The story of Tanya Grey

Normally, I’m quite an outgoing, opinionated person, but when I took him home to meet my mother, she told me she’d never known me so quiet. I thought she was jealous. She’d been separated from my father for about two years, and we’d become very close.

Dave didn’t like my friends so bit by bit they went. He rented a flat near Chepstow and at first we had some fun there. It wasn’t all terrible. I was so crazy about him I even used to kiss his shirts when I ironed them. But soon there were problems. I started to study at the flat, and because he was meticulous – his army training – my untidiness drove him mad. One day, he came into my study and threw my books and essay notes around. He had a look in his eyes that frightened me. So what did I do? I apologised quickly, burst into tears and then we had sex. I had become frightened of him and used sex as a way of avoiding rows.

Don’t ask me why I married him. It cost me most of my friends and I fell out with my mum, who couldn’t stand him. My work fell off. I was always so anxious about the house being clean that I became an almost obsessive housewife. Sex with him went from being a turn-on to something that was so unpredictable I could never relax. One night I was lying in the bath, it was before my finals and I was shattered. I wasn’t expecting him back until later, and was enjoying the soak – I had the candles on, music. He came into the bathroom and stood over me. He was smiling – he wasn’t always mean. I thought he was pleased to see me.

‘So, who were you expecting?’ he said.
‘No one,’I said.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘who were you expecting?’
I lost it and shouted, ‘I’m having a bloody bath in peace.’
He dragged me out of the bath by my hair, banged my face on the sink, threw me down on the floor, and raped me. It was horrible. I’ve never seen so much hate in a person’s eyes. I could feel blood trickling down from the cut on my head, and then, he must have broken the shelf as all the shampoos and stuff fell on the floor around me. It was disgusting, all of it, I felt absolutely sick.

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