‘How do you tell teenage children that their father’s been accused of sexual abuse?’

At the time it had seemed like a good idea to take advantage of the fortnight’s holiday we get in October now that our authority’s gone on to the four-term year, so I’d booked a cottage just outside Brighton. I’d thought this would be a perfect place because if we got tired of doing stuff around and about it wasn’t far up to London and the shops and the museums and what have you. We hadn’t had much time as a family during the summer because the kids were on various camps and sports activities – all at different times of course – and Rob had been busy getting ready to start his new job as head of science at Bouchard High, so I was looking forward to the break and to us all being together. It was a lovely cottage too, really luxurious and much more expensive than anywhere we’d been before but I’d decided to push the boat out because the new job meant quite a bit more money and since Bouchard is much, much closer to home than Leesmith was, we were saving on driving costs too.