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The Ogre and his family had to plan the wedding, as it was taking place in his home town, due to visa restrictions. Therefore, we agreed that they would organise it all and we would pay them what we owe. Now obviously, I couldn’t rely on my father to pay for anything. My mum had saved every year since the day I was born and bought one gold set (consisting of a real gold necklace, bangles and earrings) at a time, so that I had sufficient jewellery and security for my wedding. There were 11 sets in total. Some from Bahrain, some from Dubai, some from India and some from Pakistan. She also managed to get all my beautiful clothes made, with a little assistance from her family. However, in order to pay for the wedding, I took a loan for ten thousand pounds from the bank so it wouldn’t be embarrassing for me or my family at the time of payment.

Anyway, just before we flew, the Ogre called me and said that his mother had bought a gold set for me to wear on the wedding day and had designed the clothes. I explained I already had jewellery and clothes made but he said he couldn’t offend her. He sounded quite embarrassed and said, ‘Let’s not upset Mamma. Just pay her and then when I am in England and working, I will pay your family back.”

I asked him how much this all came to and he said five thousand pounds, which in those days, was a lot of money.

I was shocked. That was half of what I had to pay for the wedding and I couldn’t tell him that I was already bearing the cost of the entire thing. With a heavy heart, I agreed.

So, I took out a credit card and transferred him the money.

On the night we were returning back to the UK, I looked in the suitcase, and instead of the twelve gold sets, there were eleven. As my mum had bought everything, I didn’t really know what each one looked like so when my mother in law said, ‘No, you only bought ten with you,’ I believed her.

It was only after we landed back in the UK, my mum helped me unpack, and asked me where the missing set was. I had no answer. But at least the five grand set was still there…for now…

So, after the first horrific year of marriage, we flew back to his home in the summer and spent six weeks there. The mother in law gave me the cold shoulder because I was the woman who had shipped away her son, and she spent the entire time kissing my husband’s face and making him eat obscene amounts of unhealthy food at obscene hours of the day and night. I didn’t say a word.

On the second night, my mother in law announced that because her son had been stolen away from her and taken so far away, she wanted him in the nights too, not just in the day, so that she could make every moment last. I asked my husband what this meant and he sheepishly said that my mother in law was going to move into our bedroom that night so that she could spend every second with him.

I told him that there was absolutely no way in hell that I was going to sleep with her and it was a complete invasion of privacy. He gritted his teeth and said, ‘Don’t you dare make a scene.’

So, that night, when she turned up in her pyjamas, deliberately waiting for me to challenge her decision or react, I calmly and politely said that I am not feeling well and therefore would feel far more comfortable in her room than disturb her sleep. Would she mind if we swapped rooms?

It turned out that she was delighted. Not just that year, but annually, whenever we went back each summer, I slept in my mother in law’s room and she slept with my husband.

And I enjoyed every tiny bit of that freedom and never told anyone at the risk of sounding weird.

My father has always been an amorous man. Rumour has it that he used to have money back home and there were numerous affairs throughout the marriage, including with many with his friends’ and relatives’ wives too. My mother says he even went off two hours after my birth for a shagathon in another city (my mother did not use that word, of course).

Anyway, at no point did he consider blessing his family by actually leaving for any of those women. It was just sex, sometimes a paid transaction, sometimes a fantasy in his head. He had no fear of getting caught and made no attempt to hide it. He tried it wherever he got the chance – my mum’s sister, my mum’s niece. Openly. Brazenly.

One of his own cousins who he had shagged in his youth came to our house to ‘visit.’ She was sitting on his lap whilst her husband and my mother watched and served them food, whilst enduring their shameless behaviour.

One particularly awful year, a young woman who got divorced moved into our home – a family friend. Her family was abroad so my parents took her in and she became a sister to me. We had a small room that my baby sister and I shared and this young lady moved into this room and we all slept in one bed. It was amazing having an older sister for the first time. We lay in bed chatting, eating snacks, watching films. She waxed my arms and legs for the first time and took me shopping.

