I’m a middle-class mother with a high-flying job. This is the shameful habit that cost me thousands of pounds and almost landed me in prison. I know so many other women who do the same thing

Picture the scene: It’s 8.15am at a busy station in central London. Hundreds of people start their day in their comfortable homes in the Home Counties, then bypass ticket barriers and head to work.

And there I am, in the middle of this moving scene; A middle-class, professional woman being read my rights by an angry ticket inspector. I’ve never felt such shame.

Is it my fault? Avoiding wages. Or more specifically, shortcutting, a practice I had never even heard of until a friend and fellow well-paid commuter suggested it to me. Short-hauling is a form of fare evasion in which you buy tickets for a shorter distance (or a cheaper destination) than your planned trip, while secretly traveling further afield.

In my case, this meant boarding at my small local station, where there were no ticket barriers, then buying a ticket to London from a town further down using an app on my phone. The shorter distance ticket was half the price and I was still able to get through the barriers in central London by scanning my QR code.

I quietly justified this with the fact that the ticket prices were exorbitant and the service was generally terrible. Combined with my limited financial situation (I had recently given birth to my second child), this seemed like a no-brainer. I also suspected that many other people on my train were doing the same thing. Sure, he was a little on the wrong side of the law, but he wasn’t committing a huge crime.

I was doing short trips for a full year before I got caught.

How did the train company catch me? Anyway, I got too cocky. On that fateful day, I decided to push my luck and bought a ticket at a station even closer to London; I was delighted when I realized it would cost me less than a fiver (a full ticket is around £50 return).

The only problem was that the train I was on didn’t stop at that station, and when I got off at my final destination, I realized there was a crackdown on fare evasion. The scanner where I normally tap my QR code at the ticket barrier was deliberately blocked by a sticker, and I had to show my ticket to an inspector instead, who quickly identified that the station on my ticket was probably not the station I arrived at.

Anonymous essentially says the whole thing cost me £1,150 on top of what I had to pay

The whole ruse started to unravel when he questioned me at the ticket booths. He wanted to see my driver’s license to see where I lived and if I had ever made a delinquency before that day. He told me that the train company had CCTV that they could use to check where I boarded the train and that they could also go back months and look at the purchase history on my rail app to find out where I claimed to start my journey.

I thought about lying but I kept silent; It was so embarrassing to say that in front of so many people. I was also afraid of what might happen as a result of being caught.

When he read me my rights, I began to wonder if I would go to jail. Will I lose my job? How was I going to pay my mortgage? What will happen to my young children?

The inspector took my information and told me that a letter would arrive in the mail giving me the right of reply. In full panic mode, I immediately started googling lawyers and found a law firm that specialized in helping fare evaders on the train network in question; This confirmed my belief that this was a very common practice.

When I talked to the lawyer a few days later, he told me that he deals with similar cases all the time. He also explained that if I had pulled a similar stunt with Transport for London they would have sought a conviction; But he was confident that if I took the appropriate steps I could get away with paying what I owed to the train company plus a small fine.

But these steps were humiliating. After the letter arrived from the train company with details of my fare evasion (which took about two weeks), I had to take three character references to show that this was not my normal behaviour. The friends and colleagues I asked were shocked when I told them what was going on, but they agreed to help me.

The attorney also asked me if I was seeing a therapist or if there was a stressful situation going on at the time that might have caused “error in my judgment.” Actually I it was After seeing a therapist, I managed to obtain a letter explaining that I was going through a stressful period (I returned to work after giving birth to my second child) and that the emotional and financial consequences of this may have led me to commit crime.

It got me thinking if this it was The real reason I avoid fees. Of course, train costs were annoying for me; I had dependents and money was limited. But I think the risky element of it all also appealed to me on some level. Even though I had never done anything dangerous before, I enjoyed the mentality of playing with fire and every time I crossed the barrier I would hear a little buzz and say ‘Yes! I did it again!’

That’s definitely not what I said in the apology letter the lawyer had me write to the train company. Instead I wrote how sorry I was and that I understood the knock-on effects of fare evasion on the train company as a whole.

For their part, the train company was prepared to accept this as long as I paid back the full amount I owed (which was £2,500) plus the £250 fare. The only thing I felt when the money left my account was relief. It had been a month since I was first caught and the whole experience was incredibly stressful; I was torn to pieces.

Paying the money felt like putting an end to the entire episode. I no longer wanted this experience anywhere near me; I did not seek any criminal convictions. I also had to pay £900 to the solicitor, but at that stage I really felt like he was my saviour. In fact, this all cost me £1,150 on top of the fee I had to pay; But the stress of this experience was much more distressing than the money.

Although I have told many of my friends what happened, the only person I have never been able to explain this story to is my mother. He would be absolutely horrified; In fact, after I was caught, he watched a program on TV about ticket evasion and texted me and said: ‘I hope you never do something like this.’

Other people I told were less judgmental; They couldn’t believe the hardships I had to go through to appease the train company.

I still commute to the same job a few days a week, but I’ll never be able to escape again. Even now, as the ticket inspector walks on the train, I can feel my heart beating faster; This reminds me of the shame, stress, and panic I created when I decided to game the system.

It seemed harmless at the time, even justified, but in reality I was committing a crime. I wonder how many other middle-class passengers on my train do the same thing…