A few days ago I drove Zoriana, the Ukrainian refugee I took in after the Russian invasion, to her new home in North London.
She and I have become very close over the past couple of years, but I have to admit I felt relieved rather than bereft as I said goodbye.
Along with hundreds of others, I felt compelled to help as Russian tanks headed for Kyiv in the spring of 2022, when cities in the east of Ukraine were being blanket-bombed and there were daily reports of defenceless civilians being raped and murdered. We willingly opened our homes, but I wonder if we really knew what we were taking on.
Two years later, I’m very glad I took part in the Homes For Ukraine scheme — but also very glad that, for me, it has come to an end.
I have a small cottage in North London with two bedrooms and a loft room which I use as my office. I have a very small bathroom, a sitting room, dining area, downstairs toilet, diminutive kitchen and a garden. I could provide a safe haven for a mother and one child. My first task was to find someone who would be comfortable in my small space.
Jenni Murray with her Ukrainian guest Zoriana, who has been living with her in her London flat for the last two years
The pair have become very close over the past couple of years, but Jenni admits she felt relieved rather than bereft as they said goodbye
I had to move quickly — the chaotic scenes as families struggled to help the elderly, young children and babies, even beloved family pets, escape across the border to Poland and safety were heartbreaking. I mentioned my desire to help in my Femail Magazine column and I immediately heard from Oksana.
She told me about a woman called Zoriana Zvir who had one son and was desperate to leave her small town not far from Lviv in the west of Ukraine.
Zoriana’s English was good. I explained over email how small my accommodation would be — a particular concern after she had told me her son, Ustym, was 17.
How willing would she be to share a double bed with him? She was more than happy, she said. It would probably be only for six months or so, but she must get him out now.
His 18th birthday would be in September and, after that, she would have no chance of bringing her only child to safety in England as all males over the age of 18 had been told they must stay behind and be ready to defend their country.
We agreed we would somehow manage. Thanks to Zoriana’s command of English, we achieved visas surprisingly quickly and, on April 27, 2022, I was waiting for them at Luton Airport. They arrived exhausted, but at that first encounter, Zoriana hugged me so gratefully I knew I hadn’t made a mistake.
Jenni meets Ukrainian refugee Zoriana for the first time as she arrives at Luton Airport two years ago
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Jenni quickly realised her North London home could provide a safe haven for a mother and one child
The next months were hectic as we dealt with bureaucracy and plans for Ustym’s future. Barnet Council had joined the country’s Homes For Ukraine project in early March. I was able to register my guests’ presence and have my home checked for suitability — £350 a month was allocated to pay towards food, gas, electricity, water and transport costs.
We found the Home Office department, deep in the City Of London, where biometric visas were issued to last 36 months, and we travelled to Barnet Council for a gathering of hosts and refugees where information about Jobcentres, banks, accommodation and navigating the transport system was shared.
Zoriana and I began to get to know each other. She was warm, friendly and overwhelmingly grateful for all my efforts in getting things sorted. She took over the spare bedroom that doubled as a dressing room for me. I moved my clothes out of the wardrobes so she and Ustym had somewhere to store their things.
Zoriana, insisting that she loved to cook, found her way around the tiny kitchen and I got used to eating borscht, pancakes and little pastry parcels. All I had to do was order in the ingredients and insist that Ustym must do his share of washing up.
We became very fond of each other. I remember saying one day when she came back from one of her long walks around the area, thrilled to have found sorrel on Hampstead Heath or good beetroot in the local supermarket, that it felt as if I had gained the daughter I never had. She’s the same age as my older son.
Finding work for Zoriana and education for Ustym presented the first real difficulties. We found two nearby infant and junior schools who would take Zoriana on as an unpaid assistant.
I thought it would be a good idea. She had taught little ones in Ukraine and getting known in a school could well lead to a proper job. But she had to apply for a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) certificate to prove she was safe to teach and that would take time. She helped Oksana, who had first put us in touch, with her children and sometimes in her beauty salon, but finding real work was going to be hard.
Zoriana’s son, Ustym, in a white coat as he begins his medical training back in Lviv, Ukraine
Ustym was miserable in England and returned to Ukraine to take his equivalent of A-levels
Ustym posed an even bigger problem. A local grammar school was helpful, but the conclusion was that he was too old to start school here. He needed to improve his English and think about university the next year. Ustym clearly had no interest in remaining in this country. He was miserable. He wanted to go home and take the equivalent of A-levels in Ukraine. Finally, Zoriana agreed to take him back for the exams.
They were away for a couple of weeks, the exams were done and soon we were all back at Luton Airport, in plenty of time before his 18th birthday in September.
I took them out to dinner for his birthday. It was a Turkish restaurant with wonderful grilled meat and delicious baklava for pudding. I’ve never seen a child more unhappy at the celebration of an important birthday. He would have greatly preferred to be back home with his friends, even if there were bomb alarms going off on their phones on a regular basis, the electricity would frequently disappear and they would be spending a great deal of time in their basements.
I felt so sorry for Zoriana. She had gone to so much effort to bring her boy to safety. It broke her heart to see him so sad and hopeless. Then came the exam results. He had done brilliantly. He had been offered a place in the medical school in the University of Lviv. It was what he wanted. His mother said no. One morning, when Zoriana was out, I asked him to be absolutely honest. What did he want? I told him he was 18 now. He was an adult. He must make his own choice.
