, trying not to worry what would happen when the money from the sale of Nid ran out. She simply did not possess sufficient strength of mind to think much further than her next meal. If she thought anything all, it simply that whatever will be, will be. It would be her karma. Maybe she had done something very bad in her last life to suffer so much in this one. Maybe her next life would be better.

On this particular morning she was cheered by the familiar sight of a minibus loaded with elderly farangs, who had just alighted from their battered vehicle and were heading in her direction. The farangs had been visiting the slums for the past year or so and they came armed with desperately needed food, clothing, bottled water and medicines. In particular, they always had a several boxes of formula milk and nappies for the babies in the slum. Before they left, Dow knew they would come over and give her some bottles of water and a small bag of rice.

From the summit of the rubbish heap, Na also welcomed these visits from these strange looking people. She never went near them, but in her miserable despair, she instinctively knew that these people were inherently good folk. It actually warmed her heart a little to watch them try to communicate with the young children and babies with a mixture of sign language and primitive Thai. She instinctively took to them, not only because she could see that they were kind and were bringing things to the slum dwellers which eased their plight, but also because they brought a bit of laughter and fun back into their miserable, impoverished lives.

As she watched, she saw her mother walk over and talk to the elderly woman who seemed to be in charge. Na gazed on in fascination, wondering what her mother was trying to say to the farang.  The white lady obviously didn’t understand because she called one of the well-dressed Thai men who had travelled with them in the bus to come over and translate. They chatted between them for a while and then her mother pointed up to her daughter sitting on top of the rubbish.

Na’s heart sank, but not a lot. She was so inured to constant emotional trauma that nothing that her mother did to her could hurt her any more. She actually didn’t much care what happened.  The pointing from her mother turned to waving, and it was clear that her mother wanted Na to come and join them outside their hut. Na, got up and slowly climbed down to the ground, idly reflecting on what could possibly be the next instalment in her brief but eventful existence.

As Na approached the group of farangs standing with and her mother, she feared for the worst, but at the same time another part of her wondered how this seemingly kind, jovial old woman could possibly hurt her or do something bad to her.

Dow addressed the Thai translator. ‘Look at my daughter’s skin, it is very bad, can you give me some cream to put on it and make it better?’

Na’s skin was truly a sad state of affairs. Her face was a mess of vivid scarlet pock marks and scabs, some of them still effusing pus. The farang woman looked at Na with compassionate and then examined her arms and legs which were similarly blighted.

‘This girl is in a dreadful state, Khun Suthep, she said to the translator. ‘If she doesn’t get immediate treatment she is going to be very ill; she might even die – she is so thin and malnourished, I doubt her immune system can fight this  disease much longer. Look, it has spread all over her poor little body.’

The translator explained to Dow what the farang had said.

‘So can she help me? Does she have some medicine we can use?’ she asked, plaintively.

Na observed in silence as the discussion went back and forth.

At length, the young, Thai translator spoke to Dow: ‘Miss Kate has said that she will help your daughter but she will have to go with her to her Children’s Mission. She says the girl cannot stay here or she will never get better.’

‘Go with her! No Never – she has to stay here, with me! She is all I have left and she has to help me and take care of me.’

The usually jovial farang lady, who Na now knew was called Kate, now looked very serious.

‘If she doesn’t leave this slum, she will never get better and she might even die,’ the translator told Dow. ‘Your daughter is very ill and it is too dirty here. Even if we give her some antibiotics and put cream on her skin to stop the scabbing, within a few days the skin will become re-infected. Your daughter is in a very bad condition.’

‘But…but… how will I survive. I need Na to earn money on the rubbish heap, the money I got from… from… is nearly gone. I will starve if Na has to go….’

Dow was quiet for a few seconds, trying to take in this devastating news. If she let Na go with these people, she would lose her only source of income. But if she insisted that Na stay with her, she might become sicker and sicker and even die. What would she do then? But maybe they are lying to her. Maybe Na is not as sick as they say. What should she do?

Then a bright idea occurred to her. ‘Unless… unless the farang woman wants to buy Na. Does she want to buy her? How much can she pay…?’

Heated discussions then ensued between Kate and her translator. Na wondered if they were trying to decide how much they should offer to pay for her.

‘Khun Dow,’ the Thai man said at last. ‘Miss Kate wants you to understand that the Children’s Mission does not want to buy Na. They would never buy anyone. It’s a very bad thing to buy or sell a human being – especially kids. She only wants to help the poor children in Pattaya; to feed them if they are hungry and give them a home if they are homeless and try to give some of them an education. She says that if you let Na go to the mission with her, she will bring food to you every week, and you can come and visit Na whenever you want to. When Na is completely better, she can come back to live with you, how about that?’

Dow was unsure whether she could trust this group of strangers. She looked at her daughter – she certainly looked to be in a pitiful state. Maybe she would die at that if she didn’t get help soon. What choice did she have? And she knew that these farangs came regularly every week so she knew that she check with them next week about her daughter and make sure she received her ration of food.

‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I agree to let her go, but just until she gets better again. I love her too much to let her go for too long and I won’t be able to sleep till she is back with me.’

Na looked at her mother with a mixture of pity and a new, darker feeling that was bordering on disgust. But she quickly dismissed the bad thoughts from her mind. It was her duty to take care of her mother, no matter what she said or what she had done to her or her brother and sister.

‘So you want me to go with these farangs, Mama?’

‘Yes, my child, just for a while, just until you are better. After all you won’t be much use to me if you die, will you …?’

PART ONE – CHAPTER VII

When Na received a message from one of the younger kids that Kate wanted her to go to the office, she had a premonition that this wasn’t going to be just routine business. She hadn’t seen her mother for nearly six months and she knew that she was way over-due for a visit. On the last occasion that her mother had come to see her, they had had a big row. Her mother wanted Na to go back home to the slum with her, but Na screamed and begged her to let her stay at the kid’s mission.

At the time of the row with her mother, Na had been at the mission for two and half years, and during that time, she had been transformed from a very sickly, skin diseased, illiterate nine year old, into an attractive pre-teenager, who not only could read and write Thai, but also knew a goodly bit of English as well.

Na still recalled vividly that momentous day when Kate and her husband, Bill, had taken her with them in the mini bus and instead of driving her straight to the kids’ home, Kate had taken Na to her own home for the first few weeks. Na had been told by the young Thai translator that she was so sick that Kate had feared for her life and decided to personally care for her until she was stronger.

And so it had happened. Kate cared for Na as though she was her own baby; putting her in a proper bed with lovely clean sheets – the first bed and sheets Na had ever seen in her life; fed her nutritious meals, ensured that she took her special medicine four times a day, and, crucially, tirelessly bathed and applied the expensive, special ointment to the terrible scabs and sores which had broken out all over her face and body. Slowly but surely, Na had started to improve, and once Kate felt that she was sufficiently improved, Na went to join the other 30 or so kids who lived at the mission.

Na hadn’t the slightest doubts that the past three years had been by far and away the happiest period of her entire life. She had quickly made friends with the other kids, and as soon as she had been well enough, the Mission workers had taken her to the local Wat school, and on weekends, she had been given special English lessons by some more kind farangs who had come to help at the mission on a part time basis.

