It was like I had one husband for eight years and another for the next eight. After the accident he was not the man I married
Beverley certainly looks as if she has her va va voom back, and then some.
Hair glossy and skin all youthful glow, the sparkle is most definitely back in those eyes. ‘That’s what having a 32-year- old boyfriend does for you,’ she laughs, though the actual words she uses are, well, a bit fruitier than that.
Say no more, but Beverley can’t help but list his other, seemingly endless qualities.
‘He is full of empathy and kindness. He puts me first in a way that I am just not used to. He’s an amazing listener, thoughtful and generous with a lovely calmness.
‘He thinks I am wise and capable, which is lovely, and he is just the best company, whether we are sitting on the sofa, going for a walk or going out clubbing and getting drunk together.’
They were introduced through mutual acquaintances shortly after her husband left for Cambridge. ‘I needed some help with a property we own in Devon. I had a planning permission issue and was talking to friends who said they knew someone who could help and gave me a number of a guy named James.
‘I spoke to him and thought, “You don’t sound like the hairy builder I was expecting to talk to,” and he came round and there was this very handsome young man on the doorstep.
‘I didn’t for a second think he’d be interested in me, and it turned out he was absolutely useless on the planning issue, but he just started helping me with some stuff that needed doing round the house.
‘It was after Christmas that I realised he was interested in me and, believe me, as a 46-year-old mother of three that comes as quite a shock.
‘He spoke to my son Croyde and said, “I think I would like to take your mummy on a date. Would you mind?” And Croyde said, “Yes, that would be really nice. I didn’t think I’d want anybody to go out with Mummy, but as it’s you . . .”
The Cracknells’ children Croyde, 16, Kiki, ten, and Trixie, eight, are thriving and get on well with both new partners. ‘It’s all very grown up,’ she says.
So it came as a bit of a bombshell for Beverley to read the less than flattering interview James Cracknell gave to OK! magazine last week.
‘Bev was always viewing me through the prism of a brain injury and she stuck by how I was five or six years ago, rather than how I am now,’ he said of their break-up.
Of his new partner Jordan, a financier from New York, he added: ‘It’s nice to have a fresh start and to have someone with a totally fresh perspective.’
He even hinted that re-marriage might be on the cards in the future and possibly more children. ‘It depends how serious it gets. She might want to have children and it would be unfair for her not to,’ he said.
As for co- parenting with Beverley, he revealed there wasn’t enough room in the rented flat he shares with Jordan in Chelsea, so
I used to roll my eyes at age-gap relationships — not now !
he ends up ‘babysitting’ at the old marital home in Chiswick, ‘which is not exactly what I had in mind at my age.’
Beverley sighs and shrugs. Theirs has always been one of those very rare celebrity marriages where both sides have been disarmingly honest about their struggles.
Last April, the day after James became the oldest rower ever to win the Boat Race, Beverley wrote about the disintegration of their marriage, describing how she would scream in the shower with despair so their children would not hear.
Of his latest feat, she dismissed as ‘b******s’ James’s stated desire to show his children ‘you can do anything you set your mind to’.
She countered: ‘I wouldn’t want my children to view such an exit from familial responsibilities as something to aspire to.’
So, Beverley accepts, she can hardly complain when her ex speaks as bluntly as she does.
‘It was typical James, candid and very honest but perhaps a bit tongue-in- cheek, and I’m fine with it,’ she says. ‘He acknowledged that I am a good mum and that the kids are lucky to have me, which is what matters most because they are central to my life and every decision I make.
‘I think the nature of brain injury is that it can be very hard for those who have been injured to see the changes in themselves, to have that insight, but it’s true to say that the James I was married to for the last eight years of our relationship was a very different man to the one I married, and that affected how I related to him.’
What stings most, however, is James’s suggestion that he has been reduced to a babysitting role. ‘He is a very busy man, so of course I have the children the majority of the time, but it’s been that way throughout our marriage, so nothing much has changed,’ she says.
‘The children love their dad and, of course, they want to see more of him and I suppose some people might find it unusual that he comes here to babysit, but it’s about putting the children first.
‘When he stays overnight, he’ll sleep in my bed, while I go to stay with my new partner James, or visit my mum or go to a friend’s house. I try to do that once a week or every two weeks, because when you are a single mum, you need a respite. I can cope with it, but it’s important to have those evenings to myself as well.
‘Of course, it would have been better to stay married, but we are where we are, and I am enjoying rediscovering the woman I was before marriage and children.
‘When I was younger, I had the skill set I needed in James C. He was ambitious — that’s very attractive — he was very successful, very focused, very driven and that’s a real aphrodisiac.
‘But, of course, those qualities that make you incredible as a sportsman, can make you very difficult to live with, especially when children come along.
‘If you are selfish by nature, which you have to be to win gold medals, that selfishness does not lend itself to being a particularly hands-on dad.
‘I don’t think James’s goals will ever evaporate. There will always be something else. Another marathon, another mountain to climb, another ocean to row. That makes for a very exciting life, but an exhausting one.’