Why I wish I hadn't thrown out my CHEATING HUSBAND

Amanda Platell told the adulterer to pack his bags. Only now she regrets her decision

- AMANDA PLATELL

The memory is etched in my mind forever. It was the summer of 1988, around 10pm.

I was a junior newspaper executive – complete with huge 1980s hair, a power suit and permanent exhaustion – when a friend appeared. I was desperate for the paper to go to press, so I could head home to my gorgeous husband of four years. To my surprise, the friend gave me a huge hug and said, ‘Poor you, no wonder you’re devastated after what you’re going through.’ She added that she was glad I finally ‘knew’. ‘Knew what?’ I asked.

‘That your husband is having an affair. Everyone knows.’

Well, I didn’t until that moment. And it felt as if she’d unloaded both barrels of a sawn-off shotgun into my gut. After something terrible happening to their children, betrayal is many women’s greatest fear.

Silent rage

Whether personally or through friends, we have all experienced the fallout: the grief, anxiety, panic attacks, sleepless nights, lack of self-confidence, weight loss, depression and, all too frequently, the self-medicating, before realising peace is not found at the bottom of a bottle of Chablis.

Back in the late 1980s, I did what most empowered professional women, consumed with pain but hanging on to their dignity and pride, would do. I plotted my cool, calm, collected revenge.

Doing anything else would have marked me as a simpering doormat of a housewife.