The platform was unusually crowded, all trains severely delayed, so I walked down to where there were fewer people so I could read in peace. I sat on a bench, glancing up only as the next train pulled in. It was too full for me to continue reading if I boarded. The second train was even more crowded. I was late. I would have to get on the next one, no matter how full.

When it appeared at 8.42am I squeezed in and stood by the pole near the front of the first carriage, bracing myself as we rumbled off. Arsenal, Holloway Road, Caledonian Road — more and more passengers crowded in, but I took little notice. I was reading the story of the worst moments of my life, reliving it all over again.

The crush of humanity around me, the sour breath of the man behind and the sweaty press of bodies faded away as I felt adrenaline course through me, the familiar pounding in my chest, the tensing of my jaw and muscles as I began to remember how my body had frozen, my mind had disassociated, to save me from darkness. The story of my almost-death.

As we drew into King’s Cross I finished reading, feeling shocked by how much it had affected me. The platform was heaving. As people struggled off, others fought to get on, crushing me against another young woman. For a moment we were locked chest to chest in an intimate hug. We apologised to each other. My heart was still beating fast and my body in a state of adrenalised fight-or-flight readiness, but there was nowhere to flee to.

The irritation in the air was almost tangible, people uncomfortably pressed into each other, elbows, bags, rucksacks.

The last person to board was a smiling black woman who was giggling in disbelief as she apologised for squeezing her curvaceous frame through the doors. Her warm humour defused the tension. The train pulled out. I took a deep breath. Three more stops to go. I needed to compose myself for a busy day at work. I tried to unclench my fists.

And then I felt rather than heard an explosion; it was as if I had been punched violently in both ears. The world went as black as if I had been plunged deep underwater.

Everything had changed in a heartbeat. And the thought flashed through me: “Not again. Not bloody again.”

IT WAS almost exactly three years since July 16, 2002, when I had forced my way out of my north London flat, naked and covered in blood, with my hands bound behind my back and a wire noose around my neck, screaming as I threw my body across the bonnet of a police car.

The story of that night is hard to write without being gruesome, but I will try.
I came home after an evening out with my sister and went to bed. My partner, J, was still at work; he often has to work till the early hours at his law firm. I was woken by the doorbell. I went to the door, thinking J must have forgotten his key. When I saw the shadowy figure was not him I hesitated, but a voice said: “It’s your neighbour — there’s been an accident.”

I opened the door a crack, and a stranger pushed me back into the dark hallway of the flat with overwhelming force, punching and kicking me to the floor.

He took off his T-shirt and forced it over my head like a hood before hitting and biting me. I can’t tell you in which order the blows came, as I experienced almost immediate and total sensory deprivation in the darkness. But I can remember the warm gush of blood as my tongue split and when my lip burst like a tomato. The punch on the nose was especially painful. Choking under the blood-soaked hood, I then realised he was raping me.