Na had realised instinctively that she was a bright, quick student and she knew that she had impressed her teachers on how quickly she had learnt to read and write Thai. Indeed, she had excelled in all her studies, especially her English and she felt a deep pride of what she had achieved. For the first time in her life, she started to believe that she was actually worth something more than just a compliant ‘machine’, doing anything she was bid to do by her mother and others.

As she walked to Kate’s office she reflected on the row she had had with her mother, six months earlier. The basis of the row had been Dow’s demand that Na go back to the slum and back to her old life with her mother. But when Na had asked her mother if she wasn’t getting enough to eat, Dow had admitted to her daughter that Kate and the other ladies had been giving her plenty of food and other supplies that had enabled her to live quite well.

‘Then why do you want me to go Mama?

‘Because I am alone and I miss you.’

Na suspected it was not so much because her mother missed her, but more because she wanted someone to do all the work for her and look after her. ‘But Mama, I am happy here,’ she said, ‘I am going to school here, and I’m even learning to speak some English. This will all come to an end if I go back with you.

‘What good is school to you – a penniless slum girl!’ her mother had said. ‘Your place is at home with me, not at school, learning a lot of useless nonsense.…’

Na had been unable to control her disgust. She was normally a calm, well behaved and dutiful daughter, but the injustice of what her mother was trying to do, suddenly hit her with a jolt and she had erupted with uncontrollable anger.

‘It’s not useless nonsense! I am learning to read and write and many other things besides; you can’t take me away now! What have you ever done for me? You sold little Tom and Nid into God knows what suffering and degradation, and now you want to ruin my life as well! Don’t you understand? I am happy here – for the first time in my life I am happy!’ Na had screamed at her mother.

‘Now go! Go home! Get out of here and leave me alone! Get out! Get out!’

 Nobody was more surprised than Na when her mother took one brief look at her daughter, got up from the chair she had been sitting on, and quietly left the office, without another look back. Na couldn’t believe her good luck. Maybe her mother had gone forever.

That was six months ago, and now the ominous message to go and see Kate in the mission office. As Na suspected, when she got there, there were three people sitting in the office: Kate, her Thai translator and sitting in the centre of the room, with her head staring at the floor, was the ominous figure of Dow, her mother.

Kate, with the help of the Thai translator, explained to Na that her mother was now insisting that Na go home with her. ‘Six months ago, you refused to leave, but she has been told by some people in the slum that you cannot stay here without her permission and she has the right to take you back.’

‘I don’t want to go! I want to stay here with you and go to school. If I go with her, I won’t be able to go to school any more. It’s not fair!’

‘I’m very sorry Na, but you are only 12 years old and your mother is still your legal guardian. She does have the right to take you back and there is nothing we can do to stop her. You know you can only stay here if she agrees with the arrangements’

Na knew only too well the truth of this. She had seen many of her friends at the mission come and go during the three years she had been there. At any time, one of the kid’s parents – most of them only had a single parent if they had any at all – would come to the Mission and demand to take their child away with them. Na knew of several younger children who had been taken away on more than one occasion – just so that the parent could sell them to some filthy paedophile, usually to feed a drug habit. Later, the kids would be returned to the Mission by a social worker or sometimes a policeman, when the paedophile had grown tired of them or, more often, when the kid had succeeded in escaping from their clutches.

Na looked at Kate. ‘Miss Kate, are you still giving food and water to my mother? she asked.

‘Yes, my child, you mum is well taken care of. She says she just wants you back to keep her company. She says can’t live alone any more. I am so sorry, my child, but you will have to go with her. It’s the law. There is nothing we can do.

Na tried to meet her mother’s gaze but the old woman steadfastly refused to look at her and stared at the floor. Then Na looked across at the kindly Kate and the young Thai man, who was also a good friend to all the kids. The man’s face was inscrutable, but the elderly woman’s eyes said it all. She was full of despair, sorrow and dread for the fate of this lovely, clever young girl that she had grown to love as her own daughter.

    ‘Na, my love, you better go with Khun Suthep and collect your things.’

PART ONE – CHAPTER VIII

The bright camera flashes were giving her a headache and making her feel nauseous. She had been sitting there for at least ten minutes and there seemed to be no end in sight to the insatiable appetite of the trigger happy press photographers. Suddenly, there was a commotion behind her and four uniformed police emerged from the back office, with an as yet, unidentified European man. Within a few seconds pandemonium reigned. The reporters shouted and the photographers increased still further the speed and intensity of their overworked camera flash guns.

A second wooden chair was placed next to Na and a huge, obese farang was summarily dumped on it. He was held firmly from behind by two large policemen who had their hands resolutely on his massive shoulders, they probably needn’t have bothered; for what with his hands in handcuffs and his legs in leg irons, there didn’t seem to be much of a chance of him going anywhere in a hurry. For all the world, he looked like a trapped, frightened bear.

Na instinctively tried to get up and move away from the repulsive, foul smelling man, but two cops gently pushed her back down again, assuring her that it was safe and that she had nothing to worry about.

She looked beyond the sea of cameras and saw that two television gantries were following the proceedings from the back of the crowded public waiting room of the Central Pattaya Police station. The journalists were screaming questions at Na and the ‘animal’ sitting next to her, but she was too bewildered and overwhelmed by all that had happened to even begin to comprehend what was being asked of her.

To her immense relief, a tall, smartly dressed, uniformed policeman emerged from the rear office and immediately took command.

*

Police Captain Chamlong was very pleased with himself. He hadn’t attracted so much public attention since the day he had arrested the man Piak in the soi Khopai slums, some seven years ago for the murder of the farang tourist. The world’s press had descended on Pattaya and for a few brief days he was the best known cop in Thailand –quite possibly the world. The shocking, brutal murder of the farang in broad daylight on a beach in Pattaya’s  had made headlines all over the world, and the good Captain had been determined to make the most out of a high profile arrest – which he succeeded in doing, barely a week after the crime had been committed. Never mind that the poor fool hadn’t done it. After he had been worked over by his specialist sergeant, the man had been happy enough to take the rap; especially after Chamlong had arranged for a few sweeteners to be handed over to his family.

It was the way things were done in Thailand. Find a likely suspect; extract a confession by a ‘leaning’ on him and dangling a few bungs towards his family; re-enact the crime for the press and media, and then throw him in jail for the rest of his life. Everyone was happy, even the fall guy’s family. Captain Chamlong had only been a mere Police Lieutenant in those days, but his high profile case-solving, in addition to the large backhanders he had been able to pass on to Colonel Aroon , had ensured rapid promotion.

And now he had another wonderful, high profile crime to tell the world about. He had rescued a thirteen year old innocent girl from the clutches of a wicked farang, who had been holding her in captivity as a sex slave for the past 12 months. Never mind the fact that he had only learned about the incident after a couple of patrol officers had called his station sergeant to report they had rescued a young girl a room in Naklua, the northern-most suburb of Pattaya city.

He happened to be standing next to his sergeant at the time, and instinctively realised the newsworthy nature of the incident. He had immediately phoned his press contacts and the word had spread like wildfire. Even Chamlong had been surprised by the level of interest and the number of press and TV journalists, some of whom had even rushed down from Bangkok especially for his press conference.

