Savannah lives in a large city in the Mid West in America.  She is 37 and married with a young daughter. 

I feel like my cultural background is kind of mixed, because on my father’s side I have, like, a really, really Mexican American family.  I was never really that close with them, but I do think that certain elements of it entered into my life. And then on my mother’s side - she’s not very close with her family.  I lived with a step-father and they were kind of little 1970s California hippies - counter culture.  Do you want me to describe what that meant?  Well, when I was like really little, we lived on a commune and lots of, I don’t know, it was lots of art and music and organic foods and my parents were always scheming up ways to make money without having to go out and get 9-5 jobs, and we moved a lot around the country – trying to find places where my parents could make that happen for us. 

 My parents had come out of San Francisco and Berkeley in the 1960’s and early 70’s. They were… It was kind of like sex was no big deal, in fact it was such not a big deal that you didn’t need to talk about it with your kids. It was a natural thing and it would happen and I kind of felt that my Mom figured I would figure it out. I do remember growing up seeing adults being kind of overtly sexual with each other in the presence of kids and it was not ever a big deal. Like it just was, and it wasn’t something that we even talked about, but it was absolutely there, but not supposed to be a big deal. 

At school, we didn't have sex education, it was like the biology of sex, do you know what I mean?   My real knowledge about sex came from my friends, absolutely, from my peers. But that was hard because I was a year younger than every body.  I had started school early, so a lot of my friends were, like, starting their periods before I did and becoming more interested in boys and stuff and so I still felt quite… I was physically very mature for my age but I felt emotionally quite immature. My friends were a bit advanced so they were all experimenting with sex before I was.

 I was 13 when I lost my virginity.  I had gone out with a girlfriend of mine who was the same age and her boyfriend who was older - he drove us, so he was like 16, 17 maybe. We went to a party at the beach and I… We had been there maybe an hour or so and - there was always lots of alcohol and drugs where I grew up - so I had forgotten my purse in his car.  I had left it in there and I asked him for his keys and I was walking by myself going back to get it and, uh, he... We were like in the back of this little cove on the beach and he said ‘Oh, I’ll walk with you - I’m going to get more beer,’ or I don’t even remember what he said…'something out of the truck'… Um, so we were walking and he started kind of goofing around with me like, um, tickling me and stuff, and at first I just kind of like laughed it off, but it made me very uncomfortable.  And, um, and I asked him to stop, and he didn’t, and he pushed me down in the sand and put his arm across my throat, um, and I didn’t know what was going on.  I knew that it was… that it had sort of gone from a little bit silly and flirtatious very quickly to uncomfortable, and then it was just scary. But I also didn’t know that I was in the process of being raped because I knew him, and I thought - my idea of rape was - I don’t know, you were in Central Park and somebody jumped out from behind a bush with a knife, that was rape - it was something much more dark and sinister, and that you didn’t know the person. So he was kind of choking me, I don’t remember struggling that much.  I remember just being paralysed, terrified, and I didn’t know what to do – that I had done something to make him think that I wanted this, or… and then I thought, well, you know, I was a little concerned that my friend was going to find out and be mad at me. Um, and he pulled my pants down just to around my ankles so I was hobbled, I couldn’t move my legs.  He was big, I was never a small girl, but he was really a big teenaged boy.  And he raped me.

 He… you know that’s weird, I don’t even remember. I don’t remember the next thing.  I remember after, that is that I was with my friends – different friends.  I got my purse out of his car and there were some different friends and we left the party and I remember walking and walking and I was bleeding. That’s all I remember is that we walked to... like a coffee shop or something.

 It’s weird because there’s a part of me that kind of... I was under the impression that this act had something to do with sexuality or desirability and I thought that meant that I was desirable, and that he, you know… I didn’t realize that it was just a complete act of anger. But I… So there was a part of me that thought, a part of me that thought, that I had lost my virginity and that that should be a big deal, but I couldn’t tell anybody because it was my friend's boyfriend. 

But I did tell a couple of friends and it was like not a big deal, but you know I had friends who… so if I was 13, I had friends who were like 14 and I knew people who had been having sex since they were 10 years old, or at least they said that. So you know when I was a kid the worst thing that could happen to you was that you could get pregnant, so the fear of AIDS and that kind of stuff didn’t register yet, it was 1985, so AIDS was not, you know, on the scene, and other things could be treated, and people didn’t really talk about sexually transmitted infections. So I know how lucky I am. With all that stupid shit I did in my 20’s, that I’m not dead now. All the sex, and alcohol and drugs – with the possibility of AIDS… 

 I think after that - I know after that - I became very promiscuous, sexually promiscuous, and I continued with that sexual promiscuity until my mid 20s.  I didn’t, I never really thought that sex was anything special, you know, I was never taught that, and then that experience... but I really still, I did hold on to the idea that I could be a sexual person and thereby have some kind of power over people: over men. So that stayed with me for a long time, that I still somehow thought that this act of rape meant that I was sexually desirable, that I was attractive and that this gave me something that men wanted from me. And that I could use that. I found that I was really good at having either purely sexual relationships or, like, one-night-stands with people, but I was not good at having relationships with people because I became…
 
I found that it was hard for me to become… I wasn’t interested in sex unless I had been drinking, and that once I was in a relationship with somebody, then it was hard for me to sort of open up and explore the sexual relationship with somebody.  I think that it was because it wasn’t about the power of it anymore, it was about sharing or about… intimacy, yeah, and I didn’t know about that part and I was kind of terrified of that part of it.
 
 But I think you should probably note that I was molested when I was seven by a family friend  - there was no penetration, but he fondled me and made me touch him and told me that, told me things like if I told my mom she would know that I was a bad girl and would send me away. Um, so I think that that influenced that as well. It all influences my ability for intimacy, to be intimate, not just to be sexual. 

It took a long time.  I was married before, and we never achieved that level of trust. And now with Johnny… It was time, and just the knowledge that he was not, he wasn’t going to leave me, that he could be trusted.  I was virtually incapable of actually having a relationship until I was about 30. 