It was all going well until my father decided he was in love with her. So began his infatuation. As always, it began in a ‘jokey’ way and escalated to the point of an obsession and paranoia. He became her bodyguard and even the local grocer became a love rival; once he decided my 16 year old brother was eyeing her up and kicked him out of the house for a night, with no mobile phone, no money and no explanation. He spent the day following her around anywhere she went and at night, when my mother fell asleep, he even turned up to our bedroom. My sister and I squeezed our eyes shut tightly as he whispered perverted things and gradually this progressed to tickling her feet, touching her leg – or even worse. I developed insomnia and had school the next day.

Most of it, I have blocked out but until today, I cannot stand the sound of a man whispering.

I had just returned to the UK after the horror one calls ‘marriage’ and started work immediately, as the holidays were used up pleasing the in laws. The Ogre was upset because he did not have permission to work in the country yet and felt emasculated by watching me go to work.

My brother thought it would be an effective bonding strategy to invite the Ogre out. I was delighted as I thought it would stop the insufferable moaning and self-pity and begin his journey into settling into the country, make new friends and, put simply, get him out of the flat.

I was full of gratitude and joy, especially as I knew my brother (or anyone else for that matter) did not like the Ogre very much. I must confess, at the risk of sounding like Curley’s Wife, I did not like him very much either.

Anyway, I had a lovely evening, coming back from work to an empty, non-toxic flat, not having to walk on eggshells, having some time to play with my metaphorical, non-existent balls – as one does.

The Ogre came home, quite subdued. I asked how his day was, hopefully and optimistically. Did you get something to eat? Was it fun? You know, the wifely questions. He said, “I don’t think you know your brother very well.”

“Why do you say that?” I enquired.

“He took me to an underground brothel,” he replied to my utter horror and amazement. “I refused to go in. He seemed surprised.”

When I asked my brother about this, he simply pissed himself laughing, and said, “He was so weird. He didn’t go in.”

I knew that marrying the Ogre was a mistake at least 6 months before our wedding and the week before, I was ready to back out. But I was young, and the invitation cards had gone out and people had flown from all over the world for the wedding, so I stayed silent. I also did not want to return to my father’s home either – so you could say that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Ogre had an addiction to chewing tobacco. Only after we got married did I discover this, as he began spitting in the streets, leaving a trail of red in his wake. It looked disgusting. It smelt repulsive. And it made me sick.

You may wonder why I did not notice this earlier, but he lived in a completely different country to me, I only saw him for 5 days twice a year before our marriage. So about 20 days in total. I know this sounds ridiculous but we weren’t rich enough to get more frequent flights and he couldn’t get the travel documents sorted – for dodgy reasons that we won’t go into.

Anyway, other than the fact the chewing tobacco made me sick and during the awful times he would attempt to bounce on me in unwanted encounters, sometimes, I would physically gag from the awful stench.

His mother had taught him to spit the red crap out in a nice plastic bottle which he kept at the side of the bed at night. In the morning, it would be full with red saliva and the whole room stank. I was expected to empty and wash that bottle, ready for the next night.

Once we were sharing a coke and popcorn at the cinema, and I went to take a sip of the coke – and it wasn’t coke. He had used the plastic cup to spit but just failed to inform me. On that occasion, I did throw up.

When he didn’t take the chewing tobacco, he got really angry. It had a similar effect to the withdrawal symptoms one would get from drugs. This made flying with him particularly unbearable.

On our first mini-trip to Switzerland, post-wedding, our flight went via Paris. I can’t remember why but there was some kind of issue which meant that our connecting flight had been delayed and would be taking off the following morning. The airport staff were very helpful and said that as I was a British citizen, I would be provided with a hotel, but the Ogre wasn’t – he would have to stay at the airport. I looked at his enraged face, red, venomous, dangerous. Of course I wasn’t going to leave my husband, I said. I tried to argue with them but they refused to budge, so I spent an uncomfortable night on a metal chair too. However, somehow, this was my fault and even my sacrifice did not stop him from hurling profanities and expletives at me in front of all the other passengers. I felt ashamed and humiliated. One thing I think now looking back at the persistent abuse I faced is that the constant attack on my dignity and self respect persistently chipped away at my soul and self-confidence.