But of course, any sex crime was good copy for the down-market tabloid press, especially one that involved a poor, underage Thai girl and an evil foreigner. Any story involving a ‘sex slave’ and a farang was guaranteed to sell thousands of extra copies – especially if they could also publish some nice juicy photographs of the poor victim next to the wicked perpetrator.

‘Ladies, and Gentlemen,’ the Captain, began, ‘I am pleased to inform you that I have been successful in arresting a German National, a Mr Klaus Kessler, on charges of kidnapping, human trafficking, illegally holding someone against her will and raping an underage Thai national. The man is now sitting here before you and I am pleased to advise that he has confessed to all the charges.’

The cameras flashed like crazy as the assembled press core took yet more photographs of the massive, unshaven, dirty, pot-bellied German who sat expressionless, staring at the floor in front of him. To many of the xenophobes present in that room, he was indeed the very epitome of a repulsive farang barbarian who came to Sin City to commit unspeakable acts on their poor, delicate and helpless children.

‘Next to Mr Klaus, sits the poor victim of these terrible crimes. Her name is Siriporn Sudacha; she is 13 years old and comes from Khon Khaen. This poor girl, Siriporn, has been locked up in a room in Naklua for the past 12 months, and during that time, she was not allowed out and was kept by Mr Klaus as his sex slave to carry out whatever perversions he desired. As you can see, the poor girl is very thin and sickly and she has been driven half-crazy by the terrible, unspeakable acts she was made to perform by the monster who is now sitting before you.

‘Captain, how did you manage to find her?’ asked a reporter from the centre of the press pack.

‘I had suspected for some time that there were some German residents in Naklua were living with under-age Thai girls and maybe holding them against their will, so I formed a special undercover vice squad to infiltrate the area, with the successful result that you see before you today,’ he proudly told the assembled masses. ‘This arrest, I hope, will be the first of many.’

The Captain stared fiercely at his captive audience, almost daring them to question his version of events, which, he knew was a long way from the truth. Of course, he had no special undercover squad, and it was pure luck that the two officers had stumbled across the hapless girl.

The stupid, booze-addled German had been caught in a police raid on an illegal brothel, near his home and one of the Thai workers there, supposedly his friend, had told the police that he had a young girl locked up back in his room. Getting the address of his room from the Thai informer, the two cops had rushed over and without even attempting to obtain legal entrance; they had broken down the front door. Inside, they had found the emaciated Na crouching in the far corner of the room, terrified out of her mind, not knowing what was happening and what further horrors were about to be inflicted on her.

 So the wily, ambitious police officer had put as much spin on the incident as he was able to in order to show himself in the best possible light, and nobody was about to contradict his version of events – if they knew what was good for them.

‘Captain’, another reporter shouted from the back of the room. Can we ask the girl – Siriporn – some questions?

The officer looked at the half starved, brutalised child sitting on the stool and for a brief moment, even this mean spirited, venal cop felt a smidgeon of compassion for the pathetic little thing, but the moment passed soon enough and  business was still business. ‘Yes, you can talk to her,’ he said, ‘although I’m not sure she’s in much of a fit state to tell you very much.’

‘Siriporn!’ the reporter shouted, ‘How long did the German keep you as his prisoner?’

Na looked perplexed. She turned round to look at the Captain, as if asking for help.

‘It’s all right my child, you can speak to the reporters,’ he told her reassuringly.

She faced the crowd. ‘I – I don’t know … a long time… many months…’ It was the month of June when he first took me to his room. What month is it now?’

‘It’s June,’ the captain told her, ‘you were there for a year.’

Na absorbed this information which seemed to distress her even further. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.

‘Did he ever let you leave the room?’ someone shouted from the back of the crowd.

She opened her eyes and looked in the direction of the questioner. ‘Leave the room? No…never…’ Then she seemed to remember something: ‘Oh! Yes! Once, no, twice, I think…’

‘So he let you out two times’, continued the questioner, ‘Where did you go?’

‘I…went to a…a clinic…’ she mumbled.’

‘So you were sick and he took you to a doctor?’

‘I… was…I …was…with baby…’, she mumbled, dry eyed but looking utterly distraught.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the hard bitten press hacks in the room. The mere notion that this German ‘monster’ had impregnated this poor skinny little kid, made her pregnant, and – horror upon horror – had then taken her to an illegal, back street abortion clinic to get rid of the baby on at least two occasions was truly shocking.

‘Khun Siriporn, can you tell us what this farang, this Klaus, did to you?’ asked a female reporter from the front.

Na looked at the middle aged Thai reporter. ‘I…I, don’t understand…’

‘Can you tell us, what he did to you? You told us he made you pregnant – so what exactly did he do to you? Did he rape you? How did he rape you?’

Na stared at the woman, completely incapable of forming responses to the shockingly intrusive questions. Her mind was a total blank.

But before the poor girl was further exhorted to recount any more intimate details concerning her captivity, another member of the press core came to her rescue.

‘You can’t ask her personal questions like that! Look at the poor thing – she needs care attention and love. Can’t you see she that she is highly traumatised, and probably physically sick as well. She doesn’t deserve all this. She is only a child, for God’s sake.’

Another sympathetic reporter took up the cry and before long pandemonium broke loose between those who wanted their ‘pound of flesh’ from the girl – after all they had driven all the way from Bangkok for this interview – and those who were saying ‘enough was enough’.

This wasn’t quite the way the Captain had planned for the press conference to go. Sensing that he might be regarded in a bad light by some sectors of the media, especially the TV reporters, he quickly decided to take the side of the compassionate element and bring the proceedings to a close.

‘I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but as you can see, the poor girl is in a very bad mental and physical state and I think it is better that we close the press conference and let her get the medical care that she obviously needs.’

With that, the assembled crowd started to disperse, Klaus was led away to a police cell and the Captain took Na by the hand and escorted her back into his private office.

‘Siriporn – Na,’ he said, using her nick name, ‘Na, I will have one of my men contact social services to come and take you away. But don’t disappear, because I will need you later – when we put that fucking farang on trial. He has confessed, but I will still require a written statement from you.

With that he went out of the office and left Na alone, still traumatised, still sick and, above all – very, very hungry. She had hardly eaten for over twenty four hours and was feeling quite weak. Since she had been rescued, nobody had taken proper care of her. She had been sent to sleep in a private cell overnight and nobody had thought fit to feed her a proper meal, just some foul smelling prison muck that she couldn’t keep down.

And today, she had had to endure this nightmare in front of the reporters. She felt very depressed and very weak. But, as on so many occasions during the past twelve months, she was really beyond caring what happened to her. She wished she could close her eyes, go to sleep and never wake up again. Then – maybe then – all the pain would go away.

*

Was it only a year ago that she had been so happy, living at the kids’ mission, with her new found friends and the kind farangs and taking part in school lessons that she had relished so much gusto? Her mother had ruined all that. She had only been back with Dow for a single night when the familiar, shiny Toyota had appeared with the two frightening Thai men – the young one with the scars and the big burly one who drove.

She realised what her mother was planning as soon as the young man got out of the car. Dow had walked towards the car to meet with him, and Na was scared stiff, but resigned to her fate. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad at that. After all, the farangs at the kid’s mission had been very kind to her, so why shouldn’t every farang be the same?

