Sophia Popovych couldn’t remember exactly how long she'd been standing underneath the red umbrella on Blackfriars Bridge. The darkness of night had descended, the rain had become heavier, and the spray from the rush hour traffic soaked her trainers and the bottom of her jeans. In her mind, she was miles away, lost in the blue and red lights that lit up the Embankment and flickered down out over the swelling, dark waters. The blare of a car’s horn brought her back to her senses; suddenly she was aware of the cold and wet as she recalled the events that brought her to the spot where she now stood shivering, and the most alone she had ever been.
Three weeks earlier, Boykov had hauled Sophia out of the dormitory, down the darkened corridor, up the stone flight of stairs, along another corridor where the light flooded in from a half opened wood framed windows. She dragged her feet momentarily to bathe in the cool breeze which was a welcome contrast to the stifling basement. Boykov grabbed the door handle and pushed it open with force shoving Sophia in ahead of him. In the middle of the bare walled room stood a table and several chairs. Sitting in one was a portly pale man with pink cheeks wearing a grey suit and white shirt with the collar unbuttoned. ‘This is the one you want Beechcroft’, he announced pushing Sophia down onto the plastic chair opposite the suited man.
Sophia felt anxious; normally they’d be taken to the lounge for guests as the men were known. Sitting in this room opposite the pale man was out of the ordinary. She was convinced she was in for another beating. But the man, Beecroft, merely said, ‘Hello Sophia.’ She raised her head only long enough to see the beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘Do you remember these English men?’ He asked passing half a dozen photos across the table. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She dared not look at Boykov she had felt his fist too many times.
‘Answer! ‘ Boykov growled.
With her eyes fixed on the table Sophia said she remembered two of them, ‘British ministers at the Ukranian military party at Zhytomyr in August’, she said pushing two of the photos back across the table. She noticed her nails were cracked and dirty and bent her fingers into her palms to hide them. She remembered the three days and two nights at Zhytomyr much more clearly than she wished to. She had purposely drunk too much that night, it made her head spin, and everything slipped into a haze. Two of the younger girls from her dormitory had disappeared in those three days. Then the ministers themselves disappeared back to Kiev.
She watched Beechcroft’s chubby fingers fumble to peel the photos off the table’s surface. Beechcroft sounded pleased with her response and instructed Boykov to send her on. During the rest of that week, Sophia had been made to work double the number of guests and received double the beatings only this time Boykov was careful to keep the blows away from her face. It was as if he wanted to extract as much out of her before she was sent on to wherever that was. Boykov acquired a passport and flight tickets and a week later Beechcroft collected Sophia from Heathrow Airport. It was raining that day too, and Beechcroft handed her a red umbrella. She was sick and tired, from the journey, from not having seen her mother and brother in over year and, from the physical pain that wracked the bruised and torn body hidden beneath the new set of clothes she wore.
Sophia sat silently in the back of the taxi, her long mousy blonde hair covering her face from view. Beechcroft was reminded momentarily of his daughter and suddenly reached across the seat to brush Sophia’s hair aside, but she recoiled from his hand. Beechcroft sat back embarrassed that his touch had been misconstrued. Sophia turned her back towards him, sitting tight against the door and avoided his gaze by looking out of the window into the traffic.
The journey seemed endless, the monotonous uniform streets, punctuated every so often by rows of shops, so many cars and winding highways, how could one city be so big she asked herself. The further into the heart of the city they travelled the denser the urban constructions and heavier the traffic became. Looking up at the buildings as they passed she made out ‘Fleet Street’ on a plaque as they slowed to a crawl in the gridlock before suddenly pulling off the main road into a lay-by. The car stopped outside the dark entrance of an old building with an ornately carved door and window frames. The building looked to Sophia as if it had popped right out of fairy tale book. She was handed over to a woman called June who showed her to a room and then preceded to lock her in. The room was certainly comfortable compared to the dormitory, but there was no disguising the fact that this too was a prison. By the window stood a single bed and on the opposite wall a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. She slowly opened every drawer pushing her hand inside running it along the rough wood bottoms and finding them empty she turned to the wardrobe. Inside she found a few female garments roughly her size, jeans, jumpers and t-shirts, a wool coat and various socks and underwear in a basket sitting at the bottom. Another door opened up to a small bathroom with no window she pulled the light cord hanging from the ceiling to view this luxury in full light. The window over the bed was draped with cheap pink and green curtains. She noticed that on the outside of the window were metal bars embedded into the mortar between the bricks preventing the window from being opened more than an inch. After inspecting the room Sophia, tired and aching, slipped beneath the quilt and slept a sleep full of unwanted dreams.
Beechcroft arrived the next morning with woman interpreter through whom he informed Sophia that he’d paid Boykov money to get her out of the Ukraine and that Boykov was to pay her mother $10,000 if she would tell her story to a London newspaper. That was the last thing Sophia wanted to do; she wanted to forget those events not talk about them to a newspaper reporter. But then she knew that she had to think of her mother and brother, the money would help them even though she had little faith in Boykov handing over the money.
In the leafy suburb of Richmond behind the windows of a double fronted Edwardian home with an in and out drive, David Cunningham had just got off a call from a contact at the Ukrainian Embassy. The contact informed Cunningham of the rumours of the presence in London of a young Ukranian prostitute brought into the UK by former Telegraph reporter and nemesis Allan Beechcroft. Cunningham was furious; this was extremely bad timing coming days after he made public his intention to stand for Prime Minister. It was not the first time he'd found himself in hot water, but this story had the potential to destroy his ambitions once and for all. He, of course, blamed Fuller, the Minister for Defence, and threatened him with immediate dismissal from his newly appointed position if he did not have the story squashed at once. Cunningham set off for Westminster driving more hurriedly than usual and preceded on arrival straight to the office of his confidant and old friend Home Secretary, Helen Maypole. They had developed a special understanding during their formative years in politics, and they’d looked out for one another since. Maypole, however, was growing tired of Cunningham’s ongoing indiscretions.
