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Readers, I am back. I know it has been a while.

The Ogre has been out of my life for a few years now. I still think about him, worrying in case I bump into him, either randomly, or pre-planned by him. I remember the threats to hurt me. Sometimes, I have nightmares – of him lurking in the back of my car, or throwing acid on my face – but then I remember that I have three restraining orders, and have no child or new husband that would cause him fury. I have to remind myself I am safe.

I started thinking back to my holiday with him to Thailand. As he never paid anything towards our home or life, he had a lot of money, and enjoyed annual holidays to Thailand, sometimes with his mother. One day, he said his mother wanted me to go too. I know what you are thinking. That doesn’t sound bad. Even sounds nice, right? But I started worrying – because I knew him. He wasn’t nice. I wondered where this sudden benevolence was coming from. He had never bestowed me with such generosity before.

We flew down and he told me on the plane that his mum would not be coming and I should not tell her that I have accompanied him as this would enrage her. (I had longed stopped questioning why a husband and wife going on holiday would upset her and had learnt to accept this behaviour).

When we arrived there, it was late and dark. He took me to a remote and closed down resort which was ‘under renovation.’ He said his friend gave him ‘a deal.’ There was not a single soul around and I feared for my life. After ten minutes, he said he has to pop out to ‘see my friend.’ He then left. I sat in the bedroom completely alone, isolated, and wondering where he had gone. He had no friends. No one that he had ever mentioned.

I messaged my sister and my friends to keep myself calm and waited. Every noise startled me. After 2 hours, he came back and got into bed without a word.

I still wonder sometimes where he went and what other secrets he was hiding. I also wonder whether there were suppressed secrets at the root of his behaviour.

The Ogre must have had many discussions with his mum about the possibility that I may escape his misogynistic, selfish, narcissistic clutches soon. That I had finally managed to stand up to his threats and with the help of my sister, found a financial backing that could get me that freedom that had only ever been a dream. This sounds ridiculous but I started to visualise my life without him – with him gone. How I would be able to come home from work exhausted but not have to worry about feeding him or cleaning up after him or empty bottles of red spit. With each vision, I grew more and more courageous and began to feel more confident about being able to go through with it.

One day, I was driving home from a late night at work, when my uncle, my own flesh and blood, called me.

“Hello,” he said. “Your husband called me. He is very upset.”

I have always been a polite, submissive and obliging girl, eager to please and therefore, in my trademark manner, I asked him why. Big mistake.

He says that you are having an affair and that is the reason you want a divorce. He also is asking me to mediate between you both. I do feel you should try and resolve your marital issues.

The new me was able to explicitly say that I had absolutely no intention of changing my mind and it was better for him to accept that our marriage has been dead a long time. We both will be happier separate.

My uncle, unashamedly, continued. “Well, there are always two sides to every story,” he said. “He is a decent man who wants to stay with you. He also told me everything you have been saying about my daughters.”

“What on earth have I been saying?” I asked, genuinely flabbergasted.

He told me some rubbish about how I had bad-mouthed my cousin because she had chosen to marry a white guy. This is something I have never done – and if I had, I would have admitted it. But I didn’t. Yet, he has successfully poisoned my own family against me.

The next day, my uncle called me back and said that as I was being so stubborn, my husband had asked for a list of household furniture that he had bought and wanted to be reimbursed for. Namely, the television, the sofa set and, wait for it, the boiler. Can we take a moment to appreciate the audacity of the man who didn’t contribute a single penny in 13 years to any aspect of the house.

My uncle continued to become the Ogre’s messenger and demand ransoms in return for his cooperating with the divorce. I didn’t tell my father as i didn’t want him to turn against his brother. I tried to explain to my uncle that this man was abusive and manipulative and hadn’t paid a penny throughout the marriage. My uncle said, “I have heard the recordings.”

“What recordings?” I asked.

“Ogre sent them to me,” he said.

It turned out that throughout the 13 years I was married to the Ogre, he was recording all of our conversations and arguments. He was then sending them regularly to his mother and had saved them to be used against me during our divorce.

Throughout the entire time. Every day.

I gave my uncle the money to get him off my back and shut the Ogre up too. I told my solicitors that I wanted nothing except my freedom. She told me I was being foolish and he had accumulated lots of money and property over the years but I only wanted him out. As quickly as possible. When my husband finally left the house, I noticed a big gaping hole in the wall. He had taken the boiler with him as a final Fuck You to me.

I first sat down to tell my ex-husband I wanted a divorce after five years of being trapped in a sexless and loveless marriage. I remember we sat on a little round table and had the discussion. I explained we were very different, we wanted different things and I wasn’t happy. He said he wasn’t happy either. Relieved, I said that if we both are not happy then surely the best thing for both of us would be to file for divorce?

