He tried to kill me twice but now he won’t give me a divorce

despair, like a heavy, dragging sensation,’ she tells me. ‘And it seemed even more unfair that I didn’t have the luxury of not being in the world because I was pregnant with a young child to look after.’

I ask if she means suicide crossed her mind. She nods almost imperceptibly.

‘ I was working full- time and struggling with my pregnancy and looking after our daughter and he’d come up with these ridiculous reasons for going away “for work”. I knew it was with a girl and everything was crumbling,’ she says.

Now she realises she was the victim of an insidious form of coercive control. ‘His constant lying and the fact I had never dealt with it made me feel weak. His infidelity made me feel totally worthless — but I was trapped.’

In the wake of her near- death experience, she ran through a gamut of emotions: ‘First there was denial, then anger, which went on for years on and off, but it’s hard because you had to keep it bottled up and not show the children.

‘I was very angry, too, with his exwife Carly because she was allknowing and her deceit was just sickening. She and Emile were playing happy families.’ V ICKY

— who had an amicable relationship with Carly who looked after Vicky’s children occasionally — had no idea Emile was having sex with his ex-wife.

‘I still feel angry with Stefanie, too. Emile told her that Ben wasn’t his son and that was an incredibly hurtful lie — one of his worst — because for me, the most important thing in a relationship is trust and I was never unfaithful to him.

‘Stefanie worked in the skydiving world and it would have been very easy for her to ascertain that everything he told her about me was a lie. But she was wilfully blind.’

I ask if she believes Emile is capable of love. ‘I don’t know. But I like to think he loves his children,’ she says. ‘I hope he does.’

She speaks, too, of the new man in her life — whom she will not identify — and the fact that she and the kids have spent lockdown at her home with him.

‘We lived in our little bubble. It was good,’ she says. ‘He’s been my rock throughout the whole Covid thing. I try not to rely on him too much emotionally but practically he’s brilliant.

‘The children love and respect him. They’re always excited to see him and he plays sports with them — cycling, rugby, kids’ cricket.

‘We have a similar circle of friends and I’ve known him for nine years, which is the only way it would ever have worked because of the trust issues. And I haven’t had to explain anything. He’s been aware of everything right from the start. I don’t think I could have dated someone who didn’t know. The thought of explaining about my past would have been too much.

‘He’s 49, he’s never been married, he has no kids and he’s a parachutist with a military background. The romance has been quite a slow process and it’s developed over the past 18 months.

‘He’s not a charmer either.’ She laughs. ‘ I’ve had a surfeit of romanticism and he didn’t bombard me with attention and affection. I look for constancy and consistency now and he’s not gushy or demonstrative, which actually makes me feel more comfortable.

‘But I think I’m open to loving someone again. An existence without love would be sad. It’s just that I’m not going into it with rosetinted spectacles this time.’

She says, too, that she is more circumspect about money now.

‘I wouldn’t have a shared bank account or rely on someone else to pay bills in my name. I never want to be financially vulnerable again. I make sure I can provide for my children.’

I wonder if she is suspicious, wary of betrayal, and she smiles.

‘When you’ve had a cheating husband you know the signs. I’m happy and secure,’ she says.

one of the extraordinary things about Vicky — aside from her grit and resilience — is her determination not to become embittered. Many women in her position would have expunged every vestige of their husband’s existence from their home. She is more considered.

‘I didn’t think it fair to dump everything. I’ve selected a few photos and memories for the children to keep if they want.

‘I can’t vilify him. I don’t want them to grow up angry. I want to maintain a happy home environment without hate or negativity, and I don’t want to become bitter and twisted.’

The children have been told the sparest details about their father. ‘I said to April, “He tried to hurt Mummy.” She knows he did a bad thing and he’s in prison, being punished. She doesn’t talk much about him. Children are matter-offact about these things.

‘As soon as I’d given her the answers she needed, she went off and played with her brother.

‘And Ben has no memories of his dad. Neither of the children asks about him, although he wants to maintain contact with them.’ S HE

recognises that, as they get older, they will learn more and seek answers but she has not yet confronted that. ‘I’ll deal with it when we come to it,’ she says.

She is pragmatic but also remarkably even-handed. Adamant that she does not want to deny her children access to their paternal grandparents, she says: ‘They are decent people. They haven’t done anything wrong. We still exchange messages occasionally.

‘They still believe he is innocent and his mum plans to visit England [from South Africa where they live] next year.’

She seems, for a woman who has been coerced and betrayed so shockingly, remarkably welladjusted. She admits that she ‘struggles’ to watch programmes about medical emergencies on TV and will occasionally replay in her mind the day she fell out of the sky.

Her physical health, too, has suffered. ‘Some days I just hurt. I can’t give the children piggybacks. I can’t sit for long. I have pins in my pelvis, two screws at the back and quite fancy chain-mail pinned into place around the front.

‘If I wanted more children, I’d have to have all the metalwork out. But I’m too old for that game.’ She laughs.

She has worried, incessantly, about the way she is perceived. Extraordinarily, during the court cases she received hate mail.

‘It caused me such anxiety,’ she says. ‘But now I’m coming round to thinking that the people who matter know the real me.’