Mystery solved

Oh my god, I can't beleive it. I need to scream at someone or hit someone . Martin has been arrested and taken to Nottingham (where he was living until he moved to Walsall about 6 months ago) He is charged with sexual activity with a child.

I would love to say it couldn't possibly be true, but unfortunately , it does make sense of some things that seemed very weird - including why he had to leave his flat in Walsall so suddenly. Unfortunately he ended up living at Steve's house because Steve wanted to be nice and help a friend who was in trouble.

I can believe this is nothing more than Martin having bad judgment and getting invlved with a girl who he thought was over 16 but wasn't. But there is no doubt he is immature sexually (to put it kindly) and is only comfrtable with girls much younger than him. Reading between the lines it is possible he was abused as a child, and he has always said he enjoys working with kids. His ambition was to open a nursery. There are so many traits that you woud say in a comfirmed paedophile were clear markers of his preferences. Was I niaive to miss the signs in Martin??

So all Steve's plans had to be put on hold today when I rang him to tell him what had happened. The arest happened at the house, and Marti has te keys to the house with him, and the police took his laptop - except it was an old laptop of mine I had lent him - to be nice to a friend in trouble.

The Alan who left us the note is Martin's adopted father. So I had the unpleasant task of telling them a) that we knew what had happened thanks to the arrest sheet left at the house, and that b)regretfully we wanted everything to do with Martin (including his cat) out of the house asap. Since I was a parent trying to protect her grown up son as best she could, talking to another parent who was doing the same the call was easier than I thought it would be. Steve was too angry to talk to them. So they are coming round later today to collect clothes and papers and are going to make arrangments to move all his furniture as soon as possible . What will happen to the cat is anyone's guess. Last resort would be for us to adopt her.

On the plus side, it does mean Martin is now gone from the house - and I was beggining to worry about how he was going to e removed. So there is a silver lining to all this.

But we have to decide what to tell everyone we know who knows Martin about why he is suddenly persona non grata . I don't want to spread gratuitous gossip - after all he is innocent until proved guilty.

Steve is angry and feels Martin betrwayed his trust. Clearly he (and we) were lied to by Martin. But te other silver lining to this is that after this - almost nothing can faze Steve - because he will already have dealt with things far worse than he can possibly face in the future.

We are all busy deleting Martin from our FB accounts and all three of us feel we never want anything to do with him again. A frend is going to get and fit a new front door lock so the keys Martin has will be useless anyway.

I had to make up a story to explain to Edna why I couldn;t over today. She sounded aweful so in a bit I muct ring the wardnes and find out what is going on with her. But I have cancelled my activities for tommorrow so I can just chill without rushng anywhere. I am knackered, fed up, worried, angry, upset.... you name it I am feeling it.