Louise's father was a cheating scoundrel who had two other families. So why does she blame it all on her mother? Louise Davies was in her 20s when she discovered her father Trevor Pratt was not the man she thought he was Her mother, Jean, was actually her father's long term mistress, making Louise and sisters Sally and Karen his illegitimate children By Louise Davies Truth: Louise Davies, pictured, found out in her 20s that her father had another two families that she knew nothing about The rumours swirled around school as far back as I can remember. My younger sister, Sally, and I were constantly whispered about, the taunts and jibes always the same - we didn't have a father and our mother wasn't married. I never understood why my classmates were so cruel. My mother, Jean, a childminder, told me to ignore them and I tried. Besides, I knew they were wrong. My father did exist. He was called Trevor Pratt and he worked as a van driver, delivering drinks to pubs up and down the country. It meant that he was often away for days, sometimes weeks at a time. But when he came home, he was just like any other father. In fact, Daddy was so charismatic - laughing, joking and always up for playing games - that you couldn't fail to love him. Mum had told me many times the details of their wedding day: the bright pink trouser-suit she wore and how two friends had acted as witnesses at the register office. She wore a wedding ring and although there were no photographs of the day itself - according to Mum, they hadn't had a photographer - she maintained it was one of the happiest days of her life. Growing up in our semi-detached three-bedroom house in Hardingstone, Northants, I believed we were like any other family. I was in my 20s before I discovered that, while Trevor Pratt may have been my father, he was not the man I thought he was. Indeed, my whole childhood was underpinned by a web of lies so complex and confusing that, even today, at the age of 41, I still don't know the answers to many of the questions that haunt me about my past. What I do know is that, far from being man and wife, my mother was, in fact, my father's long-term mistress - making Sally and I, and later our younger sister Karen, his illegitimate children. My father not only cheated on his first wife with my mother, but when that marriage ended in divorce he went on to remarry - and cheated on his second wife with Mum, as well. Yet while I should feel total fury towards the father who led such a duplicitous life, it is actually my mother, who put up with the pretence and lied to us all our lives, I can never forgive. Even after the truth came out, she maintained that she was a respectable married mother, when in reality she was - and always had been - my father's "other woman." Looking back, the first clues to my father's double life appeared when I was four, and his sons Trevor, ten, and Karl, two, from his first marriage to a lady called Maureen suddenly came to stay with us - and never left. When the teachers at school questioned my mother about it, she told them that she had adopted these young boys. So we grew to accept our new "brothers" - that's just what children do. I had no idea at the time that, far from ending years ago, Dad's first marriage was barely over. I was told later that the boys had come to us after a bitter custody battle. 'Other woman' Louise's mother Jean, pictured in 2011, was her father Trevor's long-term mistress. Trevor cheated on both his first and second wives with Jean It seems strange that he fought for his children, because Dad was hardly ever at home with us. When he did come back, it tended to be at the weekends and always out of the blue. Sometimes we might not see him for several weeks. But, like many children who have fathers who work abroad or are in the army, we understood that was our life. It didn't stop us loving him. It just made it even more exciting when he came home. As Sally and I grew up, of course, we started to question things. But Mum's answers were always convincing. When I asked her about how she and Dad met, she would regale me with the tale of how they first clapped eyes on each other at a wedding and clicked straight away. She admitted that he was still married to Maureen at the time, but was in the process of separating. To this day I'll never know if Mum truly believed the stories herself and was living her own little fantasy world, or whether she was simply lying. I suspect it's the former. For I now know that Dad remained married to Maureen for several years after he started seeing my mum - even having another child with Maureen during that time. Although my mum's stories were very convincing, there were many times during my childhood when I had an inkling that all was not as it seemed. When I joined secondary school, I became friends with a girl whose father recognised my surname. One day, I went to her house for tea and he said: "You're Trevor Pratt's daughter aren't you?" When I nodded, he said: "And your mum must be Maureen?" I shook my head and told him that my mum was called Jean, but he was having none of it. "No, your mum is called Maureen," he laughed. I assumed he'd got it wrong and was mistaking Mum for Dad's first wife, but today I can't help feeling so foolish that I didn't twig earlier. How many other people in our village knew what was really going on? By the time I was 15, Dad's visits "home" became less and less frequent, to the point where he disappeared and we didn't see him again for years. Of course, I missed him - but there was no point asking Mum what had happened. She would spin out the same old tale about him being away for work. At one point, she told me he was working in the building trade in Spain. I no longer knew what to believe. Home truths: Pictured left to right - Sally, Louise's sister, aged five, Karl, her stepbrother, also five, Louise, six, and their Dad Trevor pose together for a photograph It's no wonder that, as a teenager, I began