and I had had some loud, shouted arguments, but nothing worse than the sort of rows I used to have with my mum and sister. After we moved into the apartment, however, he would sometimes be moody when he got home from work and would get angry about apparently trivial things – for example, if his dinner wasn’t on the table as soon as he walked through the door. ‘That’s the Albanian way,’ he would tell me. So, because I loved him and because I wanted him to love and approve of me, I told myself he was right and that ‘the Albanian way’ was indeed the best way of doing things.
During the time we were living with his family, Jak’s mum used to tell me to ‘watch and learn’ while she cooked, and after we moved out I tried to remember how to make the meals she made. One day, I decided to make a sort of soup-stew she used to make out of rice, spinach, boiled chicken and lemon. There was no kitchen in the apartment, just a sink and a small, two-ring electric hob in one corner of the room that was also our living-room/bedroom.
I was stirring the food in a pot on the hob when Jak got home from work. I could see he was tired and hungry. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. I had just picked up a ladle and was about to transfer the soupy stew into two bowls when he said, with a terseness that took me by surprise, ‘Leave it. I’ll do it myself.’ Dipping a spoon into the pot, he tasted the food and then stood there for a moment, still holding the spoon to his lips. It was as if every muscle in his body had frozen and when he did finally turn his head to look at me, there was a horrible expression on his face I had never seen before and couldn’t interpret. I had expected him to be pleased because I’d tried to make something his mother used to make, something I knew he really liked. I couldn’t think of any reason at all why he might be as angry as he clearly was. But suddenly my palms were sweating and I felt sick.
Turning very slowly away from the little stove, Jak shouted, ‘You don’t even know how to cook! Have you learned nothing from my mother?’ And he picked up the pot and hurled it across the room.
It smashed against the wall just above my head, its boiling contents spewed out in every direction. As I pulled off the stew-spattered cotton top I was wearing, I screamed at him, ‘What are you doing? Are you crazy?’ I was so shocked that although my whole body was shaking, I didn’t cry at first. Then, like a child suddenly realising she’s out of her depth in some way she doesn’t understand, I began to wail, ‘I want to go home. I want my mum.’
It was as if a switch had been flipped inside Jak, shutting off his fury and turning on his anguished tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’
‘I don’t care,’ I shouted at him. ‘I want my mum.’
‘No, please, I’m sorry.’ He took a step towards me with his arms outstretched. ‘I will teach you how to cook. It’s all right. I’m not like that. It’s just that I’m so worried about my mother. I’m upset because I can’t do anything to help her.’
Fortunately, apart from a few patches on my back, I wasn’t badly burned. After I had washed all the chicken, rice and spinach out of my hair and changed my clothes, Jak took me out for a meal. When we had eaten, we drove up into the mountains on his motorbike, where we sat together on a rock at the side of the road, talking and looking down on the flickering lights along the coast. Jak pointed at a cluster of stars and said, ‘Those are our stars. Whatever happens in the future, wherever you are, you can look up at those stars and know that I am looking at them too, and that I’m thinking about you.’ And by the time we drove back down the mountain in the darkness, he had soothed my anxieties and reclaimed my trust.
A few evenings after my attempt to make a nice meal for Jak had ended so badly, we were sitting outside a café drinking coffee when he asked me, ‘How would you feel about working? If you were earning money, we could pay for the treatment my mum needs, then buy a car and start saving for our own house. We’ll need a place of our own if we’re going to have children.’
I wasn’t yet 15, and Jak and I still hadn’t had sex, but the thought that he loved me and wanted us to have a family made me incredibly happy. Because of Jak, I was going to be able to put my own turbulent childhood behind me and, in effect, start my life again.
‘I would love to work,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know what I could do, but, yes, definitely.’
‘Oh, there are lots of jobs you could do,’ he said. ‘You could do cleaning, or waitressing, or …’
‘I’ve always thought it would be fun to be a waitress,’ I interrupted him.
‘Good.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll call my cousin Mergim now and see what he can set up for you.’
While Jak was talking on the phone to his cousin, I drank my coffee and tried to picture in my mind the café or taverna where I would soon be serving food to friendly, cheerful customers who left me large tips.
‘It’s done,’ Jak told me a few minutes later. ‘Mergim can arrange a job for you in Athens.’
‘Really? Oh Jak, that’s so exciting! I can’t wait.’
‘In fact, there are a few jobs you can choose from,’ he said. ‘We can decide when we get there. Then we can get an apartment …’
I couldn’t believe we were really going to go to Athens! It would be like stepping out of the past into a future that would be different in almost every respect. The next morning, Jak packed a suitcase with his own things and with the clothes he had bought for me after almost everything I owned had gone back to England with Mum. Then we got a taxi to the coach station, where we sat together drinking coffee and waiting to get on the bus that would take us to our new life.
The journey to Athens took several hours. Jak’s cousin had said he would pick us up from the coach station. But he phoned while we were en route and said he had some business to tie up and that Jak should get a taxi to his apartment, where he would meet us.
Mergim lived in the centre of the city, in a large apartment that seemed to be full of members of his family, who all fussed over me when Jak introduced me to them. Although none of them could speak English, it was clear that most of them had opinions about me that they were discussing with each other. I was nervous and found their attention a bit overwhelming. So, after a while, I asked Jak if we could go out somewhere to have a coffee.
Mergim came with us to a café in a square near the apartment. He and Jak seemed to have a lot to talk about, but they didn’t leave me out of the conversation entirely, and every so often Jak translated for me. ‘My cousin thinks you are very beautiful,’ he said at one point. ‘And that I am very lucky to have you. I told him that he is right.’ I could feel myself blushing with pride. In just a few short months, I had gone from being a bullied, miserable, truant schoolgirl to being on the verge of starting a new life in Greece with someone who loved me. I thought I had every reason to feel happy and optimistic. When I look back on it now though, I think the day I arrived in Athens was one of the saddest of my life.
After we had drunk our coffee, Mergim made a phone call. ‘He’s phoning about a job for you,’ Jak told me.
‘Where is it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know yet. But I don’t think it’s far from here.’
We left the café a few minutes later and walked to a bar where the short, black-haired man who was standing