‘What do you expect me to do this time David, we killed the coverage of your last debacle at the clown’s club, but this is just blatant stupidity’. What the hell were you and Fuller thinking? It was supposed to be a security meeting not a bloody boys weekend away.'
‘Give it a rest Helen, it’s not like you’re squeaky clean yourself is it, can’t you have her deported or something, has she entered legally, you should know border control is your department isn’t it?’ demanded Cunningham almost squealing.
‘We need to get hold of her first, I’ll get my people down to Fleet Street, Beechcroft' has an old flat there, but we’ll need a full description of the target’, answered Helen disappointed in having to clean up yet another careless mess made by Cunningham. ‘This is absolutely the last time David – do you understand?’ she said with steely determination. ‘Yes, Yes’, replied David nodding like a recalcitrant child. ‘So this is as good as done then’, he added looking for further reassurance. ‘Eton boys’, muttered Maypole exasperated as Cunningham turned and left the office slamming the door as he went.
Back down the Thames, the interview with Sophia was concluding. She had spoken through a female interpreter brought by the journalist. The journalist introduced himself as John, and for whom she shuffled once more through photos of unknown faces until she identified the two men Beechcroft was targeting. John, a man in his late thirties she guessed from the appearance of grey in his thick black hair, grilled her vigorously about events that summer. He was particular about dates, names, what was done to them, her and the other girls, who did what and to whom. Only after he got what he needed did he ask about her life and about her family. She recounted unemotionally the events the led to her being kidnapped and forced into the sex trade by Boykov beginning with the day she and her mother received news of her father’s death.
Her father had been teaching in one of the outlying villages near the Crimean border when rockets struck the school. He along with two other teachers and eight children lost their lives that day. Six months later her seven-year old brother Fider was diagnosed with Leukaemia. Sophia explained how her mother found it hard to cope, with the cost of drugs, the travelling to and from the hospital, and how the bills began to pile up. The only thing Sophia could do was drop out of school and stay home to care for brother so her mother could continue to work. But it was not enough and in the end they were forced to borrow money from Boykov. They quickly got behind with payments until Boykov turned up at the door and ordered his thugs to take her, then aged only fourteen, she was dragged away kicking and screaming. For the first time in a long time tears welled up in her eyes. She had not seen her mother and brother since that day more than a year ago. She cried that she does not know if they are dead or alive and almost pleading for her interrogators to help her. Sophia sensed John having heard so many stories like hers was not moved to sympathy. He needed facts to create a political controversy. She had thought of asking the interpreter to help her escape but held back, it would have been too risky, and she sensed the interpreter was equally cold and unresponsive to her plight. Sophia did what Beechcroft required hoping it would be enough to get her returned, not to Boykov, but home.
With the interrogation now over, and photos taken, the pair left, and except for the migraine, she found herself alone again. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she leaned against the window sill, flakes of peeled paint stuck to the skin of her arms as she leant chin in arms against the window. She watched the October rain as it dribbled down the glass pane. From this position she could see the Punch Tavern across the road with its blue and gold sign above the door and the suited afternoon tipplers that crossed its ornate entrance. She thought about their lives, their homes, their children; then she stopped thinking.
Tea was late that afternoon. June came eventually but seemed a little agitated. She left the tray on top of the chest of drawers and rushed out again without a word. Sophia picked up the tea cup, and placed it to her lips, recalling how much she missed coffee. As she swallowed the insipid liquid, she realised she had not heard the click of the lock. Her heart began to beat so fast it hurt. Don’t panic, think, she scolded herself.
Sophia gathered a few things in her bag, the money she’d lifted from June’s apron pocket over the past two weeks, and the red umbrella, but she had no passport, Beechcroft had taken that away with him. Sophia sat on the edge of the bed in the fading autumn daylight she had no idea what she would do or where she would go even if she could escape. She heard June shouting on the phone somewhere in the flat. Then it went quiet. With the bag slung over her shoulder, she twisted the door knob very slowly gradually opening the door a little and pressing her ear into the gap where she listened hard. She could hear running water from behind the closed bathroom door. She eased the door open wider, just enough to squeeze through with her possessions. Now out of the room, she tip toed along the landing and toward the front door. She could still hear June in the bathroom talking animatedly on her mobile again. Sophia made a sudden dash for the door, opening the latch and bolting down the stairwell like lightning and out onto the street. The driving rain struck her face like blades, a sharp cold reminder that she was still alive.
She continued running along Fleet Street, past the coffee shops and Boots then across the road, and a left turn where she came to a halt. Blackfriars read the sign, but she didn’t understand the meaning of it, she turned right and continued in a fast walk, out of breath. She wanted her mother more than ever, but she knew crying wouldn’t help.
Halfway across the bridge, she remembered the umbrella and opened it up over her already wet hair. The coloured light was reflected everywhere from the bridge and the buildings by the water’s edge, and from the little boats bobbing on the river. Putting her hands on the cold iron rail, she looked out across the shimmering expanse and to the black water gushing beneath the bridge. The horn of a car blared, and she noticed her wet feet and jeans, she shivered and thought about moving on.
At that moment Sophia felt a firm grip around her ankles, then a sudden shunt upwards and over the rail. The wind and the rain stung her cheeks as she fell in slow motion. Her body made an indiscernible splash, as she hit the water the breath was crushed out of her lungs until the black icy depths rapidly engulfed her tiny frame as if Sophia Popovych had never existed. The red umbrella sat handle up against the disappearing skyline and sailed downstream until it too vanished.