 I would just say that, I don’t even know if this fits here or is appropriate, but maybe it is so…now that I’m (begins to cry) now that I’m the mother of a young girl, it terrifies me that anything like that could ever happen to her, or that she could maybe not know how, how special… I feel really weird about it, I don’t want to put pressure on her like ‘save yourself’.  I guess what I would say to her is just ‘know yourself’:  know when it's right, and that no matter what, she always has the right to say yes or to say no.  Thinking about the intimacy part too, I still don’t have that, I still don’t have it, but I’m working on it.  I still…  I want the lights off and my eyes closed unless I’ve had a few drinks...  

 Pearl lives alone in a tidy semi-detached house in a small village in the West Country. The walls of her home are covered with photos of her family: her four children, eleven grandchildren, and her husband who died three years ago, 53 years after they married. 

 I had my bubble burst this week, a bit, about eternal youth.  I have a cataract coming on.  I'm 82 in May.  Yeah.  I mean, I had my MOT.  Bodywise, fine - you know - cholesterol, blood pressure, blah, blah.  Went - two and half years since I'd had my eyes tested, and I thought, God, better go and do it - went in, knowing what I wanted, you know, frames, distance without bifocals and sunglasses - BANG - my eye's deteriorated. Apparently it’s simple. Is it a laser thing?  I'm with a lady tomorrow, they're always younger than me, she's had both eyes done, I'll have a chat with her.  

 - Age.  It's all in there, innit. (points at her head).  It's all in there, duck.  I had a very good sex life. And I knew I was…  We loved each other right up to the end.  I mean, even though he was so ill, he'd say to me:  ‘Have I told you that I loved you today?’ And I'd say, ‘Yeah, I think you did earlier on.’  ‘I'm saying it again.’ 

He was ... ah, it’s  three years ... I was trying to … It was the day after Lucy's birthday, and her birthday's next Monday, I think.  The day after will be three years.  Seems  longer, yet it seems like yesterday, you know.  OK, so it's all in there, duck.  But I talked to myself in the mirror, I did, after Stephen went, after he'd gone over, I looked at myself in the mirror, and I said,  ‘Right, now, woman, this is not just today,  this is the rest of your life, sort yourself out!’  Well you have to, don't you.  It’s no good me going round saying,  ‘Oooh, I'm a poor delicate little thing!’  I mean I got a good family.  I was out with them last night.  We out to Elmfield School, to their Blues evening, it was very good, because Jessie was playing her xylophone, we sat at tables and we had this mulled wine. It was horrible, it made your mouth screw up like a chicken's bum, you know, God, it was really sharp. It was free, well I guess we paid for it with our ticket, that was only three quid. 

I was always going to marry a rich man.  I married a poor man for love.  I had £100  and he had £25, which he spent on that ring.  That was all he had in the post office, right. I'll always remember that he said,  ‘We'll never be any poorer.’  And he worked hard.  That's my favourite picture up there.  That's my favourite.  That's us. That was us.  Our wedding picture is up there on the wall. Yeah, black and white. 1951. He became ill when he was 61 and he managed to survive until he was seventy six.  There you go.  Yeah, that's always my favourite.  Just us. On the beach. That was down in Devon somewhere. 

Stephen was wonderful.  He was a great believer in keeping things alive.   

Well, I was born in Kent and I lived there until I was 15. And I was 14 when the war broke out right, and Dad had got invalided off to sea at that point, ‘cause I remember he went to Skegness as an instructor, so Mum obviously wanted to go and live where he was, and so we packed up the house which was Grandmother’s house that we lived in.  Oh my childhood was … we don’t talk about that  - well, Dad and Grandmother were always daggers drawn.  Anyway, we boarded up Grandmother’s house and he rented this house in Skegness and we went up there. And I was about 15 and a half, and I’d left school at 14 and I’d just got a job training as a hairdresser, which I’d wanted to do. ‘Course, I had to pack all that in because I was too young to be left behind, because it was right in, you know, the fighting zone, wasn’t it, at that point. So little Pearl had to go where she was told. And I think I was out of work for several weeks and then Mum said,  ‘We can’t afford to keep you, you’ll have to find something.’ So I hunted around and I had to go and work in Woolworth’s.  To me that was the end of the world! Working in Woolworth’s! The lowest of the low!  But I was a junior supervisor by the time I left that.  In the meantime I volunteered for the WRENS, the Women’s Royal Naval Service, I’ll show you a picture in a minute, and at 17 and a half I left home and went for three and a half years. “Join the Navy, free a man to do his duty.” That was a joke on my part. I used to have all the men in doing my dirty work! I was only a Steward because my schooling was quite lowly, I had no school certificates and that, but I had, I was in charge of a Chiefs' and PO’s mess with a couple of other WRENS, you know, looking after their meals on time blah blah, it was quite good fun - I used to skive off (laughs). We had a little chief-petty-officer in charge of us who’d been in the first world war – you should have seen her, she was an old battleaxe! If she knew half of what I was doing! The chief Buffer, as you’d call him, used to come round and say, ‘Who’s on duty?’ and I’d say, ’ Me Chief, me Chief!’ And he’d say ‘Right, I’ll send my Gash Hands.’ That’s people who’re on Jankers, that’s people who’ve done things wrong and are being punished by doing different work. They used to come around and do all my clearing up and stuff like that and I used to skive off. Terrible! Wicked! 

So I did that for three and a half years and so I was, I was almost 21, wasn’t I, when I was demobbed. Teenage was gone, right? But I had a good ... relationship–wise in that period, but no sex. I made a pact with myself; you do not go the whole hog until it’s the right one. And I was 25, duck, when I lost my virginity. 

We didn’t talk about sex, didn’t talk about it. In my younger years, you know, it wasn’t talked about. You just picked up bits through talking to your friends at school. Ok, maybe I might say something to Mum,  ‘Is that right?’  And she might say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right.’  And that was all you got.  It was never discussed, so you ... well, I was always half afraid, you know, and I felt sure if I did it I’d become pregnant the first time, I always had that feeling, so I never did it, I mean, never did it. And Stephen couldn’t believe it, that he had a virgin when I walked up the aisle. 

