Alfie and Lilly were too little to know what was going on in our strange household, but I could tell that it was really affecting poor Maddie and Lee. After we returned from the safe house, Maddie moved back in with us and took over Gemma’s bedroom, and she was finding it tough at her school (which was not the one that Gemma went to). She was being bullied and had to deal with a constant stream of nasty comments about Gemma.
Luckily, there was a lovely woman called Mrs Dench at her school who helped her with pastoral care. Sue – we were quickly on first-name terms – used to run the ‘sanctuary’, which was a room where the kids could go to have some quiet time when they needed it. She and I discussed Maddie’s situation and she very kindly made a point of keeping me up to speed whenever Maddie was under too much pressure and allowed her as much sanctuary time as she needed. Sue was wonderful with Maddie and her constant email communication with me really reassured me.
Some people have asked me if I changed my parenting style as a result of what happened to Gemma. While I did in certain respects, I was already very protective about my children’s safety. I always tried to make sure that I knew where they were and would never allow them to do things like hang around the streets. What happened to Gemma had been beyond my control, although it took me a long time to accept that fact, especially as regards to those incriminating pictures of Forrest that she had on her phone.
After what happened with Gemma, I became a lot more cautious regarding Maddie’s male teachers. I asked her to tell me all about them – who they were, how old they were, what they looked like, how many lessons she had with them, etc. I had a real hang-up about the same thing happening to her, and I wanted to make sure that I knew all about them. Poor Maddie thought I was mad – to her, they were all ‘so old’ – but I couldn’t stop myself panicking about it.
Meanwhile, Lee was getting stressed out by how much attention he was getting because of Gemma. His colleagues at the shop where he worked were really respectful of his privacy, but he was often recognised by customers. It wasn’t that they bombarded him with questions or anything, but the mere fact that they would say ‘Hope your sister is alright’ was a constant reminder. When it became too much for him, he was moved to a different department so that he didn’t have to deal with the public. His bosses were great, but he wanted his old life back and eventually he applied for a different job.
It was another thing that Forrest had destroyed.
I just wanted the year to be over. It seemed to be one step forward and two steps back all the time. No matter how hard I tried, something else seemed to happen to slap me in the face.
Some time in November, Gemma came running downstairs with her laptop, shouting, ‘Look what I’ve found!’ The song that Forrest had written for her had been put up on his SoundCloud account. We had been under the impression that he had no access to any kind of social media while in police custody and couldn’t understand how on earth it had suddenly turned up there.
I was as freaked out about it as much as Gemma was and wondered if perhaps some sick individual had set up an account in his name and put it up as some kind of cruel joke. I asked the police to investigate and they got in touch with Forrest’s family, who later confirmed that his younger brother had been responsible. A day or so later, his brother tweeted: ‘Sorry if I offended by posting my brother’s song. My bad.’
A series of tweets then followed, which only added insult to injury. There was a link to a Lana Del Rey song that Gemma and Forrest really liked and a message along the lines of ‘For someone special, it was a song that was theirs’. Another followed with a reference to a Jools Holland show featuring Lana Del Rey that was going to be on that night. It had the message: ‘You can be sure he will be watching’.
Gemma was tuned into Twitter and the message really hit its target, once more spinning her into confusion. I got straight back in touch with Mark Ling, chief inspector for child protection, to ask if he could stop him. I so wanted to get life back to normal for Gemma and this was just more stress for all of us to deal with.
The police spoke to his father, Jim Forrest, and warned that further action would have to be taken if his younger son persisted in this kind of activity on social media, as it could be seen as intimidating a potential witness. That seemed to do the trick. The account was shut down and things, for a while, went back to ‘normal’.
On Monday, 3 December, Forrest appeared at Brighton Magistrates’ Court, again by videolink from Lewes Prison, and the case was committed to the Crown Court. As before, Forrest, did not enter a plea. He spoke only to confirm his name, date of birth and address, which was now in Petts Wood in south-east London. From this, I gathered that he and his wife had now separated and that he was using his parents’ address.
Another court appearance over and still no answers. It was punishingly slow. Neil Ralph was as surprised as I was about how little things had moved on with the case, but he assured me that there was nothing to worry about because the case against Forrest was so black and white. But I couldn’t understand why they felt the need to drag it all out so long; I wondered if it was just for the money and the publicity.
With Christmas coming up, I started making all the preparations for the holidays. Usually I love that time of year and go completely mad with loads and loads of food, the biggest tree we can possibly get and a crazy amount of presents for everyone. I was determined to make it extra-special for Lilly as this would be her first Christmas. I know she was too tiny to appreciate it, but her life hadn’t exactly got off to a good start so far. She had suffered with severe reflux when she was born and we almost lost her when she was five weeks old. Paul and I had to attend resuscitation classes to find out what to do in an emergency, and even had to put those skills into practice on one occasion. As if those first few months hadn’t been tough enough for her, there was all the Gemma drama, of course, which made me feel I hadn’t been totally there for her.
In the end, and probably not that surprisingly, it was the worst Christmas we have ever had. Somehow we all managed to pick up flu viruses – I think we were just exhausted by everything that had been going on over the previous weeks. In some ways, it was good to be forced to take it easy and have a quieter Christmas than we would normally have had. We spoiled the kids rotten as usual, but it was much more low-key. With everything that was going on, we really didn’t feel like celebrating.
One of the nicest things to happen was a phone call I received on Thursday, 27 December from Mark Ling, checking that we were all OK. It was lovely to know that the police were still thinking of us. They knew, of course, that things weren’t about to get any easier for us as we got closer to Forrest’s trial, though.