Original subtitles

I was at absolute rock bottom.

I felt like the worst mother in the world.

This is my ticket out of here.

If you take your daughter with you... Excuse me?

No one's ever going to suspect anything.

But this definitely isn't part of the plan.

They're all shooting at each other.

We're in the middle of it.

I'd taken enough tablets to kill myself.

I didn't know when I was going to see her again.

When I was 21, I was addicted to crack cocaine.

When I did it, I felt so good, and all of a sudden I had

no problems.

I didn't have a very stable childhood and ended up in a children's

home. It was mayhem.

I started taking drugs, left school without any qualifications, and I felt

pretty... I was pregnant at 16

from my social worker and left alone to try and bring up our daughter.

When I gave birth to Nikita, it was absolute love.

Instantly, I'd never felt anything like that in my whole life.

Now I felt like the worst mother in the world.

I'd fall asleep cuddling her, promising her in my head that tomorrow I would

stop taking crack.

I wasn't working.

I had no food, no money. I'd spent it all on drugs.

Yeah, come in.

You all right? Thank goodness that I had this.

Friend Eve.

Oh, thanks.

When she realised that she couldn't help me with my addiction, she would come

round regularly and take Nikita out.

Nikita managed to have some normality in her life while she was with Eve.

You're ruled by this drug.

It takes over your mind, it takes over your body, it takes over everything.

I was at absolute rock bottom, desperate for a way

out of this vicious cycle.

My kids, they're 20. And then something happened that changed my life quite

drastically.

One of the dealers pulled me to one side and said... There's a guy called Tony.

He's quite high up. He's looking for somebody like you to do a smuggling job.

Do you want to go and meet Tony and talk about, you know... Smuggling some

drugs?

Are you joking?

No.

All right, so what's in it for me?

He's going to pay you thousands of pounds.

I've never had thousands of pounds in my whole life.

Never.

Because it sounded like a million pounds to me.

Cool. I'll give you a call.

Yeah, thanks.

Hi, Natalie?

Yeah. I'm Tony. Come on in.

Thanks.

Tony opened the door and invited me in.

He seemed like a nice person. It's a nice place.

You like it, yeah?

His apartment was huge and it was beautiful.

I was in awe of it all, really.

I felt flattered by this nice man interested in me.

Then he said... OK, here's how it's going to go, right?

You're going to go off to Holland.

My friends are going to meet you. They're Moroccans.

They're going to strap some drugs on you.

and you're going to bring those drugs back to me.

He didn't say anything about any dangers or any risks.

If you take your daughter with you, no one's ever going to suspect anything.

It's just going to look like you've gone away on a holiday with your kid. You'll

get paid £3 ,000.

I was already spending the money in my head.

He said, are you going to do it? And I said, yeah.

I'll do it.

I told Nikita that we were going on a holiday. I was so excited.

I thought this job was going to buy me a new life. I could rent somewhere nicer,

I could get toys for Nikita, I could do more things with her.

We got off the boat and went to meet the Moroccans.

I was nervous, but there was no turning back for me, no.

I went up to them and introduced myself.

I said, hi, I'm Natalie.

Hi, Natalie.

Nice to meet you.

They were really friendly. They were just really lovely to me.

This is Nikita. You are very beautiful.

She is, isn't she?

At this point, it's coming up to about a week since I've smoked any crack.

And I'm not even thinking about it anymore.

And Nikita was laughing more, she was smiling more.

She was getting her mem back.

I was all straight away there and then that I was going to stop taking crack.

This was going to be a new start and... I

don't know. It was crazy to think like that. Even though I was heading straight

towards more drugs, I was thinking that I was getting away from them.

Five days after I've arrived in Holland, the Moroccans come to my hotel to get

me ready with the drugs.

Let's do it.

The laughing,

the joking is stopped.

They've got a piece of brick.

that they're going to strap onto me.

And they're probably about this big.

Take off your shirt.

That's when it starts to become quite real for me.

Given that Nikita was just in the next room, I feel so ashamed.

Nikita, you all right? Looking back, I was putting her at so much risk, but I

didn't understand that at the time.

I'm like, you must be able to see there.

And they tell me to have a look for myself.

You can't see anything.

Okay, I'm going to get away with this. This is easy, just like they said it is.

But there's a hurdle to get over.

Standing in between me and my £3 ,000 is custom officers, and they're

just pulling people out at random.

And I'm walking through.

I can feel the drugs about digging into me. It's uncomfortable.

It's hurting me.

And I'm saying to myself, be cool. No one would ever suspect me of smuggling

drugs because I have my daughter with me.

This is the last bit. I'm nearly there.

Excuse me.

And then they call me over.

We'd just like to ask you a few questions, please.

What goes through my mind is... Do you mind if I look inside your suitcase?

Oh, sure, no problem.

OK.

