Mummy,

come home

The true story of a

mother kidnapped and torn

from her children

Oxana Kalemi

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Epilogue

Further Information

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

It was late one night when a young boy arrived at the massage parlour in Tottenham, London, where I worked. He was with two friends. They were all drunk but he looked quiet. Short with light brown hair and a stocky body, he was in his early twenties and English.

I was sitting in reception as usual. The customers would come in, look over the girls who weren’t already occupied with a client and then choose which one they wanted to go with.

I looked at the boy with only a slight flicker of interest. They were all the same to me, these men who came in looking for a piece of meat to fuck. But the night had been a quiet one for me and if I didn’t get a customer soon, I would suffer for it. My pimp, Ardy, was waiting for me, as he always did, first to get hold of all the money I might have made during the evening, and second to make sure I didn’t run. If I escaped from him, his income would vanish with me and he’d made it perfectly clear that if that happened, he’d hunt me down and kill me. As it was, even a quiet night could mean punishment for me, for failing to line Ardy’s pockets adequately.

The boy was staring at me. His eyes held the dazed look of a drunk man but he was young so perhaps he would be satisfied with a massage or even a blow job. When we caught each other’s gaze, he smiled at me.

‘Can you go with me?’ he asked.

‘Sure. Why not?’ I replied.

‘You’re not English,’ he said. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Turkey,’ I lied. It was the story I told everyone. It was easier somehow. How could I begin to tell anyone the truth about what had happened to me?

As we walked into the small massage room, he tried to touch my bottom.

‘Don’t do that,’ I told him firmly.

‘Of course. You don’t like that.’

‘No.’

I closed the door. ‘It’s forty-five pounds for half an hour.’

He dug into his pockets and handed me some crumpled notes. I took them. ‘I’ve got to give reception their money, then I’ll be back.’ I went out and returned a few minutes later to find the boy sitting on the chair by the massage table. ‘So…do you want a massage?’ I asked him.

‘No. I just want to fuck you.’

I looked at him. I could see he was drunk and I’d learned to be careful of men like that—they could surprise you, behave badly—but I couldn’t help being a little shocked. He seemed so young. ‘Wouldn’t you like a nice, soft massage?’ I said slowly. It was better for me if we started that way.

‘No. Just take your clothes off now.’

I would do what he wanted, but calmly and seriously, to keep things gentle. ‘Okay. But aren’t you going to as well?’

‘No. Take yours off first.’

I unbuttoned my dress. As I let it fall to the floor, revealing my underwear, I felt scared. He was too cold and too commanding for my liking. Why wouldn’t he undress? Did he have something in his pockets? He nodded with satisfaction as I stood in front of him, semi-naked.

‘I want a blow job now,’ he said.

I took a condom from the box beside the bed.

‘No. No condom.’

‘It’s the rules.’

‘But I’ll pay you a hundred pounds.’

‘I don’t care. Condom or nothing.’

‘Oh, come on. I’m clean.’

‘No. If you’re not happy then change the girl.’

The boy was silent as I knelt down in front of him. It was difficult to put the condom on him because he wasn’t ready so I tried to prepare him with my hand.

‘Did you drink a lot today?’ I asked.

‘Not much. What’s the problem?’

‘Well, I can’t get you hard.’

‘But you’re a fucking prostitute. That’s your job.’

I didn’t like the edge in his voice. I felt instinctively that I needed to defuse him, so I tried to sound reasonable. ‘I know but if you’ve drunk a lot or taken drugs, I can’t do it.’

He pushed me away. ‘I know how to do it,’ he slurred. He rolled the condom down over his semi-hard penis. Then he stood up and, in a quick movement, pushed me round so that I had my back to him. With sudden force, he pushed me down so that I was leaning over the massage table, my back exposed to him. With one hand, he forced my head down so that my cheek was pressed against the cheap cotton cover on the table. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and, with the other hand, he held my hip. He began to press against me and I could feel that he had regained his potency—he was hard now. He pushed and pushed and eventually found his way inside me.

