In the second of a three-part series on relatives of prison inmates, Nick Morrison talks to a mother who is hiding the truth of her partner's whereabouts from her son.

EVERY month or so, Robert goes to visit his dad. It's a bit of a trek, and the only time he ever sees his dad, and so far he seems satisfied with his mum's explanations. But Helen knows it's only a matter of time.

"You are subjected to all these searches, and you have a four-year-old boy who has to stand still while the dog sniffs around him, and they take his hat off and search his hair," Helen says.

"But he thinks he is going to his dad's work, and he works in a place where dad is not allowed out. Robert just goes and has a good time with his mates and paints pictures.

"I'm glad he is like that: you see some of the older ones and they're heartbroken to leave their dads. But Robert can put 'p' and 'r' together and soon he will be able to spell 'prison', and I'm going to have to explain it to him. I have absolutely no idea how."

Helen's partner, Dave, is an inmate at Shotts prison in Lanarkshire, just over two years into a four year sentence for dealing and possessing drugs. And it's not just her son who is kept in the dark over Dave's whereabouts.

Helen, a neatly-dressed and articulate 31-year-old, moved back to the North-East while Dave was working away, so when he was arrested and later jailed, his absence was at first easy to explain to neighbours. But the cover story is now wearing very thin.

"I just decided to tell them Robert's dad works away, and that was fine with my neighbours for a while, but this dad who works away never appears for birthdays and Christmas.

"But I don't want to tell them that my partner is a gangster who goes around selling drugs. Who is going to want to know a drug dealer's son?

'I have to hide over Christmas. I pack my bags and stay at my mum's and tell my neighbours I have been to Scotland for Christmas. And it is true that he's working - he's making carrier bags for Marks and Spencer," she laughs, before her tone abruptly changes. "I haven't told Robert where his dad is, why should I tell my scabby neighbours?"

It is an insight into how Helen is coping with her partner's incarceration. Within seconds, she veers from a resignation which allows her to see the funny side of her plight, to a bitterness at the unfairness of it all.

When she first met Dave, she had a good job, a nice house and a busy social life. He was earning a decent wage with a Formula One racing car manufacturer and seemed, she says, like a "reasonably nice bloke". A Scot, he was working away from home, and she knew nothing of his family or background.

Once she became pregnant, five months into their relationship, everything changed. He started mixing with criminals, ran a protection racket, got into fights and then began dealing drugs. He was never violent towards Helen but became difficult to live with, and eventually she decided to return to Newcastle.

Even though they lived apart, they stayed together, but Helen only realised the full extent of Dave's activities after he was arrested and then put on trial in Edinburgh.

"When he got sentenced I was horrified, I was absolutely broken-hearted," she says. "It is like a bereavement, when you lose someone really, really close to you and you are living in a trance because you are that distraught. You can't make sense of even the simplest things.

"It is hard to get on with your daily life, because you are really suffering, but your life has to go on. It is alright for them in prison, they know what they're going to be doing day in day out, but for us left behind with the kids, what are we supposed to do?"

Although Dave is the one locked up most of the day, it's clear Helen almost envies this escape from the realities of life on the outside.

"It's like living in a shell for them. They don't have to worry about paying the bills, buying Christmas presents and day to day life. I have got no sympathy for any of them, I really haven't. They get what they deserve.

"You get to a stage where you think 'poor him'. You can't upset him on the phone, and I've written to him every week since he was sentenced. Then you sit back and think 'who is getting me through my life? Who is helping me? You don't come on the phone and ask me how has my day been, how am I managing for money'."

Money is a recurring problem for Helen, as with the partners of many prisoners. When Dave was sentenced, the court confiscated assets of £250,000. He had been earning £10,000 from drugs, although Helen says she saw virtually none of this. She says everything in her neat end-terraced house was bought legitimately, although it's not necessarily on principle.

'I know this sounds selfish and I know the money was from criminal activities, but I'm sitting here with £3 in my purse and I couldn't give a toss where it came from. To think he blew all that money on drugs, it makes my blood boil," she says.

She says the one thing all prisoners have in common is their refusal to accept responsibility for anything. Even the fact they are in prison is put down to being grassed up, not as the result of anything they've done wrong.

But if she has such a low opinion of her partner, the question must be, why is she standing by him, waiting for him to come out? It's one she doesn't find easy to answer.

"Everybody asks that, and I must admit it is getting to the point where I'm thinking that. I've had enough of him, I'm sick of it. He can't help himself, he's not going to change.

"If I had washed my hands of him when he got sentenced I would not have had three years of mental torture, but when you love somebody, and you have a kid who desperately wants a dad, and there is a slim chance, just a slim one, of him coming out and being a good dad, you have to hang onto that."

She may have resigned herself to her fate, but that doesn't make it easy to take. The hurdle of explaining to people what has happened to her son's dad means it is easier to have no friends and no social life

"I suffer from really bad bouts of depression. I was suicidal on a couple of occasions and the only thing that kept me going was my son. He doesn't realise that, but you have to get on with things, because a little boy is not going to let you sit in a corner with your jarmers on."

Helen says she still loves him, but the strain of continuing the relationship is taking its toll. "We have had a verbal relationship for the last three years. We talk on the phone, but we have nothing in common. He talks about drugs and murdering people, I talk about Robert and my school dinner job," she says.

"But I love him to bits and I want to be with him for the rest of my life. I have come to the conclusion that he is not going to change, he is going to be in and out of prison for the rest of his life and am I going to accept that? I know it sounds ridiculous after everything I've said about him, but I probably will."

*Names in this article have been changed

*NEPACS offers help and advice to prisoners' families in the North-East. They can be contacted on 0191 384 3096 or at 22 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HW.