Three short words – ‘Josy, come outside’ – was all that marked the start of the devastating knife attack in which a vivacious, young, live-in maid almost bled to death in a £20 million Chelsea townhouse last year.

Uttered by the 26-year-old son of her wealthy employer on a chilly Sunday evening last February, Joselia Pereira Do Nascimento assumed he wanted her to prepare him a meal.

Instead, when she opened the door of her basement bedroom she found Maximillian Bourne armed with a kitchen knife which he then thrust into her face, chest and arms, a terrifying onslaught in which the 30-year-old Brazilian, known as Josy, sustained a horrifying 42 stab wounds and was also throttled.

‘I felt sure I would die there in that basement room,’ Josy recalls. ‘Even now I can remember the sound of his breathing, and the look on his face, like he was possessed.’

And in a sense, he was: as a jury decided earlier this year, Bourne was in the grip of a paranoid psychotic episode when he attempted to murder Josy.

As well as the devastating account of his actions, they heard a recording of the chilling phone call he made to emergency services in its aftermath, in which he said he had ‘stabbed’ the ‘demon woman in my house’ and described himself as a ‘nice boy from Chelsea’.

Only now, many months on, and after a great deal of trauma therapy, is Josy – who had come to Britain to make a better life for her family back home – able to recount fully what happened during an ordeal so horrific it takes the breath away.

‘My brain didn’t have a chance to take in what was happening,’ she says of the moment she opened her bedroom door to find Bourne wielding a blade. Before I could register what was happening, he started stabbing me.’

Only now, many months on, and after a great deal of trauma therapy, is Josy able to recount fully what happened during an ordeal so horrific it takes the breath away

A jury decided earlier this year that Maximillian Bourne was in the grip of a paranoid psychotic episode when he attempted to murder Josy

She recalls him grabbing her blouse in order to pull her towards him, and holding her wrists in front of her face in a desperate bid to protect herself. ‘More than anything, I can remember the sound of his breathing,’ she says breaking down in tears.

Backed into her bedroom by the force of the attack, she found herself pressed against a wall with Bourne’s hands around her neck.

‘There was so much blood that I started to slip down the wall,’ she says. She ended up on the floor, with Bourne on top of her, again trying to strangle her. ‘I thought “I am dead”,’ she says, sobbing again. ‘Because no one knew I was there. But then I thought about my daughter. I am only alive today because of my daughter.’

It was wanting more for Eloa, now nine, that had taken Josy from Sao Paulo after her relationship with the girl’s father had broken down and she found herself unable to find work after a previous job in finance had fallen through. She had, she tells me, just too much to lose.

‘Thoughts of her gave me the courage to fight for my life.’

Despite her wounds, somehow – she cannot remember how – she managed to wrestle free. Yet as she tried to flee from her room, Bourne grabbed her long hair from behind and started to stab her again in the back of the head, only to lose his grip because of the blood on his hands.

It gave her enough time to barricade herself in the en suite bathroom, which had a flimsy lock. ‘I was pushing against the door so he couldn’t come in, but I could hear him bashing it with the knife,’ she says.

‘I shouted “Why are you doing this?” and he told me it was because I was “from evil”.’

One can only imagine the terror Josy felt, trapped and bleeding heavily, with no means of summoning help as an enraged and well-built young man hammered on the door outside.

‘I knew my only chance was to get my mobile phone from my bed, but that meant getting out,’ she says. ‘I decided to hold my breath so that he might think I was dead.’

When everything fell quiet, Josy knew that she had to summon the courage to open the door. ‘It was a risk, but if I didn’t get the phone I was dead anyway,’ she says.

Opening it a crack, she saw Bourne had left the room and staggered to her bed to get the phone before locking herself back in. She dialled a Brazilian friend in London on FaceTime to show her injuries, begging her to call the police because she felt her own English was not good enough.

‘Then I recorded a message to my daughter because I still did not know if I was going to die,’ she says, her tears flowing freely again. ‘I said I was sorry that I had not been a better mother, but I was here trying to make a better life.’

As she did so, she heard the sounds of police sirens – summoned, as it later emerged, by Bourne himself, who had called 999 and calmly announced that he had tried to kill someone.

Even then, her salvation was not assured: aware of the house’s robust security, Josy knew that she had to find a way of getting her keys from her bag to help them get in. So she bravely emerged again from the bathroom to grab her keys from her bag, crawling upstairs to open the back door and call for help amid the flashing lights outside.

Sylvia Bourne, an art dealer and philanthropist, at the family home on Justice Walk, Chelsea

The next bit is a blur: Josy is dimly aware of a female police officer trying to reassure her as she was ushered to an ambulance and taken to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, west London. ‘I remember that’s when the pain started to kick in,’ she says.

‘Until then, I had been running on adrenaline.’

She was told by doctors that she was relatively lucky but required surgery to repair damage to her lungs. Despite her many injuries – to her scalp, eye socket, chest, back and arms – she survived.

Today, though, the scars and vivid welts on Josy’s chest, back and face are a grim testament to the horror she experienced and she remains in intense pain.

Clearly fragile, she is deeply self-conscious about her scars, even though she remains a beautiful young woman.

The psychological wounds are arguably even more profound: she suffers from PTSD and often struggles to sleep. Left homeless and penniless in the wake of her ordeal, she has had to rely on the support of a charity to survive.