He'd just got the sack when I met him. We met at a party. I had to find a job when I came home, when I was demobbed, of course the hair dressing thing had gone out the window so I went to work in the local International shop. Right? Once again I was a bit…and he had a cousin that used to come in, that was one of the customers and I got friendly with her and, I didn’t know Stephen then, and she said,  ‘I’m having a party,’ it was New Year’s Eve, ‘at the house.’  They had parties at home in those days. ‘Would you like to come?’   And of course Stephen was there, and the girl I worked with at the shop had seen him and she said, ‘Oh you won’t like him. He’s a great fat slob!’ I said,  ‘I’ll find out for myself.’  He was a bit tubby in those days, I think.  But, we played games, and you had jelly and blancmange and stuff like that. And I couldn’t find anywhere to sit, I was sitting on the edge of the bath, and he came up with a dish of jelly and blancmange for me – the start of it all. But we played a game - I can’t remember, I suppose you had music on and then you stopped as statues and turned and kissed the person that was nearest to you - and it was Stephen, and when he kissed me: wow!  My knees went (makes sound of explosion) like that!  That was it. That was it. And he didn’t say anything.  I had ordered a taxi with another friend to get home. The taxi was just going and he ran out and shouted,  ‘I’ll see you tonight at half past seven at The Eastfield Hall.’  That was a hall that we used to go to for dancing, and it was a Sunday night, so they had a talent competition and he was a good singer, he went up and sang. I can’t remember what it was now. I used to play the piano for him. We used to go and do it in old people’s homes down in Hythe at one time. I think he won a kettle that night. So that was part of our bond (laughs). Yeah, there was a gang of us, you used to go around in sort of gangs, didn’t you, in those days. He turned up late. He was the first one I ever waited for. Half an hour. He turned up late with his friend, Eric, because he said to him,  ‘Oh she won’t turn up.’ But she did, didn’t she. That was how it started, at a party. All right? 

We were together 3 years before we got married, and he was very, very patient. We talked about it and we used to ok, go so far and then, (claps) BOOM, like that! He was so thoughtful, he was, yeah.  He respected the  fact that I, you know, that I felt like that. No, he was really wonderful over that. Ok, he’d had lots of women, should I say, but I’m pretty sure he never … Carol (their daughter) used to laugh and say,  ‘Oh he’s got bambinos all over the place!’  From when he was in the Navy.   But I believed him, I don’t think he did. Yeah, he said he hadn’t and I believed him, so we sort of learned about each other, you know, helped each other through things. And it turned out it was wonderful, it really was. It was really wonderful because we, yeah, it’s the sort of thing you work at, don’t you. And to climax together! Wow! Wow! Oh yeah, wow! Not always, but sometimes we used to go ‘Wow!’ You know?  

The first time, the first time… I think it took us about three weeks after we were married because he was so afraid of hurting me and I was still a bit, you know…(laughs)  And I can remember it, Bella.  Shall I tell you exactly what happened? We were in bed. We’d had to stay on in a farm that was a relation of my father’s because we had no money.  We had no honeymoon, and I said to him, ‘We can’t mess about like this any more mate.’ I said,  ‘I’ll hold on.’ And it was an iron bedstead, and I held on to the back of the bed,  and I said, ‘Just do it! (Laughs) Just do it!’  Poor chap, he was only 22!   ‘Just do it!’  And that was the first time, all right? I can’t really remember if it was what I thought it’d be … It was just that I was always so scared of it, I suppose, and he was afraid of hurting me. But after that, I mean, as I say, through the years, through the years, yeah. We trusted each other, we did.

I believe I made the right decision in doing it the way I did.  I made this pact with myself.   When I was young most people weren’t virgins until they were married – I knew girls who were ‘doing things’ as we called it.  Doing ‘it’, it was always ‘it’. No, no, no, no. I was probably unique, I don’t know. That hasn’t really changed that much.  It wasn’t talked about, Bella.  Nowadays it’s all in the open, isn’t it.  Well a lot of stuff is more in the open, which maybe is a good thing, I don’t know. No, it was going on, sure it was, ‘cause we all used to meet down the recreation ground (laughs). Pure Pearl used to go home! God, way back in the dark ages, innit?  What was I?  5 in 1930, so I’d be 10 in…I was born in 1925. God, the dark ages, things have changed a lot. A lot. Do you think it’s for the better that things are more in the open? I mean all this stuff with the royalty went on, didn’t it, but you didn’t hear about a lot of it. I mean life’s never been any different really has it?  

What you do in your own home is your own affair, isn’t it? I mean we’ve done all sorts of things. We played strip darts. We had a dart board, I’ve still got it, we had a dart board fixed up there, we used to have an arm chair there and we used to have this dart board fixed up. Who used to be naked? Me, right? He’d be sitting there with just his socks on. (Laughs) We done everything! I threw a lot of stuff out after he’d gone, I thought, God, if anything happens to me and they find all this stuff in there…!  So I threw it out. There were vibrators and underwear, you know.  I mean, what you do in your own house is your own affair, isn’t it.  

I’ll tell you a funny story.  We had, this is when we lived in Suffolk, yeah, and the kids were a bit younger then, and we had this vibrator, I can see it now, it was pink and shaped like a penis right, and we had a wardrobe, a built-in wardrobe and we didn’t have any carpet or flooring in this cupboard, it was just bare boards and this damn thing went off in the night and you could hear this rattling.  And all of a sudden our bedroom door opened and in came, I think it was Brian - poor kids they all had to sleep together in one bed, not one bed, one room. Carol was in a cot and there was Brian and  Martin, and they’d set a curtain up so that Carol couldn’t see,  what she didn’t know about boys as she grew up! - So this damn thing went off, the door opened,  ‘What’s all that noise going on?’  And we made up some excuse, I can’t remember, but I’ll always remember that damn thing going off, and it was pink! 

