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.
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