But it wasn’t the same; not at all. The two Thai men had driven Na to a narrow soi, deep in Naklua suburbs, where there they parked up outside a dilapidated, three storey block of Thai style rooms. Na was taken up to the third floor where she was delivered to the biggest, ugliest looking man she had ever seen in her life. The man wore a torn pair of stained brown shorts and a dirty white vest which seemed to stick to his enormous belly.  Klaus wasn’t only huge and fat, with great tree trunk shaped legs, but he was dripping with sweat and smelled as though he hadn’t washed in weeks.

His home consisted of a single large room, with a small outdoor balcony for cooking and a small wash room/toilet. The room was dominated by a king sized double bed with a small television on a cheap, plastic table in the corner. In the other corner was a refrigerator which was always crammed full of Chang Beer.

 It would be many years before the nightmares of the acts Klaus forced Na to do during her year of enslavement started to fade from her nightly dream patterns. Almost as soon as the door had been closed and locked on her first day of arrival, Na was obliged to immediately perform sex acts on the vile smelling, frightening beast. Such was his appetite for sex, that on most days Klaus would force her to perform on at least three or four times – sometimes even more. Over the months she came to realise that his voracious sexual appetite was occasioned by his virtual non- stop chewing of cheap, Viagra-like Kamara pills, and also a result of his weekly injections of testosterone.

When Klaus wasn’t drinking at home and taking his perverted pleasure with Na, he would be out at one of the nearby cheap local bars, getting drunk with his fellow Germans, and even a few drunken Thais. Then he would return home drunk and invariably abuse Na yet again before collapsing in a drunken sleep.

Provided he could have his way, he generally refrained from overt violence, but whenever Na tried to demur from satisfying him sexually on the grounds of being too sick or too tired, or if she didn’t cook his foul tasting German food to his satisfaction, he would erupt in a frenzy and slap her across the head so hard that she would literally fly across the room. The bruises so inflicted, would take days, sometimes weeks to disappear. She was terrified of him and soon gave up any hope of escape or relief from her wretched existence.

*

‘Na! Na! Wake up!’

The voices seemed to be coming from another world.

‘Na! Na! Wake up, it’s time to go. Come on now.’

She blinked her eyes and tried to remember where she was. The room was in semi-darkness; night was falling fast and no one had bothered to turn the lights on. She looked around and remembered where she was. She was still sitting in the Captain’s office in the police station, still tired and above all still hungry. She must have slept for several hours.

‘Na, wake up! We have to go!’

She looked bleary- eyed at two somewhat rotund female figures who were leaning over her, shaking her and trying to wake her. Recognition started to dawn. One, she realised with a shudder of fear was her mother, Dow. ‘Oh no, not again,’ she thought, ‘not yet, please God, not yet!’

But as she turned her attention to the second figure, she breathed a huge sigh of merciful relief. It was a farang – it was her beloved Kate from the kid’s mission. ‘Surely Kate will take care of me – at least for a while, until I feel a bit better,’ she told herself.

‘Miss Kate, what are you doing here?’ she asked in broken English.

‘Oh my darling, I saw you on local TV with those awful reporters. So I drove down to Soi Khopai to get your mother and then we came straight here to fetch you.’

So…so, where are you talking me? Back to my mama’s home?’ she asked, dreading what Kate’s reply may be.

‘No, my love. Your mother has agreed that you can come back and stay with me at the mission. We will feed you up and make you better. Oh my poor thing, you are so thin and you look so sick. Come on, up you get and we’ll be on our way.’

‘But…but what about the police?’ Na asked, still worried.

‘The police have already said you can leave. We just need to keep them informed of your whereabouts. After all, you haven’t done anything wrong. Come on my love, let’s get you out of here and get some food into that poor little tummy of yours.’

Na looked plaintively at her mother, but she said nothing and pointedly refused to meet Na’s eyes.

‘Mama?’

Dow finally looked at her daughter’s enquiring gaze. ‘It’s alright Na, you can go with Miss Kate. I agree.’

‘But for how long?’ Na wondered, as the three of them made their way outside to the police car park.

PART ONE – CHAPTER IX

Na was extremely anxious; she hadn’t heard from Mike for more than two weeks. In fact, ever since he had suddenly backed his bags and rushed back to England to deal with a ‘family emergency’, she had not heard a word from him. Nor – even more importantly – had he sent her any of the promised funds.

She had now reached the point where she had to make a critical decision. Should she sell some of her hard earned gold to raise the necessary cash, or should she simply change to a much cheaper hospital? Mike had promised her faithfully that as soon as he got back to London he would send her the cash for her hospital fees. But now, two weeks later and on the brink of delivery, there was no sign of any money being sent. She had tried to call him so many times, but his phone seemed to be permanently out of order. She had a dreadful feeling that the great love affair of her life was about to collapse in the most spectacular fashion.

She was about to shake  her mother, who lying next to her, still fast asleep on the huge double bed, to go out and find her into a cheaper, more affordable hospital, when there was a ring at the door. ‘Mama! Mama! Wake up! Someone’s at the door,’ she shouted, shaking her mother quite roughly.

Dow, still half asleep, rubbed her sand-filled eyes and staggered to her feet. Then she looked down at her daughter. ‘What? What? What’s happened?

The doorbell rang again.

‘The door, Mama! The door! Go and see who’s there – maybe it’s Mike! she shouted , in a sudden fit of hope and feverish excitement.

It wasn’t Mike, but the visitor was possibly the next best thing. It was Russell, Mike’s best friend. Na knew Russell very well; he was always popping by the apartment, either alone or with other friends to have a drink and to watch videos. He would even visit on the odd occasion when Mike wasn’t at home. They had all been mates together – Mike, Russell and the others, and of course some of the girls who tagged along, or so she used to think. But she hadn’t seen Russell, or any of Mike’s friends for several weeks, and she had begun to believe that they were all deliberately keeping their distance from her. Yet here he was, as large as life, surely with a message from her beloved Mike.

The sat down in the large lounge, Na’s heavily pregnant frame sinking down into the deeply leather piled sofa.

‘Russell, you hear from Mike?’

‘Yes, Na, I just heard from him last night. He called me about two in the morning.’

‘Oh, thank God for that. I think something happen to him. I not hear anything since he go back to England. He all right? He have accident? Why he not call me?’ she asked in a worrying tone.

The young Englishman sat in silence for a few moments, trying to work out what to say to her.

‘What happened, Russell? What happened to Mike? Something happened – I know. He OK?’ Na pressed him, in an ever more anxious tone.

He looked at her, trying to break the news as gently as possible. ‘’Na, Mike is fine…’

‘Then why he not call me? Why he not send me money?’ When he coming back to Pattaya?’

‘I’m so sorry Na. he’s not coming back.’

‘Not coming back!’ she shrieked, ‘Why? Why?’

‘Na, I’m so sorry. Mike asked me to tell, you he’s not coming back to Thailand.. He’s got a new job in the city and he can’t get time off like he used to. Its’ a very big job, a promotion,  and he has to stay in London all the time.’

‘But…but… what about me? What about my – his baby!’ she screamed.