I did not bother to struggle—I knew that it would do no good. He was strong and determined. I didn’t have a chance against him.

He began to move back and forward, his body slapping against my buttocks as he went.

‘Tell me you want a fuck,’ he said suddenly. ‘Tell me you’re a bitch, a whore.’

I was silent. Wasn’t it enough that I had to endure this?

‘Say it.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

He pulled my hair as he started hitting my buttocks. ‘Say it or I won’t finish. Come on. Tell me. You’re a fucking slag, a bitch, a whore.’

I wouldn’t say it to him, couldn’t say it to him.

‘No,’ I whispered as he pushed harder and harder inside me.

‘Say it,’ he said as I felt a pain in my stomach.

‘No.’

‘You’re a whore.’

He gripped my head tighter as he rammed into me.

‘Say it.’

Anger hardened inside me.

‘Say it.’

‘No.’

‘Just say it,’ he screamed.

He was hurting me so much. My body kept slamming into the side of the table. I just wanted him to stop—for the shouts to be silent. My anger died.

‘I’m a whore,’ I said.

‘Again,’ he shouted.

‘I’m a bitch.’ My voice was utterly expressionless.

With a moan he stopped moving on top of me and I reached back to take the condom, push him away and pick up my dress. The boy didn’t look at me as he walked towards the shower. Later, after he’d got out and put his clothes on, he turned to give me £5.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his eyes not meeting mine.

‘Just go,’ I said. ‘I don’t want your money.’

The boy said nothing as he left. I sat down quickly, feeling my legs lose their strength.

‘I cannot stand it,’ I whispered, my head in my hands. ‘I cannot bear this life much longer. I would rather be dead than suffer this.’ I could see blood in my mind, feel aggression in my heart and, for the first time, feared I wouldn’t be able to control whatever was trying to rip out from inside me. I wasn’t sure what I might do if I saw the boy again. I sat in silence and stared at the wall, trying to push down the animal which was clawing to get out from inside me.

I knew I had to win the struggle for control. My desire for survival was still strong. It had to be. I had to get home to my children. They were all that had kept me going through all the terrible hardships and abuses I had suffered. I had told them that Mummy would come home and I knew I had to survive if I was ever going to keep my promise.

Chapter One

I believe your birth is like your life and you are born with good or bad luck which follows you forever. I weighed just over two pounds when I was born three months prematurely and no one thought I would live. But I fought, held on to my life and survived just as I have done ever since.

I came into the world in Ukraine at about 6pm on 16 January 1976, after my mother Alexandra slipped on an icy street as she ran for the bus. Her waters broke and I had been born by the time my father Panteley arrived at the hospital. The doctors warned my parents I would not survive but my father had me moved to another hospital where I spent three months until I was well enough to go home. They called me Oxana.

We lived in a town called Simferopol in Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union, and my parents were rich compared with many in the Communist country. My father was a lorry driver and my mother worked in a nursery. They’d met at college and my mother was just seventeen when they married and my brother Vitalik was born. Six years later I arrived and together we lived in a huge apartment block of more than six hundred flats. We were lucky because we had two bedrooms and a large balcony and could afford to eat meat every day. My mother, who was small, beautiful and smelled of a perfume called Red Moscow, was an excellent cook, and Sunday was the best because we would have chicken livers or lamb with white sauce and onions followed by biscuits or cakes. That was my favourite day of the week, when we were all laughing together and my parents weren’t working.

But things started to change when my father gave up his driving job to run his own car repair business. Suddenly my world wasn’t quite as happy. I don’t know what came first—my father’s jealousy or my mother’s nights out—but after that the beatings started. I would lie in bed listening and praying to God to protect me. Papa was like a bull who couldn’t control himself, while Mamma couldn’t stop her tongue. I listened to the awful noise of their rows, wishing that they would stop and terrified that it was my fault they were no longer happy.

