by DIANA APPLEYARD

Last updated at 23:04 11 May 2007

Blackmail and poison pen letters. As a new book reveals the nightmare of marrying a man with a bitter ex-wife, three women describe the hell of joining The Second Wives Club.

Sandra James had every reason to feel happy and contented when an envelope arrived through the post.

Blessed with an adored baby girl from her marriage to second husband Tom, and enjoying every moment of her maternity leave, life seemed sweet indeed.

She recalls smiling as she opened the envelope and started to read the letter inside - but the memory of what came next still leaves her shaking with emotion.

There, in scrawled handwriting, screamed the word "Slut".

As she read on in horror, each new sentence was seeped in venom and vitriol - accusing her of sleeping around and being an unfit mother to the child she adored.

An immaculate 35-year-old mother-of-three, Sandra recalls: "I was shaking so much that I could hardly read. By the end of the letter, I was crying my eyes out. It wasn't just the crazy accusations themselves which were so upsetting - it was the amount of hate behind them."

But these were no rantings from an anonymous stalker. The author of the poisonous missive was, in fact, Tom's former wife - who had signed the letter - furious with Sandra for having found love with the husband she had dumped years earlier.

"I feel as if I am fighting a battle all the time - and she has come so close to breaking me," says Sandra.

"The only thing which keeps me going is my love for Tom, but sometimes I even ask myself if life would be easier if I just raised the children alone, without having to face the ex-wife from hell.

"Apart from the abusive letters she has sent to my home, she has also sent letters to my boss and my parents, claiming that Tom is not the biological father of our little daughter, Amy, and that I am not a good mother.

"The personal abuse is bad enough, but there are also the grasping demands for money. She sees Tom and me as an open chequebook, and the situation is so bad that just last week I sank on to the kitchen floor and just sobbed in desperation."

A new novel, The Second Wives Club, by Jane Moore - herself a second wife - details the nightmare problems a former wife can bring to a new family.

From divided loyalties, torn emotions, open hostility and constant battles over money and access to children, each chapter brings fresh fictional horror.

But to thousands of second wives across Britain, who, like Sandra, find themselves facing a bitter ex-wife, fact is even more terrifying than the pages of any bestseller.

Sandra's problems began in early 2004, when she found herself comforting a fellow civil servant and work colleague who had just been dumped by his wife.

A divorcee living in Wiltshire with daughters Charlotte, now 16, and Sophie, 14, from her first marriage, she says: "Tom went home from work one evening to find the door locked and a note on it telling him he was no longer welcome. He didn't have any money on him, or even his mobile phone.

"In desperation, he walked to a phone box and rang the office to ask if someone could give him a lift to his parents' house. I happened to pick up the phone, and said I'd take him.

"We became friends, and five months after he had split up with his wife, I realised I had fallen in love with him.

"Right from day one, I tried to stay out of his relationship with his ex-wife and his children, but it was so hard seeing him being torn apart.

"From the moment they split, she wouldn't let him see his children, and he still hasn't seen them, even though we have spent £18,000 on legal fees trying to get access.

"Their divorce dragged on and on, and during the course of this she has requested every little detail about me, my salary, how much my house is worth, how big my mortgage is, and even asking to see my bank statements.

"It is like being burgled. It's as if she

wants me to hand over my life, everything I have built up over the years, just because I have had the audacity to fall in love with her former husband."

The arrival of baby Amy ten months ago has simply inflamed an already desperate situation.

"I love my job, but it seems Tom's exwife is at liberty to come after me financially, and I am deliberately not going back to work after Amy's birth so I don't have an income she can claim," says Sandra.

"Why should I support her? She does not have a mortgage to pay and she lives in a lovely four-bedroom house.

"I could understand it if we'd had a year-long affair and I was the reason for the break-up, but that's not the case. She doesn't want him back, but she doesn't want him to be happy with anyone else.

"Poor Tom is mentally exhausted by it all - he longs to see his children and that separation is like a physical pain. The past three years have been absolute hell and I think that second families are like a black sheep to the Government - there's no protection for us in law, and no set rules in place to protect me or my family.

"The irony is that I have a great relationship with my older children's father - he has access to them whenever he wants and we share the financial cost of bringing them up 50-50.

"My children refer to Tom's ex-wife as 'the mean lady'. They are utterly bewildered by her behaviour.

"We are being punished for being in love, while she appears to have short-term relationships which never seem to last more than a month. It must be awful for her children."

When Lucy Craft, a 39-year- old teacher from Surrey, fell in love with John, a 47-year- old pharmacist, she relished every moment of life as a soontobe stepmother.

"John's sons are aged 11 and 13, and I liked them immediately. They got on well with my own son Lucas, who is 13, and I just loved the Sunday mornings we would spend together, all sitting in bed watching TV and eating croissants," she says.

"It felt like we were one big happy family and I relished every moment.

"But then I became engaged to John in 2005, after a year together, and his former wife started to turn the boys against me. When I gave them presents, she apparently told them: 'Don't you dare be nice to that woman or take her gifts,' and they stopped talking to me. Whatever I said to them, they would ignore.

"They're just kids - their loyalty obviously is to their mum and she is controlling them by saying they must not accept me. It hurts me so much because I just want them to be happy and to make their father happy.

"His ex-wife is an extremely controlling person, and even though they are divorced she still wants to control him. It's hurtful for my parents, too - we used to take John's sons to see them but now they won't talk to them, either.