 Na, I’m sorry to tell you that Mike has a new girlfriend in London and he is getting married.’

‘Getting g married? I don’t believe it! He loves me. He told me the wanted to marry me! What about his baby???’

‘Na, I’m so sorry to tell you this, but last night Mike said that the baby wasn’t his. He said you had been sleeping around and he was quite sure that baby wasn’t his. That’s why he left you and flew back to England.’

Na was beside herself with distress, bordering on hysteria. ‘Not his Baby! That’s impossible! He is the only man I have been with for more than a year. It is his Baby, Russell, call him and tell him it is his baby!’

He looked at the distraught girl with a mixture of pity and disbelief. Mike had been so convincing when he had told him last night that Na had been ‘two-timing him’, but now he wasn’t so sure. ‘Which one was telling the truth?’ He wondered.

‘Na, I can’t get in the middle of all this; I am just passing on a message. He told me he wanted to call you but your phone was switched off.

‘No! No! That’s a lie! My phone never off. I have wait for Mike to call – all night, all day, since he leave Pattaya.’

‘Well I don’t know about that, Na, I’m just telling you what he said. Why don’t you try to call him, then, and tell him he’s got it all wrong?’

‘Russell, I try to call Mike every day – his phone never open!’ You call him – you tell him. I need money for hospital – my baby coming very soon…’

Russell didn’t know what to do for the best. It was clear that Na was extremely upset and who could blame her. It certainly appeared that she was telling the truth and he knew that Mike wasn’t averse to the odd little white lie, when the occasion demanded it. But it was beginning to look as though it wasn’t just a little white lie – it might well be a bit of a monster. Mike was just trying to get out of his responsibly… the bastard….

Na had broken down in tears and her mother had come in from the bedroom to comfort her.

‘Look Na, I’m very sorry, but I really have to be going…’ he said, as he rose to his feet and made towards the front door.

But before he had taken two steps, Na set out a mighty scream that stopped him in his tracks. He turned to see the two women with terror on their faces. Then he noticed the trickle of blood seeping through from Na’s pakoma and he knew that he was in the middle of a medical emergency.

‘Russell! Help me!’ Na screamed, half delirious form birthing pains and the emotional trauma that she had just been subjected to.

He knew that Mike had booked the expensive Bangkok Pattaya Hospital for Na’s delivery, so he quickly realised that the best thing to do was to somehow get Na into his car downstairs in the apartment car park and get her to the hospital as soon as possible.

Without further ado, and with Dow’s help, they half carried, half dragged the delirious Na into the lift, and thence onto the back seat of his car, whereupon  he scared the wits out of Dow and himself as he raced to the hospital which was located some 10 kilometres away at the Northern end of Pattaya.

***

 It was a veritable ‘Devil’s Inferno’, with its throbbing, cacophonous disco music and its surrealistic strobes and multi-coloured spots. At its centre, the drunken, heaving masses were surrounding and cheering on a beautiful, dark skinned, naked lady, perched on a small, raised platform, who was dancing up a dervish-like storm of wild, seductive gyrations.

Suddenly a young man broke away from the clinging crowd and tried to climb up onto the small platform. She saw him and pulled him up to her, hugging his body close to her sweat-laden glistening skin. ‘Oh Russell… Russell,’ she moaned, as she thrust her upper thigh into his bulging crotch..

There was a commotion in the crowd as another man broke through and grabbed at the dancer’s ankles. She looked down and screamed. ‘Mike! Mike! – what are doing here?’

He looked at her with a mixture of disgust and anger in his blood red eyes. ‘You whore ! you whore!’ he shouted, ‘You cheap, dirty whore!’‘No! No! I’m not!’ she screamed, ‘Mike I love you! I love you!’

He let go of her ankles, turned his back and made an abrupt departure from the small stage, quickly vanishing from sight amongst the packed crowd.

‘Mike, don’t go!’ she screamed, and stopped dead in her tracks, pushing Russell away from her. He responded by putting his hands around her waist, trying to pull her towards him once more. She looked scornfully at him, and tried unsuccessfully to remove herself from his frantic embrace, when suddenly, she seemed to acquire superhuman strength and lifted him up bodily from the dancing platform.

With her new-found prodigious power, she raised the flailing body above her head, holding him horizontally at arm’s length and started dancing again; this time a twirl, round and round the stage, screaming at the punters, desperately trying to locate her beloved Mike. Finally, she came to a halt and with a gesture akin to a double handed javelin throw, she launched the hapless farang into the middle of the baying crowd and watched, with satisfaction as his helpless body crashed through onto the floor and his head split asunder against the nearby bar.

The crowd became silent, the music abruptly ceased, and the tier of spotlights zoomed in on the lifeless body. The crowd stared at the body, and then back at the still naked figure on the stage. A single voice shouted: ‘Na!’ Then others joined in, ‘Na! Na! Na! Na! The spotlights changed direction again and returned to illuminate Na’s quivering body.

‘Na! Na! Na!’

 

***

‘Na! Na!… wake up, Na!’

At first she thought she was still on stage in that grotesque bar. A shiver of fear ran though her. ‘Oh my God! What on earth have I done?’ Then with relief, she realised that she had been having a nightmare and started to relax. She actually felt quite good; she was still drowsy from the anaesthetic and was feeling a little ‘high.’

But as the voices and the lights started to pierce her consciousness, the first thing she felt was a sharp pain in her lower stomach. ‘Where was she? What was going on? Why was she hurting?’ For a moment she thought that she was back in one of those dirty illegal abortion clinics that Klaus had taken her to. Klaus? ‘Oh no! Was she still in his clutches?’ she asked herself.

But gradually, as consciousness returned, the full reality of what had happened started to dawn on her. She opened her eyes and saw her mother on one side of the hospital bed and a doctor, surrounded by a clutch of nurses on the other.

‘Khun Na,’ the doctor said, ‘how are you feeling?’

‘Erm… I’m not too sure. All right I suppose. But I have a lot of pain down here, ‘she replied, pointing to her stomach.’

‘Yes, it will hurt for a few days, but you will soon feel better. I have given you some medicine to alleviate the pain.’

She looked around her and saw that she was attached to a saline drip and that her vital signs were being monitored by a nearby machine. Slowly, the memory of it all started to return.

‘Mama, where am I?’ she asked.

‘You’re in hospital.’

‘Yes, I know! But what hospital?’

‘You’re in Bangkok Pattaya,’ replied one of the nurses.

Na’s heart sunk. Oh no, not Bangkok Pattaya, one of the most expensive hospitals in Thailand. ‘Why am I here? What happened?’ she asked, although memories of recent events were fast returning. She feared the worst.

‘Khun Na,’ the doctor, answered, ‘you have had a lucky escape. When you were brought in two days ago, it was touch and go whether you would make it, but we managed to save you, as you can see’ he said with a weak smile.

‘Save me? Why? What happened?’ But she knew. It had all come back. ‘I was pregnant; I was having a baby…’

‘Yes, you were having a baby. You had a baby, which we delivered yesterday by caesarean section.’

‘Caesarean section! You… cut open my stomach…?’ Why? How? Who gave you permission to do that?’

