THE NEED TO TALK

A week after that seven-hour interview at the police house in Hailsham, Gemma announced that she had more information that she wanted to share with the police. I didn’t press her about what this information was, I just duly went along with her.

It turned out that she was starting to get angry about what she was hearing about Forrest’s past. She wanted to tell the police that she wouldn’t have started any relationship had she known he was still having a relationship with his wife. She isn’t that type of person and she had believed everything he had told her. She didn’t add anything that would support the evidence the police already had, but she took the opportunity to express her feelings. The interview lasted five hours and I wouldn’t say she felt better afterwards by any means. She was confused and hurt, and the one person she could ask for confirmation in all of this was in prison.

On one hand, social media was saying she was part of an amazing love story. On the other, she was being told ‘lies’ about her boyfriend. She wanted a chance to put the record straight about the love they had for each other. As before, she once again insisted it wasn’t an infatuation, it was real.

I had hoped the interview would reveal more information, but it didn’t. The police were very understanding, however. They wanted Gemma to feel comfortable to be able to speak to them.

At home, things were starting to be fractious between us. I was trying to monitor what Gemma was eating and drinking, and how much sleep she was getting, but I also had to give her plenty of space. She was very defensive if anyone was horrible about me on social media, but there was an increasingly bigger barrier growing between us. Quite honestly, I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Sarah, the family social worker, had been absolutely brilliant with all of us. Gemma was already having sessions with a therapist, and Sarah suggested that the rest of the family should get some counselling as well. It would be a safe, controlled environment allowing us all to speak freely about our feelings. This could only be positive, right?

It ended up backfiring really badly. We were only a couple of sessions into our therapy when Gemma and Lee took it upon themselves to annihilate me as a mother. It was just an onslaught of the most horrible things. They claimed that I had got together with Paul too quickly after splitting up with Max and that we had decided to have a baby together without thinking it through. They also said I had been working so hard and didn’t have enough time for them.

It was all my fault.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We are the type of family that regularly has family conferences if any of us has something on our mind. When I first met Paul, I made sure that I told the children all about him before I allowed them to meet, and we talked about the two of us having a baby with the rest of the children, as a family.

All these allegations from Gemma and Lee were completely new to me. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. It was a completely venomous attack.

I remember leaving the session feeling totally shell-shocked. No one said a word in the car on the way home.

I was distraught. When I told Sarah about what had happened, she said she wasn’t surprised at all. She told me that they obviously had so much anger about the way their worlds had been torn apart that they had to deflect it on to someone – and I was a safe person for them to release their feelings on.

As their mother, there was no way that I was going to stop loving them for what they said to me. There would never be any consequences about what they said and I would never throw it back at them, so in a way I was the natural target. Sarah said it was part of the process that they were going through, but maybe it had been too soon to start counselling. It was still all just too raw.

And Sarah was right. When I speak to Gemma and Lee about those meetings now, they are full of remorse and find it extremely difficult to talk about what happened.