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From the Daily Mail (UK)
Charles was happy to be a father to two children by his wife. Then she presented him with a third...and a fourth...a fifth and sixth. But when she fell pregnant a seventh time he KNEW the baby couldn't be his. So how many were?
With hindsight, retired police officer Charles Bostock knows exactly when he fell victim to his wife’s staggering betrayal.
"Sarah started pestering me for sex after a long period of little physical contact," he says.
"I remember thinking she was trying to be a loving wife, but now I realise she was covering her tracks because she knew she was pregnant by someone else - for the first time."
Back then, however, Charles had little reason to think anything was amiss.
The couple already had two children together and went on to have four more, sharing what seemed a blessed life on a rambling property in the West Country. He had always, he says, taken immense pride in his role as a loving father.
But when Sarah fell pregnant for the seventh time five years ago, his life imploded.
Charles knew with devastating certainty that he could not be the father - for by then the couple had not had a sexual relationship for some months.
After a bitter confrontation, his wife confessed that the pregnancy was the result of a one-night stand. Terrible enough after a long marriage, you may think. But worse was to come.
Last year, DNA tests ordered by his wife revealed that Charles was not the father of his four youngest children either.
They were the product of a secret 14-year affair his wife had been conducting with local businessman Richard Mills - the same man who had fathered her seventh child.
Sarah, 49, had known all along, but callously allowed her husband to believe they were his.
The discovery has sent shockwaves through the heart of the family.
The two eldest, Alison, now 26, and 24-year-old Charles junior, have left home.
But the four younger children who Charles also thought were his - now aged 12, ten, nine and six - live with their mother in the former
Charles, meanwhile, has been ****** to move out, and is facing his 70th birthday with only with his memories for company.
"Richard is beneath my contempt, but it’s Sarah I really blame," he says. "I now know she used me to raise her children.
"If she’d had the courage to tell me the truth at the start, I could have had a chance of rebuilding my life. Instead, she chose to continue her deception over the years.
"I gave her a home, children and a decent standard of life, and this is how she repaid me. The only way I can deal with it is to tell myself she’s ill."
But if you were expecting remorse from his former wife, you would be disappointed. Instead, Sarah Bostock claims she was only ever thinking of her family.
"I made a deliberate decision to have children by my lover and I would do it again if I had to," she said this week.
"As far as I’m concerned I was trying to do the right thing by the family by keeping us all together.
"If I was a selfish woman I would have left years ago, but I felt it was better for all the children to try to maintain status quo - not that it wasn’t terribly hard at times. But I have always tried to put their best interests first."
Its an astonishing sentiment - but for Charles Bostock, nothing much comes as a surprise now.
Today, his cramped council home in Bodmin, Cornnwall, is a far cry from the sixbedroom detached house a few miles away.
Together with his wife, Charles, a former Metropolitan police officer, moved there in the mid-Eighties from Surrey after an accident on his police motorbike, which meant he had to be pensioned out of the force.
"The move was Sarah’s idea actually," he recalls. "We had had happy times here on holiday and as nothing was tying us to Surrey it seemed like a good."
The couple met at a party held by a mutual friend and married in Woking 1979 following a two-year courtship.
Despite the near 20-year age gap, Charles believes they were happy.
"The age gap never bothered either of us," he says. "It was barely mentioned."
Two children, Alison and Charles, quickly followed.
"We had the typical family life — the children, dogs, a cat," Charles reflects.
"Sarah stayed at home while I got a job working as a council manager. We were happy."
Not, however, according to Sarah, who defended her actions by attacking Charles’s qualities as a husband.
"He did provide for us, yes, but what he didn’t give me was any fun, or affection, or real attention. He never wanted to go out and do anything."
An excuse for tricking him into raising another man’s four children? Few would think so.
Nevertheless, apparently without qualms, in 1989 Sarah began her affair with Richard Mills, who she met while taking her children swimming.
Like Sarah, Richard, now 46, was married with two children.
