My wife – and best friend– of the past 38 years can no longer say the word “hippopotamus” or count backwards from 100, or draw a watch face on a piece of paper. Sometimes she leaves the oven on or forgets to turn off the kitchen tap, and yesterday she wandered into the wrong stairwell of our apartment block.

Two years ago, at the age of 60, Cathie was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and our lives changed irrevocably. There were no soothing words from the family doctor as a bureaucratic error had sent us the PET scan that confirmed our fears. We read the results together and one of us, the weaker one, cried for a week. Then I pulled myself together and focused on what’s important.

Since then, we’ve sold our Blue Mountains house and moved back to Brisbane where we were born. Cathie wanted warm weather and to be close to her parents, and our youngest son. Most of all, she wanted a dog. Enter Biscuit, a 3.5kg toy poodle and the best anti-Alzheimer’s medication invented. Cathie has smiled and laughed more since Biscuit entered our lives than ever. It has left me feeling sheepish that I wasn’t attentive or entertaining enough these past few decades, such is Biscuit’s unrelenting positivity.

We both feel blessed.

Of course, Biscuit sleeps between us. In the morning, it’s often a few minutes before Cathie acknowledges me, such is her focus on the dog. I savour every moment.

Cathie exhibited none of the risk factors for Alzheimer’s. She had an excellent diet; an active social life; was very fit – only a few years ago we cycled from Marseille to Norway. We regularly spent months cycling in foreign lands. I’m grateful now that we didn’t wait until retirement to travel. Cathie still wants to see the world, still wants to explore exotic tastes and meet new people.

Everyone reacted differently when we told them the diagnosis. Most people have been supportive, aware that regular social events are our lifeblood. Cathie lunches with friends, volunteers at the local Salvos, takes bellydance classes on Friday as a student, even though she taught it for 20 years. We have more dinner party invitations than at any time in our lives.

Alzheimer’s is not the loss of memory. A relative, on hearing Cathie’s diagnosis, suggested she might have it as well because she sometimes forgets things. I sucked in a deep breath before explaining that Alzheimer’s attacks more than memory. Yes, Cathie forget things. But it’s the unexpected stuff that hurts. Cathie’s language skills have changed dramatically. We don’t care that she can’t say hippopotamus, but she now rarely speaks in sentences, or can find the accurate word, or pronounce a range of simple and not-so-simple words. My worst fear is that she’ll stop trying to verbalise.

I’m learning to never ask “either-or” questions. Beach? Or bushwalk? Cathie will look confused for a few seconds, smile gently and say yes. I’m always humbled at how often she says yes. She’s up for anything, as long as Biscuit can accompany us.

Cathie prefers colourful dresses and tops, where previously she favoured what she called the “Greek grandmother look’” of black on black. While I cook most evenings, she’s determined to keep trying. We joke whether the result will be of her usual delicious standard or a “Mrs Cropley”.

I hate visiting the neurology department of our hospital. They are sensitive and kind and professional, and I watch them measuring Cathie’s changes. We use the word “changes”. It sounds better than “losses”. Last visit they offered Cathie a higher dose of an antidepressant, because despite the headlines of “major Alzheimer’s breakthrough”, there’s little the doctors can do than this, and to monitor the losses. Sorry, the changes.

I’ve made my living as a writer for 40 years. Since Cathie’s diagnosis, I haven’t been able to face a new manuscript. Writing a book is more than sitting at a desk each morning. It’s living with the characters while walking the dog, or cycling, or doing the shopping. The emotional energy of creating … I’d rather spend it with Cathie and Biscuit.

Every day I detest Alzheimer’s and what’s it’s doing to the person I love. And every day I’m in awe of how Cathie responds to its ravages. Quietly, stoically, with patience, and sometimes tears, before hugging Biscuit and me.

She kisses my bald head when we sit on the lounge. She never did that before the diagnosis. I know what the disease is taking, but Cathie responds with gestures such as this. When we visit our youngest son and daughter-in-law, she washes the dishes piled on the bench, or helps Joe cook, or chats to Rose about clothes and travel.

I know there will come a time when Cathie no longer recognises me, or Joe, or Rose. Or our eldest son Jack and his wife Emma. Or, shudder, our precious grandson, Billy. She’ll sit in a chair staring out the window, at a world shrunken and frail, Biscuit asleep on her lap.

For now, I smile whenever possible. We live one moment at a time, and marvel at the accuracy of cliches.

I prefer today rather than tomorrow.

Tyrell Malacia

The first signing of the Erik ten Hag era, ticking the key criterion of coming from the Eredivisie. It’s difficult to say too much about a player who last featured in June 2023. The left-back made a lot of appearances in his first season but a knee injury has kept him out for 16 months. Rating 1/5

Antony

When the club paid £85.6m for the Brazilian winger, they were expecting a world beater but got ineptitude. Antony will go down as one of the worst pound-for-pound signings. Ten Hag knew him from Ajax and thought he could lead the new era at Old Trafford, but he has been a painful disappointment, putting the blame at the Dutchman’s door. Off-field issues have been a further problem for the 24-year-old who has played one Premier League minute this season, having slipped down the pecking order. 1/5

Casemiro

At the time, he was what United needed but came with a high price tag of £50m plus add-ons for a midfielder over the age of 30. After almost a decade of success with Real Madrid, he had a winner’s mentality, helping United qualify for the Champions League in his first season, but an ageing body. He has been unable to cope with the pace of the Premier League over the past 15 months. 2/5

Lisandro Martínez

Another who moved with Ten Hag from Amsterdam. The combative defender has been one of the more positive arrivals, adding steel to a defence that has too often been weak. Injuries have been a problem but when available is always first choice. 4/5

Wout Weghorst

A desperation signing when United needed an extra striker and could not find anyone suitable at short notice, making an available Dutchman the best option. Tried his best after joining on loan from Burnley but was never at the required standard nor did he fit into the system, netting zero goals in 17 Premier League outings. 2/5

Christian Eriksen

Has never looked like what United need in midfield, lacking speed and is insufficiently robust. Occasionally offers glimpses of the world-class midfielder he once was but those days are behind him. On the upside, at least he did not cost a fee. 3/5