The noise from our flat must have been horrendous, but no one ever got involved in the arguments between my parents because anything between a husband and wife was considered private. Besides, there were plenty of other families like mine in our apartment block and if you got married then it was no one else’s business what your husband did to you. Women were the ones who provoked men after all—if they answered back they were hit, if they wore a short skirt they were a slapper who deserved what they got. One day a policeman came and sat with my father in the kitchen. By the time he had left, Papa had signed a document saying he wouldn’t touch my mother but what good is a piece of paper against a powerful fist? Nothing could heal the rift between my parents.

‘He’s a bastard,’ my mother would tell me as we lay in the bedroom we shared. Vitalik had the other while my father slept in the living room. ‘I’m going to leave him. You can come with me, Oxana, and we’ll be happy together.’

I wanted us all to be happy but I wished that we could stay together too. I loved my papa, even though he was so angry all the time with my mother. I was also frightened of my mother because she had drunken rages of her own and could turn against me in an instant. Sometimes she would scream at me after one of Papa’s beatings that I hadn’t protected her, and she would hit me. Once she beat me with a bunch of roses; I was covered in scratches and had to stay off school for a week.

Maybe it was because of all this that my brother Vitalik changed. We’d always been friends when we were young but he lost interest in me as he became a teenager and soon the arguments between my parents often included him. He started smoking, stopped going to school and hung around with a bad crowd which worried my father. Then when I was nine, my parents’ wedding rings and a gold necklace disappeared. Papa was furious; he was convinced that Vitalik had stolen them and it was the first time I realised that it wasn’t just my mother he could hit.

‘Why are you doing this?’ my father screamed. ‘I’m working hard to make a better future for you and your sister and you do this to me.’

Then one day, the police arrived at our home. A car had been stolen and there had been an accident. After that Vitalik disappeared. He was just fifteen.

After my brother had left, I felt almost invisible. I was a good girl who never caused my parents any trouble but I was also a very sensitive child. Every day I would write in my diary how many bad things my mother or teachers had said to me and it made me sad that nobody liked me because I was the clever girl at school. Things got worse when Vitalik went away.

‘There’s the thief’s sister,’ my classmates would snigger as I walked by.

People would turn their backs as I walked into the playground and teachers would mark my homework down for no reason. At that time, Ukraine was a Soviet country where many things weren’t accepted. Religion was one. Lenin was our god and people who believed otherwise could get into trouble. I remember one day when a girl came into school wearing a cross. We didn’t see her for a whole year after that. There were some churches of course and I was baptised into the Greek faith but my family never practised their religion openly. We celebrated Christian festivals but there was no Bible at home or trips to church.

In Ukraine, difference wasn’t trusted. Children were taught to hate homosexuality, black skin and anything foreign. Everybody had to be the same. There was just one big supermarket where everyone shopped and it didn’t sell any luxury goods or foreign foods—things like tampons and disposable nappies were unheard of. Instead we ate simple meat and vegetables, women used pads of gauze every month to stop their blood and children drank milk. When Coca-Cola arrived in Ukraine there were a lot of people who believed it would make them sick and I didn’t have my first sip until I was thirteen—the same day I tried chewing gum.

My country was hard in other ways too—it wasn’t wealthy and everyone had to work. Just a dollar a day could mean the difference between eating and starving, and I always knew that some people had a lot less than my family.

What I loved more than anything else was Bollywood films. The singing, the dancing, the colour, the costumes—everything about them was beautiful and I was convinced that India must be heaven on earth. My favourite one was called Disco Dancer and starred Mithun Chakrabarti. He was so tall and handsome that I saw it twenty-three times and couldn’t stop crying when it finally stopped being shown. I loved the way that Bollywood films always had a happy ending full of love. They made me believe that one day my prince would find me and we would live together happily ever after. I just had to wait patiently for that day to come.

Then something happened that turned all the colour in my dreams to grey.

