My Fight to the Top (21 page)

‘Oh, that would be so good,’ she beamed. ‘We can have time together. We don’t spend enough time designing. It would be so good for you to be there. I can’t wait,’ she gushed.

I was upset, but I was trying to trap her, so I threw on a smile. ‘Okay, so you really want me to come?’ I said, double-checking.

‘It would be amazing,’ she beamed.

‘Okay, let me look at my diary,’ I told her.

I rang my PA while I was in the car to see if she could look into flights. She called me back. ‘I can get you on the same flight,’ my PA said.

‘Book it,’ I said. There was no stopping me. I phoned Sam back and announced the good news. ‘I’m on the same flight,’ I said over loudspeaker.

I could hear the panic in her voice. ‘Oh, no, oh no you can’t,’ she spluttered.

I trapped her.
‘Sorry?’ I asked.

‘You can’t come. I mean, we’ve got meetings all planned. I meant I wanted you to come, but not on this trip.’

What?
‘That’s not what you said to me an hour ago,’ I fired back at her. I got back to my office and I went to chat to my head of sales in her room with my PA. I could see straight into Michael’s office as the whole place was made up of walls of glass.

I was telling the girls that I was going to Hong Kong and then I turned around to see Michael charging out of his office. He came running like a bull towards us.

Oh fuck. Oh Jesus.

Michael grabbed me in front of everyone. ‘You fucking bitch! You’re not coming to Hong Kong,’ he yelled. He had his briefcase with him and he slammed it into my chest. ‘If you come to Hong Kong, I quit. I need to be away from you. I don’t want to be with you.’

I was trembling inside. ‘Sam told me she needed me there,’ I said, trying to stay calm.

‘Sam doesn’t need you there, I don’t need you there and you better cancel your flight or I’ll resign,’ he threatened.

I wasn’t going to be bullied. ‘Resign all you like,’ I said.

It exploded into a massive argument. I broke down in tears. My PA and head of sales, Margaret, tried to step in, ‘Enough, Michael. Leave her alone,’ they begged. Michael left and the girls came rushing to my side.

Why was he so determined not to have me there?

I phoned Carol Vorderman and asked her for
that
number. ‘Who’s that guy you know?’ I asked her for the number of her friend’s private detective. I gave the detective the dates that Michael and Sam were going to Hong Kong along with flight numbers and everything he would need to get me some proof that they were together. I needed that reassurance because Michael had been telling me that I was going nuts. I needed to show my family and my friends that I wasn’t making this up. I had to know that I wasn’t going mad.

I counted down the days until they left, crying myself to sleep every night. I was still in the spare room while Michael slept in the master bedroom. When he left for Hong Kong I went to London for business meetings. The detective was planted at the airport, ready to capture my husband and Sam as they came off the flight.

Carol tried to cheer me up by taking me for lunch at Scott’s in Mayfair. We were sitting on the terrace outside when I got a call from the private detective. ‘I need to see you,’ he said with urgency.

I told him I was happy for anything to be said in front of my friend, but the detective insisted on seeing me privately. He turned up at Scott’s and approached our table with a big brown envelope. My heart sank like a dead weight. ‘I think you should walk with me,’ he said sombrely.

‘There’s a park across the road,’ I said, leaving Carol for a moment.

It was a cold but sunny day. We walked into the park and he told me how sorry he was as he handed me the envelope. I peeled it open to find pictures of Michael snogging Sam at the airport in front of my team and pictures of her going back to his hotel room. Deep down I knew that my marriage had been over for a long time but the pain I felt when I saw the photos was indescribable. My knees buckled and I fell to the ground crying. Carol ran over and wrapped her arms around me.

As I made my way back to Scotland with the pictures in my handbag, grief turned to anger. Michael and I had been together for 22 years and he was behaving like this only four weeks after we split up. What hurt me was the deceit, the lies, and the fact he had made me out to be mad. Even my friends had started to doubt my sanity. The fact that my team were in the pictures while he was kissing made it ten times more painful.

Mum was there to give me a hug as soon as I got home, and then I told Rebecca the news. ‘Your dad is seeing Sam,’ I said. She was old enough to know what was really going on.

‘My dad wouldn’t do that,’ she snapped. Rebecca phoned Michael on his mobile and put him on loudspeaker.

