Foreword

      ‘Get that down you,’ Dad said, handing me a vodka and lime.

      I took a big gulp and shuddered as it burned my throat. My hand shook as I applied eyeliner in thick black strokes. I was just thirteen years old and getting myself ready for a night working on the Block, the section of Ber Street in Norwich where men cruised in their cars looking for sex.

      ‘Hurry up!’ Dad growled. ‘The sooner you get started, the sooner it’ll be over.’

      I took another big swig and the alcohol made me dizzy but didn’t relieve the sheer terror about what lay ahead. Every time I got into a strange man’s car I knew I could be robbed, beaten up, or worse. It never got any easier.

      Dad gripped my elbow and led me out onto the street. I was teetering in my ridiculously high heels, stumbling with fear, trying to make my mind go blank. Just do it, just get through it, I was thinking. There’s no way out.

      There were other girls working the same patch and they eyed me with suspicion and hostility as I arrived in their territory. None of them said anything while Dad was around because they all knew what he was like. I was by far the youngest one out there, but none of the customers were going to complain about that.

      When the time came and a car pulled up, I couldn’t bring myself to actually walk forward and talk to the driver. My heart was beating so hard I thought I was going to faint. Dad stepped out of the shadows behind me and pushed me towards the road.

      ‘Get out there now,’ he hissed. ‘Go and earn your keep.’

      I knew from experience that he wasn’t going to change his mind and let me go home now. I had no choice but to go through with it.

      ‘Do you want business?’ I asked the next driver through the open window, my voice not much more than a whisper.

      He did. Terms were agreed and I got into the car under Dad’s watchful eye, then we drew away from the others into the darkness.

      Working on the Block was a regular part of my life between the ages of thirteen and fifteen but never something I got used to. I always hated it but I didn’t think I deserved any better. It was my destiny to provide men with what they wanted and to be controlled by Dad. That’s all I was good for, as he had told me over and over again throughout my childhood.

      So when I started trying to break away from Dad’s influence and form adult relationships with men, I didn’t have a clue how they should work. I thought I needed a man to protect me in the world, and in return I had to provide him with sex and do as he told me. Was that what other women did? Was that how the world worked? Wasn’t it?

      ‘No one else will ever love you, Ria,’ my dad would always tell me, ‘not the way I do. I’m the only one who will ever truly love you.’

      I still believed those words long after I should have been grown-up enough to know better. Everyone wants to believe what their parents tell them, don’t they?

      Even when I stopped having anything to do with Dad, the lessons he had taught me rang in my ears. There was an invisible chord still linking us no matter how hard I tried to pull away. What hope could I have of ever being happy? What would it take?