I refused to consider divorce - partly due to my pride, but largely due to my faith. I suspected that God saw things differently from me, that it was worth hanging in. It was.

As we've worked through many experiences, I've jotted down for myself some rules of thumb.

We walk down that path each day - my six-year-old daughter and I - on her way to school. We must have passed within feet of the dead body. They cordoned off the path and we came home from school another way.

I was determined that my father should not get away with his action and I gradually turned my younger brothers and sisters against him and his second wife.

Two days after the wedding they sat and looked at each other in an empty room: `Why have we got married? There is nothing to make a life with.'

I used to imagine motherhood as a very narrow field -but I have found I have experienced a broad range of human emotions, and felt things I never thought possible.