With unlined curtains providing no barrier to the light whatsoever, I awoke to the glare of the morning sun and the sound of murmuring coming from downstairs.  The hushed tones were indicative of people trying hard not to be heard.  It didn't matter anyway as I couldn't hear what they were saying through the exchange of high and low pitched murmurs.  Forgetting them for a moment, I turned over on my back.  As I stared at the ceiling I began to wonder, I mean really wonder, where I'd gone.  Where had I actually gone and what would it take, what would it actually take, to get me back.  Not only that, I wondered whether there was anything worth getting back or whether my life from now on would be any other way.  Suddenly, the smell of fresh coffee interrupted my thoughts as did the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.  Following a gentle knock at the bedroom door, my sister, Sas, popped her head in to let me know Paul had made a fresh pot of coffee and asked if I wanted to join them.  To my croaky response that I'd be down shortly, Sas closed the door and went back downstairs.  

My thoughts then turned to Jenny's distress at seeing me leave the previous day and the promise I made to her which I'd never fulfil.  The only condition she'd made to our marriage was that at some point in the future I'd help her realise a personal ambition to relocate to Denver, Colorado.  Reneging on my promise, I fled America and now found myself languishing in a bed at my sister's house without the slightest idea of what to do now.  Firstly, however, I had to face up to the gamut of emotions, from anger and tears to complete dismay, expressed by Jenny each time she phoned me during the weeks that followed.  I couldn't yet find the answers she needed and so she stopped asking the questions and eventually ceased calling.  With Jenny subsequently finalising our divorce and moving to Denver later that year, it would be eight and a half years before I'd hear from either her or Ron again.

Despite any real idea of what to do next, I knew that anti-depressants had made my life, and the lives of those around me, hell for the past three-and-a-half years and so I had to come off them for good.  What I didn't know was that this must be done gradually and not cold turkey.  Had I known that I would've avoided some unpleasant side effects, the worst of which was an uncomfortable pulsating sensation in my head followed by what felt like a lightening strike, which temporarily impaired my vision.  Nonetheless, an environment conducive to healing brought about an eventual improvement in my sleep which made the days more bearable and saw my mood finally start to lift.  In the weeks and months that followed, with the ability to experience the sensation of feeling connected to myself and to others beginning to return, I found myself gradually coming back to life.  

Yet, despite my emergence from the lowest point in my life so far, I became fearful of finding myself back in that dark place again and wondered what I'd have to do in order to safeguard myself.  Time would aid my comprehension in this regard and enable me to understand how a tendency to depression would always be the elephant in the room.  Moreover, I'd come to realise the importance of recognising my triggers, for instance feeling trapped, constrained or unempowered and their mitigation by endeavouring to stay out of my head, taking regular exercise, having a purpose and giving to others.  So, with a desire to discover a purpose and give to others reinvigorated, I took a major step in the process of restoring connectivity. 

Following my involvement with bereaved children in hospice, in October, 2001, I took on the role of a residential social worker in a children's home run by a Kent based company called Castle Homes.  Although based at a rented property south of Maidstone known as 'Court Lodge', I could expect to be sent at a moment's notice to any of the other three intensive support homes around the county.  Intensive support homes, or ISPs as they were otherwise known, were designed to provide intensive support to one or two children aged between ten and sixteen years who, on account of their challenging behaviour, required constant adult supervision.  

To what extent my own troubled childhood played a part in my new career choice, I cannot truly say.  Nonetheless, I found myself pondering such questions as what it would take for the various children to turn their lives around, what they needed me to be and whether what they needed me to be was characteristically me, or something I could be.  Whatever it was, I had the sense from what my own childhood had lacked that boundaries played a crucial role.  Moreover, I soon learnt the importance of enforcing boundaries that could be subsequently relaxed as opposed to starting off lax then attempting to enforce boundaries later on.  I'd take my cue from the children themselves as to the extent to which that had worked when it came to them saying goodbye to me before moving on to their next placement.     