to rebel. I'd planned to go to Sixth-form college to do my exams, but left school and got a job in a doctor's surgery instead. I started drinking and going off the rails. When I met my boyfriend, Tony, at 17 I moved in with him almost straight away, desperate to escape the house in which I'd been told so many lies. At 20, I had my daughter Stacey and fell pregnant with Bradley two-and-a-half years later. The last thing I wanted was for our children to grow up without a father, but the more I insisted that Tony and I marry, the less keen he was. We split up before I'd even given birth to Bradley. I was at the lowest point in my life and took any job I could to make ends meet. Looking around the grotty house that I'd had to move into as a single mum, I knew that after four years without my dad, I needed him back in my life to help me fix things - both practically and emotionally. I'd kept in touch with my half-brothers Trevor and Karl, and one day Trevor confessed that he had a number for Dad. I was angry that, yet again, I had been kept in the dark, but I begged him to get in touch with Dad on my behalf. Just like old times, Dad arrived on the doorstep out of the blue. I know the first question on my lips should have been: "Where have you been all these years?" But the truth was, I was embarrassed. Here he was, seeing me for the first time in years: a single mum with another on the way, living in a run-down house. Suddenly, Dad spotted Stacey standing next to me, only three, and a look of grandfatherly concern came over his face. Perhaps he realised that if he couldn't be a great father, he could be a good grandfather and began to ask how he could help. I told him that I'd split up with Tony. He put his arm around me and said: "Let's go back to my house and we'll have a chat." It was during the car journey that he revealed he was now living with a woman called Julie. It didn't surprise me. But I just assumed Julie was a relatively new girlfriend. Young family: Left to right - Louise, aged two, with her sister Sally, aged 18 months during a family outing It was only when I sat down in his living room and noticed several pictures of him and Julie - clearly taken at least a decade ago - with young children that the truth began to dawn: my father had another family. Everything started to fall into place - just as I spotted a little girl's school uniform hanging up, a teenage boy walked in and started calling my father "Dad." Unable to speak, I ran straight out of the house in tears. Even now, I have no idea why my father would spring such a surprise on me. I suspect that he'd never felt able to explain the situation in his own words, so perhaps he thought that by taking me to his house, I'd work it out for myself. I went straight to Mum's house, barely able to contain the news that Dad had another woman and they had children together. But her reaction sickened me. "Oh well," she said, shrugging her shoulders. I was furious - finally, after all these years, I had discovered something approaching the truth and she was refusing to discuss it. Tragically, I was never able to ask Dad himself for the whole truth, as he died soon afterwards of prostate cancer, at the age of 58, before I ever found the right moment to confront him. People often ask me why I was never angry with him, but the truth is, it's the women in his life who were the fools to put up with his behaviour. Dad was a charismatic charmer who was having his cake and eating it. Even though I should be furious, it's hard not to have a sneaking admiration for him. Of course, there were more surprises in store at his funeral. When I arrived at the chapel, it was full of people I'd never seen in my life. During the service, as the vicar said: "A loving father to...." I naturally expected the names of myself and my sisters would follow. But while he recited the names of Julie's two children and the boys from his first marriage, there was no mention of Sally, Karen and myself at all. It was as if we'd never existed. And later, in the cemetery, further proof that I'd been lied to for years faced me in black and white. On Dad's headstone it says: "Loving husband of Julie." I felt so much fury that I could have exploded. Another life: Louise's father Trevor Pratt with Julie Barton on their wedding day I hadn't seen Mum for months, but she turned up at the funeral and we had the most almighty row as we left the wake. Even then, she insisted that she was the one who was rightfully married to my father but, if that was the case, why had she been keeping such a low profile at the back of the chapel. Surely, if she really was Dad's wife, she would have been in the front pew? I couldn't bear any more lies, and that was the last time we spoke. It's been so hard accepting that everything I grew up with was a lie, but I've now built a new, happy life with my husband, Mark, 46, a civil servant. We met through my former job with the Ministry of Defence and I've gone on to have two more daughters, Chloe 13 and Amelia, four. We live in a four-bedroom detached house in Gloucester and life is good. But the legacy of my upbringing haunted me for many years. For the first few years with Mark, I didn't trust him at all. I would go through his bank statements and his receipts to check where he'd been. One day, I found a receipt which was a bill for two coffees and I shouted at him: "Who were you with?" It was his boss. He's never let me live that down, but it taught me that if we don't have trust between us, we don't have anything. When my three eldest children were little, I couldn't bear to tell them any lies. I even told them that there was no such thing as Father Christmas because I never wanted them to think I was trying to fool them. I'll never be able to think about my own childhood without wondering what was real and what was made up. But I will make sure that my own children grow up knowing that they can trust their mum with anything. Interview: Jill Foster