A court in China has offered the parents of a British man murdered by his Chinese wife the heartbreaking choice of whether to take one of his two young children home to the UK while leaving the other behind.

Ian and Linda Simpson, from Suffolk, are fighting for custody of both Jack, 8, and Alice, 6, who have been living with their maternal grandparents in the Chinese countryside since their father Michael, 34, was stabbed to death in March 2017.

The couple, who travelled to Nanzhang, central China, for a custody hearing this week, have said they do not want to “split the children.”

The siblings are reported to be unaware of what has happened to their parents. Weiwei Fu, their mother, is currently serving a life sentence for killing Michael at his apartment in Shanghai while the couple was going through an acrimonious divorce.

Originally from Wimborne, Dorset, he had moved to China seven years earlier for high street retailer Next, to oversee its expansion. He met Weiwei at work and the couple married.