I think it was the first one we had. It was up to Stephen to get these things, wasn't it.  He’d send away for them, I think. Stuff used to come through in brown paper envelopes. We had a magazine used to come through regularly that he’d ordered and I had to write and tell them not to send it anymore ‘cause it kept coming and I thought, I don’t need that now. I don’t remember what it was called, with all these …you know. 
 
Ann Summers, that’s still going, isn’t it? That was as you went into Bristol I remember. But the first one I ever went into, we went up to London, Stephen and I, and we went in one in Soho and I put dark glasses on because I was going in this flipping shop, whatever. And oh, the mind boggles at what people use to get a …well!  That was the first time I ever went in one. We did all sorts of things but… We had several objects. The funniest bit was a goat’s eye, or something it was called.  It was a round ring with goat’s hairs which fitted on the penis.  It was supposed to titillate the vagina, or the clitoris…(begins to laugh hard) We lost the damn thing! It came off! It came off! He said,  ‘Oh my God, it’s come off!’  And I said, ‘Well it must be in me somewhere!’  I said, ‘You’ll have to poke around and get it out!’ We were killing ourselves! He said,  ‘Oh God, it’s like being up in a cave up here!’ ‘Cause it was after I’d had the kids. Oh God, I’ll always remember that thing.  

We loved each other. It was love, mate. Hark at me calling you mate – Bella. It was love. I mean if you do really love somebody you do trust them, don’t you. Right? I was never sorry that I waited for the right one, because it paid off. That’s why I’m looking so youthful! (laughs)  No, I always say that. I always remember an old film star, Googie Withers?  She was, I think her husband died and she was on, it would have been black and white telly in those days, and she was talking about life and someone said,  ‘How do you manage to keep your youthful looks?’  And she said, ‘I had a good sex life.’  Right?  And I’m sure it has a lot to do with it.  Some of these women that I see who are younger than me and they look a lot older and haggard, you know, it makes you wonder.  

We used to have under floor heating and we had a hatch, the kids remember this, a hatch to the kitchen. Stephen used to put wire stuff around the inside of that and a bolt on the door, the kids used to wonder why we had a bolt on the door, but we used to have sex on this under floor heating. So things were happening.  We had bolts everywhere, everywhere! I don’t think it ever really died I mean, OK, you have a period when you first have babies when you, you know, don’t feel like it sort of thing, but it was always there, didn’t do it so often maybe but it was always there. Right? And I miss it. Well, not the sexual side, but you miss the touch, right? 

Well, it isn’t everything, is it, sex in life, but, you see so many marriages, to my mind, break up because they’re not prepared to work at it.  It’s give and take. OK, you’ve both got faults. We had moments when we had what we called cold wars and who started it?  Me. I knew I was doing it and it went on and then you’d apologise, you know. But it’s just give and take, isn’t it Bella? I mean if you really love someone you overlook… I mean our first year was like that - Who’s going to give way? Who did?  Me, but not really. He always said I was the most crafty woman he ever met. He was boss, but he wasn’t, right? He always used to say you’re the most craftiest woman I ever met. I could get the top brick off the chimney.  All I used to say was, ‘One day…’ He’d say, ‘Oh yeah, what?’ And I’d say … And it would come eventually. Right? When I was 70 I had all these doors replaced white. That was my birthday present. I always wanted white doors in this house and all I said was,  ‘One day…’  ‘Oh yeah, here we go, how much is it going to cost me?’  And I had seven white doors.  He was a star, he was. 

We've been interviewing people about their first experiences of sex. This is one woman's story.  All names, except the most unusual, have been changed.

(Blows nose loudly) I'm going to try to stop doing this sneezing thing. It's my cats. Does that light mean we're being recorded now?

Uh, that's such a difficult question 'tell me about yourself?'.  Well, my name's Rachel and I've got two daughters who are 17 and 15, and I was with their daddy until they were about 11 and 9, or something like that. So the second part of that I've been on my own with them, and I have a very good relationship with their dad and his new girlfriend and their little baby. Um, I've got a lovely boyfriend called Rob, who I spend a fair bit of time with, and I've just set up a business selling myself as a make-up artist - which is what I used to do before I left London - and making my own lip balm product which is called Balmy Lip Stain  'coming to a store near you' and I do hair as well. I cut hair. So basically I'm home most of the time trying to rustle together a bit of business, and a bit of cash to live on, and being a mummy and looking after my house and my dog and my cats and I have a really nice time actually. I'm pretty happy, lately. And I might be moving house - into a new home at some point in the near future - so that's exciting, and a little bit scary. So that is where I'm at right now. I'm 42 - I love 42.

Well, I was brought up by my mother. I had a fairly, a fairly strict Jewish upbringing. Not as in very deeply religious and fundamental but a reform. So we did go to synagogue every Saturday morning for the Sabbath; we lit the candles every Friday night; my mum keeps a proper kosher kitchen, we observed all the holidays and the festivals. And so I was brought up as a good little Jewish girl. I had long, long hair in plaits and I was a fairly well behaved - although I did kind of live in my own little world, and I didn't really feel that I fitted into the world that I was being brought up in, but I loved my mummy and so I sort of held on to her. I was very very sick as well. I had... I was born a month prematurely, and I had pneumonia when I was 6 days old, so I was in an incubator for a long time and I've suffered with respiratory problems. I had asthma, kicked in when I was about 3, so my whole childhood was spent with sort of asthma and eczema. I was really really really tiny and scrawny and itchy and wheezy and I just wanted to be normal and not be wheezy and itchy and Jewish to boot! (Laughs) I felt like I'd been dealt a terrible hand.

I grew up in Holland Park, in west London - really great, right opposite the park. I spent my entire childhood in the adventure playground, up in the top of the tree house on my own, looking down on the world hoping that no one else was going to climb up to the top of the tree house and want to be with me. I liked being by myself. I used to ride around on my bike really fast so no one could catch me. I had an older sister who was 7 years older than me, and I didn?t really get on very well with her. She was very straight and very annoying. Always wanting to be in love, you know, and listening to Donny Osmond which made me puke. (Laughs) So at 15 I rebelled and became a mental punk rocker and just... that went over really badly, which was the intended result really. I was about as naughty as I could possibly be. It sort of kicked in about 13 but was in full force by the time I was 15 when I sort of realized that I could actually do whatever I wanted. Yeah.

