Claire was taken aback when she found out Joshua had admitted to having taken drugs that night. Chris and Claire had always talked openly about drugs to Joshua – they both knew they were absolutely rife in Manchester and had agreed to get ahead of it rather than pretend they didn’t exist. Joshua had always said he’d had no interest. They knew he drank a little at parties because he told them openly that he did. At that time, Claire remembered feeling proud that they had such an honest and communicative relationship with their son. Joshua had even told them of the night he’d gone too far and was so hungover the next day he vowed never to drink that much again.

So, what the hell had gone wrong that Joshua had gone to a party with a strange girl and taken coke? Joshua was all set to take his A levels and go on to one of the best universities in the country. Why was this happening? It just didn’t make sense. She’d read every parenting book so how had she got it so wrong?

The night Joshua was kept in custody overnight, Claire couldn’t sleep at all, wondering about him in the dank cell. She must have drifted off eventually because when she woke up, it took her a few minutes to realise her new reality: her son was in jail being prosecuted for rape.

They eventually released him on bail. Livingstone communicated everything. He called her or Chris regularly, keeping them updated – witnesses, people at the party, their testimonies. It all started to blur and Claire having previously known the case inside out only seemed to have enough mental energy to focus on her son. But Claire felt reassured by Livingstone – he was calm and capable, exactly what Claire needed. And there were some words of his that she hung on to the most: there was no forensic evidence, it was all circumstantial. But still, Claire knew, whatever the outcome, her son’s life would never be the same again.

45

‘One of the floppy-haired guys was pretty pissed off when he saw Rose dancing with Lee. He started shouting at Rose. The music in the party was loud that I couldn’t really hear what he said. Give Lee credit, he didn’t seem to take it personally and didn’t retaliate. The other guy though was getting pretty heated until his mates pulled him away towards the kitchen. Posh knob.

‘Rose seemed to like the attention though. She carried on dancing with Lee and then another random girl started dancing with Rose and that seemed to be the end of it. I stayed around for another twenty minutes and assumed posh knob and his mates had fucked off back to wherever they came from and decided to go home as well. I told Rose I was leaving and she gave me a hug and carried on dancing.