‘You mother did. She had to, If not you would have died. You had lost a lot of blood and were in a very bad condition.’

The whole awful reality of what had been happening started to dawn on her still bewildered and sleep-heavy brain. They had cut open her stomach; she would have a scar! She would never be able to dance again. She wouldn’t be able to work as a go-go dancer ever again! But her baby! What about her baby?

‘Mama, what about my baby?’ she asked in a whisper.

The doctor answered. ‘Khun Na, your baby is fine. You have a beautiful baby girl and she is being looked after by some nurses in the hospital nursery. You can see her when you feel up to it.

Na closed her eyes and tried to take it all in. The hospital staff who had gathered around her bed assumed that she must have drifted off to sleep again. After a few minutes they left the bedside and slowly went about their duties, leaving the exhausted Dow on her own.

But Na wasn’t asleep; she just wanted to lie there quietly and contemplate in silence everything that had been going on with her all too brief life.

After two illegal abortions she had become a mother, at the age of nineteen. But she now she had an unsightly scar and would never work again as a dancer. Without her knowledge or consent, they had taken her to Bangkok Pattaya Hospital and she had no idea how she was going to pay the bills. Mike had dumped her. Although she still had feelings for him, the realisation dawned that he was a shallow, deceitful man who had treated her very shoddily. She had been completely faithful to him since he had moved in with her over year ago. What’s more she knew that he didn’t really believe she had screwed around. He was just lying to friends to justify what he had done to her.

But right now, her biggest problem was how to pay the bills. With her operation and post-operative care for her and the baby, she was sure the bill would run into several hundred thousand Baht. She didn’t have anything like that kind of money. In fact her savings account was almost empty. She had actually been keeping Mike for the past couple of months when the money he had brought to Thailand with him had dried up. He had promised her faithfully that he would pay her back as soon as he reached England. The bastard! The fucking liar! Yet again her young life seemed to have taken a downward turn.

She still recalled those long ago days when she had been lifted out of poverty and deprivation and taken to live at the kid’s mission by Kate and Bill. She had been so happy. Then her mother had come and taken her and after just a single day with her mother, she had been forced to go and live with that terrible farang as his sex slave for a year. The memories of that year were still vivid, but she always tried very hard to stop thinking about it. It was just too traumatic and thinking about it always made her cry.

***

After Na had had the good fortune to be rescued from the room in Naklua, it was happy days again. Despite a few desperate and unsuccessful attempts by her mother to take her back to the slums, – for God only knows what nefarious purposes – she had stayed at the kid’s mission until her sixteenth birthday.

By general acknowledgement, she had grown into a very attractive young lady, and in spite of her emotional scars, she had blossomed into a charming and cheerful soul, seemingly full of fun and always ready to see the funny side of things. It wasn’t long before she attracted the attention of  the young Thai men who sometimes came to do volunteer work at the mission and shortly after her sixteenth birthday she announced to the apprehensive Kate and Bill that she was leaving the mission and was going to ‘live’ with her latest boyfriend .

The affair hadn’t lasted long. When she confided in her lover about her experiences when she was younger, he soon lost interest in her and kicked her out of the room they shared together. There then followed a series of short lived affairs with similar, narrow- minded Thais before Na finally got it into her head that most Thai men would never be serious about a penniless, Issan girl from the slums, with minimal education, no gainful employment and who had been badly abused as a child.

She was barely seventeen when she got her first job in a Pattaya bar. After the initial culture shock, it didn’t take her long to slip into the lifestyle of a prostitute cum bar girl. She certainly wasn’t a virgin, having been abused by Klaus when she was only twelve years old and then, a few years later, she experienced some quite enjoyable sex with her various Thai boyfriends, who were all most adept at knowing how to make her satisfied. So the prospect of sleeping with farangs for money held no particular worries for her. For the most part, she would simply lie on her back and let the punters get on with it – the quicker the better, and a vast majority were indeed extremely quick about it, quite unlike most of the Thai men she used to sleep with. Of course, Na was very young and very attractive and these sex starved farangs who flocked the bars of Pattaya were absolutely bursting with testosterone, so for most of them, the act was over before it really begun, but most were too shy to admit it or to care.

Occasionally, Na would meet a more sexually experienced customer, usually an older man, and with them she would sometimes enjoy an exciting night’s sex – but these occasions were very much the exception rather than the rule.

Within months, she had ‘graduated’ to one of the top go-go bars in Walking Street, the pinnacle of Pattaya’s red light district. Na – the beautiful, sexy, go-go dancer – had arrived and she had no problems in attracting a coterie of smitten farang customers.

She was extremely popular. She was in her prime and the men just fell over themselves to bed her and ply her with money. During her most ‘productive spell’ she would have as many as six farangs on her ‘payroll’ at one time. She became adept at structuring her time with them so that no single customer was aware of the existence of the others. Whenever they went back to their home countries, they would send monthly remittances to her bank account. She became a master of deception and even when two or more customers were in Pattaya at the same time, she became more and more inventive at explaining her absences and keeping them all at a distance from each other. She achieved all this while holding down her full bar time job – although for much of the time she was being ‘bar-fined’ and only made the odd, rare appearance at her place of employment.

This was by far the most fruitful period of her life. She had a goodly sum sorted away in various bank accounts; her velvet jewellery case was crammed full of jewellery and gold; she drove the latest Honda motorcycle and had even bought a few acres of land back in her home province of Khon Kaen, where she was born.

She lived in one of the better class condominium blocks in Pattaya and used her high earnings as a successful go-go dancer, cum prostitute, to furnish her condo with the best of furniture and all the latest mod cons and conveniences. Her mother, Dow, had come to live with her and in a remarkable ‘role reversal’, she had become her daughter’s cook and general housekeeper.

At nineteen, she was in her prime.

Unfortunately, Na was also in a prime situation for yet another fall. She had long learned that Thai men were not for her. Her brief experiences had led her to the conclusion that they were all deceitful, unfaithful, selfish, frequently violent creatures who never had any money. On the other hand she had met many good looking, young farangs who seemed to be so different. They were all rich and they fell over backwards to make her happy and shower her with gifts and money.

They wanted to spend all their time with her and were so much in love with her that they would literally do anything to keep her in the manner that she had become accustomed. Moreover, unlike Thai men, she discovered that these farang men were so easy to control. They believed everything she told them and would do anything she wished. They would never question her or argue with her – not if they wanted her to remain their ‘girlfriend’.

But Na knew that she could not maintain this kind of lifestyle indefinitely and it would probably only be a matter of time before one of her many boyfriends caught her cheating on him. Even though she bore more mental scars in her brief life than most do in a lifetime, Na was one of those rare souls who never lost her compassion or her belief in the innate goodness of the human spirit, and she had no real desire to hurt anyone unnecessarily.

So she concluded that she could do a lot worse than choose one of these fun-loving young men as a permanent partner – maybe even a future husband. In truth, she was growing tired of her life as a go-go dancer and ever wearier of all the lies and games she had to play to keep her besotted, love-struck suitors apart from each other.

Some of her friends had taken this course and had succeeded in having happy, long term relationships – a few had even gone to live abroad with their chosen spouses. So this might have been a good plan if she had chosen wisely, but unfortunately, she didn’t. She chose a ‘wrong-un’.

