My husband told me he'd been abusing my 13-year-old daughter while we were on a family holiday. I was horrified, but this is why I pretended to forgive him

My husband told me he'd been abusing my 13-year-old daughter while we were on a family holiday. I was horrified, but this is why I pretended to forgive him. Buckling my seatbelt as we waited for our flight home from France to take off, my phone buzzed. It was a text from my husband, Scott, sitting three rows ahead of me and our children, Lucy, 13, and Jack, 16. “I’ve never felt closer to you now that you know the truth,” it began. “I love you. You are always the best thing that ever happened to me.” I didn’t know what to say. My body was numb but my mind whirred with questions: why me, why our children, why was this happening? I felt like I was living someone else’s life. Robotically, I typed out the words “I love you too” and turned off my phone. I had nothing more to say. Twenty-four hours earlier, Scott, my husband of almost a decade, had confessed to something that exploded our world in the worst way imaginable. Even now, almost a year on, people ask of our sudden split: “Was it an affair?” No, much worse than that. Someone even asked me: “Has he killed someone?” Again, no. But even with murder there’s a possibility I could have found a way to forgive him. I can never forgive what he actually did. Scott, who had been married to Rosanna for almost ten years, confessed to abusing her 13-year-old daughter. Because for almost a year my husband had been sexually abusing my 13-year-old daughter, Lucy, the little girl he had raised as his own since she was three. Now, she was sitting next to me on the plane, anxious and scared but also relieved that the sickening truth was finally out and he could no longer hurt her. Burying my horror and fury, my priority over the next few hours was simple: keep up the pretence to Scott that everything was fine, so he would not suspect that the police would be waiting for him when our evening flight landed in Newcastle. As the children drifted off to sleep, I sat silently and wondered how my life had imploded so spectacularly in the space of a day. Scott and I had met ten years earlier in 2015 while working for the same company. I was in my late twenties, a single mum to Lucy, then two. Scott, who was a year younger, was living with his partner and young son, Jack, five. But within a week of meeting, he’d left his partner and practically moved in with me. We had this instant chemistry I’d never felt before with anyone. It raised some eyebrows. There was talk that I was “after his money”, as he was pretty successful. But I had my own money and home. He was the one who moved in with only the clothes on his back. Of course, I can’t deny it was a whirlwind. But Scott treated both Lucy and me so well. He was kind, generous and I felt special and loved. Things were incredible in the bedroom too, which may sound irrelevant now, but it’s not when you’re first together. We set up a successful independent estate agents together and married in 2018. Two years later, his son Jack came to live with us permanently. We were a happy, blended family and, on the surface, we had everything: a gorgeous house, beautiful children, expensive cars, lovely holidays. But behind the scenes, things were not so idyllic. In the years after we married, Scott started having temper tantrums over the smallest things that would rear up out of nowhere, and he became so critical of me. If I got my nails or hair done he’d say I was going to “ruin the business” with my spending. He constantly knocked my business knowledge, even though I was the one bringing in clients. I started shrinking myself, keeping my thoughts and feelings quiet and going along with everything he said, just to keep the peace. It was exhausting. He also started talking to other women inappropriately. Whether it was the receptionist at his local gym or old school friends, he would connect with them on Facebook and start sending overtly flirty messages such as “Hey beautiful...”. Whenever I confronted him, he’d rebuke me for “snooping” and say I was being ridiculous. What I still struggle to come to terms with is that he was so fantastic with the children. He would always tell me that he felt…