Inside, I'm freaking out.

I'm hoping for the best. I'm hoping that they're not going to pat me down.

My palms are getting sweaty and my heart's going 100 miles an hour.

and I'm just hoping he can't hear it, or I'm in big trouble.

I've been interrogated by a customs officer, and I've got kilos of cocaine,

like, digging into my ribs.

Everything's going in slow -mo then.

And maybe for the first time, I wonder what would happen to my daughter if I

caught with it.

I tell her that... We won't be long.

We'll be home soon.

Everything's fine.

OK.

You're free to go now.

Great. Thank you.

And that's when I think I'm going to give myself away.

Thank you. Because I nearly give the biggest sigh of relief.

I can't believe I've got away with it.

I'm buzzing.

I felt like a pro.

So I get back to England.

Welcome back.

And go back to Tony's flat to take the drugs off.

And it's such a relief.

Streaks are hurting me now.

Tony said to me, you know, well done.

There's our money.

Thank you. And he gave me the £3 ,000.

I could touch it, I could smell it, I could see it.

He said, good job. I told you it would be easy.

I wasn't used to praise.

It made me feel like I was worth something.

I felt good. I had the money in my pocket.

Then it all changed.

I got back to my flat and as soon as I walked, Through the doors, the

despair of the situation that I'd been in before I left came over me.

There's no furniture.

Faggots built everywhere.

Dirty cups.

The lingering smell of the crack smoke.

It was really, really depressing.

And I thought to myself, I can't cope with this.

I'm just going to go and get a 20 soon.

You know, it'll just be one and that'll be it.

Once I started, that was it. I couldn't stop.

And I kept going.

until I'd spent all of the £3 ,000 that I'd been paid, and that took me two

days.

When it had all gone, I was sat down on the floor, just

absolutely disgusted and appalled with myself.

A few days later, Tony rings.

My turn?

He said, I've got another job for you to do. Do you want to go to Venezuela,

bring back five kilos of cocaine and have a really nice holiday at the same

time? OK.

It'd be really easy because it wasn't strapped to me. I'd have a false bottom

suitcase. I was going to be put in an all -expenses -paid hotel for ten days.

Yeah. And Keith would really enjoy herself.

Then he said, I'll pay you £4 ,000 for doing this trip.

I was so desperate and so low, I just wanted to get away from the people that

was around.

It was my opportunity to be clean and healthy and financially stable.

I imagined that this was going to be the beginning of a career for me.

A successful international high -flying drug smuggler.

He never pressured me.

just ask do you want to do it and i said yeah i'll do that

it's the stupidest decision i've ever made in my life

So I get to Venezuela and find a taxi.

When I get to the hotel, I'm starting to feel excited because the environment

that I'm in, I'm seeing nice big palm trees everywhere,

really warm heat hitting me in the face.

I felt like I was somewhere so exotic.

pure blue skies this nice big hotel

let's just enjoy the place and forget that I was there to smuggle drugs

but

I'm

coming off crack for the second time

I'm getting my feelings back and I'm starting to question a little bit what

doing.

The holiday comes to an end. I'm still waiting for a man to come and bring a

suitcase full of drugs.

And to be honest, deep down inside, I don't want to do it.

I was kind of secretly hoping he wouldn't turn up.

And then there's a knock on the door.

And there's this ratty -looking man.

Hi.

He's got quite a large, hard, plastic, green suitcase.

Can you call me?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

I'm thinking, like, OK, this is real, and I do have to do this.

I'm going to talk to you.

He puts the suitcase on the bed and he shows me where the drugs

are hidden.

And I can smell the gloom where they've put this fake bottom in.

It's overpowering. It's stinking the room. And it's making me feel nervous

because I'm thinking, if anybody opens this suitcase...

You can smell the glue straight away.

I said to Al, it smells funny.

And he says to me, oh, don't worry about that.

Then he says to me, when you get to the airport, the guardia are going to pull

you to one side, but don't worry about it.

The guardia have been paid to let you go through.

It's all part of the plan.

I liked that. It made me feel good, because I wasn't feeling good about this

all.

And then he said goodbye, nice meeting you, and just left with my suitcase in

his hand.

I felt quite bewildered, really. I thought, that's it.

The next morning, the closer we got to the airport, it was the worst I was

feeling.

I don't know if I'm sweating from the stress or if I'm sweating from the heat.

I'm sure that the whole airport can smell my suitcase because I can still

the glue so badly.

And Nikita's blissfully unaware of what's going on. She's happy to be going

home.

Hello. Hi.

I was really nervous about what was going to happen here.

I'm thinking, this woman must be able to smell this.

She says, did you have a nice holiday?

Yeah, thank you.

I hope you've enjoyed yourself.

Thanks. And I'm thinking, I wonder if she knows that this is the suitcase, you

know, has she been paid off, is she part of it?

