THE CHEATING HUSBAND CAUGHT IN A ‘FATAL ATTRACTION’ NIGHTMARE
A ‘bunny boiler’ mistress who plotted violent revenge on her lover’s family. A cheating husband racked with guilt. No, not a Hollywood f ilm, but one man’s true story as he lays bare, with shame-faced candour, the horror of his...
THIS coming Christmas is probably the most important one of my life – a turning point for me, for my wife and f or my three children. Like others, we are busy preparing for the big day, buying gifts, stocking up on food and preparing our home for the arrival of friends and relatives.
But it’s fair to say that the future of my family hangs in the balance – and that it is all my fault.
Last year, our lovely home in Cheshire was ransacked by three masked thugs who subjected my wife and teenage daughter to an unspeakable f our- hour ordeal before making off with clothes and precious jewellery.
Ten days ago, the trio were given long prison sentences – but that is where the good news ends, at least for me.
Because I am responsible for the terrible events of that night. I didn’t personally hire the monsters who nearly suffocated my wife and left my daughter fearing that she would be raped or worse – but it is through my stupidity that our lives were shattered. And it is time for me to apologise for that.
The fact is that I had an ill-conceived and reprehensible affair that resulted in our family being swept into a real-life drama worthy of the film Fatal Attraction. The 1987 thriller featured a spurned lover, played by Glenn Close, who wreaked revenge by cooking a family pet – so bringing the phrase ‘bunny boiler’ into the language.
The bunny boiler I brought into my family’s life was Karine Solloway, a 59-year-old Russian businesswoman with whom I had a four-year affair. When I tried to break it off, Karine said she was going to ruin my life. She set out to do just that, attacking my family in the most terrible way.
Today I am at a loss to explain my actions. It is now 26 years since I married my lovely wife Priya, and for most of that time we’ve been very happy. With lucrative businesses in property, we’ve been fortunate. Home is a 17th Century Tudor mansion. We have travelled extensively and Priya has devoted herself as a full-time mother to our three wonderful children – Ella, 23, Robbie, 20, and Scarlett, 18. All three were privately educated.
Why then would I put all this at risk and how on earth did I end up in the thrall of this other woman?
Perhaps the ‘ otherness’ was in itself an attraction.
I was introduced to Karine when I was invited to a Russian Embassy function held at Kensington Palace in 2009. Karine was charming and vivacious but also tough and feisty, quite different from any other woman I knew.
She was not a younger woman; that was one cliche I managed to avoid. Rather, Karine was two years older than me, with an impressive professional history.
She had previously run a business dismantling submarines and then selling the metals on the Russian market; now she was running an upmarket pri vat e heal t hcare scheme for wealthy Russian expatriates. She was sophisticated and glamorous. I was flattered by her attention and quickly became infatuated, even though she, too, was married – to a British solicitor 24 years her senior.
Our affair began almost immediately. We met at least once a week when I was in London on business, staying either at a flat I own in Maida Vale or at her mews house south of Regent’s Park.
It felt new and exciting, the more so as my professional confidence had taken a bit of a battering thanks to the credit crunch. With my property business struggling, I decided to go back to my roots as an exploratory geologist.
The richest men in the world were mining iron and I wanted to emulate them – I’m not ashamed of wanting to succeed.
So I began to hunt for my own iron ore mine and, one year later, I found an exciting prospect, a previously unexplored repository of iron ore in northern Liberia.
I developed other business interests, too, including rice growing in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But the rice venture, in which investors were offered the opportunity to share in the profits, resulted in an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority, which said the business should be regulated by a City watchdog. A court case resulted in a worldwide freezing order on £16 million of my assets – an order I am still fighting.
Things were hard personally, too. Priya and I were going through a rough time in our marriage. After after all that time together, and with three children, we had drifted apart a little. I suspect I was going through something of a midlife crisis and – yes, pathetically – the affair made me feel young again.
As time passed, I became not just sexually involved with Karine but financially, too. In 2013, with my legal bills mounting and my assets frozen, Karine offered to lend me £ 350,000 and I accepted. I had already borrowed £108,000 from her but this time I wanted a legal agreement. I’m glad I did because after our affair ended she demanded her money back with ludicrous interest of about £260,000.
Priya, of course, knew nothing of this and had no idea that I was seeing another woman until my infidelity was discovered in the most painful way.
That August, while we were sitting in a restaurant on what should have been the perfect family holiday in Ibiza, Karine sent me a text with a lot of kisses.
One of my daughters glanced over and read the message. She asked who it was and I was so blindsided
My daughter read text from my lover and I had to confess
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I came clean and confessed immediately to the affair. Perhaps in my heart it’s what I wanted to do.
The consequences were horrendous. Priya was devastated and everyone was crying there and then, including me. But worst of all was seeing the look of disappointment and devastation on the faces of my son and daughters.