The child already in placement at Court Lodge by the time I joined I'd already met following my interview for the role.  Twelve-year-old Andy came to Maidstone from the Birmingham area having been removed by children's services from his heroin dependent mother.  To say nothing of the psychological abuse Andy had suffered, he came to Court Lodge with such horrific scaring in the crook of one elbow that he required skin grafts to heal the injury.  According to the case history report in his file, while experiencing the effects of heroin withdrawal, Andy's mum would inflict upon him the most appalling physical and emotional abuse.  

So challenging was Andy's behaviour that he couldn't be placed in a mainstream children's home and was considered unsuitable for fostering until his behaviour improved.  Being the only child in Court Lodge for much of his placement enabled staff to do some good work with Andy.  Alas, all the good work would be swiftly undone when a fifteen-year-old boy named Roy came to stay on a short-term placement just before Christmas.  While there, Roy wielded the kind of disruptive influence which galvanised Andy, following Roy's departure, to assault staff over Christmas which led to criminal proceedings being brought against him and his placement at Court Lodge subsequently terminated.

While our success with Andy may have been limited, my experience with him and the others in our charge taught me how with children in care there are no instant fixes and that much of our work involved planting seeds, which may or may not ever germinate.  With each new child placed at Court Lodge, the boundaried approach I employed brought me into regular conflict with children who'd had so much control over their own lives that when suddenly met with boundaries and all the control taken away, they hit a brick wall.  I lost count of the number of times I began a forty-eight hour shift, which included two sleep-in duties, in a restraint with a child on the lounge floor for having said 'no' to something or other, while, in other instances, they hit out in apparent frustration at my having left at the end of my last shift or would employ violence as a means by which to prevent me from leaving at end of my current shift.  Either way, once it was safe to release a child from the restraint in which I had them held, I'd often remark that if it was a cuddle they really wanted, why didn't they just ask? 

Crucially, my time working in residential child care provided two particularly important insights to which I could personally relate.  Firstly, I found myself struck by the lengths most children so horrifically damaged by their parents would go to in order to be reunited with the very people who'd committed the worst violations against them.  The devotion of a child to their parent, even when the behaviour of the parent is so utterly damaging to the child, can be immensely difficult to overcome.  In their reactions towards their parents I recognised my reactions towards my own psychologically damaged mother.  Similarly striking was the tendency of the children to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, even on those occasions when they were caught red-handed. Consequently, I theorised that with their having been blamed and so brutally punished for things they hadn't done, when it came to accepting responsibility for the things they had done, they couldn't.  Again, I'd witnessed the same behaviour as a child from my mother, someone who remained very much a damaged child herself and when comparing their behaviour to hers, it all seemed to make perfect sense.    

After eighteen months of being a guardian, a protector, an educator, a disciplinarian and a punchbag, and having been promoted in that time to the post of senior residential social worker, I began to grow weary.  In manner of similar physically and emotionally demanding jobs, this one also had a shelf-life in addition to which I felt I'd learned as much as I could in this instance.  Perhaps the most eye-opening revelation during my time at Court Lodge was the considerable weekly sum that various children's services around the country were paying to place a child in our care.  While the fee on a one child one carer basis alone was high, this sum would virtually double should the child require the care of two social workers, in order to ensure that Castle Homes would not lose money.  While this realisation had provided me with some insight into the transference of services from the public to the private sector, it would not be the last time I'd bear witness to the excruciating financial burden private enterprise places on local authorities.  So, the tantrums, the abuse and the restraints which characterised most of my time at Court Lodge aside, I took heart from every child who told me they hated my guts right up until when the time came for them to say goodbye to me, at which point they'd suddenly burst into tears.

Come April, 2003, it would be my turn to move on, although the seeds of my departure had been sown just over a year earlier, during Christmas, 2001.  At this time, I came across a news article regarding a Leeds man named Kevin Jackson, who died after being stabbed in the head with a screwdriver while trying to prevent three car thieves from stealing his father-in-law's car.  Having been stabbed in the head and beaten with a wooden plank, the father of two was left in the road in a pool of blood and died on New Year's Day, 2002. While stories of violent crime had by now become commonplace, for some reason this particular story shocked me to the extent that it remained in the back of my mind throughout the year.  