The two quickly became lovers - while agreeing, according to Sarah, that neither would leave their spouses.
"Richard had two young children and so did I. We enjoyed the excitement and lust and although there were deeper feelings, too, we made a point of not discussing them," she says.
"What was the point? We were committed to our respective domestic situations. Much as I would have liked to get out, I didn’t envisage leaving Charles because I didn’t want to upset the kids."
How ironic, then, that within a couple of years Sarah admits that she took the selfish decision to actively started trying for a baby with her lover.
"I was very broody and wanted Richard’s baby," she says.
"He said it wasn’t sensible but I went for it anyway. I instinctively knew that he would be fine with it and I was so desperate to have his child that I was prepared to take the risk.
"To be honest, Charles didn’t even come into it. I remember thinking I had to do something for my own happiness."
By 1993, Sarah had achieved her goal. She was pregnant.
It was at this point that she made the decision to "cover her tracks" and recommence what had been a sparse sexual partnership with her husband in order to facilitate the idea that the child was his.
"I don’t deny it was calculating," she says.
"In a funny way everyone was happy. Charles and I had discussed the idea of having more children."
A daughter, now 12, was born in 1994, followed in quick succession by another three children - a son and two more daughters.
"People ask me now if I had any idea what was going on but it’s so easy to miss the signs," says Charles. "All the children took after their mother, so I never I suspected a thing - why would I?
"Life was busy, I had a full-time job and a house full of kids. I wouldn’t say Sarah and I had an amazing relationship but it wasn’t bad, and I was perfectly content."
Sarah, meanwhile, continued to meet her lover in secret, sometimes even taking the younger children with her. She introduced their biological father as "Mummy’s friend".
Who knows how long this bizarre deception might have continued had the Bostocks’ domestic situation not come to a head in 2002 when Charles discovered Sarah was three months pregnant with what would be her seventh child.
This time, he knew there was no chance the baby could be his as the couple had not had sexual relations for nine months.
"Even then she tried to pretend," says Charles angrily.
"She said she’d had sex with me while I was asleep - it was rubbish. I felt completely numb.
"I pressed her to tell me who the father was, but she refused. I didn’t know what to do - I didn’t want to abandon my kids but it was also obvious the marriage was at an end."
After consulting a solicitor, a separation order was drawn up which allowed Charles to occupy a room in the house while Sarah and the children lived in the rest.
In another ironic stroke, it was also agreed that he would pay £400-amonth maintenance for ‘his’ four young children.
Only towards the end of the pregnancy, Charles maintains, did Sarah finally admit he wasn’t the father of the imminent arrival.
"She claimed it was a one-night stand and that the father didn’t want to know," he says.
"Later I got an anonymous phone call telling me it was a man called Richard Mills. But Sarah did not react when I confronted her with the name.
"Then, when the baby girl was born in 2002, I didn’t think I would want anything to do with her, but she was such a lovely little thing. I decided that if Sarah would let me, I would bring her up as one of ours.
"As far as I was concerned she had no contact with the baby’s father and there was a chance we could have a fresh start."
If he felt optimistic, however, he was mistaken.
"One night when the baby was a few months old Sarah came home and said she didn’t want a fresh start, she wanted me out," says Charles.
"I was flabbergasted. I had tried to do the right thing, this was my home too, and she was ordering me out."
When he refused, battle commenced.
"Suddenly there were no secrets any more. Sarah boasted about her lover, saying I was washed-up while he was virile and rich.
"She was trying to provoke me into leaving, but I had paid for this house and my family were there.
"I didn’t see why I should leave. I just couldn’t believe what was happening to me."
But Sarah claims her husband became verbally abusive towards her.
"When he talks of being a loving father it makes me laugh," she insists.
Charles furiously denies her accusations, saying that though there were fierce arguments in the house, as often as not, he insists, they were started by his wife.
He also categorically denies any violence but says Sarah called the police to the house on three occasions claiming he was being violent as part of a strategy to get him out.