I said the same thing to Zoriana. He was no longer her boy. He was a man. She would risk destroying their very close relationship if she tied him to her.
Zoriana and Ustym wear traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts in their home country in 2022
Finally, she agreed. In the October, she left to settle him in, which took quite some time.
Too much time in my view. It was summer last year, eight months later, before she came back — alone.
When she returned, I was not quite the woman I had been during her previous stay.
I was admitted to hospital with an infected hole in my foot. Zoriana could not have been more helpful. She took care of the house and the dogs and cat, visited me in hospital and picked up prescriptions and other things I needed. When I got home, she had fixed a course at university in Stratford, East London — a long distance by Tube from my home.
It would last for a year. She would study business management and hope it would lead to full-time study for a degree in 2024.
We settled into a routine. I got on with my work and made frequent visits to the hospital to have my foot dressed. Maria, my cleaner, came weekly as usual and Zoriana travelled to and from Stratford, cooked the food I’d had delivered from Waitrose and disappeared upstairs to her room to study and write her essays.
I was often asked to check her English in the work she had written. We sometimes rewrote bits together. Meanwhile, she had signed up for an online English course to improve her command of the language.
We could not have anticipated the disaster that was to follow. I fell and broke a vertebra. Two more weeks in hospital, leaving Zoriana to take care of the animals. She could not have been kinder and more attentive, coming to see me, bringing clean clothes and sending photos of my dogs, meanwhile getting on with her work.
I came home, still in a great deal of pain. I couldn’t manage to sleep in my bed. I just sat in a chair in the sitting room. I was a misery, as was Zoriana, constantly worried about her son as her phone picked up the air raid alarms he would also be hearing in Lviv. We couldn’t go on like this.
I began to be irritated by her constant, rather overwhelming concern. If I dropped something on the floor, she would rush to get it for me. I have always prided myself on my independence. I may have become temporarily bound to my armchair, but I had to learn to move again. Her fussing around me came from kindness, but it began to drive me mad. Zoriana acted as though she were my carer. She was not. She was my guest with a life of her own.
It was decided I should go away to a home where I could recuperate and have physiotherapy. I had to get moving again. I had to regain my independence. The animals would go to a friend and Zoriana could stay alone at my home, returning briefly to Ukraine for Christmas with her family.
When I came home in January, we slipped back into the habits we had developed over the many months we had been together.
Living in her spare bedroom, Jeni describes Zoriana as ‘warm, friendly and overwhelmingly grateful for all my efforts in getting things sorted’
While living in England, Zoriana signed up for an online English course to improve her command of the language
I became increasingly aware of how little we had in common. She is deeply religious and crossed London for the Ukrainian church every Sunday. I have no religion and often felt I needed to be careful what I said on the days she insisted we must have no meat. I was old and she in the prime of life, but she was unhappy, constantly worried about her son. Frankly, grateful as I was for her cooking and care, I was beginning to be resentful of her constant presence in my home.
I felt I was unable to use my kitchen. It had become her space and if I went to make coffee, she would leap to do it for me. The bedroom that had become hers contained my fitted wardrobes. I’d made space for her things and for two years now, I’d endured a great pile of sweaters and jeans on a table in my room. I never felt I could go into the space she occupied and I longed to have my wardrobe back.
When she cooked, she sang or talked on her phone in Ukrainian. It drove me mad. I longed to be able to walk naked from my bedroom to the bathroom but felt that would be too embarrassing.
Silly little things began to irritate me. I would never leave a wet sponge in the kitchen sink. Zoriana always did. I always close the lid on the toilet seat after flushing. She left it up. I felt mean and selfish to be thinking of throwing her out of the place she had come to regard as her home.
Though Jenni and Zoriana got on well, Jenni felt unable to use her space as she had before due to her guest’s presence
She had begun to see me as a mother figure. Why was I unable to speak to her about the things that annoyed me? Why couldn’t I just tell her that I needed my only spare bedroom for my son and his wife if they wanted to come to London? For some reason, I just couldn’t. Last month I had become so anxious about the situation I spoke to a therapist about my fears. She identified a fear of rejection with which I had lived all my life.
It began with my mother, for whom I was never good enough. It had existed throughout my career, working freelance on two-year contracts and always nervous that I’d be told thank you and goodbye when they came up for renewal.
The therapist said I was nervous of making someone else feel rejected but told me I must do it for the sake of my sanity.
I contacted the people at Barnet’s Homes For Ukraine and asked if they could help in such circumstances. They could. Then, on a sunny morning, just after my 74th birthday, Zoriana and I sat in the garden and I explained, as gently as I could, that I longed to have my wardrobe back and a bedroom for my son. She was upset but she understood.
More quickly than I expected, Barnet had found a lovely room in a house much bigger than mine with a professional couple who were retired. I took Zoriana and a considerable amount of stuff acquired over the virtually two years she has been with me and drove her to her new home.
It’s not far from me, her new hosts are lovely and we hugged as I prepared to leave. She will be welcome to visit me whenever she wants, but this time as a friend who cares about her and her son, but no longer as a host.
The doors to the two bedrooms and my bathroom are left open. I make my own coffee, lunch and dinner. I empty the bin, pick up the milk from the doorstep, feed the animals, do the dishes and tidy up every day. This week my son will come for an overnight stay. I feel like myself again.
