That was until the children were gone. I worked harder and harder to keep the house spotless for your weekly inspections. I bought complex washing powder and endlessly researched fabric conditioner to find out which would make their clothes smell nice after you said they were musty.

I’d asked the children why they had new clothes. They’d looked at each other and said that Daddy liked to buy them things. I’d asked them who chose the clothes and they stared at me. Charlie’s arms were very straight by his sides. Laura was blinking at me.

‘Daddy says we can’t tell you. It’s for your own good.’

I sat on my haunches in front of them.

‘Look, you two, whatever Daddy says, I love you. For ever. It doesn’t matter who chooses the clothes. I’m your mummy and I love you.’

I gathered my scared-stiff children towards me. They didn’t bend in my arms; they were just waiting for me to let them go. It made me worse, knowing that you were turning them against me too. I’d told myself that whatever you did to me, eventually you would get bored and leave me alone. It would be over and then I could start the healing process. Get over it. Let it go.

It just carried on. The judging and the thinly veiled threats. Wiping your finger across the top of the lounge door as you stared at me. Picking up a hair from the stair carpet. Looking me up and down like I was a piece of shit. Then making me believe that it had all been a big mistake and that you loved me again.

I ironed into the early hours and got up at six o’clock to clean. Even through the divorce proceedings, when I realised that you were trying to drive me mad. Even though I wasn’t, you’d made me look like I was. You even told the courts that I had obsessive compulsive disorder. That I was an obsessive cleaner.

In the end, the thing that lost me my kids was me. I can picture myself in that room, crying and wailing. Shouting out my denials and my solicitor telling me to calm down. In fact, I was a mirror to everything you and your mother were saying. Unbalanced. Neurotic. Obsessive. You didn’t produce any evidence at all, but the state of me that day was enough.

All the hard work you did, wearing me down, bullying me, hurting me, manipulating me, it all paid off that day. It was all left open, of course. No one said that I couldn’t see my kids, which only leaves one conclusion, doesn’t it – that I chose not to.