He looked at me and smiled. An odd reaction, I thought at first. But some people smile when they are nervous or sad, so I put it to one side. It almost came as a surprise, despite all of his horrific behaviour over the years, when he told me there was no way he would ever divorce me and if I tried he would throw acid on my face, rape my sister and murder my parents. What’s more, he continued. He would never let me move on. If I ever remarried and had a child, he would murder my baby too.

I listened in horror. If I’m honest, I was numb. Gradually, I learned to stay numb and go through the motions of serving food and paying bills on repeat. I withdrew into my shell and became introverted. As a child, I was vivacious and full of exuberance. Each year, the marriage drained all the joy from me, leaving me wandering around lifeless and soulless. I started going to bed at 8pm merely to avoid his existence. I spent every special day, Valentines’ Day, News Years Eve etc sleeping, just to avoid facing the reality of my situation. If my friends or family members tried to talk to me and convince me to leave him, I blocked the conversation and refused to talk to anyone about it. I just said he would never leave. I never told anyone about the threats.

And even if I wanted to leave, I couldn’t. The Ogre had stolen our marriage certificate and hidden it. We never registered the marriage in UK so my only evidence of it had been taken away from me. There was no way out.

It is never easy to tell Asian parents that you want a divorce.

But in my case, the Ogre hadn’t exactly been subtle in his level of selfish, unpleasant and aggressive behaviour over the years. He used the marriage as a means of free accommodation, free bills, free cars, free phones, free holidays, free cooked meals and it got to the point where there was absolutely nothing he was contributing to my life at all, except control and abuse. My parents and family were fully aware of his behaviour and had started asking me to leave. The problem was he was wasn’t exactly easy to leave. As he was benefitting so much from this arrangement, he wasn’t in favour of ending it.

By now, his mother had permanently moved to the UK, and he had bought a house in which she was staying. She would stay in my house for a few days per week and then go to her own place the rest of the week. She was positively loathsome in her encouragement of his disgusting, unacceptable behaviour – in the way that most brown mums are.

Anyway, so after me finally gaining the courage to ask him to leave, his mum arranged a meeting with my parents – who she had deliberately ignored and snubbed since the wedding. She sat like a monarch on a throne in my own front room and started telling my parents that I am ‘too modern’ and don’t understand a ‘woman’s role’ and should just accept her son’s behaviour and at ‘least he doesn’t beat her.’ My blood was boiling as I listened to her. My father called me into the room.

I went in, expecting her will tell her to fuck off, as he had been asking me to get a divorce for years.

“Your mother in law is right. She is like your own mother. You need to listen to your elders,” he said.

I was horrified. In order to be liked and please others, he had completely thrown me under the bus.

My mother in law turned to look at me smugly.

“Any man you move on with will be exactly the same,” she said. “Not just my son. They are all like that. We are not like these white people who just divorce.”

I stared at my father nodding along, wanting her approval, and in that moment, I felt nothing but disgust for the whole bunch of them.

I remember when my beautiful baby sister was about 16, I was staying for a night at my parents’ house. The Ogre never liked me staying a night away, for who would cook and serve him whilst I was gone? Who could he exert his control over? However, under the condition that I would return by 10am the following morning, I was permitted to go. Even if I went for a night away on holiday, I had to force my family to check out early so that I could return to him by my curfew.

Anyway, on that particular night, something happened which I still remember clearly. My sister came to me and told me that the Ogre had sent her a dick pic.

“Are you sure?” I asked horrified. I could feel the blood draining from my body. Aside from the utter unacceptability of the act, she was only ten when I had first got engaged, so I just couldn’t understand why he would send a sexual picture to her. Surely he saw her like a child, as I did?

I immediately called him to confront him. He had his narrative prepared. It was supposed to be for me. He had ‘accidentally’ sent it to her. It was because he was ‘missing me.’ I listened to this wretched being who did not contribute financially to the home, knowing the strain I was under; who did not contribute to the chores at home, as it was a ‘woman’s job’; who made me pay for phone contracts so he could distribute upgrades to his friends and family; who made me pay for his car so he could drive around like a prince. And now had sent lewd, sexual images to my sister.

It is a very difficult thing to explain in words why I was too weak to react. I guess when your lived reality is horrific, your body almost goes into a numb denial, or it is easier to believe a lie than to accept a truth. I suppose, I could only compare it to being married to a child abuser, or a serial killer. I accepted his lie, explained to my sister that it was unintentional and aimed at me, and continued to plod along into the life I had become so accustomed to.