I have never felt so wretched. It felt as if my world was crumbling around me.
I was amazed Priya did not leave me. She told me she wanted our marriage to work and we began therapy together, which made my determination to
devote myself to Priya all the clearer. Yet, refusing to accept it, Karine grew ever more unhinged.
Just before Christmas 2013, we met at her house in Marylebone so that I could explain why I was leaving her.
Her response was to claim Priya was poisoning my tea to make me want to stay with her. I felt like a player in some cheap melodrama.
No doubt I was naive. I expected her to get on with her life while I picked up the pieces of mine.
Yet Karine’s behaviour descended to new depths. A month later, she emailed a picture of her naked breasts, which my then 17-year-old son saw on the family computer. She began demanding money, even though she knew the only way I could repay her was through the slow process of property sales.
An unbearably stressful time was made worse by the fact that I was now facing severe financial difficulties.
Even so, Priya and I managed to stay together and, though we no longer shared the same bedroom, we found we had grown closer – so much so that, by last autumn, shortly before the break-in, Priya and I enjoyed a moment of self-congratulation in the garden of our local pub one summer evening, when she remarked that we had finally got ‘that mad woman’ out of our lives. If only she had been right. Karine waited until I was out of the country on business before she went to war on my family.
On her instructions, three men, led by former soldier Paul Prior, broke into our house on October 6 last year and disabled the security cameras. My wife and Scarlett were watching TV when my daughter noticed the cat growling.
She went into the kitchen and screamed when she saw a reflection of three masked men hiding behind the fridge.
It was to be the start of an unimaginable four-hour ordeal as the men tied them up with plastic cable ties, blindfolded them with blackedout goggles and placed ear defenders over their ears.
Scarlett was dragged into another room where she feared she’d be raped and Priya was almost suffocated with the plastic food wrap used to silence her hysterical pleas for the robbers to leave our daughter alone.
The men rampaged through the house, stealing more than £150,000 worth of our jewellery and designer clothes before fleeing.
My wife called the police and had to endure three hours of interviews with detectives.
The police were helpful but said that they didn’t think they would ever catch those responsible – she had not seen their faces and they left little behind.
But a chilling threat from one of the robbers left Priya in no doubt who was actually behind the attack: ‘If your husband owes the Russian he should pay them first.’
Meanwhile, I dreaded telling Priya that I had cancelled our insurance to save money and that she would probably never see her fivecarat diamond engagement ring ever again.
But the robbery wasn’t about money – it was a way of hurting my wife.
Karine was jealous of Priya and used to mockingly claim that she ‘strutted around Vanity Village’, which is what she called Alderley Edge where we live. The items stolen had been the things Karine herself enjoyed: designer shoes, clothes and jewellery.
The first breakthrough in the case came through the detective work of Priya, who found her Louboutin boots on sale on eBay, along with a pair of Scarlett’s Jimmy Choo shoes and other items from the robbery.
I told the police and hired a private detective, who within 24 hours was able to tell us the name and address of the seller.
She turned out to be the girlfriend of a man named Paul Prior. It was the best £3,000 I have ever spent. The following day, November 23, a team of police officers burst into Prior’s house in South London and found a treasure trove – of our property. He was linked to the crime scene by a partial DNA match. Prior’s phone records, meanwhile, linked him to Karine.
Then, earlier this month, Chester Crown Court heard that Karine masterminded what was described as a ‘revenge robbery’ and she was jailed for ten years.
Prior was jailed for 13 years and his fellow gang members Iain McGarry and Kimpton Mativenga were sentenced to eight and six-aand-a-half years respectively.
Karine claimed in her defence that she was just trying to get back the £800,000 I owed her.
In fact, I had already repaid £300,000 of the £458,000 I borrowed and another £53,000 was about to be transferred.
The truth is that she arranged the robbery to punish and humiliate me – and she certainly succeeded.
Priya has every right to be angry. But the irony is that we worked together to crack the case and that co- operation has helped to heal some of the pain.
My wife is an amazing woman who has handled this terrible ordeal with quiet dignity and astonishing reserves of grace and good sense. I am proud, too, of the maturity Scarlett has shown
I still can’t believe I was so bloody stupid. It is something I will regret until my dying day.
Unfortunately, the financial problems and the pressure from the FCA continue, although I am confident of winning through.
Restoring my reputation at home is more important, though, and perhaps even harder.
I’d never had an affair before and I certainly won’t have one again.
If I’ve learned any lesson for this Christmas, it’s that families are simply too precious to be put at risk, however glamorous or exciting the temptation might seem.
All I want now is for my family to know how truly sorry I am. And to hope and pray for their forgiveness.
I’ve learned that families are too precious to be put at risk