Jack Butland

The goalkeeper never played but was on the substitutes’ bench 20 times. N/A

Marcel Sabitzer

United’s financial situation has seen them dip far too regularly into the loan market. The Austrian’s high point of a forgettable spell was scoring twice in a Europa League quarter-final against Sevilla but the club did not make his move permanent. 2/5

Rasmus Højlund

A striker with potential but like others before him has lacked service. The £72m fee seemed excessive at the time, considering Atalanta paid a quarter of that to sign him 12 months previously. A reminder that United have not been smart in the transfer market for a long time. 3/5

Mason Mount

Kickstarted the second summer of transfer business but it was never particularly obvious where he would fit into the team with others already at the club who could play in his position(s). Injury meant he never got going in his first season and has interrupted the second already as he struggles to remind everyone of the player he once was at Chelsea. 2/5

André Onana

Was available for nothing when his former Ajax manager Ten Hag arrived at United, but let his reputation grow at Inter, forcing United to invest £45m in the Cameroonian goalkeeper. Was unconvincing in the early part of his Old Trafford career but has become a steady performer in an indifferent team. 3/5

Sofyan Amrabat

Another familiar face to Ten Hag, joining on loan on deadline day at the end of the summer 2023 window. Never looked comfortable playing for United, not helped by playing in numerous positions, but did produce a fine FA Cup final performance against Manchester City. 3/5

Altay Bayindir

The Turkish goalkeeper played twice and was victorious on both occasions, giving him a 100% record as a United player. No one else can boast that. 2/5

Jonny Evans

A shock signing when the veteran centre-back returned to the club aged 35, a decade after leaving. Played a lot more games – sometimes at left-back – than he expected and even earned a one-year contract extension, having rarely let anyone down. 3/5

Sergio Reguilón

An underrated loan signing from Tottenham as United needed a left-back. Was allowed to return in January, which was a mistake considering his steady presence and the inability for Luke Shaw or Malacia to stay fit. 3/5

Leny Yoro

The 18-year-old defender is a £52m long-term investment but has been prevented from making his debut after suffering a pre-season injury. N/A

Manuel Ugarte

United’s potential gamechanger in defensive midfield with Casemiro’s decline. Too early to judge whether the 23-year-old Uruguayan signed from PSG will be the transformational signing but his performance against Spurs drew criticism from Marco van Basten who called him “idiotic”. 3/5

Matthijs de Ligt

Another who worked with Ten Hag at Ajax and has plenty of experience for a 25-year-old centre-back. The manager hopes his partnership with Martínez can provide the stability in defence United have lacked for a long time but is yet to show the class his CV promises, giving the impression of being too slow in mind and body. 2/5

Joshua Zirkzee

When an out-and-out striker to challenge Hojlund was needed, United went for a player Ten Hag describes as a “nine and a half” as his first signing of the past summer. Produced a wonderful finish on debut against Fulham but has not scored since and does not look likely to be prolific. 3/5

Noussair Mazraoui

Another of Ten Hag’s former charges, the Morocco international grew up in the Netherlands, joining from Bayern Munich. The versatile defender can operate in numerous positions and is bedding into the team. 3/5

I was a young dancer based in Queensland when in 2012 I got my first international gig at the Leipzig Ballet in Germany, and a year later a beautiful Brazilian named Naiara joined the company. Her personality was infectious and I was instantly drawn to her high energy and natural charisma.

I was attracted to her from the jump and tried to put some moves on, but we were so young – just 22 and 19. I guess she thought I was just playing the field and wasn’t interested in taking it there with me. But we were good colleagues and socialised a lot together. For three years we coasted along that way and were never paired together as dancers.

It wasn’t until I got another job in Switzerland and knew I’d be leaving the company that I goofily approached her in the studio to confess the chemistry I felt between us and the respect I had for her as an artist, and a person. It was a shot in the dark, but I could see it shifted her interest in me.

Before I left for the new job, our company toured in Colombia and romance blossomed. Back in Germany we started spending a lot of time together. By 2016 I was in love. There was this beautiful simplicity to our dynamic. From early on we could be together in silence – dancers are good at communicating without words. I could feel her, I could understand her; that happened so quickly for us.

Between gigs in 2017 – me in Switzerland, Naiara in Germany – we had a summer break and I invited her to Australia to meet my family. Our closeness grew ever deeper, but we knew we were headed into the unknown of a long-distance relationship once we got back to Europe.

It was an eight-hour journey between Leipzig and Basel, but we never let more than a fortnight pass without seeing each other. For some couples distance can create a chasm, for us it brought us closer together. But it wasn’t without its challenges and after about a year she presented me with an ultimatum – we had to be in the same city.

As the pandemic bore down in 2020, I managed to get into the same company she was dancing for in St Gallen, Switzerland. Because of the rules around physical contact during Covid, the fact that we were a couple and living together meant we were paired together for duets, finally.

I remember one day in the studio there we were rehearsing a difficult lift. Naiara assured me my grip was wrong. I kept telling her it was the right thing to do. She kept telling me, “It’s wrong, it’s wrong.”

Despite the risk she obliged me and went into the jump 100%. Partly, I think, to prove she was right, but also because she knew that even if things went wrong, I would catch her. Which I did, just before her head hit the floor.

I felt so silly that I hadn’t double-checked it and believed her, but I understood at that moment how implicit her trust in me was, and how much responsibility I felt towards her. In the moments she’s above my head and our eyes meet, it’s like we are looking into each other’s souls – it’s profound connection, ultimate trust.

I feel like we are in complete balance together. In life and in dance we know where each other’s going, it’s a joint instinct which is so beautiful to share. It’s like we are dancing our way not just through our choreography but through our day-to-day life together. In 2022 that synchronicity brought us to Australia when we joined the Sydney Dance Company.

In the studio and at home, we’ve shared many scary moments together, pushing the limits of our trust for and responsibility to each other’s hearts and bodies. But whether we are doing a duet or making dinner, that sense of vulnerability and nurturing each other makes me feel love. True love.

• Piran Scott and Naiara de Matos appear in the Sydney Dance Company’s production of Momenta at the Arts Centre Melbourne, 8-12 October.