Chapter Two

It was the summer of 1990,I was fourteen and on a secret day out at the beach with two friends, Natasha and Alina. I knew I’d be in trouble if Papa found out, but I had had a wonderful time sunbathing and chatting with my girlfriends. Now we were going to buy some food before walking to the station ready for the hour’s train journey home.

As we stood in the queue for pastries, a handsome boy waited behind. He looked about eighteen and was wearing shorts, no shirt and good sunglasses.

‘Excuse me, could you tell us what time it is, please?’ Natasha asked as she turned towards him.

He looked at his watch. ‘Nearly six o’clock,’ he replied.

I was worried. It was much later than I’d thought. ‘We have to go,’ I said urgently. ‘We’ll miss the train and we’ll never be home in time. I have to get back before Mama comes home from work.’

‘Don’t worry, Oxana,’ said Natasha breezily. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

She didn’t seem at all worried as she started chatting and laughing with the older boy. I didn’t like it—she seemed so open and free with him, and it wasn’t how I’d been taught to behave.

‘Why don’t you come and meet my friends?’ he asked, when we’d bought our pastries.

‘Sure,’ replied Natasha, and she began walking off with our new friend.

‘But we’ve got to get home,’ I cut in, looking at Alina.

‘Not yet,’ she said as she turned to follow Natasha and the boy. ‘We can always catch the next train. Don’t be a scaredy cat, Oxana.’

I stood for a moment. What should I do? I could go on my own to the station or for once try to fit in with my friends. I didn’t want to be left alone. I turned to follow as the boy led us behind the shops to the edge of a small wood.

‘My friends are in there,’ he said, gesturing at the trees.

Twigs cracked under our feet as we walked into the sudden darkness. I saw a group of about seven boys a little way ahead. They looked between sixteen and eighteen, and were sitting on blankets with food and bottles of homemade wine surrounding them, smoking. We went over and sat down with them. Natasha accepted a bottle immediately but I felt more and more nervous. We were going to be so late.

Then I heard two boys muttering behind me.

‘What are we going to do?’ one asked in a low voice.

I strained to hear and made out a few other words.

‘…and you can take her,’ the other said as he looked at me.

Fear filled me. Something was wrong.

‘Come on, let’s leave,’ I whispered to Alina. I turned to the boy next to me and said with a smile, ‘We need to go to the toilet.’

‘Over there.’ He gestured at some bushes. Alina and I got up and started to walk casually away.

‘We need to get away from here,’ I told her in a low voice.

‘What do you mean?’ she replied.

‘Trust me. There’s something wrong. I’ll count to five, then we’ll run.’

‘Okay,’ Alina said and my heart beat as I waited to count down.

‘Five, four, three, two, ONE,’ I shouted and started running through the shadowy wood. I couldn’t hear Alina behind me, she must have gone in a different direction, but I couldn’t stop. I just had to run. That was all that mattered.

Suddenly I felt hands on my back and was pushed to the ground before being pulled roughly around. Looking down at me was a boy of about seventeen with blond curly hair, blue eyes and big lips.

‘Listen,’ he snapped. ‘I can make you a deal. Either all these guys are going to fuck you or you accept just me.’

‘No way,’ I screamed. ‘Never.’

‘All right then,’ the boy said as he started getting up. ‘I’ll just call the others.’

I could sense he was nervous, unsure of what he was doing. ‘No, please don’t,’ I begged. ‘Don’t call them. I’ll go with you.’

‘Good,’ he said as he pulled me to my feet. ‘Now follow me.’

I was very afraid as the boy took my arm and we started walking through the woods. What was he going to do? Why wouldn’t he let me go?

‘Please don’t hurt me,’ I sobbed. ‘My parents are expecting me home.’

‘If you’re good I won’t give you to anyone else but if you’re not then I have a lot of friends.’