Do you want to know the story of my dad? This is going to take a long time. Well you see you could make another film about this because actually I have written the script. Well no, I've written the storyline. Because there I was being brought up as this very very respectable little Jewish girl with my shiny shoes and my plaits, and my sister was 7 years older than me and her daddy is called Gary, we'll call him Gary, for the sake of this story that's his name. I thought Gary was my dad, that was what I'd been told, that, you know, this was my daddy, and my mum and my dad had divorced when I was about 6 months old. No they weren?t together, it was just my mum and my sister. So it was sort of like, it was like, because my sister was much older than me, it was kind of like, my mum and my sister were a bit like my mum and my dad. And so I sort of resented them because those two were sort of like the grown ups that got on really well and I was the annoying little girl. And that's probably why I didn't like my sister, 'cause she took to that role. And um, so you know, as far as I knew, my mum and my dad were divorced when I was a baby. And I very, very rarely saw him. My sister would go and spend weekends with him and I would wonder why I wasn't going and I was just simply told that because, um, because they divorced when I was just a baby that he didn't really know me and so there was no need for him to spend time with me. He had also remarried quite soon after splitting up with my mum and he had another three children so he had quite a big family going on over there, so my sister would go over and hang out with my dad and the kids, and I just didn't know them. It was all very very bizarre. And um, and then sometimes my sister would be in a play or something and we'd go and there'd be this man who'd come up and say hello to me and I'd go to my mummy "who's that?" and she'd go "that's your father!" and I'd be like "oops!" I mean I literally wouldn't kind of be quite sure who he was sometimes. And then of course I had my own children and then I realized that actually even if couples split up when babies are little, you know, those babies still get to see their dads and those dads still want to see those babies, even if they haven?t had a relationship at all together, the baby?s just happened, you know. And so I started to really question this whole concept of Gary as my father and I never had anything in common with him or spent any time with him. So I developed all sorts of fantasies, in fact I'd had fantasies all the way through my childhood about various men that might be my father, so it had already, it was already a thing going on in my head about maybe the rabbi is my dad, or maybe the man from the electricity shop? any man that I sort of connected with and liked I would think, oh, you know, maybe that's my dad, because I never saw my dad so I had to sort of pretend other people were. And there was also Uncle Henry who I thought was my uncle and that was all a bit weird. He would turn up every now and then and um, one time I caught my mum and Uncle Henry on the floor having a snog, which was quite funny ? which she denied utterly for years afterwards, that that had never happened. She said that she?d dropped her pen on the floor and Uncle Henry was helping her to find it! (Laughs) Um, yeah, so there's the whole Uncle Henry thing?

So basically, when I was 32, my mum threw a party for the cousins that she'd grown up with that didn't know me. And uh, and at that party, a little cat was let out of the bag accidentally. That this Gary chap wasn't actually my father and that somebody else was my father that I'd never heard of at all. So to cut a really long story short, basically I've met him once. Basically my mum had had an affair with another father on the school run. A father of a friend of my sister's. Ok? And, um, what had happened was that she'd fancied? there'd been a sort of thing between the two of them, they both really fancied each other, they were both married and they each had, you know, obviously, had a 6 year old daughter who were friends together at school. And it was all a lot of, you know, kind of (sucks air through teeth) and no, no, no, no we mustn't! Because, you know, they were both also respectable Jewish families, um, in Woodford, which was a very sort of respectable area - everyone knew each other. And then my mother's parents went on holiday to America and my mum was really really really close to her dad. She absolutely adored her father. And while they were on holiday in America he had a heart attack and died. So he didn't come back from his holiday, um, but her mother came back, you know, without her husband. And my mum said to me at that point she just thought "fuck it, life's too short, I really like this bloke." And she went for it. And she had an affair with him, and he left his wife and she left her husband and they were sort of renting a flat or something, and then she got pregnant. And at first I think he was sort of quite excited and then he started getting really cold feet and wobbling out and started going back to his wife, backwards and forwards... his wife obviously wanted him to come back home. And um, he sort of... and then I think they had booked the abortion and the day before the abortion my mum decided to go check out the clinic which was a little back street abortion clinic in South London, in New Cross, in 1965, which is, you know, before the legalization. And she went and had a look at it and was just like 'there's no way I'm coming back here tomorrow.'  So I was saved once that time, that was my first save. And um, and then she just told him to sod off back to his wife because she got fed up with him not being able to make a decision. And she just thought, actually, it would just be easier for me to do this by myself. And she'd just inherited her father's business so she had some money so she could do it. And she moved to Primrose Hill, which is where I was born. Yeah, pretty posh, she says proudly. Kind of posh in a sort of a um, in a sort of middle class, posh way. I mean I'm not, you know, it's not posh posh like old English proper posh, it's kind of aspired posh, because actually my great-grandparents came here as immigrants, so they were definitely not posh, you know, they came here from Poland and my grandfather was a very, very good businessman. He bought one of the first cars in this country and he was - he set himself up as a cabbie. So he used to drive around in his car, this open top car - he had terrible asthma like me and it was smoggy and foggy so he was really really ill. Um, but with the money he made from his cabbing he opened up a garage in Dalston in East London and he had a petrol station and a mechanics, and then I think he bought sort of various warehouses in East London. So it was all a sort of cheap area but by the time he died, he had made enough money for my mum to sell up his business and then she bought flats in Knightsbridge which in the 70s she rented out to the influx of Arabs that were coming to live in London that had plenty of money. So they were renting.. she had like three or four flats that she was renting to these incredibly rich Saudis and, as a consequence, me and my sister were privately educated and we went on nice holidays. And yeah, my mum worked it all really well but, you know, it's all gone now. Sadly.

