Charlie was crying, running away, and I chased him. Out onto the road, leaving six-year-old Laura crying in a fast-food restaurant. On the CCTV outside I could see myself crying and shouting after him as he ran as fast as he could. Afterwards, he said that I was shouting swearwords, but anyone could see from the CCTV that I was shouting, ‘I love you, Charlie.’ I love you.

It took the police two hours to find him. He was hiding behind a skip at the end of the road that led to your mother’s house. Naturally, social services were involved and I attended on automatic pilot, because by then I knew it was a lost cause. You told them that Charlie said he had seen me drinking. That I had a bottle in my handbag and was pouring it into my McDonald’s Coke.

The gap between Charlie and Laura and me was widening with a joint effort of nastiness from you and your mother. It was the last bastion of normality for me, a kind of metric that I would measure each day against. The children. I had to be OK for the children.

You knew that. I could see it in your eyes. At the final hearing, when you flew back from Argentina and turned up with your bent lawyer, even though it was an informal, civil matter, I knew that you knew that it was the final crack that shattered me. Everyone said how sorry they were that I couldn’t be trusted to see my own children unsupervised, and they hoped that I would get help for my drinking.

The social worker didn’t look entirely convinced, and I hung my hope on her until the very last second. The options were that either I could see Charlie and Laura supervised by social services or I shouldn’t be allowed to see them until it had been decided they were ready and I had sought help.

My department head, Professor Linda Cox, had written a letter in my support and it was this that flashed a beacon of hope. My not seeing the children was discounted as I had three character references that told the truth about me. That I loved my kids and this blip was because things had been rough. That I would be helped and supported. That I was still doing my job well.

You didn’t like that. Just when you thought you had destroyed me completely, someone was sticking up for me. And for your mother it had become a battle. A battle to make sure that her martyrdom reached new heights at any cost. I saw you exchange glances with her and my heart sank as I watched her shift into the familiar attack stance.