My heart beat fast. I hardly understood what happened between men and women but I knew that I didn’t want this boy to touch me and there was no way to get away from him. Even as my eyes scanned the floor for something to use as a weapon—a plank, a stone—he held tightly on to me.

‘Please don’t hurt me today,’ I pleaded as we reached a deserted house and he pushed me into an old shed at the back. ‘Can’t you just leave me tonight?’

The longer he didn’t touch me the better. I’d been told again and again that I had to be a virgin to be a good wife and I knew that meant not letting boys touch me. I couldn’t let this boy do anything to me or the word ‘whore’ would follow me forever.

‘Don’t worry,’ he replied. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. You just need to drink some wine and then it won’t be so painful.’

He lay a blanket on the ground and offered me a bottle before lifting his eyes to me once again. The silence was thick between us as we stared at each other. I saw in his eyes that he was determined to do it.

‘Please don’t hurt me,’ I whispered as the boy pushed me back onto the hard ground.

I was so scared I couldn’t move. I’d hit boys at school if they’d ever tried to touch me but this was so different. My body froze. Maybe he would let me go when he realised how afraid I was.

‘I won’t tell anyone about this,’ I sobbed. ‘Please let me go. I won’t tell the police or my parents.’

But the boy did not listen and started pulling at my clothes as I folded my arms around my body.

‘No,’ I pleaded as he ripped the thin straps of my pink top. ‘I’m a virgin.’

‘Oh, come on,’ he snapped in a low voice. ‘You must have had a boyfriend.’

Tears ran down my face as the boy pulled at my shorts and I stiffened my legs to hold them tightly together. He pushed himself onto me and I could hardly breathe. He was too heavy and strong to resist as he forced my legs open. I tried screaming but a hand clamped down on my mouth.

A hot jab of pain flooded in between my legs. I didn’t want him to do this to me and neither did my body. It hurt so much. The boy pushed again and again until he went inside me. I screamed.

‘Shut up,’ he shouted. ‘Relax and you’ll be fine.’

But pain filled me as millimetre by millimetre the boy robbed me of myself. I could feel his sweat dripping on me, his tongue licking me and smell the stink of his armpits. Sickness rose up in my throat.

I don’t know how long it was before he stopped moving and rolled away onto his back.

‘You see, it was nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m tired now. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the train station and you can go home.’

He dozed off straight away while I lay awake trembling, too terrified to move, until I finally fell asleep, grateful for the oblivion.

Early the next morning we woke up. I saw dried blood on my thighs as I pulled on my shorts. It hurt to move as I shifted from one leg to the other. I felt freezing, so cold I was almost shaking, and I wondered what he was going to do now. Home felt so far away.

He led me out of the shed and we started walking along a deserted road with trees on either side until we reached an empty beach.

‘Clean yourself up,’ the boy said as he gestured at the sea. ‘And then I’ll take you to the station.’

I looked at a toilet block on the edge of the beach—the kind of low building with no roof, low walls and holes in the ground that were found by the seaside.

‘Can I go?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but don’t lock the door.’

The boy waited outside as I walked into the latrine and looked at the back wall. I could climb it and run. If I could just get away, perhaps I could forget this had ever happened. No one need ever know.

I stayed still for a moment as I listened for the boy. I couldn’t hear him moving, just the sound of the sea as it rolled onto the beach. Holding my breath, I pulled myself up onto the wall. As my head appeared over the top, I looked down to see two men waiting on the other side.

‘She’s trying to escape,’ one called and I heard a grunt of frustration as the boy rushed into the cubicle.

‘You’ve made a real mistake,’ he shouted as he grabbed me. ‘And now you’re going to pay for it.’

Panic filled me as the boy pulled me outside to where the two men were waiting. One was in his early thirties with blond hair and a well-built body while the other was tall, thinner and older.

‘Hello there, little girl. Nice to meet you. Now, let’s go,’ the tall man said as he dug his fingers into my arm and started dragging me towards a tent pitched nearby.

