by KATHRYN KNIGHT

Last updated at 08:57 23 March 2007

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 forced 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.

By spring 2005, circumstances had become intolerable and after receiving an Occupation Order, which he did not contest because he says he had lost the will by that point, Charles was forced to leave the marital home, moving into

a former council house with his eldest son Charles.

"It was a horrible transition. Overnight, I’d gone from seeing my kids all the time to seeing them once a week when Sarah could be bothered to drop them off."

If that was hard to swallow, however, there was a final bombshell which made him realise

that much of his family life had been a lie.

Last summer, Charles was told by his 12-year-old daughter that she and the other children had had swabs taken by Richard.

"I was baffled and immediately rang my solicitor to get him to find out what was going on. A few weeks later the children came to see me again and the eldest told me: ‘You aren’t our father.

Richard is'."

The same day, Charles’s solicitor confirmed his worst fears.

"I was devastated. How do you cope with news like that?"

Desperately hoping there had been a mistake, Charles ordered separate tests, which confirmed he was not the father of four of the

children he’d raised as his own.

"In just one moment I stopped being Dad to my kids. They are confused, and at the moment I

barely see them.

"The 12-year-old refuses point blank to see me at all as she believes I deliberately lied to

her about not being her dad."

Sarah, however, remains unrepentant.

"When we told the children they took it really well. My fifth child by Richard already knew

who her father was, while the others seemed relatively unfazed by the news.

"I’m lucky in that my kids are happy and well-adjusted. They are all doing brilliantly at

school."

But is it really that simple?

Meanwhile, not content to stop at seven children, Sarah has gone on to have another baby by Mills, a boy now five-months-old.

While in another twist to the tale, Mr Mills

has been publicly accused of having affairs with two other women - claims he denies.

Finally divorced from Charles, Sarah remains in the marital home, although it is due to be sold

as part of the financial settlement, with Sarah receiving 61 per cent of the proceeds.

Richard Mills is also now divorced, although he has not yet moved in fully with Sarah.

"I didn’t want to force him on the children so he stays two or three nights a week as well as

during the day when he has the chance," she says.

"But we do plan to live together as a family."

That he is living only part-time with Sarah is but cold comfort to Charles Bostock.

"He is still in my house, bringing up the children I consider to be mine, while I live in a council house with my eldest son.

"It’s hard for him and my daughter Alison because they feel torn. They are horrified by what their mother did but don’t want to cut her out of their lives completely.

"What she has done has affected so many lives."

It is impossible to disagree.