It has, undoubtedly, enhanced the sense of abandonment she feels on the part of her employer, Sylvia Bourne, 60, a glamorous and wealthy Brazilian art consultant with impeccable credentials and whose biography on Instagram describes her as a ‘humanitarian and philanthropist’.

The great-granddaughter of Epitacio Pessoa, who was president of Brazil from 1919 to 1922, Sylvia’s father previously served as Brazil’s ambassador to the UK.

Married to British property developer Graham Bourne, 71, the couple’s five-bedroom home is situated in one of London’s most exclusive postcodes. Josy says that Sylvia’s only contact with her in the wake of the attack was to send her a brief text message as she lay in her hospital bed.

‘So sorry for the tragedy that just happened. I know that you had the surgery, and you are getting better. Good luck,’ it read.

Alas, luck is not enough, and there has certainly not been a great deal of it in Josy’s life so far.

Like many other young women from Brazil, she came to the UK to improve her prospects after a difficult childhood marred by poverty.

Raised in a northern state, she moved to Sao Paulo in her teens and found work in the finance department of a large company.

At night, she studied law, only to find her ambition to become a lawyer thwarted when she fell pregnant with daughter Eloa. It was the start of a difficult juggle that became more complex when she lost her job after a disagreement with her boss.

She decided to come to London temporarily after receiving an invitation to stay from a Brazilian friend living in the capital, leaving Eloa in the care of her father, from whom she had split when their daughter was two. ‘All I ever wanted was to help make a better life for my daughter,’ she says. ‘Yet coming to this country has brought me so much unhappiness.’

Josy arrived in May 2022 and, through her friend, was introduced to fellow Brazilian Sylvia. She decided to take up an offer of employment made by Sylvia, who told her that while she already had a live-in housekeeper, Ivanilde, there was the possibility of a few hours of work a week.

In June 2022, Josy started working for Sylvia – whom she says lived in the house with Maximillian Bourne while her husband and younger daughter resided in the US. Her tasks encompassed anything from cleaning to helping to prepare dinners and drinks for guests. She had to pack and unpack Sylvia’s suitcases when she travelled.

In June 2023, when her accommodation fell through, she asked Sylvia if she could live in one of the two small bedrooms in the basement. As Sylvia was often away travelling for work, Bourne was periodically the only resident, although Josy says she had little interaction with him. It is unknown whether he had a previous history of psychiatric problems.

‘Most of the time he was in his room,’ she says. ‘He didn’t seem to have any friends. When we did speak it was usually very limited greetings, or he would ask me to make some food.’

Then, shortly before Christmas 2023, Sylvia announced that she would be travelling for three months, accompanied by Ivanilde.

‘She asked me to look after the house and help take care of Max,’ Josy says. ‘That meant food shopping and cooking meals for him for which she sent me money.’

At this point, she had little cause for concern about her employer’s son, although, aware she would be left alone in the house with him for a prolonged period, she did ask for a lock to be put on her bedroom door, a request that was not fulfilled.

She adds: ‘By this point, I had decided that, whatever it took, I would be gone before Sylvia returned.’ She blinks back tears. ‘If only I had left sooner.’

In fact, Bourne spent most of the time in his room, although, as the weeks went on, some of his behaviour caused her concern. ‘I heard him talking to himself and I realised he was sleeping in the bath some of the time,’ she recalls.

Even so, when she heard his footsteps coming to the basement at 8.30pm on February 25 last year, Josy had little cause for alarm.

‘I assumed he had come to ask me to make him a meal,’ she said.

Instead, as we have seen, Bourne’s summons was for something altogether more sinister: as he later told police, he thought Josy was a ‘demon’ who must be dispatched.

Josy remained in hospital for a week on a trauma ward. She was told by police that he had been arrested and taken to a secure mental health unit.

She also received that one text message from Sylvia. (She also had two missed calls from her in August, six months later.)

Without financial aid from her own family, Josy had to rely on a charity to provide a roof over her head as she awaited Bourne’s court appearance. ‘For many months, I was too scared even to leave my bedroom,’ she says.

Nonetheless, she was determined to attend proceedings at Southwark Crown Court in February this year. Bourne was deemed too unwell to stand trial but the jury still had to determine whether he was responsible for Josy’s attempted murder.

After they decided he was, Judge Gregory Perrins ordered he be held indefinitely in a mental health unit, his release reliant on the assessment of a specialist tribunal. He also paid tribute to Josy’s courage, as well as pointing out that relying on charity must feel ‘cold, unfeeling and unfair at a very difficult time in her life’.

‘Although Ms Nascimento worked for an extremely wealthy family, they have offered her no help, no support, and nothing but a single text message when she was in hospital,’ he said.

It is why Josy is now contemplating bringing a civil claim against Sylvia Bourne for compensation, and has launched a Crowd Justice page in order to help raise funds.

‘Josy has suffered life-changing injuries and trauma, and she urgently needs compensation to begin rebuilding her life,’ her lawyer, Hal Branch, of London firm Branch Austin McCormick, told the Mail. ‘She was the victim of a near-fatal attack while working as a housekeeper. We will be seeking justice for the devastating harm she has endured.’

Nothing, of course, will undo the events of that terrible night, or erase Josy’s physical and mental scars. Little wonder that all she wants now is to go home and be reunited with her daughter.

While they video call every day, it’s not enough.

‘I always tried to be a good person, but life has been very hard,’ she says. ‘Now I just want to start over again.’