Mike was a smart, streetwise handsome young cockney lad of twenty-six. He was one of the new breed of city traders who survived on his wits and had made a small fortune in the London money markets. He lived hard and played hard and had discovered Pattaya a couple of years earlier when he had made the miraculous discovery that his good looks and long, flowing, blond hair together with a fat wallet would buy him almost any girl he desired, and that included the lovely Na.

Mike was very much enamoured with Na. When he was back home in the ‘square mile’ making yet more loadsa money, he would send her regular, very generous remittances, just so that he could ‘keep her on ice’, (or so he thought), until his next visit. But this didn’t stop him enjoying the delights of many other girls when he flew back to Thailand. At this point in his life the last thing he wanted was a monogamous relationship. He was enjoying himself immensely ‘playing the field’ and could well afford to do so.

Never the less, when Na suggested that he move in with her, he was highly flattered. She was one of the most popular ladies in Pattaya. Every time she got up to dance in her glittering, skimpy outfit that left so little to the imagination, all the punters  fawned around her  and queued up to buy her drinks and hold her hand.

It hadn’t even occurred to Mike to shack up with one of these girls until Na suggested it to him one day. Not only was he flattered but it would prove to be a huge boost to his ego to have Na on his arm whenever he went out for a night on the town. He would make sure all the lads understood that it was, ‘Hands off Na – she’s taken’. They would all be so jealous and as an added bonus, he wouldn’t have to go to the effort of finding a new lady to sleep with every night. So after taking a few moments of weighing up the’ pros and cons’, he readily agreed to Na’s proposal that they live together. It was a recipe for disaster. Na was ready to commit to a full time, serious relationship, but Mike was just after a bit of fun and a means to make his friends jealous.

The novelty of Mike having a beautiful Thai lady as his very own, exclusive, property didn’t last long. At first, things seemed to go well, but as time wore on, Mike absences to have a ‘night out’ with his mates became ever more frequent. He soon grew tired of bringing Na with him as his testosterone-filled body was bursting to impregnate as many of the lovely damsels of Pattaya that time and money would permit.

Eventually, a progressively more suspicious Na confronted her boyfriend with his infidelity and he would swear on his life that it would never happen again. But it did – over and over. But by this time Na was already seriously in love with her charming farang so in a fit of desperation, she came up with a devilish master plan; she allowed herself to become pregnant.

Na wasn’t too sure what Mike’s reaction to the news of her pregnancy would be, but she needn’t have worried. He was delighted. It was proof – as if he needed it – of his virility and he spent many drunken evenings celebrating and bragging to his friends how clever he was to make a baby. After she broke her happy news, for a while they seemed to be happier than ever. Na was blossoming in the full throes of her pregnancy and Mike was being surprisingly solicitous; spending more time at home with her than he had ever done.

But as her pregnancy progressed – from three to six months, with Na’s inevitable weight gain, Mikes eyes started to wander again. The odd day out alone turned into several days a week, and by the time Na was seven months pregnant, Mike was hardly ever at home. He would disappear, night after night,  sometimes not come home till morning – presumably after having enjoyed the delights of another woman, before crawling home to bed in the wee hours.

Although most of Na’s non-monetary assets were still intact, the cash in her saving account had grown alarmingly low. For the past two months she had been spending her own money as Mike had told her he had run short of Thai funds. He had assured her it was purely a temporary situation and that as soon as he went back to England he would immediately transfer some more cash over to her.

***

‘Hmm…’ she thought wryly to herself, then aloud, ‘and we all know what happened, don’t we, Mama?’

Her mother, dozing in the corner of the room, woke up with a start.

‘What? What? Are you all right, my love?’

Na looked at her worn out, weak willed, stupid mother. In spite of all that had happened, she still loved her and still cared about her. It wasn’t her fault that she was born like that, she would always end up convincing herself.

‘Mama, please ask one of nurses if I can see my baby. I want to see my baby.’

‘Oh, of course, I will go and ask someone outside,’

Dow got up from the chair and walked towards the door. Suddenly she stopped and turned back towards her daughter. ‘Na, what are you going to do?’ How can you pay the bill? You told me you have no money left in the bank.’

‘If you knew that, why did you bring me here – the most expensive hospital in Pattaya?’ she snapped harshly at her mother.

‘Because…..you….’

‘Never mind. Mama. Go and find my baby. I want to see my baby.’

Na didn’t know what she was going to do, but one way or another she would have to find some money, quickly. She had heard horror stories of babies being held captive at hospitals until their parents came up with the hospital fees.

But Na gritted her teeth. She was determined that this would never happen to her baby; she would find the money somehow; for her and her mother… and now, her new baby daughter…

PART ONE – CHAPTER X

There is no question that history always seemed to have a nasty habit of repeating itself, certainly as far as the hapless Na was concerned.  But it would be too easy jump to the conclusion that she was either simple minded or stupid – or even both.

It wasn’t that she was lacking in intelligence; in fact, during her brief years at school she had demonstrated, on the contrary, that she was, and is, a very bright girl. As for being stupid, well if she was really stupid, she would never have managed to survive all these years, virtually on her own devices in this Mafia controlled hell-hole, since she was barely sixteen years of age.

Not only had she been able to take care of herself, but she had also looked after her mother, as well as her offspring. Despite some tumultuous ‘ups and downs’ in her life, never once did anyone in her little family really want for anything during these past eleven years – ever since she had made that life-changing decision to leave the safety and comfort of the children’s mission at the age of sixteen.

She sat on her thin mattress and looked across the dimly lit room at her mother, who was fast asleep on an adjacent mattress and at Wan, her seven year old daughter, who was also ‘dead to the world’.

It was four am, and although Na was totally exhausted from her gruelling, fourteen hour shift at the Beach Road beer bar, she couldn’t fall asleep. Too many thoughts were whizzing around in her over-active brain.

But at least, at long last, little baby Jom was asleep – probably from sheer exhaustion. When she had arrived home, an hour ago, the two month old baby had been screaming his head off, and there was nothing his grandmother could do to calm him down and get him off to sleep. He was not sick; he was just a ‘screamer’ – ever since he had been born; so different from little Wan who had been such a gentle, quiet baby. Jom rarely slept more than four or five hours in a twenty four hour period. ‘How could two such different babies have come from the same mother’s womb?’ Na reflected. ‘Well,’ she surmised, ‘they might have had the same mother, but they had very different fathers. Maybe that’s the answer.’

In the end, just as the three of them had more or less given up hope of getting any sleep that night, Jom had mercifully closed his eyes and fallen into a deep slumber. Dow and Wan had lost no time in doing likewise, but for some unaccountable reason Na remained wide awake; contemplating her myriad problems and musing yet again, over her short, but event-filled life.

***

Her meagre savings were fast running out. It was costing her a lot of money to keep baby Jom in formula milk and nappies, and ready cash was something that was proving very hard to come by these days. Apart from a few brief bright periods, it had been an upward struggle, ever since that terrible occasion, seven years ago when she had been obliged to sell every item she possessed to settle that crippling hospital bill.

