This is a story about a year in my life. A year when everything fell apart. But this story is not about that. This story is about how we put it all back together again. A story of love defeating hate, loyalty battling desire but most of all, it’s a story about a family. And that family is mine.

It was a Wednesday afternoon when I came home from Sainsbury to find my brother having sex with my little sister. It was, you could say, a bit of a shock. I believe I screamed “What the FUCK are you doing?” before running from the room.

 I felt sick, upset, confused, worried and scared. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Not to our family. We were normal. We’d had our share of tragedy, of course but this surely added to our normality. Being a one parent family from 1998, 11 years later we had all dealt with our hand in life. 4 kids, one mum. Easy.

But that afternoon, my ‘normal’ family had been torn apart. Ripped down the middle. I could almost hear my world crumbling around my ankles.

What to do now? Tell mum, the rational part of my brain screamed as loudly as it could. But- could I? Should I bring this all down on her? My answer came in the form of Heather. My best girl friend. Only living 5 minutes away we spent a lot of most school holidays together. Neither if our families especially well off, we never went skiing or to Spain. We stayed in Norwood, wandered around and smoked Richmond Superkings round the back of Sainsburys. We only needed each other, and maybe my mum’s cooking.

I’d got Esther out of the room, leaving Thomas alone and sat her down in the kitchen. With the biggest smile I was capable of, I poured her an ice-cream soda (ironically the treat, Heather and I had gone to the shop to buy for both the kids, while we babysat) with shaking hands, and tried to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault. It was then that she did it. As Esther picked bits of ice-cream of her straw, Heather looked me in the eyes and said “Babe, you can’t deal with this on your own” and I knew she was right.

We all cried that afternoon, Heather, Esther and I, sitting in the kitchen weeping into Vanilla Coke.

Thomas stayed alone in the living room.

I had to talk to Esther though, had to ask her some questions or I thought I was going to explode. It was a choice between having to get some answers or going back into the living room and tearing Thomas’ bollocks off myself.

“Baby girl, look at me” I started, Heather watching anxiously as I took hold of Esther’s hands. “You HAVE to realise that this is not your fault ok? You have to tell me what happened.” The crying started again and I realised that this wasn’t going to be easy, but if she was going to talk to anyone, it would be me. We had always been so close. Dad’s decision that marriage and kids wasn’t his cup of tea, coinciding with Esther being born and mum having to cope with being alone with 4 children under 7 the youngest of which was lying in hospital, with the doctors predicting her imminent death had, understandably caused Mum to fall into a deep depression. Consequently, on Esther’s release from hospital, the tiny bundle became mine. Me, aged just 7 held her in my chubby little arms and knew I would never let anything happen to her. 10 years later, and we were still as close as ever. She still slept in my bed almost every night and she told me everything. 10 years later, on the 27^th May 2008 I held my baby girl in bigger chubby arms and knew I had let her down, she had never told me about this.