I found out about my dad when I was 32, but he wouldn't see me. I wrote him a sort of really romantic letter because I was just so excited about the fact that I actually did have a dad, you know, after all these years it turned out, and not only that, but he had my favourite name, which is Harry. The whole kind of thing in my head was just like 'well obviously my father is Harry', you know, it made complete sense to me. He had gone, after I was born he had gone back to his wife and they?d had another baby, so they had this daughter who was the same age as my sister, and then they had a little boy that was a little bit younger than me. You see? So he went back to his wife and pretended that nothing had happened, no child had been born, I didn't exist. And when he got the letter from me he sent it back to me with a note written at the bottom of my page, of the last page of my letter after I'd signed off, that said 'Frankly I'd rather let sleeping dogs lie. H' and he posted me back my letter. And I think that was when the nervous breakdown probably started. Really slowly from that point but it was really bad.

And then Mike, who I was married to at the time, wrote to him again and, sort of less romantic, you know, a male letter, sort of basically saying 'you've got to meet her, she's got to be allowed to see what you look like, I will accompany her and make sure that she doesn't flip out on you.' And I was a bit annoyed by that kind of - he didn't say 'flip out on you' but I was kind of annoyed that he was sort of saying that I needed to be accompanied, as though I couldn't actually have this relationship with this man, or a meeting with this man, without needing some sort of accompaniment - you know- and it was taking another letter from somebody else to try to get him. And he actually honoured Mike with a slightly more detailed letter, you know, which he hadn't bothered to give me, in which he sort of said you know 'I never thought I'd see Rachel's mum again,' - you know - 'I just put it all to the back of my mind... my wife doesn't know about this, nor do my children' - you know - 'No, I'm just not going there. I don't want to bring all this up.'  And so I sort of had to kind of leave it at that.

And then, about four years later when me and Mike were kind of right in the middle of sort of splitting up, and I was in a real mess, and everything was going very badly wrong, my mum wrote him a letter, my mum wrote him a letter saying - you know - 'I have not contacted you in 36 years' - by now this would be - 'I haven't asked you for anything at all, not once, and this time I'm asking and I mean it and you've got to see her.' And he did respond favourably to that letter. And I was driven up to London, cause I'd moved to Somerset by now, I was driven to London by Mike under the guise of us having an appointment with him. He was an accountant, so we were going to his office pretending to be having an appointment with him. And I met him in his office. And it was just so sad because he so obviously is my dad, you know. We've got the same sense of humour, we instantly liked each other, we could have had a really... you know I could imagine going for walks in the park with him and, you know, I would have really have liked it and I really liked him, um, but it was just clear that his main priority was that his family was never going to find out about this. And that means keeping me shut out. And um, I could cry, but I'm not going to right now. I do cry about it.

So my relationships with boys have sort have been - you know - when I found out about him, now that I can look back in retrospect at the way that I behaved with boys when I was younger, there?s a sort of underlying rejection and unwantedness  - you know, that's my history - my history was a sort of deceitful, and an unwantedness, and sort of rejection thing that was going to be my pattern throughout my early relationships with young boys.

I don't think I did get any sex education. I don't know... I think sex education is handled so badly in this country that it really, it makes me quite angry. I got a small bit of information when I was on holiday in Israel with my mum and she wouldn't go swimming. She wouldn't get in the swimming pool and I couldn't understand why and I kept on pressuring her 'oh why, why, why, why won't you go?' - you know - 'why can't you swim?' And finally she had to explain to me that she was bleeding, etc, and she probably didn't say that, um and I didn't really know what it meant. Maybe she said she had her period. She took that as a cue to explain to me about sex, which it wasn't what I was asking about as far as I remember, I was probably about 8 or 9, maybe 9,and uh, and so she decided at that point that it was time to tell me about the birds and the bees and so what she said to me was that... her words were 'the man goes to bed', no, what did she say? 'The man puts his penis in the lady's vagina and they go to bed like that'. I think that was her way of telling me that's how babies are made. So I had this very strange picture in my head of this man and this woman standing face to face in front of the bed, him somehow squishing his flaccid penis into the lady's vagina hole, and then them really carefully kind of shifting their way together towards the bed and lying down really carefully so that it didn't come out. And that was what you did when you wanted a baby and that was the only reason for it, for doing this weird strange act of not getting into bed properly (laughs) like normal. Yes, it's quite shocking. So that was it.

So to sex education at secondary school. We skip straight to that year, probably the first year of secondary school so I would've been 11/12. And you know, the drawings that they show you. I mean they give you 'sex education': they're not; they're giving you reproduction information and this is somehow supposed to educate you um, sexually. Which is bizarre. So yeah, you know, they explained about the menstrual cycle and about the blood flowing into the penis and about where the eggs are and how that gets to the egg and when it all happens in the month and I put my hand up and said, 'So if you're wanting to have a baby, the best time to do it is just before your period then, is it?' And the whole class laughed and the teacher said, 'Yes, but you know, people also do have sex because it's fun. And that was the first I'd ever heard of it, and I felt very stupid. But that was a, um, that was a bit of news to me.

So my mum had sort of kept her relationship with Uncle Henry as a secret, so there was no sex going on in our world. I went to an all girl's school, there were no brothers, there was no male, there was no male role model for me whatsoever, and um, and suddenly, there was sex.

Yeah so my virginity was then this sort of, you know, this hideous bag that I needed to dump somewhere, and get rid of. Certainly didn't want to be carrying that around with me anymore.