‘Listen, darling, I swear on your life I’d never do that to you, I’d never kiss Sam. She works for me,’ he promised.

More lies.

Rebecca turned on me. ‘My dad said you need to be sectioned. You need to see a doctor,’ she shouted, echoing her father’s words.

I had the pictures in my bag, but I couldn’t let on until Michael got back because I wanted to get him first. My head was all over the place. I cried out that my own daughter didn’t believe me and then I just saw red. Him lying to Rebecca, our daughter, was the final straw. I just went mad, absolutely crazy.

I charged through the kitchen, grabbing a knife and a keyring and I went to town on Michael’s brand new Porsche Panamera in our driveway. Michael was so anal about his cars: if I scraped a wheel he would go on about it for a week. I swear he cared more about those cars than me. You fucker, I thought as I scratched his beloved £100k Porsche to shreds.

I charged next door to my guesthouse that I’d let Sam live in, out of the kindness of my heart. All her clothes were crumpled at the bottom of the wardrobe. I was shocked at the state of the place. Michael was OCD about cleanliness just like me. How could he find a girl who leaves her room like this attractive? I scooped the clothes up into my arms and threw every single item of hers out of the window and into the garden. I picked up the dressing table and threw that onto the drive too. I was like a banshee.

Meanwhile, Rebecca and my mum were screaming for me to stop. ‘You can’t do this, Mum,’ Rebecca cried.

‘I’ve done it,’ I said dusting my hands off.

‘You’re mad. He’s not having a affair,’ Rebecca shouted, as she started collecting Sam’s clothes into black bin bags.

I knew Michael was about to land and I’d sent a text message to him saying I’d caught him red-handed. I kept ringing Sam’s phone until she picked up. Finally, I heard her voice. ‘You bitch, you lied to me. You said you were not having an affair with my husband,’ I screamed.

‘I need to explain,’ she stuttered. ‘It’s not like that. It only started a few days ago,’ she said.

‘You’re a fucking liar and you’re fired,’ I blasted. ‘Don’t dare come near me, or my kids again.’ I watched through the window as Michael pulled into the driveway. The first thing he was raging about was his car.

He came running in and grabbed me. ‘My fucking car!’ he shouted.

Rebecca was screaming as my mum separated us.

‘You’ll pay for that! You’ll pay for that!’ he yelled.

‘You’re lucky I didn’t set fire to it, you fucker,’ I told him.

‘I’m calling the police.’ Michael reached for the phone.

Never look back.

‘
M
ichelle! Is it true you attacked your husband’s car after you found out he was having an affair?’ a journalist shouted from behind my electric gates. The press had found out about the car because Michael had reported me to the police. Someone close to me must have tipped them off about Sam. I had dozens of paparazzi camped outside my house shouting my name.

I put on my sunglasses to hide my bloodshot eyes and got in my black Range Rover. ‘Michelle! Michelle!’ they shouted as I drove off. The paps all took pictures of me in the front seat with a face like thunder.

Overnight, everything began to fall apart. Our nanny of ten years left, the housekeeper left and key people from my team just upped and left. My life came crashing down around me. Why was I getting the hard time? Michael was the one who had run off with another woman. Of course, he denied it. Michael told my operations director on the flight to Hong Kong that he had fallen in love with Sam in the 14 days following the split. But he and I had been married for 20 years. You don’t fall in love in two weeks. He issued a statement to the press: ‘There was no affair and what is happening now is private. Prior to our split there was no relationship. If anyone is saying that is the reason for the split, that’s untrue.’

I went back to the office and things were a nightmare because the staff didn’t know what was happening. Everyone was walking on eggshells and I felt really sorry for them. I couldn’t believe it when I got a letter from Sam’s lawyer. They said I’d sacked her without going through the correct procedures and that she was going to take me to a tribunal for unfair dismissal. What was I supposed to do? Sit down and design with her? I would have stuck the needles and scissors up her arse! I hired my own lawyer rather than go through the company because I didn’t want anyone connected to Michael dealing with Sam’s claim.

‘You might as well just pay her off,’ he advised. She wasn’t the only cost. I had to pay Michael £8,000 for the damage to his car.

