There had clearly been a significant amount of contact, probably mostly by telephone but occasionally in person, between Marie and I during those first few weeks of your life because by the time you were eight weeks old, Marie was ready to leave her marital home.

I remember that day very clearly.  I was so nervous that her husband might turn up during the hour or so it took us to load up my car.  We bundled up all of those things which were important and necessary to both you and Marie.  A mixture of clothes, new born baby paraphernalia and toys, and packed them into those large black plastic bags which are used as refuse bin liners and packed everything into my car.

I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible and couldn't get everything into the car quick enough.  My heart was pounding and I could feel that kind of adrenaline rush that one has occasionally when one is in a particularly fraught situation.

By complete contrast Marie seemed so much more controlled and not at all put out by the course of events we had entered into.  I seem to remember her thinking it funny the heightened state of concern I had got myself into.

Still, at last everything was packed and before too long we were on our way up the Motorway to Manchester.

As usual we chatted all the way home.  It usually took around three and a half hours or so to get to Manchester but it passed very quickly.

I lived in an apartment on a development which used to be the Docks in Manchester.  Since the mid 1970's Manchester's docks had laid mostly derelict but towards the end of the 1980's they were transformed into a modern area of houses, restaurants and offices.  I bought my flat in 1989 so had lived there for a couple of years already.

Clearly though, I didn't have the kind of things in my apartment to accommodate eight week old babies.  My apartment was on the second floor (directly above and to the right of the arch in the photo), so getting your pram up and down was a bit of an issue.  The second bedroom had two single beds in it so in order to make you comfortable we took one of the mattresses off one of the single beds and laid it on the floor between the two.  This made for quite a cosy little bed for you, as the mattress fit snugly between the beds, such that the sides of the beds stopped you from rolling off the mattress.

It was winter time, so it became dark outside quite early in the evening.  The contrast of the cold outside with the warm inside and the dimmed house lights made the apartment feel even more like an oasis of warmth and calm.  I've never forgotten the feeling of peace and tranquillity which existed in the apartment having you there, particularly when you were sleeping.  We would talk quietly so as not to wake you and have mellow music playing.  And although you would be sleeping in another room, your presence was there with us as a constant reminder that we had a vulnerable dependent baby whose needs were paramount to anything else.

If you ask Marie what she remembers about that week she would probably say that the floor boards were really squeaky and that she probably walked three times the distance she needed to, to get to the large Sainsbury's supermarket

The floorboards in the apartment had always squeaked when walked over and whilst you were sleeping we'd always be aware that they could wake you.  I had lived there for so long that I'd stopped noticing it, but having someone point it out made it seem even more noisy than it actually was.  I would have little routes through the apparent where I knew that I could walk without the floorboards squeaking too badly !

On one of the first days in the apartment I had gone to work and Marie was left with you.  She decided to go on a shopping trip to the local Sainsbury's, which was only a mile away, so a 20 minute walk at the most with you in the pram.  Well Marie took a wrong turning somewhere along the way and I seem to remember her taking closer to an hour to get there.  It wasn't a difficult route, hardly any turns at all, but when you're new in a city it can be easy to get dis-oriented, which she managed to do very well.

As the week went on, it was clear that Marie had been doing some thinking about her situation and despite the fact that everything seemed to be just fine, I remember a conversation which we had regarding what she was going to tell you about this time, when you were old enough.  She told me that it would be better if she could say that she had left the man we then thought was your father, because she didn't love him, it wasn't right and she needed to leave him for everybody's sake, without the added complication of another man interfering with the reasons.

I must say that I was very reluctant to accept this, but accept it I did because this was a very traumatic time for everyone, especially Marie who was at the centre of it all, and I didn't want to encourage her into doing anything which she didn't want to do.  She'd had enough of being told what to do in her marriage and I thought the most constructive thing I could do at that time was to support her in whatever she felt was right.  This is one of those hindsight moments.  If I knew then what I know now, and to be fair if Marie knew then what she knows now, things might have been very different.

Well at the end of a fabulous week in my life, I reluctantly took her back down south, to stay with her brother John.

I felt almost like a taxi service, especially when I got to John's house.  John knew nothing of me or my relationship with Marie.  When we arrived at his house he came out to meet us, we took all of the things from the car and with the briefest of farewell's I left to return to Manchester.  It was a long and lonely drive back.

I think I felt sure that things would work out in the end, so I was reluctant but happy to go along with it.  But the experience of having you live with me for that short but happy week was never to be repeated and I have, to this point (November 2002) never enjoyed the privilege of having you spend so much time with me again.

I live in hope.