The police discovered nothing amiss.
Charles was happy to be a father to two children by his wife. Then she presented him with a third...and a fourth...a fifth and sixth. But when she fell pregnant a seventh time he KNEW the baby couldn't be his. So how many were?
With hindsight, retired police officer Charles Bostock knows exactly when he fell victim to his wife’s staggering betrayal.
"Sarah started pestering me for sex after a long period of little physical contact," he says.
"I remember thinking she was trying to be a loving wife, but now I realise she was covering her tracks because she knew she was pregnant by someone else - for the first time."
Back then, however, Charles had little reason to think anything was amiss.
The couple already had two children together and went on to have four more, sharing what seemed a blessed life on a rambling property in the West Country. He had always, he says, taken immense pride in his role as a loving father.
But when Sarah fell pregnant for the seventh time five years ago, his life imploded.
Charles knew with devastating certainty that he could not be the father - for by then the couple had not had a sexual relationship for some months.
After a bitter confrontation, his wife confessed that the pregnancy was the result of a one-night stand. Terrible enough after a long marriage, you may think. But worse was to come.
Last year, DNA tests ordered by his wife revealed that Charles was not the father of his four youngest children either.
They were the product of a secret 14-year affair his wife had been conducting with local businessman Richard Mills - the same man who had fathered her seventh child.
Sarah, 49, had known all along, but callously allowed her husband to believe they were his.
The discovery has sent shockwaves through the heart of the family.
The two eldest, Alison, now 26, and 24-year-old Charles junior, have left home.
But the four younger children who Charles also thought were his - now aged 12, ten, nine and six - live with their mother in the former
Charles, meanwhile, has been ****** to move out, and is facing his 70th birthday with only with his memories for company.
"Richard is beneath my contempt, but it’s Sarah I really blame," he says. "I now know she used me to raise her children.
"If she’d had the courage to tell me the truth at the start, I could have had a chance of rebuilding my life. Instead, she chose to continue her deception over the years.
"I gave her a home, children and a decent standard of life, and this is how she repaid me. The only way I can deal with it is to tell myself she’s ill."
But if you were expecting remorse from his former wife, you would be disappointed. Instead, Sarah Bostock claims she was only ever thinking of her family.
"I made a deliberate decision to have children by my lover and I would do it again if I had to," she said this week.
"As far as I’m concerned I was trying to do the right thing by the family by keeping us all together.
"If I was a selfish woman I would have left years ago, but I felt it was better for all the children to try to maintain status quo - not that it wasn’t terribly hard at times. But I have always tried to put their best interests first."
Its an astonishing sentiment - but for Charles Bostock, nothing much comes as a surprise now.
Today, his cramped council home in Bodmin, Cornnwall, is a far cry from the sixbedroom detached house a few miles away.
Together with his wife, Charles, a former Metropolitan police officer, moved there in the mid-Eighties from Surrey after an accident on his police motorbike, which meant he had to be pensioned out of the force.
"The move was Sarah’s idea actually," he recalls. "We had had happy times here on holiday and as nothing was tying us to Surrey it seemed like a good."
The couple met at a party held by a mutual friend and married in Woking 1979 following a two-year courtship.
Despite the near 20-year age gap, Charles believes they were happy.
"The age gap never bothered either of us," he says. "It was barely mentioned."
Two children, Alison and Charles, quickly followed.
"We had the typical family life — the children, dogs, a cat," Charles reflects.
"Sarah stayed at home while I got a job working as a council manager. We were happy."
Not, however, according to Sarah, who defended her actions by attacking Charles’s qualities as a husband.
"He did provide for us, yes, but what he didn’t give me was any fun, or affection, or real attention. He never wanted to go out and do anything."
An excuse for tricking him into raising another man’s four children? Few would think so.
Nevertheless, apparently without qualms, in 1989 Sarah began her affair with Richard Mills, who she met while taking her children swimming.
Like Sarah, Richard, now 46, was married with two children.
