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The four lovers who healed my broken heart

Date: 2006-11-23

When her jailbird husband left her for the nanny, Lady Alice Douglas despaired of ever recovering from the blow. Then life took a passionate and surprising turn:

At the end of 2003, I was the living embodiment of that age-old cliche, the dumped wife and mother. Alone, demoralised and unloved, I couldn't believe how foolish I'd been, trusting a man who had cheated on me with - of all people - our au pair.

I'd been in relationships almost continuously from my 20s and had lost any ability to be on my own. The marital home was a temporary building site with boarded-up holes where windows should be and I was utterly terrified. My husband Simon and I had met in Blundeston Prison in the mid-Nineties.

I was a marquess's daughter with a privileged upbringing, an acting career and a flat in Notting Hill. Simon was an armed robber serving nine years who'd grown up on a council estate.

But in the confines of the prison walls, our very different upbringings didn't matter. As part of the acting workshop I ran in the prison, he played a handsome Macbeth to my Lady Macbeth.

Despite family and friends decrying the match, after a 15-month romance, we married. We went on to have a daughter, Hero, seven, and a son, Tybalt, six, and bought a disused church in Snowdonia. It could have been idyllic. The problems came when I discovered Simon's drug habit, then his affair.

Simon and the au pair left together that same evening. Of course, in the immediate aftermath of our split, friends rallied round, cooking me meals or visiting with a bottle of wine and a box of hankies. They tried to keep me and the children as busy as possible. But soon their visits evaporated and I had to make do with phone calls from friends to see me through the long, wintry evenings.

With only my two children, then aged three and four, my dog Brecon and the bleating of sheep for company, there was little to distract me. Without drastic action I was doomed. So, two months on since our split, I was thankful when my survival instinct kicked in.

I cast about for possibilities for escape - and I knew the only way to get Simon purged from my system was to have a fling. Naturally I was scared. My emotional - and physical - attachment to Simon ran so deep that when he walked out, it felt as though my guts went with him.

But when you're as low as I was you need to find a way to put some sparkle back into your life - and the best way it seemed was to find a lover. The internet was out I wasn't a total glutton -for punishment - and I had been warned off dating agencies by friends. In desperation, I rang my single London girlfriends, imagining that the city might hold out the promise of romance.

Forget it! Eligible men, they said, were as rare as golden pavements, while out-and-out b### ds were as common as pigeons. So I huddled up in bed with a toddler on either side and wept. All I could see before me was loneliness and an eternity on the shelf. Little did I know what was just around the corner.

Over the next two years, I went out with four gorgeous, interesting and extremely different men. I wasn't just looking for sex - there had to be an element of love and affection. And I didn't need to be in love, but the relationship had to be loving. I suppose, in a word, I was looking for passion. And, that's exactly what I found...

Lover One: Steve Peake, 48, the Sexy Snapper, who rekindled my sex life. November 2003.

Steve had pitched up in my garden previously to take snaps of my family for Hello! We'd become friends and, like me, he had recently broken up with his partner. When Simon and I split up we naturally confided in each other.

Maybe I was naive but I assumed Steve was offering the hand of friendship. But I must have been receiving some flirtatious signals because a few weeks later, when I had a work appointment in London and was invited to stay overnight in a hotel, I gave Steve a call.

As I picked up the telephone I was so nervous I could hardly speak. I was terrified that maybe I'd got the signals wrong and that he saw our friendship as purely platonic. I didn't explain that I was being lodged in a hotel and we'd have to share a room.

Christ! What would he think? Anyway, he agreed to come. The idea of sex with another man loomed. I categorically believed that I was incapable of making love to anyone other than Simon. I could not imagine touching, let alone sleeping, with anybody else.

It was a feeling very much tied up with the fact that he was the father of my children. Once I slept with another man I would be breaking so much more than my bond with one other person; I would be facing the reality that my family was fractured irrevocably.

But I knew I could never escape from the memory of Simon until I had dissolved the sexual bond that existed between us.

So, one cold weekend just before Christmas, Steve and I went out for a meal in London. The evening passed swimmingly - with help from a bottle of champagne.

We talked for hours, and back in the hotel room we continued to chat while he sat on the armchair and I lay on the bed. Then he asked if he could sit next to me.

The sexual tension in the air was palpable, but not till the last moment was I sure that the boundary between friend and lover would be overstepped.

Slowly, he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. From that moment my wedding vows were nulled in my heart. Steve was beautiful, gentle and loving.

Next morning, I woke feeling so happy inside. For six months Steve and I met up when we could - which was not often. But when we did escape together for a blissful 24 hours in some luxury hotel, he was very caring, tender and always made me feel incredibly loved.

But I always knew it was never to be a full-blown relationship. He's prone to jealousy. Doubtless of course, it was his troubled soul that attracted me in the first place. But I've been hurt too badly in the past not to be wary of another man like Simon.

