“I’m almost fifteen,” Alice murmured in a faint voice, as though caught doing something wrong.
Wilkins shuddered, because his only daughter, the light of his life, was the same age. Alice had evidently suffered a deprived childhood lacking in protein; she was a late developer and her small size and delicate bone structure meant she could easily be taken for a much younger girl. Wilkins calculated that if at that moment she looked twelve, in the first images that had circulated on the Internet she could have looked nine or ten years old.
“Let me talk to your mother on her own,” an embarrassed Wilkins told her.
But by then Radmila had entered the aggressive stage of drunkenness and shouted that her daughter had the right to hear whatever he had to say. “Isn’t that so, Elisabeta?”
The girl nodded as if in a trance, her eyes fixed on the wall.
“I’m so sorry, child,” said Wilkins, laying half a dozen photographs on the table. This was what brought Radmila face-to-face with what had been going on in her house for more than two years, although she had refused to see it, and this was how Alice learned that millions of men all over the world had viewed her in secret “games” with her stepfather. For years she had felt dirty, evil, and guilty; when she saw the photographs on the table she wanted to die. For her, no redemption seemed possible.
Robyns had assured her that this kind of game with a father or uncle was perfectly normal, and that many boys and girls who played it did so willingly and happily. Those children were special. But nobody talked about it, it was a well-kept secret, and she shouldn’t ever mention it to anyone, not her girlfriends or teachers, above all not to the doctor, because people would say she was sinful, filthy, and she would be left all alone, with no friends. Even her own mother would reject her, because Radmila was very jealous. Why didn’t she want to play? Did she want presents? No? Okay, so he would pay her as if she were a little grown-up woman: not directly to her, but to her grandparents. He would make sure he sent them money in Moldova on behalf of their granddaughter; she had to write a card to go with the money, but again, she shouldn’t say anything to Radmila, this was their secret too. Sometimes the old couple needed a bit extra; they had to repair the roof or buy another goat. That was no problem; he was bighearted and understood life was hard in Moldova. Fortunately, Elisabeta had been lucky enough to come to America, but it wasn’t good to establish a precedent that money came for free, she had to earn it, didn’t she? She could at least smile, that cost nothing, she had to put on the clothes he told her to, to get used to the ropes and chains, to drink gin to relax, mixed with apple juice so it didn’t burn her throat, she’d soon become accustomed to the taste, did she want more sugar? Despite the alcohol, the drugs, and her fear, at some point she realized there were cameras in the toolshed, the “little house” the two of them shared, where no one else, not even her mother, could enter. Robyns swore that the photos and videos were private, they belonged just to him, nobody would ever see them, he would keep them as a memento in the years to come, when she was away at college. How he was going to miss her!