She's looking at me, and she does seem to, like, hesitate a little bit.

Then she says to me, you can go through to the departure lounge now, have a nice

journey home.

And I'm just massively relieved that the suitcase

is no longer anywhere near me.

We go through to the departure lounge and sit down.

I'm hoping that this thing with the guardia isn't going to happen.

Time seems to be going so slowly.

And then I noticed two guardia checking the passport.

I just know that it's me that the guardia are looking for.

And my heart is going 100 miles an hour.

I'm trying not to panic, and I'm saying to myself, it's OK, it's OK, but it

doesn't feel OK.

Passport, please.

The guard here asked to see my passport.

And then they want me and Nikita to go with

them.

I know it's part of the plan and I've been prepped for this, but it's just

getting really scary.

They take me into a room and, to my horror, there's my suitcase

on a table.

But then I say to myself, it's OK, they're just making sure that they've

right suitcase so they can let Tony know that everything's OK from their end.

They open my suitcase, take my clothes out.

And the one guardia pulls out a knife,

stabs the knife into the bottom of the suitcase.

And in that moment, I know that he pulls the knife

out and licks.

the end of the knife and said, Koka, this definitely isn't part of the plan.

In my head I'm screaming, this isn't supposed to be happening.

This isn't supposed to be happening.

Koka.

They cut my suitcase open and start

pulling out the packages and all I can hear them saying is, Koka, Koka.

Mucha boca.

There are probably about ten packages.

We're put in this room with a disgusting mattress on the floor.

Nikita is scared now and I'm just making up anything that I can to reassure her

everything's OK.

We're just going to stay here the night.

My brain kind of shut down.

I wanted to go to sleep and wake up realising that it was just a bad dream.

It's not real, it's not happening.

In the morning, they opened the cell door and said, move out.

We're going to court.

I'm still thinking that when all this is over, I'm going to go back home.

We get taken to this big room.

The drugs are there on a table.

The judge says, you're in big trouble.

and you're going to go to prison.

It hadn't crossed my mind that I'd get a prison sentence in Venezuela.

Then she says, we're going to take your daughter and we're going to put her into

an orphanage.

You need to say your goodbyes now.

Say it now, please.

It was like somebody had put a knife in my heart.

And I say to be a good girl.

You're going to go and stay somewhere for a little bit.

Everything's going to be all right.

And mummy loves you.

There was a pain on her face that I'd never seen

before.

I just kept telling her, I'm really sorry, Nikita.

And she'd say, it's OK, Mummy, I love you.

We just hugged and cried.

I don't ever want that cuddle to end.

And then the last thing that I say to her before she goes is, I love you,

Nikita.

I'm looking at her face and I'm just trying to remember as much of her as I

possibly can, like trying to take a photograph.

And the door closes and I just sat there and tears just rolling down my face.

I didn't know when I was going to see her again.

They told me that I was being transferred to one of the most notorious

in the world.

The first thing that I noticed was these men on the roof and they had big guns.

I didn't understand why they weren't wearing a uniform.

It's really intimidating.

I can see people with guns, males and females, together, having relations.

People smoking weed.

I was just trying to take it all in.

Terrified, yeah.

I can't speak Spanish.

I'm feeling really, really lonely.

No bed, there's no water.

The toilet is a bucket.

Cockroaches running across the floors. It's disgusting.

That first night, I'm just trying to remember Nikita's face as much as I can.

What kind of person was I to have done that?

to my daughter, I felt like absolute scum.

I just wanted to see her. I just wanted to put my arms around her and tell her

that everything was going to be okay.

The next day, as I walked past one of the cells,

There was a body hanging.

They'd cut his tongue out and sewn his tongue to the side of his face.

I went into a complete shock.

I realised I'm in hell.

The people on the roof with the guns aren't wearing a uniform because they're

not guards. They're prisoners.

and those rival gangs killing people.

I couldn't believe the horror and the brutality of what people were doing

to each other in this place.

A few days later, war broke out in the prison between two sides.

And the men are just killing each other.

They're all shooting at each other and we're in the middle of it.

It went on for days.

There were people being carried through this doorway hole in the wall.

Injured people and dead people.

The guardia wouldn't come in.

It was beyond their control.

It reminded me of something from a war film.

It's pure horror.

Every morning, I was waking up thinking the embassy are going to come today.

Nightmare is going to end.

Eventually, my consulate came to see me and I was so happy that I was going to

speak to someone from England.

He sat me down, he looked at my paperwork and he said, I'm going to do

in prison and there's nothing we can do for you.

Ten. It was like a track just suddenly hit me in the chest.

There is some much better news, though.

The embassy have spoken to Eve and arrangements have been made for Nikita

back to England.

I've got so many mixed feelings.

