STARING at the wedding photo on Facebook, Michelle Agbulos could barely process what she was seeing.
The picture was of a bride standing proudly next to her new husband – but the groom was strikingly familiar.
“It was my husband, Andrew O’Clee, who I had a six month old baby girl with,” says Michelle.
“My sister, Jasmine, had been browsing and stumbled across a video of an – where people are filmed being drenched in freezing water for charity.
“She recognised the guy in the video – which was captioned ‘Uncle Andrew’ and ‘Auntie Philippa’ – and so, of course, she clicked on the profile page.
“The profile picture was a wedding photo of Andrew with this other woman.”
Jasmine was so horrified, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Michelle.
Instead, she asked Michelle’s best friend, Sarah*, to deliver the shattering news.
Michelle, from Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, said: “All I remember is gazing at the picture after Sarah said to me, ‘Michelle, I am going to tell you something that is going to change your life. Andrew is living a double life.’
“Those words went on to haunt me for a long time.
“I’d been betrayed by the love of my life and father to my child in the most humiliating way.”
Through some Facebook digging they discovered that – the same year Michelle had given birth to her and Andrew’s daughter.
Her husband and his second wife were also living in Godalming, Surrey – just 40 miles away from the home he shared with Michelle in west London.
Nearly 13 years on, Michelle has a happy new life with new man Paul, and her daughter Millie, 12.
But it took years of healing before she finally found love again.
She has not seen or spoken to Andrew since his arrest.
In 2015 he was jailed for eight months at Chichester Crown Court, after admitting – marrying someone while already married to another person.
In another callous act, he also demanded a paternity test, insisting, initially, that Millie was not his own.
“I still do not forgive him, because that means I’m saying what he did is right and it wasn’t,” she says. “But I have forgiven myself because I was really angry that I’d fallen for his lies for a long time.”
The pair met in 2000, when Michelle was working as a shop assistant at River Island. Andrew was 21 and a product manager at the store.
The chemistry was instant.
A year later, the couple got engaged and in 2008 had a lavish £30,000 wedding at the Great Conservatory at Syon Park in West London.
But looking back now, Michelle realises the cracks in their relationship were already starting to show a year later.
“He’d started to cut me off from everybody, although it was only later I realised that” she says.
“I asked why I hadn’t seen his family since our wedding. He told me it was because he’d ‘fallen out with his mother and brother’.”
In 2011, Andrew began a new job as an accounts director at a different company.
Michelle started seeing less and less of him.
“I remember feeling frustrated, but he told me he was doing the job for both of us, so I was supportive,” she says.
Towards the end of 2012, ex-soldier Andrew dropped a bombshell.
He told Michelle his company had been involved in a fraud probe.
He claimed he had to be taken to a witness protection house and, with no reason not to trust her husband, Michelle believed his web of lies.
Andrew claimed he’d been put in a safe house and could only be let out for a few hours at a time to visit her.
Scared for her life, Michelle waited patiently for him.
“He instructed me not to tell anyone, or I would put us both in danger,” Michelle says.
“He would visit me for only two hours a day each day, and he was always accompanied by a man, who I now know to be a taxi driver he used regularly,” she says. “He said the man was a officer in plain clothes.
“In those two hours, we would eat together, chat and make love before he left again.
“I believed every word he said. I didn’t think my husband would lie to me.
“I felt like I couldn’t speak to anyone about it, so I was emotionally overwhelmed and isolated.
“I’d ask him when it was going to end and he’d just tell me to trust him.”
In 2013, after two years of trying for a baby, Michelle fell pregnant.
“When the pregnancy test came back positive, it felt like something wonderful in our lives to keep us going,” she says.
When she broke the news over the phone, Andrew went strangely quiet.
“All he said was ‘are you sure?’ because we weren’t seeing each other very often. I think he thought that would never happen. It wasn’t the reaction I thought I’d get.”
While she was pregnant he was barely around.
During the birth, he turned up five hours late and later cut the umbilical cord – before telling Michelle he had to leave with a police escort.
“It may seem naive, but I had no reason not to believe him,” he says.
That same year, Andrew claimed his fictitious court case was being heard in Cuba so he had to fly out.
Michelle now suspects Andrew may actually have been on honeymoon with Philippa.
The infrequent visits continued before the crushing Facebook discovery revealed the depths of his deception.
In September 2014, after the Facebook revelation, Michelle went to her local police station and reported her husband.
“I felt so scared,” she admits. “I didn’t know who this man was any more.
“I also realised I had nowhere to go.
“Andrew was paying for everything and he was in total control of me and Millie.
“He’d manipulated and psychologically abused me. I felt really angry at myself, even though I’d done nothing wrong.
“I used to Google ‘why do men do this?, as in cheat or have a double life, all the time.
“I was obsessed. I think that’s because I never really got closure from what my ex did to me. Over time I accepted I didn’t need closure to move on.”
She hasn’t ever chosen to speak to Philippa, but Michelle has gradually rebuilt her life.
“The turning point came after my in 2018. I actually had a panic attack when it came through which I think was all the tension and stress I’d been holding in my body coming out,” she says.
“Even the thought of finding love again made me feel sick to my stomach at the start but I knew I needed to change my life and I’ve done a lot of healing since.”
The same year she became a life coach, to help other women who have been emotionally abused. She also wrote a self-help book called Shine Baby Shine.
She is also now a survivor’s voice for charity, Refuge, and works as a retail store manager when she’s not supporting others.
“Initially, I struggled with the dating world because obviously I didn’t trust my judgement. Then I realised I deserved to be happy,” she says.
“What’s happened has taught me never to put a man before myself again. No man will come before me and my daughter. I now also have a rule about managing my finances. I make sure I look after them and I am also teaching my daughter to do that too.”
A few years ago Michelle joined the dating app , and finally met a match she felt comfortable with and who was genuine.
For the last two years she’s been in a solid relationship with Paul, a 43 year-old finance contract manager.
Michelle, who looks after Millie full time, says the trio are looking forward to spending Christmas together as a family and affectionately call themselves the “Three Amigos”.
“I’m happy now but I still have a fear that this will all go and things can change very quickly, like they did before,” she says. “All I want is the living family unit that Andrew robbed from me.
“It’s taken a lot of work to open myself up to love and to trust again,” she admits. “But I’m excited to be building a life with Millie and Paul.”
*Name changed.
