I know people are LAUGHING at me but I was so in LOVE... and now I want to WARN other women not to make the same MISTAKE
Dubbed a ‘Sri Lanka Shirley Valentine’, her marriage to a man 33 years her junior cost her everything – and almost her life
SHE’S been mocked for being a ‘Shirley Valentine’ who married a hotel worker less than half her age when they met on holiday. Last week, Diane De Zoysa returned to the UK penniless and with her reputation in shreds. The 60-yearold had dreamed of a new life in Sri Lanka when she began a romance with her former room boy, selling up and leaving everything behind in Scotland to be with him.
But after her wedding to Priyanjana De Zoysa, her dream of living in paradise turned into a nightmare of such epic proportions that the retired council worker admits she was lucky not to lose her life along with her £90,000 savings.
Diane, originally from Musselburgh, East Lothian, said: ‘I’m not looking for sympathy or understanding. I just want to warn other women not to make the mistakes I’ve made.
‘I know people are laughing at me. I’ve been called all sorts of things, including bloody stupid. I’m just glad to be back now and safe.’
It was at the Mermaid Hotel in the fishing city of Kalutara, in November 2011, when at the age of 53 she met the attentive 20-year-old who would become her husband.
She had planned to be there with a female friend but her travelling companion dropped out because of ill health. She says: ‘I wasn’t being a Shirley Valentine. I wasn’t looking for romance. I was just there on holiday.’
At first, she had no idea Priyanjana might be romantically interested in her. Each day, she left money and chocolates in her room as a ‘thank you’ for him. In return, he brought her flowers and asked for her mobile number, even though he spoke barely a word of English.
When she returned to Scotland at the end of the holiday, to her surprise he called her and began sending text messages. One read: ‘I can’t stop thinking about you, I don’t know why.’
She admits she was flattered, adding bluntly: ‘I know I’m overweight and I’m not great-looking, so I was touched that he seemed to care. I was quite lonely and didn’t have a great social life.
‘When I was younger, I’d wanted to get married and have children but the long-term relationship I was in didn’t work out and I never met anyone else. Online dating led to nothing, so my life was a mixture of work, shopping and watching TV. I felt if there was a chance at happiness, I was going to take it.’
Gradually, her feelings for Priyanjana grew stronger as they became friends on Facebook and began to speak to each other via Skype, where he would beg her to return to Sri Lanka to be with him.
She returned in June 2012 for a two-week holiday. To everyone’s surprise, even her own, she agreed to marry him there and then. The ceremony – so impromptu that the bride wore a T-shirt and shorts, while the groom wore jeans – was conducted at a register office.
She grimaces at the memory, as she says: ‘I know it seems crazy, but we thought we were in love. I did worry about the age difference but he said his parents didn’t mind.’
Diane then returned to the UK and her £17,000-a-year job as a customer service assistant with the City of Edinburgh Council, while her new husband took up a new job in Sri Lanka. Five months later she went back out there for another holiday, this time dressing up for a set of ‘official’ wedding photographs.
Diane, who lived at home with her parents until their deaths when she was in her mid-forties, says her young husband remained affectionate as for the next three years she travelled back and forth between the two countries.
In May 2015, she sold her flat in Musselburgh for £105,000 and took early retirement from her job at the end of that year. She gave £60,000 to her husband to build a threebedroom villa next to his parents’ home – but soon found that he wanted more.
The house was registered in her husband’s name because of complex laws and taxes governing the purchase of Sri Lankan property by foreigners.
She also gave him cash to buy a £31,000 Hyundai minibus so that he could set himself up as a taxi driver, and bought gifts for her husband’s mother, father and three younger brothers.
Before long, she was struggling to survive on her meagre £363-amonth pension, paying for all the bills and for food, yet her husband continued to ask for more.
She says: ‘I kept telling him, “I don’t have any money left”. I really thought he loved me – but it turns out he loved my money more.’
Despite her role as a cash cow, the life she dreamed of never came to pass. Her husband was away for weeks at a time in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, driving tourists to and from the airport, while she sat alone in the house.
She was allowed to leave the property only if accompanied by her mother-in-law or brother-in-law. She adds: ‘I thought I would have this lovely life in the sun. Instead I was left alone all day. It was intolerable – but my pride wouldn’t let
I was lonely and did not have a great social life
me tell everyone back home the true extent of what I was going through. I didn’t want them to say, “I told you so”.’
In 2016, she returned briefly to Scotland where family and friends urged her to leave her husband. But foolishly, she says, she returned to Sri Lanka determined to give her marriage another chance – but to no avail.
They were already having terrible rows, mostly about money, and in December 2016 she found a marriage certificate in his pocket and a letter from a hospital regarding his sperm count. The first, in his native Sinhalese, confirmed he had secretly married an 18-yearold girl. As Diane had already gone through the menopause, she knew the second document was not for her benefit.
After confronting him, he claimed the certificate belonged to his brother, but the ages on the certificate did not match.
‘I was devastated,’ she says. ‘I don’t know how he thought he could have two wives, and keep us both happy. I think he thought I would get fed up living there, move back to Scotland, then he could move her into our house.’
Five months later, on May 30, her life was turned on its head again when her husband was shot dead, aged 26, at a friend’s house after becoming embroiled in a suspected Mafia-style gang killing. Ironically, police suspected his new wealth made him the target of thugs, who saw him driving around in a costly minibus and living in a new house, and were demanding money with menaces.
‘It was a terrible shock,’ says Diane. ‘I don’t want to say I’m glad he’s dead because he didn’t deserve to die that way. But I don’t miss him. He and his family made my life hell.’
Unwilling to lose the house she had invested in, she endured months of misery at their hands, threatened with violence and starvation if she stepped out of line. She said: ‘I didn’t know how I was going to get out of the situation. I even contemplated suicide.’
Finally she left a hotel where a man with a pistol had gone looking for her and, with the help of friends, made it back to Edinburgh last Tuesday night.
She said: ‘I wish I had done things differently. I would warn other women in their twenties, thirties, forties or fifties going out there, you will probably be flattered by the attention but try not to get involved.
‘It’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life.’
I don’t know how he felt he could have two wives