On the flip side, I got a lot of support from the public. The magazines wrote, ‘Way to go, Michelle’, for trashing his Porsche. Okay, yeah, for those ten minutes it took me to destroy it I did feel amazing, but the hangover from the fighting was killing me. I was really scared, upset and frightened because I’d never known anything other than being married to Michael. I’d never been on my own before and all my friends were married. I was desperately worried about what was to come for me, my kids and for the future of the business.

I decided I had to get away from the all the media attention and the heartache. I spoke to my friend Andrea, and her footballer husband, John Barnes, who used to play for Liverpool. They invited me to visit them in Dubai. I remember being in the airport lounge with Declan and Bethany (Rebecca wanted to stay at home with her friend), and suddenly feeling incredibly lost. I picked up the phone to my mum and dad. ‘What am I doing?’ I burst into tears. ‘I’m so lonely. I’m never going to meet anyone. I’m always going to be on my own. I’m going to be on my own when I’m 65 with ten cats and I hate cats,’ I blubbered.

I heard my mum sigh deeply at the other end. ‘Michelle, just relax. Just have a good time with the kids,’ she said. ‘When you’re not looking, it will happen.’

‘Okay,’ I sniffed. It was enough to calm me down and get us all on the flight.

The sunshine helped, as did being a million miles away from my troubles with just my kids. On the third day, after much persuasion, I finally found the courage to be around other people and I agreed to go out for dinner with John, Andrea, and some of their friends. I did my hair and my make-up and I helped the kids choose outfits. When we arrived, John and Andrea had a seat waiting for me next to one of their friends, Carl French.

Carl and I had a bit of common ground – Carl’s wife had left him the year before and he was going through a separation. We didn’t spend our time drowning our sorrows. Far from it – we got on like a house on fire. He was 6ft tall with dark hair and he was a handsome guy. He made me laugh constantly; it was the first time I’d laughed since God knows when. I felt like my spark came back that night. ‘It was so lovely meeting you,’ he said and kissed me on the cheek after we finished dinner. I didn’t want the night to end but I was too shy to say anything. I took the kids back to our hotel and then I met up with Andrea for a girly chat. Bethany came with me while Declan did his own thing in the hotel complex.

Ring ring
. Declan was calling me. ‘Hi, what’s up?’ I answered.

‘Hello, it’s Carl,’ came the reply. Carl had bumped into Declan at our hotel and used my son’s phone to call me. ‘Where are you?’ he said. My heart raced. I felt like a teenager all over.

‘I’m just with Andrea having a drink,’ I said and blushed.

‘Why don’t you come back to your hotel and we can have a drink?’ he suggested.

‘Go go,’ Andrea was mouthing to me.

So I met Carl at my hotel bar while Declan and Bethany went up to bed. A few drinks later we headed to the nightclub part of the hotel complex. We laughed, we danced and then we headed to the beach to watch the sunrise. We sat on the sand talking until 7 am and it was magical. Carl then leant over and kissed me. It felt amazing to be kissed and it felt amazing to be wanted after all those years of feeling lonely and being made to feel ugly.

Wow! Someone actually finds me attractive.

I left him on the beach and I went back to my hotel room with a skip in my step. Five hours later, I still couldn’t get to sleep so I went down to the pool. Who did I see there? Carl. From that moment on, we were inseparable. I didn’t sleep with him though. You can imagine there was quite a build-up when he took me away to Rome for a weekend not long after. I remember being so nervous in the hotel bathroom while he waited for me in the bedroom. I was wearing my sexiest Ultimo underwear and I checked myself from every angle in the mirror. My heart was racing at 100 miles an hour. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

‘You’ve got an amazing body,’ Carl whispered in my ear as he kissed me.

Really? Seriously?

Somewhere there was still a fat and unloved person inside me.

Carl kept going on about my body and my smile as we lay in bed together and I was a bit shocked. I’d never had that before. It was like a dream for me to have a man think these things. I never felt like a woman with Michael, I felt masculine around him. Michael had never said anything to make me feel wanted but Carl made me feel sexy. Carl resuscitated my heart. Sadly, I just wasn’t ready for a relationship. I had so many issues to deal with and so many things to sort out at home and with my business. If I were to meet him now, the scenario would be different.