"Christmas is awful, with all of us sitting around the table, and the boys ignoring me if I say anything, even 'pass the butter'. Then John gets angry and says: 'Stop behaving like this!' I feel as if I am being ripped down the middle, when I have done nothing wrong.

"The first time his ex-wife brought the boys to the old family home - where I was living with John - she said, 'I can see she is in my house, meaning me'.

"Yet I know she doesn't love him any more or want him back - he's just a cheque book to her. John has bought her a house, she has no money worries and she doesn't have to work.

"My son copes by staying out of it - when the boys ignore him he just goes off and reads a book. All he says to me is, 'I want you to be happy, mum'.

"Dealing with John's ex-wife is like playing an appalling game of poker, where you don't know what move your opponent will make next - she is so full of contradictions.

"John is caught in the middle - and now she claims she will stop him seeing his children when we marry. It would simply break his heart. I'm a member of a support group called the British Second Wives Club, and without their support I do not know what I would do.

"The only thing which keeps me going is love for John. I have days when I sit with my head in my hands, wondering if all this agony is worth it, but I have to hang on to the fact that one day we will be together and it will all be worthwhile."

But are mind games, undisguised hostility and the use of children as innocent pawns an inevitable result of our growing culture of divorce?

Claire Halsey, 49, is a consultant clinical psychologist who has worked with many families with separate homes and divided loyalties.

Claire - a stepmother and second wife herself - from Cheshire, says: 'There is a big difference between letting go of your adult relationship with a partner, and having someone else who you don't know, and didn't choose, to be parenting your child for part of the time.

'When a new relationship starts and a new stepmother comes in, the mother has no control over who is now influencing their child's life. They feel powerless - and a mother's basic instinct is to protect.

"Sometimes, mothers feel they don't know what is going on in the new family unless they ask the children, and this leads to a terrible spiral of interrogation and family conflict.

"As a professional, I know that family-relationships after a break-up are more successful when the child retains a loving relationship with both parents - and crucially when the adult business is dealt with between the adults.

"But it is sometimes a lot to ask for people to put aside hurt emotions and act as adults - with or without children involved.

"Some ex-wives have been dislodged for a younger version, others may find new partners living in the homes that they themselves worked hard to make beautiful.

"Also, money worries add to the stress. Statistically, single women usually come off financially worse after divorce.

"They tend to have continuing primary care of the children, which makes it hard to work full-time, and they often have had career breaks, so they are not as high up the career ladder or earning so much.

"It is important to remember that many stepfamilies do manage to have happy relationships - I am a step-parent myself and I was incredibly lucky that the children were very accepting and it worked out positively.

"But I see so much tension and conflict over second marriages during my work - and I know just how hard it can be to make these new relationships work for everyone concerned."

Ellie Carmichael, a 39-year-old secretary from North Yorkshire met her husband Michael, a 42-year- old divorcee, through a dating agency three years ago.

She blames his ex-wife's unhappiness for the hamster-wheel of bitterness and resentment which has been spinning ever since.

Ellie, who has an 18-year-old daughter Chloe from her first marriage, says: "I've never had a penny of financial support from my exhusband, which makes the behaviour of Michael's ex-wife so hard to understand. She seems to have no pride or self-respect, and it is one battle after another.

"We have been together for three years, married for a year, and it has been hell. At the moment, it's the quietest it has ever been, but I am permanently on tenterhooks, waiting for the next saga. She's been hugely unreasonable, greedy and manipulative, and it pains me to say it, but she seems to put money before the needs of her son.

"If Michael doesn't immediately give her the money she asks for, she withholds his visiting rights and won't let him see his 12-year-old son. This is not only hurtful for Michael, but for Nicholas too, who feels very caught in the middle. He's a very sensitive boy and this must be tearing him apart.

"We have Nicholas every other weekend, but if she's in a bad mood she says he's ill, or she has made other plans. Basically she is using him as a tool to get at Michael.

"I didn't break up the marriage - they had been living separately, within the same house, for a year before they even split. It was a very big house, and they had their own bedroom and living room.

"Michael waited for two years before he applied for a divorce, and there was no contest.

"They split up because his wife had an affair - but unfortunately her lover then went back to his wife after she and Michael split, which means that she is now on her own and able to dedicate all her attention towards us. I think her bitterness about this fuels her attitude towards us - she's not happy, so she thinks we shouldn't be happy either.

"I actually feel quite sorry for her, as we are very happy together when we can forget about all this. They had been married for 12 years before the split, and it's only now that he says he can understand what a happy marriage is.

"Michael pays for everything for her - the mortgage, all the bills, maintenance for his son, and maintenance for her. She gets £300 a month just to spend on herself, for clothes and things like that. She works fulltime, but he still pays for everything.

"We get bombarded with emails all the time - 'Nicholas needs new trainers. Nicholas needs a hair-cut', which is fair enough, but Michael's already paying his maintenance.

"He just pays up but it makes me seethe. If we buy anything, she questions how we can afford it - I bought Michael a new DVD player and she said, 'How can you afford that?'

"It's as if we're not allowed to spend money on ourselves. Nicholas has everything he wants here, a PlayStation, a wardrobe full of clothes, but she says we are squandering money on ourselves and taking it away from him. Honestly, you would laugh if it wasn't so heartbreaking.

"I can't wait for the day when Nicholas is out of full-time education and Michael can just tell his ex-wife to get lost."

Her sentiments, clearly, are ones that would be echoed by many women across the country.

• For support as a second-wife, contact the British Second Wives club at www.thebritishsecondwivesclub.co.uk

To protect the identities of the children involved, the names in this feature have been changed.