I looked back to see the blond man handing over some money to the boy as I was pushed inside the tent. The light inside glowed yellow and the air was hot, hard to breathe.

‘So what shall we do now?’ the blond man smiled as he crawled in behind us.

Without a word, he grabbed my hair and pushed his lips onto mine. I felt teeth bite into me as the man held my shoulders and pulled open his shorts. He pushed my head towards his nakedness as he knelt. My mind went black. What was he trying to do? I gritted my teeth, forcing myself not to cry or scream, as the man forced himself towards me. Suddenly fingers wrenched open the sides of my mouth and I tasted blood as my skin split.

‘Hold her nose,’ a voice said and fingers pinched my nostrils shut.

Whatever happened I must keep my mouth closed, mustn’t let this man into me. But as the world went from red to black and my body gasped for air, the blond man thrust himself into me. I bit him.

‘Fucking bitch,’ he shouted.

A fist smashed into my mouth and a knee flew towards my face. Pain flooded into my head. I could taste blood and feel the salt sting of tears melting into my cuts.

‘Here, wait,’ the tall man said as he grabbed me by the neck and pulled out a roll of masking tape. He pushed a strip over my mouth. Blood and tears rushed into my throat as my arms were pulled behind my head and I was forced back onto the ground.

The blond man pulled up my T-shirt and suddenly his weight was crushing me. He wanted what the boy had taken yesterday. It had hurt so much. I had to stop him. Once again I went rigid as he forced himself into me.

‘You’re only hurting yourself,’ he said.

It was worse, much worse, than the night before as the grown man pushed into me with a violence the boy did not yet know he had. I wanted to die. Just fall into the sea, out of the sky, and die. Tears fell wet down my face as the man moved on top of me. I had never known pain like it so deep inside, at the centre of me.

‘Sshh,’ he said as his hips pushed into mine again and again, his voice suddenly soft, the kind of voice you use to speak to a little girl. ‘Don’t cry. You’ll be fine.’

But still he heaved on top of me until suddenly a thick, musky smell filled the air. I felt warmth spread on my stomach as he rolled off me.

Silently I sat up and pulled the tape off my mouth as the men lit cigarettes. It felt like there was an animal inside me which wanted to scream but I couldn’t let it out.

‘It was all right, wasn’t it, even though you were tight?’ the blond man smiled as he smoked.

‘Can I have one?’ I asked, gesturing at the cigarette.

‘You smoke?’

‘Yes,’ I lied as he put a cigarette into my bleeding mouth and held a match to it. I felt dizzy as chemicals rushed into my brain and, without thinking, I pushed the burning cigarette onto the back of my hand. I wanted to see if I was alive but couldn’t feel a thing as the burning tip scorched my skin. Only the small white scar it left on my hand reminds me still that the day was real. But I didn’t know that back then. It all felt like a dream. When would I wake up at home?

I felt a slap on my face.

‘Are you crazy?’ the tall man shouted.

I looked at him silently.

‘She needs to clean herself,’ the blond man snapped as he took my arm and pulled me out of the tent.

I stood up and stumbled towards the sea where I started splashing myself. The water felt cold and my nose and mouth stung as the salty water bit into my cuts. Inside I felt nothing.

‘Are you all right?’ a voice asked.

I turned to see a police car parked on the beach and an officer standing near the tent. Another sat in the car.

Suddenly a flash lit up inside me. I was safe. They could help me.

But then fear filled me again. No one must ever know what had happened. My father could never find out. I would be shamed forever if he did. I started shaking as the sea rushed over my feet and I pulled down my wet T-shirt. I had no underwear. What kind of girl would they think I was?

‘I’m fine,’ I told the policeman.

He looked at me.

‘She’s my cousin,’ the blond man said.

‘Is that true?’ the officer asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

The policeman stared at me for a moment. ‘Well, get your things anyway because I want you to come with me.’