David Paterson, the former New York governor, and his stepson were attacked and injured on New York City’s Upper East Side on Friday night, the city police department said.

Paterson, 70, and his stepson, Anthony Sliwa, 20, had been walking in the upscale neighborhood at about 8.30pm when they were attacked after a verbal altercation with five people, according to the police.

Paterson suffered minor injuries to his face and body, while Sliwa, son of Curtis Sliwa, founder of the anti-crime group the Guardian Angels and New York mayoral candidate, received minor injuries to his face.

“Anthony was able to hold them off because Governor Paterson is sight-challenged but the governor was in the middle of this, too, and they both stood their ground,” Curtis Sliwa told the New York Post. The elder Sliwa said he is “proud” of how his son, who is also a Guardian Angel, handled the incident.

Both were taken to a nearby hospital in stable condition. Police said Paterson, who served as New York’s first Black governor from 2008–2010 after Eliot Spitzer stepped down amid a prostitution scandal, is not believed to have been targeted in the assault.

Sean Darcy, a spokesperson for the former governor, told ABC News that the younger man had had “a previous interaction” with the five people.

Myles Miller, the managing editor of Bloomberg, posted on X that both men had been taken to the hospital as a precaution after they suffered some injuries “but were able to fight off their attackers” and police had not yet detained the suspected assailants.

Paterson’s spokesperson said the “governor’s only request is that people refrain from attempting to use an unfortunate act of violence for their own personal or political gain”.

Reports of the assault come at a tense time in the city around issues of street crime and subway safety. Next week, ex-marine Daniel Penny goes on trial for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for choking an unhoused man, Jordan Neely, on a subway train last year.

In that case, witnesses claimed that Neely, 30, had been threatening passengers, and millions of dollars have been donated to Penny’s defense fund. Others have said that Penny, then 24, acted as an overzealous vigilante, stirring memories of Bernhard Goetz, who shot four African American men on a subway train in 1984.

Penny has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Mass hunger and malnutrition. A looming nuclear winter. An existential threat to the Canadian way of life. For months, the country’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has issued dire and increasingly apocalyptic warnings about the future. The culprit? A federal carbon levy meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

In the House of Commons this month, the Tory leader said there was only one way to avoid the devastating crisis: embattled prime minister Justin Trudeau must “call a ‘carbon tax’ election”.

Hailed as a global model of progressive environmental policy, Canada’s carbon tax has reduced emissions and put money in the pockets of Canadians. The levy, endorsed by conservative and progressive economists, has survived multiple federal elections and a supreme court challenge. But this time, a persistent cost-of-living crisis and a pugnacious Conservative leader running on a populist message have thrust the country’s carbon tax once more into the spotlight, calling into question whether it will survive another national vote.

In 2018, Trudeau announced plans for the “pan-Canadian climate framework”, modelled after British Columbia’s pioneering carbon tax. Notably, the levy is revenue neutral: the government doesn’t keep any money. Instead, it remits all of it back to taxpayers in the form a quarterly rebate. Any increase in costs from a tax on fuel is offset by a rebate of roughly equal value.

According to the federal government, a family of four in Ontario will receive C$1,120 (£630) this year in rebates. Those living in a rural community receive C$1,344. A rural family of four in the province of Alberta receives C$2,160.

Anyone willing and able to change their behaviour would end up in the black. Economists, political scientists – and the parliamentary budget officer – have found low-income households receive more from the rebate than they pay in additional costs. But the Conservatives, with a significant lead in the polls, are keen to capture mounting frustration with the incumbent government and transform a federal vote into a referendum on Trudeau’s marquee climate policy. Their campaign message, on billboards and T-shirts, has been simple: “axe the tax”. They argue that levy burdens Canadians at a time when rents, groceries and transportation costs have all surged.

Kathryn Harrison, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, who has spent years studying the effects of carbon levies on behaviour and emissions, laments the “outright falsehoods” peddled for political benefit.

“The current political discourse means a lot of Canadians misunderstand how the policy affects them. They don’t think it works. They think they’re paying more than they are. And that’s a very distressing thing for me, from not just a climate policy perspective, but a democratic perspective,” she said. “This isn’t a debate about how much emphasis to put on one issue or another. The unpopularity of the carbon tax is, to a large degree, driven by voters misunderstanding it and having the facts wrong.”

For Canada’s environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, the fractious debate represents a crossroads for the country in addressing the effects of the climate crisis.

“The reality is, it’s easy to say ‘axe the tax’,” he said. “No one likes to pay taxes. It is more complicated to explain that climate change is real, it’s costing Canadians billions of dollars and carbon pricing is one of many measures we’re putting in place to try and fight climate change. That’s harder to communicate than a slogan.”

But the tenor of the debate – and the misinformation – also suggests something deeper is at stake.

“Climate, and more generally, the environment is now caught into this culture war where facts don’t matter, where the truth has no currency,” said Guilbeault. “This is an issue that speaks to the fundamental elements of our democracies around the world, many of which are being weakened by those campaigns of disinformation.”

Still, the perceived benefits of abandoning the tax have lured in other party leaders. Last month, the New Democratic party leader Jagmeet Singh suggested his support was waning because he doesn’t want a policy that puts the “burden on the backs of working people” – a claim dismissed by experts.

“It is surprising the federal NDP are turning their back on a very progressive policy that both reduces carbon pollution, but also delivers rebates greater than carbon payments for lower income households – the people he purports to be most supportive of,” said Harrison.

Guilbeault admits federal government was “a bit slow” in course-correcting the waves of misinformation surrounding the levy.

“We could have done better, but the 2019 and 2021, and partially, the 2015 elections were fought in part on the issue of carbon pricing – and we won those elections,” he said. “

Initially, the tax was remitted in the form of a tax cut that few people noticed when they filed their taxes. Later, the government began directly depositing the money – but couldn’t get the banks to indicate the money was a rebate from the carbon tax. It took a change to the law that finally compelled banks to label government payments as the “Canada Carbon Rebate” or “CdaCarbonRebate”.

