Scandal: The wronged women

Belinda Oaten's world turned upside down last week with the revelations about her MP husband. What's it like to be in her shoes? How can she get through all this? Years on from her own equally public humiliation, Margaret Cook looks back - and suggests ways to deal with the pain

I have been thinking of Mrs Mark Oaten this week, probably with more sisterly sympathy than many. She is the innocent bystander, the recipient of the shaming flak that has fallen on her husband, outed by the News of the World for a six-month relationship with a male prostitute. Belinda Oaten is believed to be holed up somewhere with her children, out of media reach; possibly in a ski resort. She is no doubt wishing the slopes would open and swallow her up, yearning for total anonymity.

Sympathy is a cold flame: the further off you stand from the event, the less you engage with those involved. To many reading the story it is a moment's amusement, a morsel of schadenfreude, someone providing the day's scandal ration. And politicians are always fair game, next only to the royals for their debunk-potential.

Only those who have been at the centre of the vortex of breaking scandal can know how painful it is. Facing the world becomes an overwhelming ordeal, but facing the world in the shape of the insatiable media is just what you cannot avoid.

How much did she know? Perhaps it would be better to have known nothing of her husband's sexual leanings. For having the sword of Damocles hanging over you, wondering if or when the story will break, is never-ending, all-corroding misery.

I went through this in 1997. For a year I'd been aware that the press knew of my then husband's affair with his secretary, gnawed by the question of just when this would be made public. He had only confessed to me because the press knew, and he felt that they were waiting for an opportunity of maximal embarrassment to reveal all.

When he became Foreign Secretary, I truly believed the affair was in the past. Foreign Secretaries are guarded like royal children, and he must have had considerable ingenuity in continuing to lead a double life.

The morning we were due to go on holiday in August 1997, I congratulated myself, as I did some pre-holiday shopping, for weathering the storm. Little did I know that the same day, the worst of the storm was about to break. Even as we were both conveyed with all the privileges of a ministerial limousine and attendants to a private VIP lounge at Heathrow airport, the foundations of my life were crumbling.

With the entourage abruptly dismissed, he told me that the holiday - and the marriage - were over; finished. He had heard by phone from Alastair Campbell that the story of his affair was about to break. He had to make a lightning decision; whether to back the wife or the mistress. I was the loser.

Amid the chaos of that evening, there was a sensation of being demoted, a dizzying loss of status. It was incredibly brutal. The attendants were uneasily polite, behaving as if only a minor crisis had happened, unable to meet my eyes.

The role of victim had begun. Trying to muster my dignity like tattered garments, I refused the offer of a safe house, but allowed my home phone number to be changed. This was a mistake, for it cut off for the first few days the contact of friends.

My younger son arrived to see us off, as he thought, on a fantastic holiday. For the first time in his life, he had to be the strong arm supporting his distraught mother. I then had to hotfoot it back to Edinburgh so that I could organise some food shopping before the siege began. And when all I wanted to do was sit stunned and alone with my thoughts, I had to phone my mother, my elder son, my sister and other people who would otherwise hear it all from the national news.

My mother said amid the tears: "I thought you had such a strong marriage." It made me aware for the first time how I had always striven to present the positive side to the world. Even my own mother did not know about the cracks in the picture. Such is the power of reputation to direct us all to put on an idyllic facade.

Neither of our sons had a clue as to their father's infidelities. I watched the late evening news with them, witnessing my own repudiation delivered with detachment and solemn mien. From that moment I felt cast completely adrift.

Within minutes, the predators were circling, ringing the doorbell at break of day. There were, in the midst of anguish, moments of high comedy. As my sons dashed out to the car, the pack descended in anticipation, only to leap back with athletic haste as the car skidded through their midst.

One reporter, relieving himself against a garden wall, found himself face-to-face with an irate female neighbour. A colleague at work was misidentified and ambushed in the car park. She waited till everyone had snapped away before telling them they had caught the wrong fish.

In many ways, the task facing Mrs Oaten is more difficult than mine. Whereas my role was determined for me, she must decide how to handle the situation. Whether to announce she and the family are staunchly behind her man, as David Mellor's family so memorably did, clustered around the house gate, or whether to jump ship.

In the present perception of shame, which is as volatile as any fashion, it is far worse for your husband to engage in a gay relationship, and with a paid sex worker. The superficial reckoning is that if this is his need, how inadequate must be the wife's charms.

We remember Jeffery Archer's aquittal (from the charge of perjury over an encounter with a prostitute) seemed to rest on his wife's evident fragrance. But many men have dark secrets and earthy preferences which the mind may reject but which trigger explosions in the gonads. Some women too. And throughout history men who stray have found creative ways of blaming the wife.

If Mrs Oaten stays with her husband, as she probably will, her loyalty will be absolute. There will be no catharsis of telling the whole story, as I did, and thus no way she can restore her own personal standing before her immediate friends and the world. She will be commended for her dignity and fidelity, but there will be no escape from victimhood and from pity.