Her lovely motor bike, her jewellery and gold, her apartment furniture, fridge, TV, video player and even her precious land in Khon Kaen had all fallen victim to the need to raise money to pay her bill. Even then it hadn’t been enough, and she had been obliged to resort to borrowing from illegal money lenders to find the balance; spending the next three years, working day and night like a coolie, to pay off the loans which had been grossly inflated by the loan shark’s horrendous interest rates.

She had embarked upon a serious retrenchment of her lifestyle, had been obliged to do a ‘moonlight flit’ from her luxury condo – owing three month’s rent – and  moved into  a modest, Thai-style room in a cheaper part of town. The first couple of months were very difficult as she was unable to work at all with a new born baby to nurse, but once she had recovered her full health and handed over the daily baby-caring duties to her mother, she slowly started to get her life back together.

The scar on her stomach meant that she would never work again as a go-go dancer, but she was still a young and very stunning looking girl, whose good looks still turned most men’s eyes, even in a town which was crammed full of young, attractive women. Indeed, after she delivered her baby, her still slender frame filled out judiciously in all the right places, blessing her with an ‘hour glass’ figure that was more enticing than ever. She had blossomed into a gorgeous, desirable young lady.

There were good times and bad times. On occasion, she would be ‘bought-out’ of the bar where she was working for several days at a time, or even for a week or so, by her farang customers. A majority of these tourists were kind and generous to her and made sure she had a good time. Once in a while, a customer would take her with him to another part of Thailand and over the years she visited most of the popular Thai tourist destinations; Phuket, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui and many others. She even obtained a passport which she used on a couple of occasions when one of her richer punters whisked her off to Hong Kong or Singapore for a ‘shopping weekend’.

In spite of all her trials and tribulations, she remained a bright, fun loving, effervescent young thing, who spoke passable bar-girl English and she became an ideal companion for foreign businessmen, often more than double her age, who travelled the region. Many of these men – usually divorced and with little spare time to go searching for a new wife – would revel in the ego-boosting delights of having a drop dead gorgeous young lady hanging on their arm whenever they went out on the town or socialised with friends.

Indeed, Na nurtured the hope that one of these farangs might end up being her future spouse, but as the years went by, such ‘business’ trips became rarer and rarer. Moreover, her daughter and mother, back in their rented room in Pattaya, remained a major obstacle to her chances of finding a husband.

There were times when she wouldn’t find a customer for days and she had to resort to pawning some of her precious possessions at a local pawnshop, but eventually, a well-heeled customer would come to the rescue and pay her enough to redeem them, until the next occasion when she became desperate for money.

On a few really bad occasions, she was obliged to tolerate the ‘bottom end’ of the ‘kaak’ sex-market; old, ugly fat farangs, (many of whom reminded her of the evil Klaus of her youth), who made her perform acts that disgusted her. But she had to live, and for the main part, life wasn’t too bad. Most of the farangs were reasonably well behaved and she generally managed to keep herself in good spirits.

***

She had only dozed off for a few minutes, when Jom suddenly started crying again. Within seconds, her mother awoke and picked him up, holding him in her arms, trying desperately to nurse him back to sleep. Mercifully, five minutes later, the two adults breathed a sigh of relief as Jom once more closed his eyes and his grandmother placed him very gently back into his cot.

Dow lay back down quickly fell to sleep but Na was wide awake again. For God’s sake – she had only slept for a few minutes! What on earth was going on? She decided to think back over her recent life again, as that seemed to get her in the mood for sleep. Now where was she? 

She had been doing OK. Not particularly flush with money, but apart from the odd bad week or so – usually during the low season – she had managed to earn enough money to keep herself and her family comfortable. Her only child, Wan, had been enrolled at a decent Thai school, and although they still lived in a modest room, they ate well and had enough spare cash to make their lives a little more tolerable, with the occasional forays out to restaurants and the cinema, and of course, they had the ubiquitous television and mini CD karaoke stereo set that kept them entertained during the endless hours they spent at home.

‘Then what happened’, she asked herself?

She was twenty-six years old when another moment of total madness overcame her. She became very friendly with a Thai man who worked with her in the same bar, and after a short period it had developed into a romantic relationship. He was a very handsome, charming young man who was the resident DJ and he only had to snap his fingers and the bar girls would come running. His sexual appetite was legendary and on most nights he would take two or three girls home with him from the bar.

But Na was something special, and he soon became as infatuated with her as she was with him. As the affair grew ever more serious, she realised with much pleasure that she had shacked up with one of the very few men who could truly satisfy her. They had many interests in common and in particular, they shared a love of the latest western hip hop music. Na became convinced that this time it would be different and for the first time for years, she allowed herself to fall in love again. Her young Thai lover promised her the earth. He told her that he wanted to marry her and he would take care of her and her daughter for the rest of his life.

For a short while, she believed every word he said, but when the first flush of romance started to wane, his eyes started to wander once again towards some of the other delectable young girls who were plying their trade in the bar, along with Na.  She should have known better, but once more she allowed her heart to rule her head. After all these years of working the bars, she should have realised that no Thai man would really get serious with a bar girl who slept with farangs for money, but like so many before her, she somehow believed that she was different. She decided on a foolhardy strategy that had already failed so miserably some eight years earlier; in her desperation to hold on to him, she once again allowed herself to become pregnant.

It was another silly and disastrous mistake, as this time, the father-to-be didn’t even stay long enough to see her through the early months of her pregnancy. Within a week of learning of Na’s condition, he packed his meagre belongings and was gone – out of her life and his job at the bar for ever. There were plenty more jobs in Pattaya for a handsome young DJ.

As before, she had cried herself to sleep for a week, then picked herself up and soldiered valiantly on. She continued to work as a hostess, right up to the time she delivered her second child; although for the last four months of her pregnancy she had to rely on her ‘share’ of  the few drinks that came her way. Even in ‘sin city’, nobody wanted to bed a heavily pregnant lady.

After this latest birth, life once more became very tough and most of her prized possessions seemed to be permanently lodged in a nearby pawnshop. But even the birth of two babies had not significantly damaged her very trim figure; sure, her naked body bore a few tell-tale stretch marks of two full term pregnancies, as well as the ugly ceasarian scar, but all things considered, she was still in pretty good shape.

‘Yes,’ she assured herself, ‘I am still in good shape and I can still attract the men. Nothing to worry about…nothing to worry about…’

At long last, sleep came to the weary Na for a few precious hours.

PART ONE – CHAPTER XI

Her unsatisfied craving for somtum temporarily forgotten, Na hurried over to the smouldering car wreck to confirm what, deep down, she already knew. A large crowd had gathered around the badly damaged vehicle, but she pushed her way through in unladylike fashion and peered in through the darkened side window. One glance was enough; she knew him well enough. It was him – Toby – that bloody drunken old man.

‘What a bastard!’ she said out aloud. ‘What a fucking bastard!’ You crazy, drunken, bastard!  How many people have you killed Toby?’ she screamed through the window at the lifeless form, which lay slumped across the steering wheel.

She turned her head to look at the scene of carnage – at the dying and badly mutilated bodies that were strewn across the road. Then she turned back towards the car and the perpetrator of this outrage.

‘I hope you’re dead, Toby, I hope you’re fucking dead! Because if you’re not – your life won’t be worth living, I can promise you that!’