I had a friend called Chloe who wasn't from my school but that I knew from another friend of mine that was a neighbour, and I think she was quite sexually precocious and I think quite a lot of things came up with her. Like she was quite happy to talk about masturbating and stuff and we were like 12, and that was quite, I found that quite difficult, because, again, it was like you weren't supposed to masturbate. That was something that if you did you had to keep it really secret. And I did used to masturbate a lot, um, always with the fear that my mum might... you know once I discovered that I could make myself have an orgasm, I was just away! I was just like this is brilliant: what fun! - you know, I can do this as much as I like. So it was almost like I was sort of having this secret sexual relationship with myself, because my mum had always kept her sexuality a secret and sort of something that was considered really wrong and dirty and not to be talked about. I mean, you know, she'd bring tampaxes home from the supermarket and take the bag to her bathroom cupboard and literally sort of get them out of the shopping bag and into the cupboard without me being able to see - you know. I remember one time going into the bathroom while she was shoving a tampax up her and she freaked, you know, freaked - shouted at me to get out. So that whole sort of thing around sexuality, she totally totally kept it a secret. And I think she must have been quite ashamed about it.

So from that to checking out boys was just, you know, parties, wasn't it. Because I went to an all girl's school but we had a corresponding boy's school so we had parties which were designed purely for getting drunk and getting off with boys, basically. And um, the first boy that I kissed was really lovely, he was called Daniel Pollack and I think that he's gay now and lives in LA, from what I've heard. But I was terribly nervous, it was sort of the first party which had an equal number of boys and girls invited to it and it was a pairing off party. And I had got really dressed up. I looked killer: I had on these skin-tight, leopard-skin leggings and my sister had lent me stilettos, and I had like a leotard top underneath you know with the leggings over and like a belt. And I think my sister had even done my hair for me in sort of big flicks. And I remember walking, cause it was in my friend's basement, and I do remember walking, I must have been about 12, walking down the steps and all the boys' jaws just dropped and I was definitely the hottest looking girl out of all the lovely girls that were at the party. I knew that I looked hot. And all, everyone kind of coupled up and obviously you know, I got picked by this guy Daniel who was the loveliest of the boys. Like automatic... she's, you know, I'm having that one. And all the girls and the boys all started snogging, kissing, and I felt terribly uneasy and I didn't really want to do it. And he kept trying to kind of sneak his arm around me like this by pretending to be sort of scratching the wallpaper and I kept going - you know - 'what are you doing? What are you doing?' And he was going 'Oh nothing, nothing.'

And then there was this whole thing about the lights - everyone was going 'Turn the lights off,' and he was going to me 'Do you want the lights on or off?'and I was going 'On.' And he was going 'Leave the lights on.' And I could see him turning away going (whispers) 'Turn them off.'  So I could see what he was doing. And then um, you know, and then he stuck his tongue in my mouth and I screamed at him - I went 'What the hell are you doing?' 'Cause I had no idea that there was anything to do with tongues going to go on with this kissing malarkey! So I was appalled, and very disappointed 'cause I didn't realize we'd have to do that touching tongues thing. Disgusting. And so I think he was a bit like 'Oh God, she's really frigid and tight this girl.' And then a little bit later I think I did kiss him again and I realized it was really nice and I sort of got quite into it. And we did do proper kissing, and I did like it. This was at the same party after I'd gotten over my initial shock and horror, I then sort of tried it again and thought ooh, yeah, yeah, it's rather nice. So I did that for a bit. But then we all went for a date, this sort of group date ice-skating kind of, the following weekend, and I obviously wasn?t looking quite so hot as I had looked at a party 'cause I was sort of wrapped up to go ice skating, and uh, he decided that he liked Tanya, who was the girl who had thrown the party. And he sort of didn't really pay me much attention and he went off with Tanya, and we all went back to another friend's house and they were all shouting horrible things outside about me. And I was really upset. I think because I'd needed to be home by a certain time. There was some reason why they all wanted to go on and do something else and I couldn't and all the boys sort of got a bit horrid. And um I was really upset and I went home and I was really sad 'cause I liked Daniel Pollack. You know, he was handsome, and um, and he had a baseball jacket which I thought was really cool in those days. Like an American style baseball jacket with leather sleeves. I liked those, so you know, obviously I liked him. And I cried to my mum and she said 'Oh, don't worry dear, there's plenty more fish in the sea', and I just thought, I'm never ever going to come to you with my heartbreak again, ever. You know, if you think that's going to help? 'There are plenty more fish in the sea.' I didn't want any other fish - I liked him. So my mother has this sort of very kind of emotional, you know... she doesn't do emotional. She doesn't really see the point of it. And so kind of my emotional stuff, I've never really taken that to my mum.

So yeah, so after that, my sexual promiscuity was just kind of me just going, right, I'm just going to do what I want now; obviously my mum can't deal with anything, so I?m going to find out about everything by myself. So I started sort of you know, abusing drugs and alcohol and... this was - I met my first boyfriend when I was 15, my Proper First Boyfriend, who was a punk rocker called Sven Dogsucker. And he was really bad and horrible and he was ugly in the fact that he had a sort of mohican - shaved the side of his head and sort of three nose rings, two in one side and one in the other, and I think he probably wore makeup and he was really revolting and I just thought yeah, (laughs), you?ll do. If I really want to go against the grain, this is my perfect opportunity. So we went on a date. I got off with him at a gig - a 999 gig. And um, and he was a friend of my friend Sarah's, he'd been a lodger of hers' - her dad had some flat that he'd lodged in, and Sarah was forbidden to see him. I think she'd got off with him once and her mum had found out and she was actually banned from ever seeing him. So I thought, OK, well, seeing as your banned from seeing him, I'll go out with him then. And um, so uh, yeah. I got off with him at this gig and then I didn't know how to find him, and then I went to Southall and found his friend and then yeah, I went through this whole kind of detective thing. I had to go down this really really really really long road called Lady Margaret's Road, and ask - ringing all the doorbells and asking if anyone knew a punk rocker called Rhubarb. And I did find Rhubarb, and Rhubarb was in love with me, unfortunately, because I had to use him to then find Sven which probably wasn't very nice for poor dear Rhubarb. He lived in the shed in his mum?s garden. He wasn't allowed in the house (laughs).

