When Gemma was born, on 2 June 1997, I made a promise to her that I would always love her and would never let anything bad happen to her. I had separated from her biological father Gary while I was pregnant. I was twenty-two; Gary was twenty-five. I remember telling her that day that it wouldn’t matter that she didn’t have two parents because I would always protect and love her more than two people put together.
Gary was my first love and our relationship was good to begin with. Shortly after we moved in together, I became pregnant with Lee and then three years later I discovered I was expecting again. At the time, Gary had a terrible temper and really scared me, so when I found out I was pregnant again, I decided to go it alone and bring up the children myself.
I tried again and again to get Gary to have some kind of relationship with Lee and Gemma; I didn’t want them not to have a father in their lives. But it was to no avail – he didn’t even so much as hold Gemma until she was two weeks old and after that he only saw her a couple of times. He just didn’t want to know her and Lee.
After that relationship, it wasn’t a priority to meet anyone else, but two years later I met Max, and it was love at first sight. He was amazing with the children and we got married in Gretna Green on 23 October 1999. The children took his name and we were all really happy together. I gave birth to Maddie in 2000 and then, eight years later, Alfie came along.
Unfortunately, our relationship went downhill after Max was involved in a serious bike accident. He sustained terrible injuries to his back and had a year’s rehabilitation. He kept reliving the nightmare of the accident and it was just too much strain on our marriage. We were unable to get it back on track and we agreed to separate when Alfie was two years old, but promised to stay as amicable as possible for the children’s sakes. In fact we even spent a Christmas together as Max was determined to be a proper dad to the children. Later, Maddie moved in with him – she has always been Daddy’s girl – but we are still very close and she comes and stays with us all the time, so I don’t feel detached from her.
In 2010, I got promoted in my work as an auditor and it was there that I met Paul, who was a senior auditor. With four children already, I really had my hands full, but after much discussion we decided to try for a baby and were blessed with beautiful Lilly. Of course, the day she was born was the day that Miss Shackleton had called from Gemma’s school about the rumours. For me, the first few months of Lilly’s life were fairly dramatic, but through it all I was determined that Alfie and Lilly wouldn’t be dragged into the nightmare.
I am extremely proud of the fact that we united as a family to keep Alfie and Lilly’s lives as normal as possible. But things were about to get much more challenging …