Nikita's going back to people that love her. She's going to Eve, who's going to

do a much better job of looking after her than I am.

But I couldn't.

Bear the thought of not seeing my kid until she was 14 years old.

I wouldn't even know what she looked like mentally.

I wasn't going to get through that.

I suppose I gave up hope.

And so I started smoking crack again.

I just wanted to blow my head off and be free from

the reality of what was going on around me.

I was so desperate and so low and I couldn't see any way out.

I wrote a letter to Nikita.

Dear Nikita, you're going to be 16 by the time you read this letter, and

you probably don't even remember who I am.

I'm so sorry for failing you as a mother.

I love you, my little girl.

I knew that she was okay with Eve, so I made a decision to kill myself.

I got some crack and as many tablets as I could get.

I went to sleep and I was hoping that I wouldn't wake

up.

Two days later, I woke up and saw the same dirty walls of the cell.

I'm absolutely gutted that I'm still alive.

It didn't make sense to me.

I'd taken enough tablets to kill myself.

OK, then, I must be alive for a reason, but I can't see it.

I got on my hands and knees and I begged for help,

praying for that reason to be shown to me why I was living.

And then I realised what it was.

I'm going to go and get Nikita and I'm going to be a good mum to Nikita and

we're going to be happy.

You can't be an addict and be a good mother.

I had to make a choice. Now I chose my daughter.

Eve was writing and sending me photos of Nikita.

I was gutted that I was missing her first days at school, but she looked

happy.

I got a job in the sewing factory and I got my first pay packet, which was the

equivalent to about £1 .50.

Now, finally, I was able to ring Nikita.

I wanted to hear her voice so badly.

Nikita.

And then when I did, this wave of warmth rushed down my spine.

Do you know who it is?

It was so great to talk to her. She had settled right in at ease.

She was happy there.

How's school?

I really started to believe that I could get through this and I will get back to

my daughter.

I was nearly halfway through my prison sentence.

I'd behaved well.

I decided to apply for day release.

That's where you get permission to go to work, right side of the prison.

And the judge was really happy to give it to me.

And then something amazing happened.

A prisoner girl mentioned that the Colombian border is only four hours away

bus.

I realised that you can do that on a day release.

If I can get to Colombia, I can get a plane back home.

So I decided on my day release to escape from prison.

The problem that I have is that I haven't got a passport, so I can't

anywhere. So I phoned up my embassy and I explained that I'd got day

release. but nobody would give me a paid job because I had no ID.

Was there any chance that I could have a new passport?

She had to find out for me.

I'm just hoping for the best.

To my utter shock, a few days later, my brand new shiny passport arrived.

It was like Christmas Day.

You know, when you're a kid.

This is my freedom.

This is my ticket out of here.

It was about two weeks later.

The morning came of my first day release, the morning that I was planning

escape.

I was leaving an hour earlier than I was supposed to catch the bus to the

Colombian border.

I was terrified that the guards would notice.

This goes wrong.

No more date releases.

It's today or never.

Enjoy your first date release.

As I walked through the door, I couldn't believe it.

It wasn't just some crazy dream.

I might actually get away with this.

My stomach's churning over, tying itself up in knots.

i got on the best i'm praying that i'm never going to see this place ever again

the

best starts moving it felt amazing it felt great

i'm

feeling more and more free and less and less like a prisoner

But the closer we get to the border, I'm getting so nervous.

The last bit of the journey is the most dangerous.

The bus drives up to the checkpoint.

There's guardia everywhere.

Not every car gets stopped.

So when we got pulled over,

My heart literally dropped into my stomach.

I stand out in Venezuela with blue eyes. I can't have the guardia seeing my

eyes. If it's a guardia that's worked in the prison, he's going to recognise me,

myself.

So I pretend to be asleep.

I'm praying that they don't ask to see my passport.

Passaporte, por favor.

They scan it with a poppet that I'm a prisoner.

When the guard asks the guy next to me, I'm thinking, this is it.

Chica, los papeles.

And then he asks me if I'm a passport.

Before I've had time to think, the bus driver says there's no point in talking

to the gringa. He can't speak a word of Spanish.

OK. And the guardia doesn't question it.

I literally cannot believe what has just happened. I feel like I've got guardian

angels around me.

I've just escaped prison.

I deserved my sentence.

But I'm getting closer to Nikita.

It was the best feeling in the world.

I can't.

That's my daughter in front of my eyes.

She's five years older, and she looks so different.

I said, do you know what my name is? And she said no, and I said, my name's

Natalie. And she said, are you my mummy?

I said, yes, I am your mummy, and I always will be.

I've always struggled with drug addiction, so I'd made a new life for

away from Gloucester, away from drugs.

It helps that me and Nikita have a strong relationship, but it's up and

because of what happened in the past.

I can never make up for those years.

All I can do now is just be the best mum that I can be now.