Our Lives
I was grateful when a family friend offered to help with childcare. Then my daughter told me something shocking and my world fell apart.
My friend Aimee and I raised our glasses and clinked them together.
‘Cheers!’ she said.
Aimee and her hubby Thomas had thrown a party at their place for a friend’s birthday and I was enjoying letting my hair down while my daughter Penelope, three, played with their kids in the garden.
Being mums had bonded Aimee and I when we’d met while working together a few years earlier.
I was a single mum, but Aimee and Thomas had both welcomed me in. Penelope and I loved hanging out with them and their children. We got on so well, they felt more like family.
The following year, I began struggling to juggle work and find childcare for Penelope when I needed it.
When I told Aimee, she said: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take Penelope for you.’
They began looking after her regularly and whenever I dropped her off, she’d run straight to Thomas.
‘How are you, darling?’ he’d ask, scooping her up.
It was lovely that she felt so comfortable with him and Aimee. I felt she was in safe hands with them too.
Then, a few months on, I was getting Penelope ready for bed, when I noticed something strange in her underwear.
Must be the soap we’re using, I thought, making a note to try some different brands. But it carried on, so I took her to the GP.
‘It could be an allergic reaction,’ he suggested.
So, I stocked up on soaps for sensitive skin, hoping that might help.
When Penelope started school the following year, she went to breakfast and afterschool clubs when I was working.
But then the pandemic hit, and struggling with childcare again, Aimee and Thomas kindly stepped in to help.
Whenever I picked Penelope up, Aimee would say: ‘She’s upstairs with Thomas. They’re obsessed with that computer game.’
But one day, when I told Penelope I was taking her over there, she burst into tears.
‘Please don’t make me go,’ she begged.
‘Mummy has to work, sweetheart,’ I said.
But she’d never been upset about going before.
She began struggling to sleep too and became terrified of the dark.
‘I’ve bought her four nightlights, but she still wakes up screaming,’ I told a friend.
I didn’t know what to do.
And there was something else concerning. I’d started finding blood in her underwear sometimes too.
Then one day, I was chatting to Penelope, now seven, about her day when she blurted out: ‘I saw naked photos on Thomas’s computer.’
Surely Thomas wasn’t watchin
