On the last day of the summer holidays, instead of stretching out on Porthmeor Beach while my seven-year-old was at art school, I was driving two-and-a-half hours from St Ives to Plymouth for a police interview over four polite tweets.
I had taken a call on my work phone weeks earlier from a Devon and Cornwall Police constable – one I never imagined I would receive – informing me that I was under criminal investigation for harassment.
Before becoming a journalist, I spent eight years teaching policing at university, so I know the justice system, including its flaws, well. Yet even I was shocked to encounter something as ridiculous as this.
When I asked why, the PC refused to say. Instead I was told to pop into the station for a 'friendly chat' or so-called 'voluntary interview'. I politely declined, and the response was instant and blunt. Non-attendance meant that I'd be arrested.
This didn't sound remotely 'voluntary' or 'friendly', but I didn't want my daughter to see her mother led away in handcuffs, so I begrudgingly contacted a solicitor.
