Lin didn't think things could get any worse when the family home was destroyed by fire. Then her daughter broke her back. Phil Clee reports...

Single mum Lin Coxhead's world fell apart when a fire gutted the rented house where she lived with her three teenage children.

The family lost all their possessions in the blaze at Kingston Warren, near Wantage, leaving them homeless.

But as she was trying to come to terms with living in a borrowed caravan, living apart from her children, disaster was to strike again in the same week.

The distraught mother learnt that her daughter Julie, 17, had fallen from a horse, breaking a bone in her back.

The accident left the girl in agony and for the past week she has been immobilised at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, where she has only just begun to take her first tentative steps.

Mrs Coxhead said: "Last week when the phone rang to say Julie had had an accident and was on her way to hospital by ambulance, I thought the world couldn't get any darker."

But Mrs Coxhead, 39, who is currently living in a borrowed caravan in the garden of her sister's home at Goosey, is due to have talks with housing association officials later this week. She hopes to take over the tenancy of a property for the homeless in Wantage.

At the moment, her two sons, Robert, 16, and Martin, 13, who both attend King Alfred's School, are being put up by another sister, who lives just a few doors away in Johnstones, Goosey.

"But now there's light at the end of the tunnel, and things can only get better," said Mrs Coxhead, a divorcee for the past six years. She praised the generosity of family, neighbours and friends, who have rallied round to help with offers of clothes and accommodation since the fire on June 3 which destroyed all they had.

Daughter Julie's year-old Jack Russell cross pup also perished in the blaze at the Henry Candy racing stables, although the family's other dog, Charlie, survived with slight burns and a singed coat.

Mrs Coxhead, who has worked as a domestic for local families since her children were small, said Julie, a stable girl at the Mark Usher stables in Kingston Lisle, came to grief while out riding with other staff on June 10, when her mount unsaddled her and she fell heavily in the road.

Local traffic was halted as she was left lying where she had fallen until the paramedics arrived. Once at hospital, she was X-rayed and tests were carried out to discover the nature of her back injury, which is believed to be a broken 'wing' bone at the base of her spine.

At the weekend, Julie, developed a chest infection through lying immobile for so long, and now has to be exercised to ease her breathing and keep the infection at bay.

"Her boss has been brilliant and she's had lots of visitors from the stables, and one owner sent her some flowers," said Mrs Coxhead. We don't know how long her recovery will take, but at least she's able to move now, although yesterday just drained her.

"At first she was suffering from intense pain attacks and had to be given morphine, and she was very low at that point, which made me feel worse.

"But she can't have wished for better staff at the adolescent unit, they've all been brilliant."

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