Revenge is a dish best served cold… or, in some of our writers’ cases, exacted in a wine-fuelled fury.

From burning boxes of family letters and ambushing the mistress at a cafe, to becoming part of your ex-husband’s new family, it’s hard to know just how you would react to your partner cheating.

As Eleanor Brown, who posted photographs of her father’s former mistress on an escort site as an act of ‘revenge’, is jailed for three years this week, we reveal how some of our writers settled the score…

I GOT HIS MISTRESS SACKED

Liz Jones

When he got home my cleaner had been present to ensure he didn’t steal the cat

We were on a remote island off the coast of Mozambique when, two days into a two-week stay, my husband admitted he had cheated… again. This time with someone he had met a few weeks before at a literary festival in India.

As I had paid for the holiday (£26,000), I went to the manager of the small resort and told him I was ejecting my husband forthwith. The staff, all enthusiastically on my side, put my disgraced partner in another, less palatial log cabin for the night (okay, it was the linen cupboard), then arranged a small plane (expensive!) to the mainland. In his haste, my husband forgot several pairs of trainers and nylon football shirts, which I donated to the waiters and cleaners.

I managed to extract the woman’s name out of my husband (he had the cheek to smirk as her name passed his lips), so I easily found her online. I emailed her, telling her that sleeping with a married man is immoral and that I would let her bosses know.

I got her sacked.

My agent, whom my husband shared (as he did my private GP and Harley Street dentist), got in touch, telling me that as soon as he landed my husband had tried to sell his story to Grazia magazine. I told my agent to choose sides, which he did: mine. When I finally got home, my husband had taken his things and left my credit card (which I had foolishly let him use for years) cut up on the table; my cleaner had been present to ensure he didn’t steal the cat, although Squeaky had never warmed to him.

I messaged a thank you, adding, ‘Oh, and by the way. Just as I was about to walk down the aisle, your best man, your closest, dearest friend, whispered in my ear: “If it all goes t**s up, get in touch.”‘

I TOLD HIS GIRLFRIEND HE HAD BEEN CHEATING ON HER… WITH ME

Lucy Holden

He  sent me the most narcissistic, self-centred, whining email I’ve ever received

I was halfway through a Chinese takeaway when I realised the guy I was seeing had a girlfriend and had been lying to both of us. It was late, a post-coital meal in fact, and his phone rang and rang amongst the empty cartons. ‘Go away L,’ he said, saying a woman’s name, and I immediately realised that, of course, no friend would ring over and over again this late at night.

He had a girlfriend.

It took a while but I decided to tell her. I’d been cheated on before, and I knew that part of what hurt was feeling like an idiot. In this scenario, I would later discover, I was the ‘Other Woman’, and she the long-term partner, but of course I’d thought all along he was single. The OW (other woman) is not always the villain of the piece.

It also turned out that other people knew, which I found especially humiliating. These were people I liked and thought were our mutual friends and yet none of them told me – or her.

I do wish I’d avenged myself better: I was scared to speak to her and therefore got drunk before messaging. He was very angry, obviously – so I blocked him on social media and he sent me, instead, the most narcissistic, self-centred, whining email I’ve ever received. She didn’t deserve this, he essentially said, which was of course true – but what he meant was she didn’t deserve what I had done to her, not what he had done. Clearly he felt sorry only for himself. I asked him never to contact me again and hoped she’d be able to say something similar and find someone who deserved her.

I HELPED HER STRIP HIS FLAT

Flora Gill

We hired a van and started stripping the place of all the upgrades she’d made to the flat

I always liked my friend’s boyfriend, but then he cheated on her and was obviously dead to me.

Since they both lived in his house (bought for him by his parents), I offered to help her move out. The ex would vacate the property for the afternoon so we could collect and gather her possessions.

However, if he thought we’d be taking a few suitcases of clothes, and maybe some books, he’d not been paying attention. Over the last few years, while it might have been his house, she had made it a home and we were going to spend as long as it took undoing her handiwork.

So we hired a van and started stripping the place of all the upgrades she’d made. First was the kitchen – all those pretty plates, glasses, useful pots and pans went into boxes, leaving him with the one carcinogenic pan he’d had since university.

In the sitting room we took the couch, the cushions and the curtains (we did discuss stripping the wallpaper but decided against for the sheer amount of manual labour required). In the bathroom we took the toilet seat, the loo roll and unscrewed the fancy new shower head my friend had bought.

And while the bed might have been his, the bedding and mattress certainly weren’t.

When we were done, the house was the dull, soulless husk it had been before my friend moved in. The only new thing she left was a card on the kitchen table that read ‘sorry for your loss’.

I often wonder how he reacted when he returned, realising he’d have to sleep on the slats of his bed. I hope it made him reflect symbolically on the amount of colour and joy he’d lost from his life.

I BEFRIENDED THE OTHER WOMAN

Marion McGilvary

I remained friends with my husband – for the sake of the kids, and frankly, for my own soul

Revenge? Oh how I plotted, lying awake at night thinking of the ways I could punish – not the cheating husband (the guilt trip I laid on him was, he claimed, Stasi level) but the woman he left me for. She knew he had a wife and kids when she pursued him – and pursue him she did, I saw the emails – and I wanted her to suffer as much as the rest of us did.

When I actually bumped into her, however, sitting outside a cafe with my ex’s business partner one day, I was totally unprepared. I considered throwing coffee in her face but the cup was empty and anyway I’m not sure I’d have had the guts.

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My real revenge was to play the long game.

I remained friends with my husband – for the sake of the kids, and frankly, for my own soul, deciding it was better to remain cordial than be a bitter old bag.