As nations around the world unveil politics to blunt the effects of a rapidly changing climate, recent report from the Canadian Climate Institute found the national carbon levy, which targets both consumers and industry, is projected to reduce emissions by as much as 50% by 2030.

In the event that a Conservative government abandons the national carbon levy, Canada will have “no way” of meeting its 2030 emissions targets,” said Guilbeault, adding it “reduces our credibility” when negotiating with other nations moving ahead with plans to lower emissions.

Most of the debate right now is on the fuel charge the consumer-facing carbon price, with little focus on the industrial carbon tax, said Dale Beugin, vice-president of the Canadian Climate Institute, which “delivers three times the emissions reductions by 2030” than the consumer component of the tax.

Opposition party leaders, including Singh, have vaguely suggested strengthening the industrial part of the carbon tax to make up for the lost benefits of the consumer tax.

“But the reality is, when you remove one policy – in this case, the consumer carbon tax – you’re forced to pushing harder on other levers to go after emissions,” said Beugin. “And there aren’t many sources – buildings, vehicles – that haven’t been looked at yet.”

For Beugin, the debate underscores an uncomfortable reality about policies meant to unwind the sustained environmental damage from unfettered emissions.

“Climate policy isn’t easy. It requires some effort to push against the things that are easy and simple politically, because that’s this transformation that we need,” he said. “Yes, technology is getting cheaper, but climate policy is inevitably hard – and you don’t want to shy away from that.”

Oklahoma’s top education official is seeking to buy 55,000 Bibles for public schools and specifying that each copy contain the Declaration of Independence and US constitution, which are not commonly found in Bibles but are included in one endorsed by former president Donald Trump.

The request is part of Republican state superintendent Ryan Walters’ ongoing efforts to require Bibles in every classroom, which has been met with resistance by some of Oklahoma’s largest school districts.

Walters is seeking to spend $3m in state funds for Bibles that fit a certain criteria, including that the pages are supplemented with US historical materials. The Bibles must also be “bound in leather or leather-like material for durability”, according to state bidding documents posted this week.

The non-profit news outlet Oklahoma Watch first reported on Thursday that the requirements match the God Bless the USA Bible that Trump urged his supporters to begin buying earlier this year on a website that sells the book for $59.99.

Asked Friday if the state’s bid was tailored for the Bible backed by Trump, a spokesperson for Walters said the proposal was open to any vendor.

“There are hundreds of Bible publishers and we expect a robust competition for this proposal,” said Dan Isett, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma state department of education.

Former Oklahoma attorney general Drew Edmondson, a Democrat, said the bid “does not pass the smell test” and said a court could void it if the process was found to limit competition.

“All fingers point to the Trump Bible that does contain all these requirements,” Edmondson said.

Walters in June ordered public schools to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades five through 12. The bidding documents also specify that the Bibles include both the Old Testament and New Testament, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Bill of Rights.

“We can see there are very few Bibles on the market that would meet these criteria, and all of them have been endorsed by former president Donald Trump,” said Colleen McCarty, executive director of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.

The name of the Bible backed by Trump is inspired by country singer Lee Greenwood’s patriotic ballad. Trump takes the stage to the song at each of his rallies and has appeared with Greenwood at events.

The Bible’s website states the product “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign”. It says the site “uses Donald J Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC”.

Trump reported earning $300,000 off sales of the Bible, according to financial disclosures released in August. His campaign did not immediately return an email seeking comment on Friday evening.

Walters, himself a former public school teacher who was elected to his post in 2022, ran on a platform of fighting “woke ideology”, banning books from school libraries and getting rid of “radical leftists” who he claims are indoctrinating children in classrooms.

Robert Jenrick will be toppled by the Tory party’s right wing should he attempt to pivot to the centre ground if installed as leader, senior Conservatives have warned.

Jenrick, who remains the frontrunner for the job after the party’s conference in Birmingham, has won support from the right with a series of uncompromising stances. He has said he would welcome Nigel Farage into the party, leave the European convention on human rights and vote for Donald Trump.

Having started life as an MP as a moderate, some believe he has only temporarily adopted a more rightwing stance as part of his efforts to win the leadership. Some allies have suggested he will move back to the centre once in office.

However, senior party figures are already warning Jenrick that if he becomes leader, his fate will be in the hands of rightwing MPs willing to attack those who have attempted to move away from their agenda.

They warned that he had entrusted his fate to the “Braverman right” – a reference to the former home secretary, Suella Braverman. Jenrick was made immigration minister under Braverman in the expectation that he would be a moderating force. However, he is said to have been radicalised by his time in the Home Office on the need for tougher policies.

One shadow minister compared Jenrick to Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader delivered into power by the right, but ultimately unable to widen his appeal to voters. Duncan Smith was removed as leader after just over two years.

“What will happen to him is that he will suffer the fate of IDS,” they said. “He will try to pivot to the centre, but what he’ll find is that the Braverman right won’t let him. They would pull their support and threaten to submit their latest vote of no confidence for a leadership contest. They have got him by the balls. It now only takes 19 letters to prompt a confidence vote in the leader.”

Allies of Jenrick strongly disputed the idea, pointing out that the likes of Victoria Atkins, Ed Argar and John Lamont – Tory figures associated with the liberal, One Nation wing of the party – also backed his leadership bid.

Jenrick bolstered his credentials with the party’s grassroots during the conference by confirming that his daughter’s middle name was Thatcher. He has also appeared in a hoodie emblazoned with the words “Hamas Are Terrorists”.

MPs will whittle down the four remaining candidates to two this week. Those two will then be put forward to a vote of party members. While Jenrick remains favourite, a small number of MPs changing their vote could have a major impact. James Cleverly, shadow home secretary, was thought to have had a good conference after calling on the party to be “more normal”.

However, there are sobering revelations about the party’s relevance to the public in the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. It reveals that more of the public were aware of Phillip Schofield’s return to TV in his programme Cast Away than had heard about the Conservative conference. Labour still leads in most policy areas with the public, though the two main parties are now tied on the economy.

Among those giving a view, Cleverly was deemed to have had a good conference, seeing an improvement in his “acceptability” score and is currently the frontrunner among the wider British public.