That wasn’t the only time he behaved like that in airports. I began to dread travelling with him but because we had to go back to his homeland each summer, and I had already stolen him away from his mother, so I couldn’t escape it either. Apart from those compulsory trips, I stopped any other form of travel with him – even sitting in the car – and he started taking his mother to exotic holidays instead. Sometimes, I even paid him to go. Those days of freedom were bliss.

I was a very hardworking and studious university undergraduate. I really enjoyed my English degree – but the module I enjoyed the most was my creative writing dissertation. It was 15000 words and represented 30% of my final degree. I wrote a series of short stories and then a critical piece to accompany it, explaining my thematic, linguistic and structural choices. I injected my soul into my words and really loved everything I wrote.

We had bought a second-hand desktop computer, and this was when computers had not invaded society as they have now. We installed the computer solely for my degree, as the university expectation was that we had to word-process all submitted essays (a fairly new and revolutionary concept) and my family’s expectation was that I would not move out and I would come straight back after each daily lecture. So, I was not able to work late in the university campus libraries.

Anyway, I finished my masterpiece and was all ready to print, bind and submit it the next morning – as it was due by 2pm. We did not have a printer – but I slept peacefully, knowing that magic had been conjured.

The next morning, I was frantically awoken by my mother, who rushed into the room to tell me that the desktop had died; a virus had engulfed it. I rushed to the room with the computer and tried to control, alt, delete, restart, unplug, as frantically as I could. Nothing worked. I called a technician who came to visit and check it out. I explained that I had a deadline today and my degree depended on it. He worked busily, trying to fix it, as I tried to fight my tears, in a complete state of shock.

The technician turned to face me and said, ‘Someone tried to download pornography on this computer last night and a virus has been transmitted onto the computer.’

It was unsalvageable and irretrievable. My work was gone.

As my mum looked guiltily away and told me to call my university, pacifying and cajoling me, all I remember is looking at my father’s nonchalant face, rage piercing through every pixel of my skin.

DO YOU REALISE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE? I shrieked at him.

He responded with a barrage of profanities and expletives, demanding to know why I was crying and who had died. IS YOUR MOTHER DEAD? he shouted.

I love my mum more than words can say. She is genuinely the kindest human I know. In fact, she is so kind that often people who don’t know her well think there must be a hidden side, or some element of duplicity; surely no one can be that kind. If a neighbour was to need a kidney, she would sincerely tell him (or her) that she has plenty of spare ones, and he or she could easily have hers. That’s who we are dealing with. So let me explain why she has even made this shortlist:

Asian mothers are complicated. They would do anything to ensure their child is well-fed, well-clothed and well-loved. BUT, at the same time, they also do EVERYTHING to ensure their daughters, and particularly their daughters’ hymens, are well-protected. Yes, I am generalising, so let me specify that this was certainly my experience as the daughter of a Pakistani mother.

I am struggling to identify or pinpoint a particular incident, or conversation that told me sex was dirty or wrong. It is not like I was ever sat down and informed, ‘DON’T HAVE SEX. IT IS TABOO.’ But that is certainly the impression I got. More likely, it was a series of events that led to this ideology. For example, overhearing conversations about other people’s daughters who had brought shame to their families by getting pregnant (evidence that they had been fornicating), or being told random ‘facts’ like it was wrong to insert a tampon inside a vagina, because it may mean I am not a virgin anymore. This emphasis on virginity being sacred and any touching of it or damage to it being a sacrilegious offence did come from my mum. She, in turn, had been told this by her mother, and thus generations of Asian daughters, denied themselves the ability to feel and partake in sexual pleasure for the fear of upsetting societal obsession with female sexuality.

I love my mother with every fibre of my soul. But I do sometimes wonder if her way of feeling shame and telling me off every time she heard the words, ‘period’, ‘vagina’, or ‘sex’ bears any relation to my vagina’s refusal to play the game today.

This post is probably the most difficult for me to write. I was eleven years old and a very, very naive one at that. The perfect child; obedient to the core. Not that it matters. An eleven year old girl should always be treated like the child that she is, obedient or not. Anyway, we were visiting our family friends’ house and I was upstair watching television. My uncle came upstairs and I could smell the alcohol in his breath. He came close to me and put his arm around my shoulders.

“What’s this?” he asked, cupping my newly emerging breasts.

