My name is Tony Marsh I am a fit healthy 26 year old red blooded male sitting in a café at Euston railway station London on a dark November evening, in a wet raincoat feeling sorry for myself. It had been a pig of a week. My girlfriend Monica of three years had left me without a good reason for another man and I also had major staffing problems at the office.

I was using the excuse that I was waiting for the evening rush to die down, in reality I was not looking forward to going back to an empty cold apartment, to have to get myself a hot meal and to spend the night in a lonely double bed. I did not fancy a Saturday shopping for one and then the lonely weekend that lay ahead of me.

I had been reading an article in the Evening Standard about how the police were warning about the increasing numbers of young girls sometimes as young as thirteen or fourteen coming to the city from the provinces without money, looking for work or perhaps running away from unhappy homes looking for a job. Many of these girls were picked up at railway stations by unscrupulous men who by various methods, introduced them to hard drugs and then forced them into prostitution.

As I was digesting this story I was attracted by a scuffle in the middle of the concourse. Two youths had snatched a bag from a young girl sitting on a bench and had run from the station premises knocking pedestrians over as they escaped through the evening rush.

From where I was sitting I saw the girl had burst into tears and was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief. As was usual for London no-one was taking any notice, they were all too intent on catching their trains, to be bothered by a young distressed girl.

On the spur of the moment I walked over to her and sat on the bench beside her. I saw that she was quite a pretty slim young girl with long dark hair trailing over her shoulders. I judged she probably was about sixteen or seventeen years of age. She looked well groomed and quite well dressed in a red anorak and black skirt with knee high fashion boots.

"Are you alright?" I asked" I saw what happened, is their anything I can do?"

Feeling utterly stupid as I asked the question, but not knowing what else to say

"They have taken all my clothes and I don't know what to do.!"

"Where do you live?" I asked in a sympathetic tone.

"I have just come to London from Leeds. I want to get a job as there is no work at home. I don't have a home in London. I was going to find a room somewhere, but most of my money was in my bag and now I am not sure what to do.

"Well as its Friday I doubt if you will get any work until Monday I could let you have a room until Monday and then we can decide what to do to help you. I live on my own in Ealing and I have a spare bedroom you can have."

"I don't want to trouble you." She replied quietly but now with a faint hint of relief in her tone."

"Its no trouble and I would welcome the company over the weekend." I told her.

I held out my hand to her and she stood up and we walked to the underground to catch our train home. On the way she told me her name was Jill and she maintained she was eighteen years of age. She also told me that she lived with her mother and stepfather and not uncommonly she was having problems with her stepfather. On two occasions recently he had tried to get in bed with her and she had managed to fight him off. Her mother had not believed her and had blamed her for leading him on, so reluctantly she had decided to leave home.

We arrived home about 7.00 pm. The weather had got worse and we were both soaked when we got to my apartment. Fortunately Monica had left a lot of her clothes when she left in a hurry and Jill after a hot shower was soon looking much happier. We were both hungry and so I sent for a take-away, meanwhile I showed her the bedroom pointing out that she could lock the door from the inside.

Previously I had made the condition that she should ring her mother to tell her she was OK and I gave her the telephone number and address to give to her mother if she wished to do so. I left her to make the telephone call in private.