Kemi Badenoch has taken the biggest knock to her public perception. She received criticism last week for suggesting maternity pay was “excessive”. Half (49%) of 2019 Conservative voters say Cleverly would be an acceptable leader of the Conservative party, with 41% saying the same of Jenrick, 40% of Tom Tugendhat and 37% of Badenoch.

Adam Drummond, head of political and social research at Opinium, said: “To nobody’s surprise, voters are not paying a great deal of attention to the Conservative leadership contest and it is notable that, as unpopular as the Labour government already is, voters prefer them over the Tories on almost all issues, with the two parties tied on the economy.”

A year ago, Franky Dean, a 24-year-old documentary film-making master’s student, decided to make a phone call she’d been avoiding nearly half her life. She was sitting in a dark computer room in New York University’s journalism institute in Manhattan when she FaceTimed her parents. They were in the living room at her home in the UK, where she grew up. Franky told them she’d just filed a police report about something that had happened more than a decade earlier. When Franky was 12, she had been sexually abused by a close friend’s dad.

Franky stared at her phone. For a moment, her parents didn’t say anything.

“How do you know that?” Franky remembers her dad saying.

“What do you mean? How do I know that?” she said, taken aback. “I know it because I remember it.”

And then her mum said two words that would change her life, again, for ever: “We know.”

It was meant to be a climactic moment – a revelation that Franky had been building up to for years. Instead, it was the beginning of another story – the unravelling of a shadow narrative that spanned half of Franky’s life. It’s a story about what happens when police assume survivors of sexual abuse to be “unknowing victims” – a series of misinterpretations and missteps that amounted to Franky spending 12 years hiding her abuse from her parents while they spent 12 years hiding it from her.

Franky’s story sheds light on a complicated and little-understood area in criminal law. What should police do if a victim does not know – or is presumed not to know – that they are a victim of a crime?

There are a number of instances in which someone may be an unknowing victim of a sex-related crime. For instance, if someone is date raped and does not remember that they have been assaulted. Or if they have consented to having sex with someone but do not know that they are being filmed or that the film is going to be distributed.

One of the most extreme examples is Gisèle Pelicot, 72, whose former husband Dominique is currently in court in France accused of drugging her to the point of a “coma-like” state so that he and more than 70 strangers could sexually assault her at home. Gisèle says she had no idea that any of the alleged assaults had happened until she was told by police. She has chosen to waive her right to anonymity to raise awareness of the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

Franky has chosen to be public about what happened to her because she feels that misunderstandings about her experience as a victim have led to a miscarriage of justice.

Franky was a happy and bubbly child. She boarded at a private girls’ school in England. One of her best friends was called Jo. Outside term time, the two girls played at each other’s houses. Sometimes Jo’s dad, Greg (not their real names), took them on outings, such as fishing trips. Anne Dean, Franky’s mum, remembers respecting him. He had a military background and seemed nice. Perhaps a bit quiet, but she thought of him as “a normal dad”.

One night, Franky was having a sleepover at Jo’s house. Jo had offered Franky her bedroom and said that she would share her younger sister’s bunk bed. At some point during the night, Franky noticed the glare of a computer in the corner of her eye. Greg was in the room, sitting on a chair by the desk. She wasn’t alarmed and fell back to sleep.

But then, some time later, she felt something. Greg was touching her. He was still looking at his computer, but his left hand was under her loose shorts. Franky lay there, frozen. She didn’t know what sex was, but she knew that what was happening was wrong.

The next morning, everything appeared to be normal. Greg lived in a detached house on a private estate, so he had to drive Franky to the gate for her mum to pick her up. During the journey, neither of them acknowledged what had happened. In the car ride home with her mum, Franky didn’t bring it up. She felt ashamed. She wouldn’t talk about it to anyone for several years.

The first person Franky told about the assault was her first boyfriend, when she was in her teens. She’d begun getting flashbacks to that night at Greg’s house. “It’s almost like the memory came to me later in life,” she says now. Sometimes when her boyfriend would touch her, she’d feel uneasy. Or, when they were intimate with one another, she’d have a panic attack afterwards.

But even small things, like the sound of her own breathing, could trigger her. “It’s the silliest thing, because I’m breathing all the time,” she says. “I’m almost stuck in that position of constantly going over it, over and over again.”

The flashbacks had become vivid and all-consuming, but at the same time, they made Franky confused. She sometimes doubted whether the assault had happened at all. It felt like waking up after a nightmare. “You wake up and you’re thinking: was that real? Was that not real?”

One day, when Franky was still a teenager, she called an NHS helpline to try to get therapy. She says she was told that since a child sexual assault had taken place, she’d have to report the crime first. Franky felt trapped. She knew she needed help but she didn’t want to be responsible for her friend’s dad going to jail. “I loved her so much,” she says. “I didn’t want her to lose her dad.”

So she made a promise to herself. “I’m not going to tell my parents,” she decided. “Whatever happens, I’m not going to tell them.”

What Franky didn’t know was that her parents already knew.

In 2014, Franky’s parents received a call from a detective constable. She asked if she could meet them at their house, and arrived soon afterwards. She told them that Greg had been arrested. A year earlier, three girls in a changing room had spotted him holding a small camera under the cubicle walls. Thames Valley police raided his home and seized his computers and laptops, which contained 13,000 indecent images of children. Some of the footage was of Franky. He had filmed her at his home: in the shower, using the toilet, and while he touched her vagina and lifted up her top, revealing her breasts.

Franky’s parents’ memory of that first meeting and what came after is blurry. Recently, they’ve begun trying to pin down exactly what happened and when. But one thing stands out in their minds. They remember the detective telling them that it looked as if Franky was asleep in some of the videos, and advised them that they shouldn’t discuss what had happened with her.

Franky’s dad, Andrew, describes himself as someone who is “fairly fussy about people”, but nothing about the police officer’s manner alarmed him. Andrew and Anne were horrified about what had happened to their daughter, but the detective was “personable” and had explained everything in a “reasonable way”. Her advice made sense to them. Franky’s behaviour hadn’t changed. She was still going to Jo’s house. “We just thought: well, what’s the point?” Anne says. “If she knows nothing about it, what good is it going to do to tell her that this has happened?”

