Frances had only just arrived at work when she received a phone call that turned her life upside down.
Police officers had arrested her solicitor husband Andrew over allegations he was defrauding clients - and were searching the family home the couple shared with their two children.
Andrew's office, in a leafy village to the south of Manchester, also resembled a scene from a TV drama - cloaked in yellow crime tape, staff in shock and records being boxed up.
His legal practice held power of attorney for many elderly people with dementia. But the police discovered that hundreds of thousands of pounds of Andrew's clients' money were missing. Officers later found he had spent the funds on adult webcam sites, sex workers, and antiques.
That was 12 years ago.
A resulting court case would hear Andrew's impulsive behavior was caused by medication he was being prescribed for Parkinson's disease.
He stole from 13 of his clients. All, except two, were aged over 80, and some were unwell. They had a combined £600,000 taken from their accounts.
One 87-year-old living in a care home died shortly after the theft - her estate didn't have enough money to pay for her funeral.
People didn't want to know us, and I can understand that entirely, says Frances, thinking back to what Andrew did. While their daughter, Alice, says her father never forgave himself.
Andrew's behavior would later have tragic consequences.
His case is extreme - but far from isolated.
Over the past year, we have spoken to scores of families whose lives have been torn apart by impulsive behaviors caused by a family of medications known as dopamine agonist drugs.
These include the development of new sexual urges - such as addictions to pornography and sex workers - but also compulsive shopping and gambling that have cost people tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The drugs are an established treatment for Parkinson's, Restless Legs Syndrome, and other conditions. They have been prescribed 1.5 million times by GPs alone in England in the past year.
NHS advice is clear - if you are taking them and you have any concerns, you should speak to your doctor.
One in six Parkinson's patients on the drugs are affected by impulse control disorders - the clinical term for this behavior - according to a 2010 study of just over 3,000 people.
In response to our investigation, the chair of the MPs' Health Select Committee described our findings as devastating and has written to the UK drugs regulator asking it to review official warnings.
Many of the people we spoke to told us they had no history of any such impulsive behaviors before taking the drugs - and made no connection with their medication when they began experiencing them.
They say doctors failed to either properly warn them or to monitor the drugs' effects.
The potential side effects of the medication, she says, finally explained Andrew's compulsive shopping - although at that point, she had no idea about the true extent of his spending.
Before his diagnosis, Andrew had used webcams and sex-chat sites roughly once a week. But in the year after he started on the pills, he made nearly 500 payments to them.
He went on to spend more than £100,000 on one website alone using his clients' money. He also spent nearly £80,000 on sex workers in just four months, and when he was arrested, his mobile phone was found to contain the numbers of 90 different escorts.
Andrew also began compulsively buying antique pens, pottery and cricket memorabilia, spending £85,000 on eBay in the six months leading up to the police raid.
For more than a year, the family waited to hear from prosecutors - and eventually, Andrew was charged with fraud. The couple's son, Harry, found it particularly difficult to cope, leading to severe mental health issues and ultimately taking his own life.
Andrew was sentenced to four years in prison and within that time, the family faced numerous challenges. Frances and Andrew divorced while he was incarcerated and upon his release, he moved into sheltered accommodation. Sadly, the effects of his actions followed them, leaving deep scars on the family. In October 2020, Andrew took his own life, an event shrouded in the stigma surrounding the medications he had taken.
The collateral harm caused by dopamine agonist drugs to wider families remains unrecorded. Some have lost their life savings or homes due to the compulsive behaviors of users.
The MHRA has said it cannot change drug warnings as they are “individualized”. Yet organizations like NICE have stated the importance of providing comprehensive information about these drug risks.
Frances and Alice have moved away, but their pain remains. I had my life taken away from me: my home, the community I lived in, but above all my son, Frances reflects.