My sister knew it was no accident. She was furious at him and even more enraged at me. Until today, I find it hard to forgive myself for not protecting her and being stronger.

But I am glad she was as fierce as she was.

About five years into my marriage, I had gone to India and swapped rooms with my mother-in-law (I had started looking forward to this ‘me time’, when she came into my bedroom. She sat at the foot of my bed and said she had spoken to a specialist about ‘my problem’, implying my vaginismus. She said she had booked an appointment for me to see the doctor the next day. I thought it was yet another consultation, so agreed. Obviously, it was incredibly embarrassing – but after so many years, I had seen a series of doctors, psycho-sexual specialists, hypnotherapists, etc and nothing had worked. I had reconciled myself with the view that I would die a virgin, and the stench of the chewing tobacco and red spit was a reminder that I wasn’t missing much anyway.

The next day, the Ogre, my mother-in-law and I walked into a posh hospital, who informed me that I was going to have a surgery under general anaesthetic. I was petrified. My ex-husband started begging me, saying that as we had tried everything, it must be something physically wrong with me, and this was our last shot. My mother-in-law defiantly spoke on my behalf and consented to the surgery which was to be carried out that day.

It turned out that they were going to pull apart my vaginal opening to see if it helped penetration.

As I sat in the hospital gown and waited to go into the operation theatre, I thought of my own family back home who had no idea what I was about to do. Like Juliet just before she takes the potion, I wondered whether I would wake up, and what would happen if I didn’t.

It turns out I did wake up. The surgery was useless and surprisingly didn’t cure me. What it did do was give me a lifetime of bladder problems.

When I came around, my mother-in-law was standing there, holding an extortinate bill, which she presented in my hands.

The Ogre was never a supportive partner. He was extremely narcissistic and only interested in talking about himself. Some of this is cultural – I have seen many men from the same background (now that I am aware of the trait) who manage to turn every conversation to themselves. So, if you say, ‘I just bought a handbag’, he would say, ‘Handbags were invented in India.’ He wouldn’t just say, I work in ____. He would say, I work in the NUMBER ONE MOST POPULAR etc etc etc. Droning on and getting off to the sound of his own voice. 13 years of this was like being strapped to an electric chair. I was really embarrassed of this behaviour and didn’t want him to meet any of my friends.

But anyway, soon, once he settled into the country, and realised how things worked, he came up to me one day and said he wants to buy a car and use my name, as he was new and didn’t have a credit rating yet. So I bought him a car and at first, he paid all the instalments and then, once he had decided he would not contribute anything at all to the household expenses or mortgage, he stopped paying for the car too. He used to say, ‘make me.’ When my brother ruined my credit completely, I got to the stage where I had no money at all, so I couldn’t even get a phone contract. I begged my husband to get me the contracts in his name, and he did, but obviously the payment details were mine. In return, he took out 3 additional contracts and linked them to my payment details too. So each month, I was paying.4 phone contracts, his car, my brother’s loans, my parents’ rent and then all of my bills. Those contracts were in his name which meant he got all the upgrades too. So 4 times a year, he used to get brand new phones and distribute them to his family in India like he was God. I had the same phone for ten years. Because he lived bill-free, he also saved a lot of money over the 13 years and bought 3 houses, whilst I sank lower and lower into bankruptcy.

I was so desperate to get rid of them that I walked away from that marriage not claiming a penny. All I wanted was him gone. My solicitor told me I was mad but she hadn’t lived my life.

Let’s go back to the disaster that was my wedding. Have you ever felt like all the blood has been drained from your body? Well, I certainly did many times during that awful period of my life.

As I was paying for my wedding (no one in my family had any money due to reasons previously cited) I used all my student loans and credit cards plus the little savings I had and had just managed to pay off all of the expenses. Our flight was an indirect flight and we had to spend one night as an extended stopover in another city before catching a domestic flight the next morning. The Ogre had arranged that we would spend one night with his close friend who would pick us up from the airport and then fly to the city where my wedding was taking place. That is all it was. One single night.

The friend was lovely. He looked after my family and took us to dinner and booked us into a hotel for a night. The next day, he dropped us to the airport and I was very grateful.

At the wedding and throughout that time, my father was a nightmare. He always is but he was the worst he has ever been. He stood outside the venue sulking and refusing to participate and the guests who had come on my side (only about ten due to the wedding being abroad) were trying to pacify him. So, when the women were singing and dancing and asking for the ‘bride’s mum to dance’, there was no bride’s mum in the hall. The only person present was my lovely little sister who danced and sang and desperately tried to make the day as positive as her 14 year old self could.