Still, keeping it a secret was a challenge. They no longer wanted to let Franky go to Jo’s house; but they couldn’t explain why. Once, when Jo was at their house, Greg arrived to collect his daughter. Anne was horrified; she couldn’t believe it. She ran inside to get Andrew. “He’s here,” she said.

The man who had molested their daughter was metres away from them, outside their house, but the Deans felt they had to act breezy. “We didn’t want to make a fuss in front of the girls” or “stir anything up that might make Franky think anything about it,” Anne says. “We also didn’t know who knew what, because the police hadn’t told us.” Andrew pulled Greg aside and told him to leave. “I didn’t care what happened to him. It was so far down the priority list,” he says. “My overriding question was always about what’s best for Franky.”

On 2 September 2015, the detective emailed the Deans to inform them that the Crown Prosecution Service had authorised 22 charges against Greg. She said that since they strongly anticipated him pleading guilty (he had already fully admitted to the offences in interviews) there was no need to inform Franky about any of it.

The sentencing hearing took place in December. According to the local news account, Greg described his obsession as a “cancer” – a disease he wanted to defeat. On 22 December, he was sentenced to a three-year community order but no jail time – despite admitting to all 22 charges. The Deans couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to jail. But they kept quiet. It was the same problem all over again. “What do we do about it?” Anne says. “Because if we try to do something about it, we’ve got to involve Franky.”

According to Suzanne Ost and Alisdair Gillespie, professors of law at Lancaster University, there is no explicit guidance in England and Wales on how police officers should deal with unknowing victims. “If you look at the Victims’ Code, for instance, there is nowhere in it that says: ‘victims have a right to know’,” Ost tells me.

In 2019, Ost and Gillespie published a paper in the International Review of Victimology, addressing what they believed to be a gap in victimology and criminology literature. They put forward a hypothetical situation: a law enforcement agent comes across abusive images of a toddler, who is now an adult. As far as the agent knows, the victim is not aware that the images exist, or that the abuse has taken place. “Now imagine that victim is you,” they ask the reader. “Would you want to be informed of the crimes and the existence of the images?”

When Ost and Gillespie consulted police officers about this conundrum, they tended to agree that unknowing victims deserved to be told. But without any official guidance to disclose such abuse, potentially life-changing decisions are left to interpretation. As technology develops, the prospect of being filmed, photographed or AI rendered without one’s consent becomes increasingly likely. But unknowing victims remain in a legal and ethical grey area, their fates determined by the discretion of individual police officers. “They need more guidance full stop,” Ost says. “This issue is not going to go away.”

Should unknowing victims always have a right to know, even if it will cause them trauma that could otherwise have been avoided? And what if a mistake has been made? What if – as with Franky – the unknowing victim, in fact, does know? Across the board, experts in child sexual abuse believe that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to these questions.

“It’s just such an ethical debate,” says Lawrence Jordan, director of services at Marie Collins Foundation, a charity that supports victims and survivors of technology-assisted child sexual abuse. “No one has been able to say with confidence – probably because it’s a case-by-case basis – that yes, a survivor should know or no, they shouldn’t.”

Donald Findlater, the former director of Lucy Faithfull Foundation, the preventive child sex abuse charity where Greg received therapy (according to local newspaper reports at the time), recalls a story he heard at a conference. A woman said that when she was a child someone had taken photographs of her through the windows of her family home without her knowledge. She only found out years later when police knocked on her parents’ door to tell them that someone had gone to prison for the crime.

The woman wished she hadn’t been told. The revelation made her anxious. How could she protect herself from future danger if she was unable to protect herself from this? “As a consequence of that knock on the door, she’s now living with this very spooked world of thinking: who’s watching me?” Findlater says.

What makes these decisions so challenging is that every survivor is unique; it’s impossible to predict the impact of disclosure until it happens. One of the most prolific incidents of unknowing victims in recent years was the case of Reynhard Sinaga, who drugged and raped at least 48 men in Manchester between 2015 and 2017. Almost all the victims had no idea they had been raped until police officers knocked on the door years later.

“It was a moral dilemma,” says Lisa Waters, the former child service manager at St Mary’s sexual assault referral centre, who worked with police on these visits. “You can’t just go in there, tell them what’s happened and drop the bombshell and walk away. You have an obligation to keep people safe.”

Some victims were numb; others were furious. “Why have you told me this?” Waters recalls them asking. “I had no idea that this happened to me. You’ve ruined my life. So why have you told me?” But for other victims, the revelation was a relief. They didn’t have a clear memory of the night, but they had a feeling that something bad had happened. “Unknowing was harder than not knowing, even though what I know is horrible,” one victim told the BBC.

What may seem like an obvious distinction – between knowing and unknowing – is, in fact, hazy. Waters says that survivors sometimes report sexual assault years afterwards, perhaps because they have only recently remembered it happening.

“Sexual violence can affect people’s mental health so deeply and so tragically that sometimes people will dissociate from their experience,” she says. “People will come to us, years later, and say, ‘I don’t know what it was that made me think this is what has happened to me.’”

Sam Tarling, a child investigative interviewing specialist, says she understands why police might not talk to unknowing victims of sexual assault when they are children, but adds, “There’s a massive difference between: ‘Let’s not tell them now’ and ‘Let’s never tell them.’” She also cautions against the rationale for non-disclosure being that someone looked as if they were sleeping. It’s not uncommon for children to pretend to be asleep during traumatic situations.

At its core, the concept of unknowing victimhood poses a deeper question: how certain can we ever be about what we know and what we don’t know? A wealth of research into pre-verbal trauma tells us that we are shaped by experiences before we can even articulate them. In 1995, a clinical professor of psychiatry at University of Colorado hospital, Theodore J Gaensbauer, published a case study about a young boy called Robert (not his real name), who, at the age of seven months, was physically and sexually abused by his birth father.

When he was adopted, Robert was “catatonic”. He was afraid of men, he didn’t want to be touched and he preferred to be left in a dark room, alone. As a child, he had behavioural problems and intense mood swings. Robert’s adoptive mother decided to take him to therapy. In one session, when Robert was eight, he said that he’d had a scary memory of his father hurting him. He flung himself to the floor, wailing hysterically, raising his bottom in the air. He shouted: “Stop! I hurt all over! My bottom is red!” and, “Don’t let him hurt me! Please don’t do that to me! I’m just a baby!”