And so I went out on a date with Sven and we went to the funfair and I sort of said to him, basically: I want to lose my virginity. I said 'I'm a virgin, I want to get rid of it, I want you to do it'. And he said 'Not before you?re 16 and you?ve got to go on the pill.' Which was quite weird. It's not very punk rock. No. He was 19 though, so that was quite a big age gap at that time. And so he'd obviously realized that he didn't want to be fathering any children, and um, possibly didn't want to get nicked either. Maybe he just said I had to go on the pill? I think he did say something about me being 16. But um, anyway, I didn't go on the pill. Not until... in fact, we split up 9 months later and it was during those first two weeks when you start taking the pill but you're not safe yet, we split up then, it was really annoying. I did have sex with him during that time, yeah, yeah, I did. We used condoms. We were great fans of condoms.

Well, I don't think I'd been going out with him very long, maybe a couple of weeks, and um, his mum didn't approve of me coming around to the house. They lived in a tiny little terraced house so it was very difficult to be discreet. And so we packed up some candles and some blankets and we went to this building site where they were building some new houses. And there were all these sort of houses that had been built but they didn't have any doors or windows. They were just sort of shells. And we had to climb over the wall and the barbed wire fence. And there were signs up saying that there were dogs patrolling it so that was a bit worrying but we couldn't see any sign of dogs. So we climbed in and we went up into this bedroom upstairs and we put out the blankets and made a bed and lit the candles and proceeded to do the do. Yeah, he knew that I was a virgin, and he'd said to me that he'd only slept with - it might have been one or it might have been three - but a very small number. I can't remember if it was just one. But yeah, that he hadn't had very many sexual encounters himself so...

I thought it was rubbish. I thought, you know, it was over really, really quickly. He came kind of almost immediately. I remember sort of feeling this thing between my legs and kind of thinking, gosh, that's a strange new sensation that I've never felt before. But it wasn't kind of exciting or erotic. And uh, and then before I knew it, it was over. And then he was all upset because he'd been so rubbish and I was the one sort of going 'It's ok dear, you know'- I just sort of said to him - 'you know if you've only had sex a few times, that's quite normal and we'll probably get better at it.' And he just sort of, he was really upset and said 'It's not true I haven't only had sex two or three times, I've had it loads, I've had like sex with nine girls, or something, and I'm just rubbish at it.' So it was a sort of confession at the end of this weird virginity losing experience. So I had to deal with his confession that he'd actually lied about how many girls he'd had sex with, and that he'd done such a bad job of it all.

But then I think after that sex probably did get ok. Yeah, I continued to sleep with him. We had quite a lot of fun. I remember one time the condom broke and that was rather alarming. The top of it came off, and I found it later that day in my pants, (laughs), and gave it to him as a present. We were watching telly with his parents and I went 'I've got something for you?!'

I think sex did start to become enjoyable quite quickly, and I think I did think, this just is going to take some practice. Because I think I?d read enough sort of girly magazines to know that the first time isn't really you know, you don't have too much expectation of it. So yeah, I think I knew from reading those kinds of Jackie magazines, and that, that the sex would get better with practice. I don't think it was ever that great with him though, to be honest. I mean, you know, sex when you're 15 is a bit different to sex when you're 40 (laughs). I think emotional maturity and security and self-assuredness makes it different.

I think I was really really needy. I was always being dumped because I always wanted - I wanted each and every boy that I went out with. I did it with the intention of them falling in love with me and never leaving me. And so because I was so needy, that of course puts boys off quite badly. I mean, you know, there were a couple of boys that fell in love with me and I didn't want to be with them, but on the whole I was always being dumped and I was very often suffering with a kind of heart-break of rejection as a consequence of that. I didn't know how to be with boys at all. So yeah, it wasn?t really very good, I mean even to the point where my marriage - my relationship with Mike - it was very much based on the fact that we were just good mates and he didn't want to be in a full-time relationship with me, although we'd sleep together sometimes and I was completely in love with him, and he even, for the first two years of our relationship dumped me regularly. So I was kind of always in this state of sort of weeping, kind of not understanding why he was doing this. And, um, until, you know, I got pregnant with Minnie and we got together properly. So yeah, I've um, managed to sustain the pattern of being rejected by my, what would be the Alpha Male I suppose. It's funny that you carry on repeating patterns even before you know what the blueprint is - because I didn't know. But I was still managing to repeat it over and over and over and over again a million times. And that's shifted now.

I've really enjoyed it with my own girls because I so wanted it to be a different experience for them. There are two things? the first thing that I learned was that it's safe to answer the question that they ask, and if they ask the question then they're ready to hear the answer and that it's safe to answer that honestly. But stick to the question. Don't rush ahead, you know, they're not ready to hear what they haven't asked yet. I think that what?s happened is that I've taught Minnie and that Minnie has passed it on to Flora and I think that works well for a lot of mums. Because it's like your younger one is always your baby, so I can't actually talk about it to Flora but I know that it's ok because I know that she's got a good big sister that she can go to. And it's not that I want to hand the responsibility over to Minnie, but I think it's ok for Min to be big sisterly and advice-person to Flora, that's a good role for her.

So that was the first thing, was just to answer the question as it came up with them. And the second thing that I just felt really strongly about was that, I knew, you know, that it was... parties were starting. Minnie was getting to that stage where her mates were going to be doing it, and that for me was a pressurous time because, you know, once my best friend lost her virginity, I just was like, right, I've got to get rid of mine, I've gotta get shot of mine, and um, basically I just said to Min that sex is absolute fine, you're allowed to have sex, it's ok and it's fun, but the only thing is that it's got to be because you want to do it and for no other reason - not because your mates are doing it, not because the boy is putting any pressure on you to do it, as long as it's something that you wholeheartedly want to do, go ahead and do it - it's fine. And this is how to keep yourself safe. Yeah, she has quite a healthy attitude actually. And she's very very funny, and she talks about it as well in ways that I never would have talked in front of my mum. She came in the other day when I was in the bath and, um, she came in and sat on the loo while I was in the bath and got a tampax out of the cupboard and started shoving it up herself and I was kind of in the bath going 'Min, what are you doing?' and she just turned around to me and went 'I'm shoving a dry wad of fucking cotton up my cunt!' And I thought yes, we have come on a long way, haven't we!