Sitting in a tiny, squalid cell for 23 hours a day with two other women, eating nothing but rice, and dreaming of freedom is the price Tresa Gaughan is paying for trying to smuggle drugs out of Jamaica.
The Greater Leys mother-of-three holds her hands up to her guilt, and wishes she had never boarded the plane home after a holiday, her cork-wedge shoes stuffed with crack cocaine.
She was arrested on board the plane before it left and received an 18-month prison sentence, which she is currently serving in Kingston Jail. She hopes to be released in the next few months.
Here in Oxford, at the family home that Tresa's mum Christine shares with her second husband, Ian East, and the couple's three children, hers is not the only story of a life gone off the rails.
Tresa's brother, 26-year-old Martin Meredith, died of a heroin overdose in 1999, another, Patrick, is in jail for drug-related burglary, a sister has had to overcome drug addiction and another lived with a violent partner.
Stepfather Ian, 45, has decided to talk to the Oxford Mail to highlight the drug problems on the Greater Leys estate and to show the devastating effect drugs have had on his family.
When he married Christine 20 years ago, he welcomed the idea of bringing up her five children, but is now appalled at how his stepchildren's lives have revolved around drugs and crime.
"Drugs have devastated this family. However much you look after your children, tell them that drugs are wrong and try to keep them on the straight and narrow, you can't be with them 24-hours a day," he says sadly.
"If they say they are going round to a mate's house you can't go with them, you have to learn to give them some sort of responsibility," he adds.
Ian rarely drinks and is very anti-drugs, but it hasn't stopped his family succumbing to the drug culture where they live in Greater Leys.
"People say I shouldn't be washing my dirty linen in public but only because their children have the same problems. You just can't escape from drugs round here. It's a far worse problem than people think," he says.
Ian was there when Tresa admitted she was a crack addict a few years ago, after her brother died and her marriage broke up.
"She started off smoking cannabis and it progressed from there, it was a gradual thing," Ian remembers.
Her children were then taken into care and not returned.
So when she announced she was off on holiday to Jamaica with some friends to sort her head out, Ian was delighted.
Two weeks later he received a phone call from the Home Office saying Tresa had been arrested for drug trafficking and was in jail in Montego Bay.
Ian immediately sold whatever family furniture he could to pay for his flight to Jamaica but when he arrived he realised there was little he could do to stop the wheels of justice.
Tresa's condition is being monitored by the chaity Prisoners Abroad, the London-based organisation which has also been in touch with the Easts, doing what they can to support the family.
Although Tresa could be released as early as next month, there is still the matter of her £5,000 fine to be settled. Ian, who works at Sainsbury's, is doing his best to keep his family and to save, but he will have to take out a loan to pay off Tresa's fine. If it isn't paid she will have to stay in jail until November.
"She knows what she did was wrong and she is clean now. But she is paying for it big time and there are so many others suffering around here because they are on drugs.
"I just worry about what will happen when she comes back because she will bump into the people she associated with before. She will just have to be strong," he adds. "I hope she has the foresight to move away and start again somewhere else. We have got relatives in Ireland."
"I know that people blame the parents but it's just the people they knock about with. They got into a bad crowd and it's a hard cycle to get out of. I don't know what my step-children saw in it.
"I had to kick Patrick out of the house one Christmas when I found a needle and realised he'd been doing heroin in the house. None of us have ever recovered from Martin's death. I don't want to relive it with another one of our children."
The strain of the circumstances have taken their toll on Ian's health. After Tresa's arrest he was diagnosed as suffering from depression and was forced to take 12 weeks off work.
But he is still struggling to keep his family together, despite the situation.
"We just try to carry on with life, but it's really hard. It would just be nice to have some sort of normality," he says.
And now that the couple have three young children of their own, Ian is terrified about their future too.
"Of course I've warned my children about the dangers but I feel very helpless. I just hope they've got the strength to avoid the peer pressure and don't get into the wrong crowd because they're great kids," he sighs.
"There are so many other parents who must be going through the same thing as us in Greater Leys. But sometimes I do feel like I'm fighting a losing battle because drugs are everywhere around here and something has to be done about it."
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