Robert’s adoptive mother was disturbed and perplexed. She’d made a point not to talk about Robert’s birth father in front of him and he was too young to comprehend his assault when it took place. Yet it seemed the experience had stayed with him.

Tarling gives an example of a baby witnessing a violent fight between their parents, in which a knife is pulled and bottles of alcohol are everywhere. “You won’t be able to process all of that because you don’t have language for it. But what you might do, when you’re five, is have a complete meltdown when you see somebody get a bottle of beer out of the fridge,” she says. The child may not be able to explain why they are reacting so viscerally, but that “doesn’t mean you don’t remember, it means that you can’t articulate what you’ve experienced, because when you experienced it, you didn’t have words”.

Without disclosure, unknowing victims of sexual abuse risk being isolated in a lonely, liminal state of partial knowledge, deprived of victim compensation or adequate psychological support built from a full picture of their histories and mental health.

About a year after Franky was assaulted, she and a group of girls were called into the deputy head’s office. It was a bright room, overlooking the front of the school. Franky remembers two police officers standing there, asking the girls if anything weird had happened at a friend’s party or sleepover. Franky recalls the girls looking round at each other, confused about what they were talking about. Months had passed since the assault and it wasn’t at the forefront of her mind. “It didn’t trigger anything,” she says. “Even though I knew what had happened to me, it never clicked.”

Years later, when Franky finally reported the assault to the police, they brought up this school meeting, as if to say: why didn’t you tell us then? “It felt very much like victim blaming,” Franky says. There’s a particular art to interviewing children who might have been subjected to sexual abuse. It’s called the ABE technique, which stands for achieving best evidence. It’s a balancing act between wanting to get all the necessary information, without asking leading questions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go to plan. “The biggest problem is the lack of planning,” says Tarling, who has observed police rush into schools, and, because they don’t want to ask leading questions, don’t give children a full understanding of why they are there.

Tarling believes that hiring specialist child investigative interviewers (as opposed to police alone) could improve the process – people who understand both the demands of navigating an adversarial court system and child psychology. “I have very strong views about the feminist discourse around this,” she says. “A lot of it is rooted in this belief that speaking to children must be easy, because women [typically] do it … they look after children and they stay at home.”

Philip Baines, a safeguarding and training consultant at the Marie Collins Foundation and former police detective on the Child Abuse Investigation Unit, covering Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, says he has also observed officers miss opportunities for disclosure. “It’s not necessarily that the child doesn’t know the answer, it’s just you haven’t asked the right question.”

In 2019, Franky was getting ready with her friend Kate (not her real name) for Henley Royal Regatta, an annual rowing race on the River Thames. “Did you ever know why the police had come to our school and talked to all of the girls?” Franky remembers Kate asking her. Franky said she didn’t.

Kate said that her mum had told her. “It was because Jo’s dad had filmed us all in the toilets.” Franky didn’t say anything, but her mind was whirling. It was the first time she’d had confirmation that the shadowy memory of that night was probably real.

Soon after, standing with her mum in the kitchen, Franky decided to float what Kate had told her. “Who told you that?” Franky remembers Anne saying. Franky told her that it was Kate. “I never let you stay over at his after that,” her mum responded. Franky felt devastated; “I remember thinking to myself: it was way too late.” Franky and her mum were facing each other, talking about Greg’s predatory behaviour, but at the same time, they were worlds apart, each barricaded by their lack of understanding of what the other knew.

“Both of us were obviously keeping face, almost hiding our own secrets,” Franky says. “She was feeling me out to see if I knew anything about my assault, and I was feeling her out.”

It would be years until they would address it again.

The night before Franky filed a police report, she’d been to the cinema to watch a new documentary, To Kill a Tiger. The film follows the story of an Indian farmer seeking justice after his 13-year-old daughter was gang raped. Franky was moved. “If she has the confidence to do that where she is and at her age,” she remembers thinking, “I should be able to do the same.” She called the police the next day.

But months after filing the police report, Franky is still waiting for some form of closure. After the phone call with her parents, Franky’s dad sent her his email correspondence with the detective who first approached them, which went back to 2014. Franky scrolled through it, feeling nauseous. She started having a panic attack. “There was stuff that I didn’t know had happened.”

She didn’t know, for instance, that Greg had lifted up her top and filmed her breasts. Franky had recently started therapy at NYU, where she’d been diagnosed with PTSD. She found this new revelation particularly upsetting. “I’d look at myself in the mirror and be like, I’m disgusting,” she says. “It was the body part that I really loved and now it just feels so violated and horrible.”

Franky’s perceived unknowingness was brought up during Greg’s trial. “I’m told that these girls do not know what happened,” the judge is reported as saying, “but if they did, a great deal of harm would be caused.” To Eleanor Laws, a barrister specialising in criminal, sexual offences, and civil harassment cases, this indicates “that the judge has reduced his sentence because she thought that and was told that the victim was asleep”.

The starting point for a prison sentence for someone who has committed a child sexual assault of this kind is usually four years, and if Franky was found to have suffered severe psychological harm, the starting point would have been higher: at least six years. But without Franky having the opportunity to give a victim statement, the judge would not be able to gauge the full impact that the assault had on her life.

Last Christmas, Franky returned to the UK and recorded an interview with a police officer at her house. She sketched out the room where she was assaulted; recalled details such as Greg touching her with his left hand. “She was asking me questions that I’ve never even thought about before, but I had the answers to them, they were still in my head,” Franky says.

But after cross-referencing Franky’s statement with video evidence gathered at the time, police came back with a response that Franky found disheartening. Sitting alone in NYU’s journalism department, Franky spoke to a detective constable over Zoom. He told her that it was unlikely that the incident she remembered was different from the one Greg had already been charged for, meaning that the case could not be reopened.

Franky felt depleted. In the UK, the prosecution can appeal against a sentence if they consider it to be too lenient, but there is a short time frame in which this can be done: 28 days. After this, the defendant cannot be retried for the same charge, unless new evidence arises that may amount to a separate criminal offence.

