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A wife gained revenge on her cheating partner - by flogging the house while he was away on a business trip.

Builder Craig Arnolds returned to the Nuneaton property from New York to find the locks changed - and six students in his lounge.

Wife Laura, aged 42, had packed her bags and gone.

She decided to get even - rather than mad - after discovering an incriminating message on her partner’s iPhone.

And she was able to sell the Warwickshire property behind Craig’s back because her parents had taken over the mortgage after the pair ran into financial difficulties.

The place was flogged within a fortnight through website www.sellhousefast.uk - and occupied by University of Warwick students.

Laura told The Sunday Mercury: “Things aren’t great between us at the moment.

“I could do it because my parents came up with the deposit for our home and when we struggled with the mortgage, they came in.”

She decided to get even, not mad, after 44-year-old Craig made the cardinal error of forgetting his iPhone six when on many business trips to America.

poll loading Did Laura do the right thing to get back at her husband? 0+ VOTES SO FAR YES - he deserves every thing he gets. NO - She's gone much too far.

When the phone flashed an unknown number, suspicious Laura swooped. The steamy message was from an American woman who described the kind of hot reception Craig could expect in New York.

It was then she hatched her complex revenge plot.

Craig, who now lives in London, described the baffling scene that greeted him at the former family home.

He smelt a rat when he spotted a Nissan Micra on the drive. “All the lights were on and the TV was blaring,” he said.

“I remember thinking it was really out of character for Laura to be up past 11pm. I had no idea what on earth was going on.

“At this point I was seriously freaked out, jet lagged and frantic - I started banging on the door and shouting Laura’s name – but was greeted instead by what looked like a 21-year-old hippie.”

The terrible truth dawned on Craig when he walked into the property. He added: ‘I noticed all Laura’s furniture was gone, but the chairs and tables I’d inherited from my late father, plus my set of golf clubs and vintage radio - which Laura always hated - was sitting on the kitchen table in all its glory.

“She’d included my most prized possessions in the ‘fixtures and fittings’. I was gutted. I still can’t get my head around how she did this in the space of a two week holiday.”

A spokesman for www.sellhousefast.uk said: “Looking back now, I suppose Mrs Arnold did seem unusually desperate to sell up and pretty urgently, but at the time I thought nothing of it.”

Craig told The Mercury wryly: “Last time I marry an Italian, that’s for sure.

“I made a mistake and paid for it dearly.

“I was very annoyed at first but life is too short to dwell on these things and I made the decision that for the children’s sake, we should stop the hostilities there.

"Who knows, maybe by getting this out of her system will allow us to build on the existing amicable relationship?”

But he did admit: “What I would really like to say is a little more colourful than that so probably wont be printable.”