There will be for her, I am sure, many letters of empathy from women whose husbands have similarly betrayed them. All of this is wonderfully comforting, and a salve for raw emotions, but it only goes so far. It does not restore self-esteem and the joie de vivre that goes with it. She will be at risk from mood swings and depression, as I remember so well.

How should she cope with her own demons? There are some historic examples she might choose to ignore, such as Christine Hamilton's capacity to brazen it out, making a career out of being famous for nebulous, shady reasons. Or Jonathan Aitken's miraculous discovery of religion. She may find redemption in the resort of many a good woman, that of charitable works.

She will certainly need to explore with her children how they can go on respecting and loving their father, even though he has exposed them all to shame and ridicule. My sons, in their twenties at the time of the break-up, found their loyalties painfully split. They now had a divided life, one half concealed from each parent. With the resilience of youth, they coped; but the obvious buttoning up and the avoidance of troubled topics were inexpressibly painful to me after the lifelong loving trust. They found comfort in their own networks. I saw messages to them from peers, on the theme that parents were an incomprehensible species and could be relied on to behave embarrassingly.

Rehabilitation from such a public humiliation takes time; for me, a year, at least. But with unequivocal rejection, there is only one way - to go it alone. That is until, through a dating agency, I met the new partner with whom I have found happiness and a renewed trust in mankind. My other great balm came through writing; at first responding to every letter of sympathy, later writing for the press.

Finally, I found my way to writing my own story, which inevitably meant telling some unsavoury anecdotes, for which I was lambasted. While gentlemen in high places condemned me as bilious with revenge, women viewed me as iconic. I was not fitting the humble and retiring role assigned to rejected women of a certain age, and quite suddenly I was revelling in the power of having a voice. Crazily, having been media-averse, I now had some very good journalist friends who gave unstinting and generous help to a budding career.

I was fortunate, too, in having had a marriage that was modern in the sense of allowing me to pursue my own well-paid career and interests. How much more vulnerable are the women who, misty-eyed with romance, invest everything in their husbands and live vicariously through him.

Looking back, my subconscious intentions were undoubtedly to marry for life. I also thought in my innocence that if we ever came to hypothetical divorce, we could surely do it with calmness and dignity. How wildly misperceived that was. The explosion of anger and bitterness testifies to the amount of love invested, I suppose. A couple, and even more, a family is much greater than the sum of its parts, and the greatest tragedy of our piece of scandal was the sundering of that unity.

My final word to Mrs Oaten is, after the cooling-off and inevitable recriminations, try to understand, toss your head at the world's opinion, and keep your family together.

Lolicia Aitken

She stood by Jonathan when he cheated on her and dabbed cologne on his forehead through his 1997 libel trial. Aitken was jailed for perjury and Lolicia filed for divorce. She said recently she wouldn't have had things any other way: "He was always a bad womaniser. But then I decided early on that I'd much rather ride a wild tiger and suffer a few bumps on the way than ride a tired donkey."

Christina Davies

When then husband Ron experienced a "moment of madness" on Clapham Common in 1998 she said: "I am supporting Ron and taking an active role to help him." The marriage ended in 2001. Davies married Lynne Hughes, but in 2003, Davies was again caught in a notorious gay pick-up spot. His "looking for badgers" explanation did not work and he again resigned. The couple are still together.

Ann Parkinson

Her response when husband Cecil's 11-year affair and imminent love child with his Commons secretary, Sara Keays, was made public in 1983 was: "I have a very happy marriage." He said: "My wife and I have decided to stay together." Last year the couple spent his 74th birthday together in the Rockies. Their eldest daughter, Mary, says: "It proves that it doesn't have to be roses all the way."

Diane Yeo

Her daughter had suffered a brain haemorrhage and her son was undergoing chemotherapy when minister Tim Yeo's affair with the Conservative councillor Julia Stent, and the existence of their six-month old child, were revealed in 1994. Yeo resigned and Diane said she would stand by him. "If you've had to deal with two life-or-death situations it puts everything else into perspective," she said recently.

Jane Clark

In his diaries, Alan Clark, the former Tory defence minister, admitted a string of liaisons, including a "coven" of women - mother and two daughters - from the same family. Husband and father Judge James Harkess called for Clark to be horsewhipped. Wife Jane called him a "s***," but stuck by him until his death in 2000. "Where does a woman like me go?" she said. "What would I do?"

Helen Merchant

When told of a supposed relationship between husband Piers and 17-year-old club hostess Anna Cox, Helen invited the girl to stay in their home. He resigned as parliamentary private secretary. Despite allegations of another affair, Piers and Helen are still together. She said: "People stay in marriages. You have to work at a marriage. That's the answer as far as I am concerned."