I didn’t speak to the new partner on the rare occasions I ran into them together – until she got pregnant. Then I realised there was no point in keeping the Cold War going: she was having my kids’ half-sibling and I had two choices – separate myself, or go all in and be part of the extended family.

I went all in. I befriended the mother (to be fair she accepted me), and cuddled the baby the day she came home from hospital.

It doesn’t sound much like revenge, but in a way to me it’s the perfect payback. There I am – the smell that just doesn’t go away.

I DESTROYED HIS PRECIOUS LETTERS

Lucy Cavendish

 After two days, I was so unbelievably angry it was like Vesuvius erupting inside of me

The explicitness of the message is what did it. He wasn’t in the room, his phone pinged and I only had to take one look to know.

Even so, I couldn’t believe it – I thought we were happy.

When he came back into the room – this was a decade ago, before phones routinely locked themselves – I told him I had read the text. I remember crying, and him constantly telling me I’d got it wrong.

It took a bit of time for the rage to arrive. Two days later it came like a wave.

I was so unbelievably angry it was like Vesuvius erupting inside of me. I found our family photo albums, and looking at him and me and our small child on the beach, in our home, playing in our garden, the dozens of physical, printed-out photographs I had of us together, made me feel so utterly furious that I got a pair of scissors and chopped the whole lot up. Every single one of them.

I remember feeling viciously vengeful. I felt he’d betrayed not just me but our entire family unit and I just wanted to destroy it.

Then I decided I wanted to destroy him. I found the box where he’d kept all his precious possessions. I’d never looked in it before, thinking it just a box of old papers but inside I found letters from former girlfriends, full of love and gooey compliments. That made me even more angry. I made a fire in the grate and burned them.

In fact I burned pretty much everything in that box.

Once I had stopped and my anger had abated I realised it felt pretty good to go chopping and burning and slashing. Indeed, I look back on it now and I don’t regret it. It would still be painful to look at family pictures, so I’m glad they don’t exist.

What I do regret is the scorched earth nature of my slashing and burning. Some of the letters I destroyed were written by his parents, who are both now dead. Despite his betrayal, I don’t think he deserved that.

… AND HOW IT FEELS WHEN YOUR FATHER LEAVES YOUR FAMILY FOR HIS MISTRESS

Tanith Carey

 I always thought I was the apple of his eye, I expected my father to get on the next plane home. It didn’t happen

There’s one image from my childhood that is still seared into my memory.

I can see it now: the sight of my father, Kim, head bowed, staring into the pond at the end of the garden of our Surrey home.

Next to him is my mother, also looking down into the water.

It was an oppressively hot summer’s day in 1976 and her words were drowned out by the sound of 10CC’s I’m Not in Love drifting over the fence.

But I knew what she had to say.

She had found two ferry tickets for France in the side pocket of my father’s car – for him and his mistress – in the week he said he was away on business.

My mother pretended to forgive him, but the reality was that it was the final blow to their 11-year marriage, which had been punctuated by his infidelity from the start.

Fast forward a few months and I can also see myself kissing my father goodbye at the airport where he was boarding a plane to Australia.

He was due to start a new job and the plan was for us to join him once our house was sold so we could start a fresh life together.

Only when he was 10,000 miles away did my mother break the news that we wouldn’t be going, too.

As I always thought I was the apple of his eye, I expected my father to get on the next plane home. It didn’t happen. Instead, he booked tickets for his mistress to join him.

As a psychotherapist-in-training, I’d say it’s only now I can fully comprehend the impact a father’s infidelity can have on a daughter.

The fact that I can still feel nausea in the pit of my stomach as I write is a clue I’m still processing the trauma, almost half a century on.

My father never came back. He stayed in Australia, married his lover and they went on to have two more children. While I visited him once a year, our relationship was never the same.

He had a new life. But for me, the aftershocks kept coming.

Compared to the other girls who had enjoyed a solid male presence throughout their lives, I grew into a gawky teenager, insecure around boys.

After all, my own father had put other women before me, so I expected other men to do the same. If I couldn’t control how men behaved towards me, I could control how hard I worked.

I became a workaholic, never allowing myself to enjoy my life, because visible achievement was my way of shoring up my self-worth.

When I had my first relationships in my early 20s, I was hyper-alert for the smallest sign of unfaithful behaviour.

If I spotted the merest hint a man was comparing me unfavourably to another woman, it was over, immediately.

Rather than continue the cycle of infidelity, I married the most dependable and honest man, Anthony. I am proud to say we recently celebrated our silver wedding, and he has remained steadfastly loyal to me.

Even so, before our wedding, I still felt I had to spell out to him that I had a zero-tolerance policy on infidelity.

I told him in no uncertain terms that if I spotted so much as a frisson of flirtation, it would be over – no questions asked.

It would not just be me he would be betraying, I told him. It would be our children, just as I had been.

Looking back, do I resent my father’s mistresses? Not really. My mother is a survivor and mainly seems to consider herself well shot of him. I know they could never have made each other happy.

However it’s still a struggle for me not to judge women who have affairs with married men, knowing they have children, as I experienced first-hand the damage it causes.

Knowing how precious the mental well-being of my two daughters Lily and Clio is, I sometimes wonder if my father ever considered the consequences of his liaisons.

I will never know. He died in 1997 age 57, the same age I am now, of a muscle-wasting disease. After he moved to Australia, our relationship was too limited to have those ‘How could you?’ conversations.

As a trainee therapist, I recognise too he must have something in his own history that made him so insecure that he could not resist affairs. I am sad that now he is gone, I will never find out.

But even with all that I know now, there’s still that confused and abandoned nine-year-old girl inside me who wants to ask him this question.

‘Were your affairs really worth it?’