Periodically, we are still drawn back together again and maybe this is the best way of preserving the magic. Nothing feels as wonderful after time apart from him than the the moment when I run back into his arms - but I know he's not The One. So I was back on my own until...

Lover Number Two: Gareth Williams, 50, the Seductive Sailor. June 2004.

The disused church we'd bought together was in the process of being converted into a home and was a building site.

Then, into my life strode a handsome stranger who told me he was doing up a chapel nearby and wanted details of local contractors.

We exchanged pleasantries and soon got to know each other. Gareth had spent 20 years sailing around the world, chartering out his yacht in the Caribbean and captaining for clients, but had given it up for the nightmare of a conversion in Wales.

I commiserated, sharing with him my own terrible building traumas and he told me he had originally trained as a structural engineer. Suddenly, he became irresistible, and his workmanlike builder hands sexy.

I invited him to an outdoor production of Pride And Prejudice and afterwards, we kissed like teenagers in his Merc. I played coy - I couldn't possibly have another relationship - and went home glowing.

But some time later I cooked him a lavish dinner, the evening only mildly complicated by the fact that my son - who obviously didn't take to a predatory male on his dad's turf - woke up 30 times. Gareth, however, didn't betray a glimmer of impatience.

From then on, we saw each other on and off for five months. I knew he was a playboy, more used to living it up in St Tropez than North Wales and I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the only woman he was dating.

The death knell came when Simon - who couldn't bear another man paying me any attention - told Gareth that the full responsibility for the collapse of our marriage lay at Gareth's door.

It was all lies. But Gareth, loaded with guilt, couldn't bear to have anything to do with the break-up of a marriage. I have not seen him since. And that brought me on to...

Lover Number Three: David Preston, 43, the Divorced Dad. March 2005.

David, the genial son of a vicar, arrived in my life one afternoon saying he'd been on a hike when he had become aware that he'd acquired a rather large German Shepherd. That was Brecon, our dog, whose tag had led David, literally, up the garden path.

We got chatting and a minutes later he disappeared, only to return having retrieved a rather nice bottle of Rioja from his car.

Over a glass or two, we discovered a rapport. He had also lived in the same house as his ex-wife and they both had non-molestation orders against each other. We toasted our inability to achieve amicable divorces.

He lived in Kent so a relationship was always going to be fraught with problems, although we talked every night on the phone.

The first weekend he stayed over, he cooked me delicious seafood pasta and was charming. The plusses were totting up: a fabulous cook; a brilliant dad to his two lovely daughters; a lighting designer (might come in handy); a sportsman; and, most importantly, single.

But it became hard to sustain the relationship beyond a summer romance and, eventually, we called it a day.

Afterwards, I thought it would be good to have some lover-free time. Little did I realise that it wouldn't be for long...

Lover Number Four: Steve Roberts, 37. The Domestic God. September 2005.

Within a month of David and I calling it a day, a dark, handsome creature appeared in my garden, accompanying the man who mowed my lawn.

Steve (not to be confused with the first one) was a chef by trade. But when his marriage ended he had taken to wandering the country, taking work wherever he could find it.

I'd now finished renovating my home, had a gigantic mortgage and was doing B&B to keep afloat. I interviewed him to be live-in cook and manager. He was very endearing and humble and fitted the bill perfectly, so I offered him the job. But my resolve to keep things professional grew weaker with each lavishly-prepared meal that he served, and it wasn't long before we were an item.

He seemed to love me and want to be with me. He poured attention on me constantly and it seemed a match made in heaven.

But an anger lurked beneath the surface. In the morning he was always bright and breezy and wanted me to shower him with delightful kisses. I was more prone to grunting but did my best to appease him with a laboured peck on the cheek.

My lack of gushing affection began to cause cracks in his perfect veneer. One morning when I gave him too sleepy a kiss he smashed my cutlery on the floor and stormed out.

On his return, I berated him which had some effect because my cutlery never hit the floor again. But the storming out continued.

Steve would vanish for days, in a mood. After the 21st occasion, I'd had enough. I delivered his stuff to his friend's house and he got the message. Still, I've no regrets.

Today if you're looking for a date, forget the city, forget the internet - I'd suggest moving to a remote village in the countryside.

By the second anniversary of my discovering my husband's infidelity, I was breaking open the champagne and having a party to celebrate my renaissance. The once worn-out wifey has been completely transformed and she's having acres of fun.

But, remember: lovers are best when they're not live-in. As soon as a relationship progresses beyond the illusory, romantic stage, the problems start coming out. That's when the manipulative techniques begin to reveal themselves and the power games begin.

Since the end of my marriage, I've come back from the depths of despair to discover a new confidence in myself, while the joys that flings can bring have given me a new lease of life.

How great to experience that initial intense buzz and then skip to the next horizon before any dominant male ego gets to crush you.





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