The two quickly became lovers - while agreeing, according to Sarah, that neither would leave their spouses.
"Richard had two young children and so did I. We enjoyed the excitement and lust and although there were deeper feelings, too, we made a point of not discussing them," she says.
"What was the point? We were committed to our respective domestic situations. Much as I would have liked to get out, I didn’t envisage leaving Charles because I didn’t want to upset the kids."
How ironic, then, that within a couple of years Sarah admits that she took the selfish decision to actively started trying for a baby with her lover.
"I was very broody and wanted Richard’s baby," she says.
"He said it wasn’t sensible but I went for it anyway. I instinctively knew that he would be fine with it and I was so desperate to have his child that I was prepared to take the risk.
"To be honest, Charles didn’t even come into it. I remember thinking I had to do something for my own happiness."
By 1993, Sarah had achieved her goal. She was pregnant.
It was at this point that she made the decision to "cover her tracks" and recommence what had been a sparse sexual partnership with her husband in order to facilitate the idea that the child was his.
"I don’t deny it was calculating," she says.
"In a funny way everyone was happy. Charles and I had discussed the idea of having more children."
A daughter, now 12, was born in 1994, followed in quick succession by another three children - a son and two more daughters.
"People ask me now if I had any idea what was going on but it’s so easy to miss the signs," says Charles. "All the children took after their mother, so I never I suspected a thing - why would I?
"Life was busy, I had a full-time job and a house full of kids. I wouldn’t say Sarah and I had an amazing relationship but it wasn’t bad, and I was perfectly content."
Sarah, meanwhile, continued to meet her lover in secret, sometimes even taking the younger children with her. She introduced their biological father as "Mummy’s friend".
Who knows how long this bizarre deception might have continued had the Bostocks’ domestic situation not come to a head in 2002 when Charles discovered Sarah was three months pregnant with what would be her seventh child.
This time, he knew there was no chance the baby could be his as the couple had not had sexual relations for nine months.
"Even then she tried to pretend," says Charles angrily.
"She said she’d had sex with me while I was asleep - it was rubbish. I felt completely numb.
"I pressed her to tell me who the father was, but she refused. I didn’t know what to do - I didn’t want to abandon my kids but it was also obvious the marriage was at an end."
After consulting a solicitor, a separation order was drawn up which allowed Charles to occupy a room in the house while Sarah and the children lived in the rest.
In another ironic stroke, it was also agreed that he would pay £400-amonth maintenance for ‘his’ four young children.
Only towards the end of the pregnancy, Charles maintains, did Sarah finally admit he wasn’t the father of the imminent arrival.
"She claimed it was a one-night stand and that the father didn’t want to know," he says.
"Later I got an anonymous phone call telling me it was a man called Richard Mills. But Sarah did not react when I confronted her with the name.
"Then, when the baby girl was born in 2002, I didn’t think I would want anything to do with her, but she was such a lovely little thing. I decided that if Sarah would let me, I would bring her up as one of ours.
"As far as I was concerned she had no contact with the baby’s father and there was a chance we could have a fresh start."
If he felt optimistic, however, he was mistaken.
"One night when the baby was a few months old Sarah came home and said she didn’t want a fresh start, she wanted me out," says Charles.
"I was flabbergasted. I had tried to do the right thing, this was my home too, and she was ordering me out."
When he refused, battle commenced.
"Suddenly there were no secrets any more. Sarah boasted about her lover, saying I was washed-up while he was virile and rich.
"She was trying to provoke me into leaving, but I had paid for this house and my family were there.
"I didn’t see why I should leave. I just couldn’t believe what was happening to me."
But Sarah claims her husband became verbally abusive towards her.
"When he talks of being a loving father it makes me laugh," she insists.
Charles furiously denies her accusations, saying that though there were fierce arguments in the house, as often as not, he insists, they were started by his wife.
He also categorically denies any violence but says Sarah called the police to the house on three occasions claiming he was being violent as part of a strategy to get him out.
The police discovered nothing amiss.
