IT WAS A HAPPY HOME UNTIL HEROIN MOVED IN

A DESPAIRING mother from Tunbridge Wells tells Peter Foster how drugs have
shattered three of her talented daughters and left a fourth in anguish

Thomasina Dodd has been a heroin addict for eight years. She makes the co
nfession sitting on the sofa in her mother's elegant apartment, overlooking
the downs at Tunbridge Wells, Kent. A print of Rembrandt's The Prodigal Son
hangs on the wall.

"Mum telephones me every day," says the 28-year-old. "We talk for an hour
and she tells me she is going mad with worry about what I am doing to myself.

"If I could give it up for her, I would. But the pull of the drug is so
intense. I feel like I am trapped in a hell of my own making and I have
nowhere to go."

The de-tox clinics won't have me anymore. I was in before Christmas but
left after a week. They say they can't help me until I leave my partner,
who is an addict too.

"As she speaks, Thomasina's hands are shaking, not from nerves or emotion
but, as she admits, from the UKP10-a-day heroin habit she began after
leaving school.

Two nights ago her mother, Theresa, 58, ignored the advice of her husband -
and the fear of local gossips - and walked into a local television studio
to tell the story of her three daughters and their addiction to heroin.

Her eldest, Antonia 30, is a reformed addict of one year's standing. The
middle two, Thomasina, 28, and Angelika, 22, are currently addicted. The
youngest, Seraphina, 19, is, in her mother's words, "still clean".

It was an act of desperation, prompted by the recent photographs of Rachel
Whitear, the 21-year-old from Hereford who died from a heroin overdose, and
the growing certainty that one day soon it would be her daughter who was dead.

The Dodds' house is filled with the relics of a happy middle-class home.
The dressing-up box the children once played with, the family photograph
albums and, in the hallway, Thomasina's old tuck box scrawled with the
bossy message: "Do Not Sit On This Tuck Box!"

Asked where it all went wrong, Mrs Dodd, a practising Catholic who draws
much of her strength from the Church, picks her way through the last 20 years.

The family was well-off. Her husband, Charles, was running the firm of
London solicitors that was started by his grandfather. She gave up her
nursing career to have children.

The family lived in a beautiful house in Westerham, Kent, with a
conservatory and a garden with a paddling pool for the girls.

The children were privately educated at the Sacred Heart Convent, in
Woldingham, Surrey. She encouraged them in their love of ballet and
theatre, arranging for Angelika to appear in several television
commercials, including one for Birdseye chicken directed by the comedian
Mel Smith.

As she paints this picture, Mrs Dodd is interrupted by the telephone. She
hopes it is a call telling her the whereabouts of Angelika. The daughter
supports her heroin habit by begging on the streets of Tunbridge Wells,
where the family moved eight years ago after Mr Dodd's business suffered in
the recession.

The call does not bring good news. "No one knows where Angelika is. I have
been trying to contact someone who she shares accommodation with but they
don't know where she is either. I just want her home."

Seraphina, the youngest daughter, arrives. She is heavily pregnant with her
first child, due on April 14. The last time she saw Angelika was in
hospital two weeks ago. The addiction made Angelika too ill to talk properly.

"She was very scared," Seraphina said. "She knows that she is killing
herself. But she is also too scared of cleaning herself up because that
will mean leaving her friends who are users too. It will mean a whole new
life and that is a daunting prospect."

Although she has never felt the urge to use drugs as anti-depressants - the
reason given by Antonia for starting heroin when her marriage failed -
Seraphina has suffered with and for her sisters.

She was 13 when the family started to disintegrate through drugs. Angelika,
then 14, was running away from home for three days at a time and was
already starting to use soft drugs. Two years later Antonia began using too.

"For three years I worried about the others, not myself," she said. "It is
the hardest thing in the world to watch those you love more than anything,
destroying themselves."

When I got to 16 I realised I was deeply depressed. I had a brief period of
self-harm and depression but I got well again with the help of doctors and
anti-depressants. Drugs never held any attraction.

While she speaks, Mrs Dodd, cannot suppress a tear at the sight of
Thomasina whose skin is translucent and pale despite make-up.

There is still no sign of Angelika. Several more frantic phone calls throw
up no more information. Thomasina admits to having seen her sister on
Thursday night when they watched their mother together on the local news.

"She was very upset," she said. "She burst into tears. I didn't cry, but
then I've been doing it [heroin] for so long I sometimes don't feel
anything anymore."

On the end of the sofa Antonia, who has two children, Nemone, nine, and
Spike, two, offers Mrs Dodd the hope that she may yet be able to save her
other two daughters.

Like her sisters Antonia is well-spoken. Her conversation betrays the love
of books which impelled her to start a literature degree at the University
of Kent. Heroin made sure she did not finish it.

"I started like everyone else - because I wanted. Friends had done heroin
and said they enjoyed it. My first bag was in exchange for a lift."

That was in 1997 and I quit a year ago. I had to, for the children. I came
round to my mum's and asked for help. Me and the kids all stayed in the
spare room together and we got through it.

"What hope for her sisters? "I know how hard it is, when you are addicted,
to believe that life will be better without heroin. I can only tell my
sister that one thing: life is fantastic."