The story of Kevin Jackson's appallingly violent death coincided with me being invited at the beginning of 2002 to join an LGBT advisory group set up by Kent Police.  Chaired by the chief inspector of Maidstone police station and attended by gay and lesbian officers and local residents, the advisory group had been created to establish better links between police and LGBT people living in the town.  The level of concern and interest demonstrated by the chief inspector coupled with the important work undertaken by his liaison officers impressed me sufficiently to want to become more involved and support them in their endeavours.   Rather unexpectedly, my interest in the police began to progress beyond advisory groups and towards the end of the year I surprised myself by completing an application to join Kent Constabulary.  

In my suspicions that getting into the police wouldn't be plain sailing, I was not to be disappointed.  While my recent experience working in a children's home appeared to stand me in good stead, the sticking point was my medical history, as detailed in the subsequent rejection letter I received from Kent Police's recruitment department.  The rejection focussed specifically on my asthma, which had afflicted me more as a child than it had as an adult and by now my symptoms were few and far between.  Following my petition to the chief inspector, he explained the perversity of the situation in that I wouldn't be kicked out of the force if I were to develop asthma after joining whereas a diagnosis of asthma prior to application would be an automatic disbar.  Even the chief inspector's appeal to the head of recruitment wouldn't be enough to sway their decision.  However, all was not lost when the chief inspector advised me to consider looking further afield and when I asked him which force I should try, he recommended Thames Valley Police.

Being the largest non-metropolitan policing area and bordering London's Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley's policing area encompassed the home counties of Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire.  With responsibility for roads policing of the M25, royal protection duties around Windsor Castle, not to mention the resources required for policing cities and large towns such as Reading, Slough, Maidenhead, Oxford and Milton Keynes, Thames Valley Police (TVP) became the next force to which I'd submit an application.  Despite my asthma diagnosis, my chances of being accepted by TVP were increased on account of its proximity to the Met.  Fortuitously, TVP had a retention problem on account of the regular exodus of officers who, once fully trained and out of their two-year probationary period, would travel the ten-mile distance to the Met border every working day.  For their efforts they'd receive an additional £10,000 a year in their pay packets while in Thames Valley I could expect as a fully fledged officer to earn approximately £23,000 annually.  Put simply, TVP had difficulties keeping bums on seats, so with some degree of confidence I submitted my application form.

My optimism would be short-lived when, a few weeks later, I received a second rejection letter once again on the basis of my asthma.  Around this time I'd undergone a rigorous exercise routine which included seven-mile runs three days a week and as a result I'd never been fitter.  After poring over the rejection letter and my adrenaline levels had dropped sufficiently, with righteous indignation, I set about writing a searing rebuttal of their concerns, chief among which was any potentially adverse asthmatic reaction I might have to CS spray.  As if guided by some unknown force, whatever it was I stated in my letter had the desired effect when, a few days later, I received a reply inviting me to attend a recruitment day at the force's training headquarters at Sulhamstead, just outside Reading in Berkshire.

  
Occurring at the start of 2003, the recruitment day began with scenario based exercises whereby potential recruits would read information on cards taped to the door of six rooms.  Referred to as a 'rotation station', each room contained a different incident that each potential recruit would have to enter and resolve.  A fitness test followed the rotation station scenarios, both of which preceded the police initial recruitment test of maths and English in the afternoon.  After receiving a letter a few weeks later informing me I'd passed the recruitment day, I returned to Sulhamstead, or 'Sully' as it was affectionately known, for a formal interview.  Having successfully passed every stage of the recruitment process, Thames Valley Police consequently made me an offer of employment.  

Hardly able to comprehend my success, I read the information in my acceptance letter over and over detailing the eighteen weeks of foundation training I'd undertake prior to my posting to High Wycombe police station in Buckinghamshire.  Considering my emotional state upon returning to the UK just under two years earlier, nothing could have seemed more unlikely than being on the cusp of joining the police.  With high hopes that this would turn out to be my job for life, I counted down the days until my official start date on 7th April, 2003.  Little did I know then that instead of being my job for life, supposedly the best job in the world, I was about to jump from the frying pan head first into the kind of fire which would lead me eventually to commit the boldest act of my life followed by the most explosive consequences I'd ever had to face.