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Smiling into the camera’s lens, Helen Steel and John Barker look like the perfect happy couple.

But now when Helen sees the holiday snap it fills her with feelings of anger and betrayal.

Because though John told her he loved her and wanted to grow old with her, he was in fact an undercover policeman who spied on her friends and disappeared as soon as his mission was over.

“For years I’d look at that photo and think how blissfully happy together we seemed,” says Helen.

“But now I see me as young and naïve, and him in a position of power knowing he’s going to disappear from my life very soon leaving me completely bereft.”

She realises now that little from that period with John was what it seemed.

“All these memories and photographs I had were now of a nameless stranger,” she says.

“John told me both his parents were dead and he wanted to sell their house so we could buy a place somewhere rural, grow our own vegetables.

"We talked lots about having children – he said he was an only child and wanted a big family.”

Helen was an anti-capitalism activist when John came into her life in 1987.

He worked for the Met Police’s Special Demonstration Squad but posed as a like-minded individual to gather intelligence on her and her friends.

Helen, now 48, had been involved in environmental campaigning and social justice work since her teens.

John started attending meetings and in 1990 he homed in on her.

“John definitely instigated the relationship,” she says. “He asked me out quite a few times.”

He then claimed his mother had died back home in New Zealand and asked for help.

“John asked to borrow money so he could fly home for the funeral,” says Helen. “Before he left he poured his heart out to me and we became much closer.”

After his return they became a couple and rented a flat together. All seemed well.

“In any normal relationship people have little arguments,” says Helen. “But we never did.

"They’re trained to be what you want them to be and into the same things as you.

“In a short space of time I fell absolutely madly in love in a way I had never fallen in love before or since.”

In 1991, Helen got home one day to a letter saying he was leaving, “pre-empting” his fears she would leave him.

He went back but disappeared for good the following year.

The last Helen heard from him were two letters sent from South Africa. Helen was distraught and feared John was suicidal. In truth, he had been redeployed.

Helen launched a search for him, even hiring a private investigator, but it was not until 2011 that she found out for sure that the man she had loved was a police spy.

For some of the time Helen thought John was missing, he was actually working at Scotland Yard.

He trimmed his mullet haircut and returned to a desk job where a colleague said he appeared “very miserable”.

One of the first things Helen discovered in her search was a death certificate that revealed the real John Barker died of leukaemia aged eight.

“At that point, the world as I knew it collapsed,” she recalls. “Everything that seemed real no longer was.

"This person I loved and lived with no longer existed. I didn’t even know his name.”

Helen now knew John lied about his identity but had no idea who he was.

She remembered the name of a woman in New Zealand who John had told her was an aunt.

In 2003 she travelled there and discovered the woman was not his aunt but, bizarrely, the mother of John’s wife, Debbie, and learned his real name was John Dines.

And while there she found a document in a public archive that linked John to Debbie.

Helen instantly realised they must have been a married couple. Back in London, she ordered their wedding certificate.

On it John had listed his occupation as “police officer”.

However there was still the possibility he had quit the police to become a political activist.

Her worst fears were only confirmed in 2010 when Helen met a woman who had recently divorced an undercover officer and told her John was a spy too.

“Although it was extremely upsetting, it was a relief to finally find out the truth,” she says.

The relationship lasted under two years but Helen says its bitter legacy consumed nearly two decades. For years she put off starting another relationship in case John “ever came back”.

Later, she feared no other partner could live up to the “unrealistic expectations” John planted. She also wondered if he ever had feelings for her.

“Somebody suggested John might have loved me even if he was undercover,” says Helen.

“I spent years thinking maybe there was something genuine because it would be so painful not to.

“But he told me so many distressing lies about how he was alone. If he cared, he wouldn’t have done that.”

The morally-dubious tactic only emerged in 2011 when it was revealed Mark Kennedy, a police officer who went undercover with the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, had several relationships with women he was spying on.

It turned out he was not alone. Now Helen and seven other women are suing the Met claiming they were deceived by officers.

Three will learn today whether their cases can be heard in open court, rather than in secret as the Met claims is necessary.

And later this month the others, including Helen, will challenge the Met’s attempt to have their cases struck out.

The force claims it will not get a fair trial because their policy of “neither confirm nor deny” will prevent them from presenting evidence.

Their lawyer, Harriet Wistrich, insists the victims have suffered “emotional and psychological damage”.

She adds: “It is fundamental that these women are given answers and receive an acknowledgement of harm done.”

Helen says other women activists need to be aware of the threat they could be under.

“People have the right to protest but this is what the police are trying to undermine,” she says.

“We want to see an end to the abuse of campaigners and others by undercover police officers.

"It’s unacceptable they can cultivate intimate relationships in order to gain so-called intelligence.”

A spokesman for the Met police said: “Sexual contact between an undercover officer and a member of the public is not an authorised tactic.”

For more information on the campaign visit policespiesoutoflives.org.uk