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Several weeks later, Daniel was arrested as he stepped off a flight from Jakarta. The police also took statements and arranged a medical examination. Listening to her engraved pictures on my mind which I still have trouble banishing today. I’m not going to describe Tamsin’s statement to social services. Whenever anything was worrying her, she wouldĬome and tell me. And once he tried to give me a tummy rub, but I wouldn’t let him.’ ‘He asked me to take off my T-shirt, but I just said no. ‘But I liked that…’ ‘Nothing else?’ I asked.

‘He used to come and give me back rubs,’ she replied. Gently, I asked Claire if her dad had ever touched her. Meanwhile, I had to address another horrible thought. Social services set up an appointment for the following Monday. Until that day.ĭaniel was in the Far East when Tamsin wrote her devastating note. I still loved Daniel and I thought we could make it work. I knew the harm that divorce causes to children. Why did I stay with him if things were so bad? Well, they weren’t bad all the time. But his efforts to improve never lasted long. Over and over again, we talked about what was reasonable behaviour and over and over he agreed with me.

He was angry with me for taking him to task but when he realised I was serious, he backed down and apologised. I really went for Daniel, threatening to kick him out if he couldn’t control his temper. When the girls were seven and four, I noticed ‘fingertip’ bruising on Claire’s arm.

He, too, resorted to smacking and violence. His own parents hadīeen authoritarian, and not reluctant to use a belt to hit their children. As it turned out, I loved being a mother and Daniel was Tamsin was conceived two years after our wedding, and Claire came along two and a half years after that. It was Daniel who felt that we wouldn’t be a ‘proper family’ Within a week, I had decided he was the man with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. And he was gentle, laid-back – all the things I wasn’t.

Anybody else lyrics phil cook full#

He was tall and slim with auburn hair and blue-grey eyes and a full beard and moustache. I was 27 when we met, working as a medical photographer he was a year older and at college, studying for his Second Engineer’s certificate. I just knew I had to do theĭaniel and I had been married for 18 years. Tears were falling from my eyes as I looked up the number for social services and picked up the phone. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding, an over-tactile father who would have to learn to respect He brushes against my breasts so I know it’s not accidental, but he could persuade someone else it was.’ She looked into my eyes and must have been reassured by what she saw. ‘Come home and tell me about it,’ I begged. In the seconds it took me to absorb her words, my world came tumbling down. And f*** you, you probably won’t believe me anyway.’ She was talking about her father – telling me that he had been sexually abusing her for the past five years. ‘I have to leave or he has to,’ she had written. The following evening, I was in the living room when she burst in, flung a piece of paper at me and stormed out. At bedtimewe kissed goodnight, but for the first time we parted with a coolness between us. She began making hurtful personal attacks on her father and me, something she had never done. But that day she was impervious to reasoned argument. Tamsin and I squabbled, like all mothers and daughters. That was when the first hint of discord arose. At 15, she was a weekly boarder at a specialist school for high-ability dyslexics.ĭo. Was at school, and I was looking forward to spending some time with Tamsin, who had just broken up for the holidays. It started out fine, that Tuesday in December 1996. But I never for a moment dreamt that we were extraordinary – until As a ship’s engineer, my husband Daniel worked away from home for up to four months at a time. In many ways, we were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two kids, a Volvo in the drive.