There is a cultural tradition that when it is time for the bride to be ‘given away’, everyone watches her walk out with her husband and his family and we all cry, as she is officially leaving her parents’ home. My sister went out to get my parents but they never came. So, there was no one from my family watching my departure.

Anyway, put that to one side, we returned to the UK, and about six weeks later, my ex-husband got an email from his friend back home, who had picked me up. Apparently, in that one night, my father had told him a sob story about how he didn’t have the money to pay for his daughter’s wedding, knowing perfectly well that he wasn’t paying anyway, and had taken 6000 pounds from the friend’s family, saying he would pay him back within a month. My husband, stunned, came and told me, and I looked at him, white as a sheet.

I found the money and paid him back instantly, of course.

But the shame never left me.

So, after a few years of working myself to a state of near death, having no money to show for it, paying all my bills, and my parents’ bills, like a responsible adult, despite not having five pounds left at the end of the month, in a severely unhappy marriage and knowing that I will die a virgin, my brother decided to break the news to me that he had taken a ‘few loans in my name.’ After a bit of interrogation, it was revealed that a ‘few’ in actual fact translated to about fifty thousand pounds, and the monthly amount would be debited from my account. He was near to bankruptcy but promised he would try to transfer me the money each month; both of us knew he didn’t have the money to do this.

It transpired that he had a gambling addiction – quite a severe one. I wasn’t the only one he had taken loans in the name of – he had done the same to his wife and my mother. Now, he was in a mess. I, who was already not coping with the financial burden I was in, remained at a loss for words. I shouted at him, cried, and then resolved to help him solve his problems. Thank God I had already bought my flat because my credit rating was now fucked.

Anyway, he paid the monthly repayment for the first couple of months, then gradually started partially contributing, or saying he had no money. I had to take out credit card loans now to help me stay on top of things and of course I couldn’t confide in the Ogre, because he was already pissed off about my parents’ financial responsibility and not contributing anything anyway.

So, when I got to breaking point, 3 years into the repayments, I confided in a close friend and she helped me come up with a plan. She said I should take out one large loan to consolidate all the payments, instead of paying out so much money to lots of different loans. I did this. And I immediately paid off my brother’s loan and my loans and could now focus on a single sum of money to pay off slowly.

I put the phone down and felt relief for the first time in ages.

But the next month, my brother’s big loan payment was still debited from my account. I phoned the company – surely it was a mistake? I had paid it off.

It transpired that he had registered his email address with the loan but my bank details. So when I paid off the loan, he had received an email informing him. That second, he had taken out the full amount again, gambled it, and lost it.

As a result, I now had doubled my debt.

Yes, it was his debt, but it was my credit rating and name and he had no money and no income to pay for any of it. Of course I cried, and screamed and even hit him. I told my mum. She was crushed and burst into tears to see my state – but she was helpless too.

You are lucky I am still alive to tell the tale.

I just carried on.

I think that was possibly the worst moment of my life.

My parents never bought a house and we spent the first 18 years of my life moving home to home so by the time I took over the rent, I knew that domestic stability was the most important purpose of my life. And I became so fixated that I worked three jobs and ended up buying my own first flat at the age of 22 – six months before I got married. No one contributed a penny towards it. It is my single biggest independent accomplishment to date and something I am incredibly proud of.

After my wedding, and when we returned to the UK, I continued supporting my family but also contributed towards the running of my marital home too. However, six months into the marriage, my ex-husband sat me down and said, ‘I am not happy about you supporting your parents financially. You are not a son; it is not your job.’

I tried to explain that I had always done this and they rely on my income to pay their rent and my brother was not financially stable enough to do it and my sister was a child.

He listened and then said, ‘I have spoken to my mum about this. We have decided that if you have the money to run one household, you can run two. I won’t be contributing financially at all and you can pay for both households, as you obviously can afford to waste your money.’

Even typing these words now, I can see how completely callous, unreasonable and unfair he was – and I am sure some of you are thinking, ‘Why didn’t you leave the bastard’ but I didn’t. I paid my parents’ rent, my mortgage and the bills of both houses. The Ogre paid nothing. Not a penny.

This luxury meant that he saved lots of money during our 13 year marriage. He went on six holidays per year, taking his mum with him of course, and ended up buying three houses.

I, on the other hand, worked three jobs, seven days a week, eighteen hour shifts, and didn’t have five pounds to buy underwear from Tesco at the end of the month.

I lost my confidence and self-worth and withdrew completely into a shell. The Ogre saw my state and just laughed and said, ‘Your parents are responsible for your condition, not me. Go and get me more food.’