“Everything that I had been working up to for the past 12 years was unsuccessful,” Franky says. Listening to the police officer’s words, she couldn’t stop crying. “This whole thing went on about me,” she says, “about my vagina, about my boobs. And I had no clue.”

“I’ve completely lost what I needed, which was to be in court, say my piece, say what he’s done to affect me,” she says. “This man has completely wrecked my mental health and I can’t even sit in front of a court and have what feels to me like my own fair trial.”

Today, Franky wonders what might have happened if the story had gone differently, if police hadn’t assumed she was asleep in the videos. She thinks that if she’d been given a chance to speak, the outcome of the trial and the trajectory of her life might have been different. “I just have to deal with the fact that I can never be part of my court case.”

Franky doesn’t blame her parents for what had happened; she thinks that “if I was in that position, I would have done the same”. But Anne and Andrew can’t help but reflect on the years that passed them by, the years they kept Franky’s assault a secret, consumed by guilt. Sometimes they wonder, knowing what they did at the time, if they should have done it any differently. “The answer’s no,” says Andrew. “Because we did it out of love.”

Your bedroom is too messy

“Studies show that clutter kills libido. A messy and disorganised space can cause stress, which is not good for our sex life,” says sex educator Portia Brown. “You may find yourself thinking, ‘Why haven’t I put away that laundry?’ instead of focusing on pleasure.”

Men’s sex coach Cam Fraser believes the bedroom should be “like a little sanctuary”, free from stresses and distractions, so that you can feel instantly relaxed and ready to be intimate in it. How do you create a sexual sanctuary? Take five minutes to declutter before initiating sex – “if you’ve got dirty clothes on the bed or the washing has to be put away, at least put everything in a cupboard, close its door and make the bed” – and don’t talk shopping lists or the school pickup in bed.

You’re cuddling too much

If one person constantly wants more cuddles, their partner can start to feel smothered. The more they pursue, the more the other can pull back from all physical affection, including sex, leading to both partners feeling more disconnected. “They end up on this merry-go-round of one person pulling back to try to widen the distance and the other trying to shrink the distance,” says Natasha Silverman, a sex and relationships therapist for Relate. “ It’s a really unhealthy cycle for both people and it can feel very emotionally damaging for the person who needs more connection.” If you can relate to this, Silverman promises “there’s nothing wrong, you’re not broken and the relationship is probably OK – you’re going through a very normal process”.

There is, after all, no right way or amount to cuddle. “It’s completely subjective,” she says. Plus, some partners may find that the more comfortable they become in a relationship, the less they want to cuddle and even have sex. It’s what is known as the intimacy-desire paradox. “After the honeymoon stage, sex often starts to take a dive. When we talk to couples, it often emerges that they’ve started to replicate a family dynamic. Living together, washing each other’s clothes and cooking dinner conjures up a lot of family memories.” Once this happens, physical and sexual touch can feel a bit unappealing. “I have a client who got really upset when her partner stroked her hair while they were watching telly on the sofa. She freaked out and said, ‘That’s when my dad used to stroke my hair!’”

To avoid this, when you initiate cuddles with your partner, ask: “Is this OK? Do you like this?” If you notice that your desire for cuddles is causing tension, step back and give your partner more room to pursue you. Silverman adds: “The way we initiate affection is often replicated in the way we initiate sex. So if you can nail this when it comes to cuddles, you can break the cycle when it comes to sex as well.”

Labour may cut financial support for flooded farmers, the Guardian has learned, while money to compensate them for deluges in January has still not hit their pockets.

The previous Conservative government earlier this year promised up to £25,000 in payments for uninsurable damage from flooding caused by Storm Henk. However, the eligibility criteria for these grants has still not been set out, leaving farmers out of pocket. The scheme has been plagued with delays, with some affected farmers not being paid because they live too far from a river.

Some early claimants received money in July but thousands more who are thought to be eligible are still waiting for the financial support.

Senior sources in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) told the Guardian that decisions about how much money could be paid to farmers for the floods were being held up because of the spending review, and that cuts were on the table. The Conservatives had promised a £50m expansion of the fund before the general election.

Floods have already begun this autumn, with freshly sown crops washed away and farmers facing another unprofitable harvest season. Farmers fear that they are about to take a financial hit while still waiting for government payments from January’s floods. New Met Office data shows six counties had their wettest September on record: Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. There have been floods across the country and more rain is expected by the end of this week.

The National Farmers’ Union vice-president, Rachel Hallos, said: “Back in May, farmers impacted by the devastating storms at the start of the year were promised help through the expanded farming recovery fund offer, but this has not been forthcoming.

“Months later, farm businesses are still suffering the impact of the relentless rain. Thousands of acres of farmland have been completely saturated and unusable, and we’ve just finished an incredibly difficult harvest with huge variations in yield and quality. We urgently need details of when the fund will be available to help these farms recover.

“With further heavy rain leaving more fields waterlogged, arable farmers are once again concerned about getting crops in the ground for next season. We cannot keep getting stuck in this cycle – we simply must invest in our water management systems. The farming recovery fund is one part, but we need a long-term plan for how we protect our towns and countryside from what is becoming more regular, and expensive, flooding events.”

This is the latest blow to farmer confidence from the Labour government, after the Guardian revealed ministers were mulling cutting about £100m a year from the nature-friendly farming budget.

Flooding is hurting UK food security, and experts believe floods are being made worse by climate breakdown. Income from farming in England plummeted by 19% in 2023 after floods meant harvesting many crops was impossible. Farms also contributed less to England’s economy in 2023 at £10bn, a fall of £1bn or 8.7% compared with 2022. Farmers’ total income from agriculture in England was £4.5bn, down £1.1bn or 19.0% compared with 2022.

A Defra spokesperson said that all spending commitments for the coming year were to be confirmed in the spending review, adding: “The government is working at pace, with input from representatives of the farming sector, to accelerate the building of flood defences through our new flood resilience taskforce. All farmers eligible for the initial farm recovery fund set up in April have been offered payment, with further information on the scheme set out in due course.”