I blushed with shame and humiliation. I thought if I told anyone, they wouldn’t believe me, and it would also break up his family. I kept silent and ran downstairs.

I must add, he never tried anything again – and probably regretted it – but from that day, every time they visited, I physically felt the fear shiver down my body and my anxiety manifested into a pent-up anger and an inability to sleep throughout my teenage years.

Many years later, I told my ex-husband what had happened to me as a child in an act of trust between husband and wife. It was the first time I had told anyone about the abuse, thinking it may have a link with my vaginismus. Big mistake.

Upon our divorce, he took great pleasure in announcing it to every member of my extended family and his own. My childhood abuse became a weapon for him to malign my character.

I remember when I was working three jobs, 14 hour days, 7 days a week, paying the rent and bills for two households (my parents and my own) when my sister decided it would be a great time to become a teenager.

Overnight, she went from a clever nerd to a hormonal adolescent. Gone was the excited, little face who looked forward to revision guides that I used to bring home as her ‘special presents’ each week and in her place, there was a sulky, moody brat. The school trousers were replaced with skirts which rolled up shorter and shorter as the years progressed.

Luckily, she was naturally very clever. So although the truanting started in Year 11, she got straight A*s at GCSE. It was when she was in Year 13, and I was at work, that I got the phonecall.

B: You have to come to my parents’ evening.

Me: Obviously, your parents will go to your parents’ evening.

B: No. Take time off work. I will explain when I see you. Meet me there in two hours.

Because I’m a p***y, I took the afternoon off work and went to the parents’ evening.

The teachers were irate. 17% attendance. I asked why they hadn’t written to us and informed us – they had. The brat had given her friend’s address.

I sat there, ashamed, humiliated, worried, wondering how she was going to make the grades for her medicine offer. She sat there rolling her eyes, yawning loudly with a complete lack of remorse.

On our way home, in the car, I asked her where she had gone, instead of college, as our father dropped her everywhere.

“I saw all of London,” she declared. “It’s all of your fault as you never let me out.”

So, after working three jobs, 14 hour days, 7 days a week, and not having £5 left at the end of the month to buy new underwear, I decided urgent intervention was needed to save the brat I call my sister. I got her a Chemistry and a Maths tutor and took out a small loan in order to prioritise the last few months of her education. She sat down in the living room with the tutor and I went off to make a cup of tea.

As I walked back, I did think it was oddly quiet in the room, but that didn’t stop my utter amazement and horror when I opened the door as saw her…

Asleep on the sofa.

Whilst he continued to teach..blissfully oblivious.

When I was growing up, I was a typical gawky teenager with very long, brown hair that I liked to sometimes untie, so that I could feel like Rapunzel (probably wanting my prince to climb up my hair and save me – if that sounds weird, blame the fairytale, not me). Now, my family, although quite traditional, were not uber religious. But as we grew up, my brother became quite conservative – only when it came to me of course. Like most Asian boys, he was naughty himself (girlfriends, smoking, etc) but at a certain age, he decided that he did not like other boys looking at his precious younger sister. At the time, I didn’t question it – and I didn’t question the level of assertive control he had over our family either.

My father made a secret deal with the Afghan boy who worked at our local cinema. He said that if we attended the late 10pm show on Friday night, we could watch the latest Bollywood film at a significantly reduced rate. As a Bollywood mad family, who were not financially well off, Friday nights became our haven. Each Friday, we used to all pack into dad’s banger, the exhaust pipe sellotaped together, and after a big push from my brother and me, the car would slowly set off with the family towards our weekly treat.

One day, my brother decided that if we were going to continue going out as a family, I would have to agree to wear a dupatta on my head. Nothing was going to get in the way of me and my Bollywood hero, Shahrukh Khan, so I started doing it. We all made jokes about it but mum and dad didn’t question it and nor did I. We just thought of it as a phase, really. Soon, it turned into me having to sit next to the wall on one side and then each member of my family on the other side so that I always had an army of security guards protecting me from any boy who may dare to look my way. This level of control escalated from amusing to disturbing quite rapidly and ended with him replicating some of this behaviour with later girlfriends too. We laugh about the way his now wife, then girlfriend, had to prove that she had reached home from a night out by letting him listen to her dogs bark to prove she was home. Her word was not enough.