Love rival dads lived together until one stabbed the other

-Mirror

UK: It was never going to be easy for love rival dads to move in ­together and bring up the ­children of the woman they both adored.

But that is exactly what Steve Cook and Mark Motteram did after the mother of their kids died from a heart attack.

They took the amazing decision to put aside their differences and share a home after Anne Motteram’s funeral.

But it didn’t end well. The dads’ attempt at unity in Anne’s memory ended in one stabbing the other and going to jail.

After two years of rowing over cooking, cleaning and football, Mark, Anne’s ­ex-husband, attacked Steve, her ­fiancé, with a kitchen knife. As a result he has started a four-year prison stretch.

Today Steve, 37, tells the Sunday People exclusively how the unusual living ­arrangement descended into violence.

Now recovered from his injuries, he says: “If Anne is watching down on us she’ll be disgusted. Our good intentions turned into a nightmare.

“I’m devastated that it ended this way and wish I could erase the past year.

“Even though I am the victim I feel I’ve let her down. It’s heartbreaking. I lost the woman I loved and my ­unborn baby. Now I feel I’ve let her down too.”

When she died in 2011, Anne had one child with Steve – Catherine, five. And she was seven months pregnant with their second, a boy to be called James.

From her previous marriage with Mark she already had three children – Luke, 18, Toni, 15, and Ben, 10.

Former IT consultant Steve said his relationship with Mark was “stand-offish”. They rarely saw or spoke to each other.

But when they met in tragic ­circumstances outside the intensive care unit at Southampton General Hospital, they formed a bond which gave their children hope for a stable future.

Steve says: “I was in a state of shock.One minute I’d been preparing for the arrival of our baby and discussing our wedding plans, the next the love of my life was dead.

“We wanted the sex of our baby to be a surprise so I didn’t know we were having a boy.

“I named him James as it was Anne’s first choice if we had a boy.

“Mark was there, I suppose that’s where we realised we were in it together. When James was on a life ­support machine Mark held him – he understood the grief I was going through because he felt it too.

“We were outside the intensive care unit when we decided to live together. It was a very matter of fact conversation.

“We didn’t decide on the logistics of it all, but we felt it was the best thing to do. Until that point, Mark and I had hardly spoken but now I was seeing a completely ­different side to him.”

The pair moved into Anne’s house in Southampton. With them was Catherine, Steve’s only child, and Mark’s three children.

Two weeks later, the two dads stood shoulder to shoulder to carry Anne’s coffin into the crematorium. An inquest concluded a blockage in Anne’s heart had triggered the fatal heart attack.

Tiny James had brain damage in the womb and lived for barely a week.

“It was a painful day,” says Steve, “but we held it together for Anne and the kids.”

After beginning domestic life together the odd couple accommodated each other’s needs, even taking turns to sleep on the sofa because the house was too small for two men and four kids.

But as the months rolled by, the pair began to fall out.

Steve says: “We’d never really gelled as we were both so different.

“Mark liked to watch the footy but I didn’t care for it.

“We were like chalk and cheese.

“We started to argue over money. Neither of us were working and Mark would control our benefits.

“He would give me a weekly allowance for the food shop, yet spend lots of money we didn’t have on 40 cigarettes a day.”

The tension came to a head in January 2013, two years after they had taken the well-meaning decision to move in.

Steve left the house after one of their now regular blazing rows and Mark ­contacted social services and falsely ­accused him of alcoholism.

The accusation meant that Steve ­temporarily lost custody of his daughter Catherine, then aged four.

It was three months before Steve was cleared of the accusation and able to take himself and his daughter away from the now troubled household.

Despite their relationship having ­broken down, Catherine had grown close to her half-brothers and sister.

The little girl was allowed to visit them and Mark from time to time.

It was on one of those trips in October 2013 that the two dads’ relationship came to a violent end.

Catherine had gone to spend a week with Motteram and her siblings during her half-term holiday.

Steve heard nothing from Mark during the week and was nervous as he ­approached the house to pick her up.

As he knocked on the door, he could see Mark was already waiting for him behind the frosted glass.

Steve says: “He opened the door and walked slowly outside with his hand ­behind his back.

“He lunged at me with a four-inch kitchen knife, aiming for my chest.

“The knife struck me once just below my ribs and above the abdomen, breaking a rib in the process.

“Luckily I managed to get the knife off him as we fell to the ground.

“Then I hobbled off to try to alert a friend, who was waiting in the car.”

When the police arrived Mark was taken into custody – while Steve was rushed to hospital.

He says: “Luckily, he’d missed my vital organs by half an inch. Had he not I might not be here today.”

In the days that followed, Motteram was charged with attempted murder but the charge was later changed to wounding with intent to cause serious harm. He was remanded in custody and pleaded guilty at Winchester Crown Court in April. The sentence was four years in jail.

The court heard prosecution evidence that Motteram lunged at Steve while shouting that he was going to kill him.

Sentencing Motteram, Mr Justice Teare said that while there were mitigating ­circumstances it did not excuse what he had done, adding: “Your offence is serious because of your admitted intent to do serious bodily harm.”

Steve, now living in Derbyshire, says: “It’s a bitter sweet feeling as I’m glad he’s been jailed. I am just concentrating on Catherine. She is excelling at school and is very happy.

"I tell her about Anne every day and when she gets older she can see her siblings again.

“But at the moment we just need to get back to some normality. I hope Anne is proud of how I’ve handled things, but I know she’d be devastated.”