HE DIED SO OUR KIDS COULD LIVE

Laura Burford, 35, was 80 miles away when she received a terrifying phone call

- JANE COHEN, ASHLEIGH PAGE

As my partner Joff, then 35, wrestled with our three kids on the living-room floor, I couldn’t help but laugh. The giggles from Lacey, then 11, Lauren, 10, and Jack, nine, echoed through the house as their dad tickled them into submission.

Joff was such a good dad, and our kids absolutely adored him. He and I had known each other since I was 13 and he was 14. He was my brother’s friend, and I’d always had a crush on him. We didn’t become a couple, though, until I was 20.

My life with Joff, a plasterer, was such fun, and we were always laughing and joking around. A year into our relationship, I fell pregnant with Lacey. Lauren followed in 2008, then Jack in 2010. Life with three kids put a bit of a strain on our relationship, but we always worked things out. ‘We’re meant to be,’ Joff would say.

But when Jack was six, Joff and I split up. We’d been arguing a lot and we both needed space.

Even though we were separated, we tried our best to stay friends, and Joff saw the children all the time.

Slowly, we both started seeing other people, and I fell pregnant again, with Joshua arriving in 2016. The relationship with Joshua’s dad didn’t last, though, and Joff was a shoulder to cry on.

GIVING IT ANOTHER TRY

Whenever Joff came to visit the kids, I found myself smiling - nobody made me laugh like he did. And when he split from his partner, we both realised that there were still feelings between us, so we agreed to give things one more go, much to the kids’ delight.

Joff even raised Joshua as his own and, in 2019, I changed Joshua’s surname to Joff’s as a Father’s Day present.