So many young women, myself included, have been criticised for returning to Epstein’s lair even after we knew what he wanted from us. How can you complain about being abused, some have asked, when you could so easily have stayed away? But that stance discounts what many of us had been through before we encountered Epstein, as well as how good he was at spotting girls whose wounds made them vulnerable. Several of us had been molested or raped as children; many of us were poor or even homeless. We were girls who no one cared about, and Epstein pretended to care. A master manipulator, he threw what looked like a lifeline to girls who were drowning. If they wanted to be dancers, he offered dance lessons. If they aspired to be actors, he said he’d help them get roles. And then, he did his worst to them.

One day, probably two weeks after I’d met them, Epstein upped the ante. I was upstairs, cleaning up after another “massage”, when Epstein told me to come to his office. “How about you quit your job at Mar-a-Lago,” he said, “and work for me full-time?” He wanted to make things easier on me, he said. But he had a few conditions. As his employee, I would be at his beck and call, day and night. And another thing: I could no longer live in my parents’ trailer. Seeing me come and go at all hours might make them suspicious, he said. He held out a wad of cash – probably $2,500. “Use this,” he said, “to rent yourself an apartment.”

I’d never held that much money in my hand before. I thanked him, even as a twinge of worry crept into my head. By this point, I had seen dozens of girls coming and going from his house. Many came once and never returned. If he got rid of them so quickly, would Epstein eventually throw me away, too? Epstein must’ve sensed my qualms, because he walked around his desk, picked up a grainy photograph, and handed it to me. The image had been taken from some distance, but it was unmistakably my little brother. I felt a stab of fear.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre in the foreground wearing a pale-pink sleeveless top in a crowd of people including Naomi Campbell and her then partner Flavio Briatore

“We know where your brother goes to school,” Epstein said. He let that sink in for a moment, then got to the point: “You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house.” He was smiling, but his threat was clear. “And I own the Palm Beach police department,” he said, “so they won’t do anything about it.”

From the start, Epstein and Maxwell held me to my promise to be available at all times. Some days, the call would come in the morning. I’d show up, perform whatever sex acts Epstein wanted, then hang out beside his vast swimming pool while he got some work done. If Maxwell was there, I was often told to attend to her sexually as well. She kept a bin of vibrators and sex toys handy for these sessions. But she never demanded sex from me one-on-one – only when we were with Epstein. Sometimes there were other girls there, too, and I’d end up staying at El Brillo Way all day.

In October 2000, Maxwell jetted off to New York to meet up with her old friend Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II’s second-born son. On Halloween, along with other guests that included Donald Trump and his future wife Melania Knauss, Maxwell and Prince Andrew attended a party hosted by German supermodel Heidi Klum at The Hudson, a swank hotel. Maxwell was proud of her friendships with famous people, especially men. She loved to talk about how easily she could get former president Bill Clinton on the phone; she and Epstein had visited the White House together when Clinton was in office.

While they usually slept in separate bedrooms, and rarely kissed or held hands, it seemed to me that Maxwell and Epstein lived in complete symbiosis. Epstein, who described Maxwell as his best friend, valued her knack for connecting him to powerful people. Maxwell, in turn, appreciated that Epstein had the resources to fund the lavish life she thought she deserved yet had trouble affording after the death of her father, the media mogul Robert Maxwell. In social settings, Maxwell often appeared vivacious, the life of the party. But in Epstein’s household, she functioned more as a party planner: scheduling and organising the endless parade of girls who she recruited to have sex with him. Over time, I would come to see Epstein and Maxwell less as boyfriend and girlfriend, and more as two halves of a wicked whole.