ON Friday night at around 8.30pm I nearly got that phone call that every parent dreads.

"Hello is that . . . .'s mum? This is PC . . . ."

Thereafter I managed to pick out random words . . . "unconscious", "Jumbles Country Park", "drunk?!"

Thank God she wasn't dead. But she was staying in at a friend's house. She was safely in someone's home.

She had left the house only an hour-and-a-half earlier with a friend. She knows I hate liars.

You have to trust them sometimes, don't you?

I thought we had gone past this. Months and months of arguments every weekend. I was the worst and only mum in Bromley Cross who wouldn't let her child hang around on street corners.

Surely the reasoning and countless articles from The Bolton News which I had read to her about "feral" children and the effect of their anti-social behaviour on the community had made some impression on her. She was too intelligent to lower herself to that level? Surely?

Plus, I believed her when she told me that "she was past that stage", she didn't want to be "part of that scene" and that if I let her go out, she was in friends' houses or at the cinema.

So it was on that understanding she began to go out on either a Friday or Saturday evening.

They are all "nice kids", they live in lovely houses, they are from nice families. I dropped her off and generally picked her up as well, unless she was sleeping out.

Of course, there was the odd hiccup, but teenagers are like that, they are not perfect.

She wasn't where she should have been at "said time" . . . the night she spent on the shower floor with a "stomach bug" being sick . . . those little niggles that I had ignored up until now.

It was only now that I actually realised just how blinding love can be. I went to collect her from the car park on Horrobin Lane. Her sister drove. I couldn't stop shaking.

The police were fabulous. I was devastated. She couldn't stand up. She had mud on her face and vomit down her clothes.

Little groups of teenagers were scurrying off in various directions as her dad bundled her into the back of the car.

The police handed me two empty bottles of vodka and empty lager cans.

She was 16 years old, where had she got this from? She knows I have zero tolerance for alcohol.

Later that evening I needed some air and the dog needed a walk. It was late but I needed to get out, my head was banging, I hadn't stopped crying.

Was I the worst parent in Bromley Cross? My two elder daughters were well adjusted. One in the third year of a medical degree and on for a first. One with a good job in one of our financial institutions, company car and all. There is only four years between her and her oldest sister. What had I done so wrong with her?

As I strolled down Grange Road, I was behind a group of teenagers who were deep in conversation and on a mobile phone. I deliberately stayed behind them to listen. The language was disgusting and they had obviously been drinking.

They discussed the evening, the police, my daughter and were arranging to regroup at the ice cream shop on the Jumbles.

It was dark and it wasn't until they stopped outside a house and I had to pass them that I realised that they were her "nice friends". I was getting a glimpse into how she behaves when she's out.

I passed little huddles of teenagers on mobile phones, with alcohol. My advice of "remember to conduct yourself as if I was looking over your shoulder, don't let me down" had well and truly fallen on stone deaf ears.

The police told me there were approximately 120 children on the streets that night.

So parents of Bromley Cross: My eyes are wide open now. Don't be blinded by love for your children, they were your "nice kids" too.

Bromley Cross mother