I dragged a hand over my mouth to wipe away the blood as I stood up to follow the man. Silently, I got into the front seat of the car as the other officer put the two men into the back. They didn’t say anything and neither did I. I wouldn’t tell, I decided as the car drove away. I’d lie if I had to. If Papa found out I wasn’t a virgin anymore then he’d either kill me or I’d be labelled a whore—either way my life would be over.

I was scared when I got to the police station. I knew what the police were like—they could do whatever they wanted—and so, even though a kind man asked me again and again what had happened, I didn’t tell him.

‘So where are your friends?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘And your clothes?’

‘I lost them.’

‘What were you doing with the men we found you with?’

‘Just talking.’

There was silence while the policeman considered my answer. Then he said, ‘Did these men do something to you?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure, Oxana?’

‘Yes.’

Soon a woman doctor arrived to take me to another room. I cried again as she asked me to sit in a chair with stirrups before looking at every part of me, the parts no one had ever seen until that day. The woman was silent as she examined me before turning away to write notes. Later she left the room, came back with a white gown and I was taken back to the room where the investigator sat.

‘Why have you lied to me?’ he asked softly. ‘You’ve been raped, haven’t you? The doctor says you’ve been treated very roughly. You must have been in a great deal of pain. Why keep silent?’

I stared down at the table. Would my body always tell my story to those who looked closely enough? I felt sick. Would my husband know in the years to come?

‘I’m scared,’ I sobbed. ‘My father mustn’t know what’s happened to me.’

‘But why?’

‘Because he’ll kill me. Please, please don’t tell my parents. I’ll do whatever you want but please don’t tell them.’

‘I won’t,’ he said.

So I told him everything. He kept his promise and did not call my parents. Instead, we called my second cousin, Yula, who came to pick me up and take me home. She lived not far from us with her husband and two children and I saw her often. I trusted her to help me. The investigator told her that I’d been found at the beach alone and needed clothes.

Yula came bringing clothes for me and, after speaking to the investigator, took me home in her car. We had only been driving for about fifteen minutes when she stopped the car and climbed into the back seat beside me.

‘What were you doing at the beach alone, Oxana?’ she asked gently.

I started sobbing. ‘You must never tell Mamma and Papa,’ I whispered.

Yula began crying as well. She knew my father was very strict. ‘But I have to,’ she said. ‘You’re fourteen. A girl. They need to know.’

‘Well, then I’ll kill myself,’ I cried. ‘I know how to die and I’ll do it.’

‘We have to say something, Oxana,’ she insisted. ‘You’ve been gone nearly two days.’

‘You’ll think of something,’ I said in a rush. ‘Please, Yula, you have to help me.’

We didn’t talk anymore as she drove me back to her house and waited for my mother to arrive.

An hour later, my mother came rushing in. ‘Where have you been?’ she screamed as she started slapping me. ‘Your father has had heart pain all day and night. We haven’t been to work because of you. You are a bad girl! Such trouble. We had no idea what had happened.’

‘Alexandra,’ cried Yula, ‘you don’t understand! Poor Oxana has been through a terrible ordeal. Yes, she was naughty—she went on a secret trip to the beach with her friends—but she and the others were set upon by thieves. They were badly beaten and had all their things stolen before being dumped in the middle of nowhere. She’s lucky to be alive.’

My mother’s anger vanished. ‘Oh, my poor baby!’ she said, with tears in her eyes. She put her arms round me and hugged me. I couldn’t remember when she had last done that.

Back at home, I climbed into my pyjamas and went straight to bed. The next day I told the story Yula had invented to Papa and he stopped asking questions when I began crying. He didn’t do as I’d expected and beat me. Instead my parents sent me to see relatives in the country for a week and we never mentioned what had happened again.

I still find that day at the beach almost the worst of everything that was to come. I was a child until I started running through the dark forest away from those boys. But in that moment I was forced into the painful world of adults. In the months that followed, I started seeing the devil in my dreams. I was sure that one day he would kill me.

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