Human Trafficking Starts With a White Van, We’re Told. Romance Recruited 4 Times as Many.

We picture a stranger. In 2021 US sex-trafficking reports, a partner recruited 956 people, abduction 222.

A love padlock on the Ponte Palatino in Rome. In 2021 US hotline reports, a partner recruited four times as many people into sex trafficking as abduction did. Photo by Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s 11:40 on a Wednesday night and your phone buzzes against the arm of the sofa. Your oldest friend has sent a photo. Flowers, a ridiculous armful, still in their cellophane on a kitchen counter you’ve never seen. They’re the frilly kind that pass for roses until you look twice. Beside them sits one key on a little silver keyring shaped like a house.

He found me a flat!!!

Then a second message, just the key emoji, which she has never used once in all the years you’ve known her.

You type omg and delete it. You type wait, already? and delete that too, because the last time you asked her something in that tone she went quiet for a fortnight, and you don’t want to be the friend who can’t be glad for anyone.

You’ve met him once, at her birthday drinks. He paid for the whole table before anyone could argue, then kept one hand on the back of her chair for the rest of the night. Everyone said he was lovely. He was lovely to the waiter. He was lovely to you. He knew your name before she’d introduced you, which you decided was…