That story later caused the Essex police to turn up at Briscoe's door. She panicked and ran off to the gym. They hung around for four hours until she came home, and she felt obliged to give a false witness statement. This was the key evidence that persuaded the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute my wife and me. I was convinced that Briscoe had made this up, which is why I went on denying guilt and hoping that I could cause the prosecution case to collapse. Nothing encourages a defence like being fitted up with fake evidence.
Although I was guilty, I justified my denial to myself by saying that it was a relatively minor
offence committed by 300,000 other people (according to AA polling), that prosecutions should be based on facts not fantasy, and that we would no longer be able to pursue requests for disclosure about Briscoe's wrongdoing.
