I FELL IN LOVE WITH A CON MAN

Carolyn Woods, 64, was duped out of her life savings by a man leading a secret life

- STEPH CLARKSON

It was almost closing time when a striking man, dark-haired and impeccably dressed, walked into the clothes boutique where I worked. I helped him try on a jacket, and he told me his name was Mark and that he was a Swiss banker. He’d flown in from Geneva and was planning to buy Cotswold Airport. Before he left, he asked for my number and minutes later my phone pinged. ‘Did I turn your head?’ he asked. ‘A few degrees perhaps,’ I replied. I wasn’t looking for love. Divorced for 10 years, I was enjoying my independence, having moved to an idyllic country cottage in Tetbury, but no one had ever come on to me so strongly.

I agreed to a date. Mark Conway was great company. He came from a wealthy family, he said, but had made his own fortune. He could fly planes, spoke seven languages and had a photographic memory. He said he couldn’t stop thinking about me. And so began a whirlwind relationship, in which things moved so quickly, I could barely draw breath. Now I know this to be the classic behaviour of a psychopath.

First they love-bomb you, then they blow hot and cold, making you feel guilty if you question them. After they have squeezed everything from you for their own amusement, they will discard you. My relationship followed this pattern exactly. Mark said his job was really a cover for his work for MI6 – I would have to bear with him as he flew in and out of my life. It sounds extraordinary, but I believed every word he said. He looked the part and subsequently lots of things happened to convince me that he was indeed a real-life James Bond, including him driving me to the MI6 building and walking into what looked like the underground car park, past armed guards– a stunt he must have staged somehow.