A love-rat bingo caller did a number on his wife – bedding a school mum and having a child.
Devastated Emma Woodworth was pregnant herself when a stranger tipped her off about her husband’s double life.
The care worker had just posted a picture of her 12-week scan – her third child with hubby Ashley Barker.
To add to her heartbreak, she discovered the woman was a parent from school who had looked after their kids.
Emma said: “I can’t believe he did this to our family.
Our children were playing with their half-brother and had no idea.
His bit on the side was looking after my kids but breaking up my marriage.”
When Ashley confessed his affair he told Emma his ego was enormously boosted by women ogling him after dropping ten stone turned him from chunk to hunk.
Emma, 31, said: “He said he had an ego because he’d always been fat as a kid and nobody looked at him ‘in that way’ before the weight loss.
“He said he was flattered by the attention after losing the weight. I just thought it was pathetic.”
Ashley, 34, last night admitted having a fling but claims Emma was an “emotional bully”, which she denies.
Emma, who wed Ashley in 2011, was delighted when she found out she was expecting their third child in 2018.
Life was hectic – Emma was holding down a job in a care home while Ashley worked at a bingo hall.
But help was on hand from a concerned mum, who we are calling Joanne, who got friendly with Ashley at the school gates.
She offered to pick up the couple’s kids after school and look after them for half an hour until Ashley could collect them.
The arrangement worked perfectly, until Emma got pregnant again.
She posted her three-month scan on Facebook in July 2018 and was shocked when she got a text from a mystery number.
It read: “Ashley has been cheating on you for four years and has a baby with someone else.”
Emma, from Manchester, said: “I’ve no idea who sent it but my initial thought was ‘surely not?’
“There was no indication Ashley was playing away from home or anything was wrong.
I started asking around my family and friends and one pal said ‘what about Joanne?
She’s got a three-month baby and isn’t telling anyone who the dad is.
“Even then I thought ‘Nah, he wouldn’t do that’.”
But then Emma started to have her suspicions.
She said: “Ashley had dropped a lot of weight after his car broke down and he began
cycling to work.
“He was 20 stone when we first met and was now half that.
“I got a strange feeling in my gut.”
When Emma confronted Ashley, he broke down and confessed he was having a relationship with Joanne and that they’d had a baby together.
“I was really shocked,” said Emma. “Ashley denied it but I could see in his eyes he was lying.
Then he put his head in his hands and started crying, saying he didn’t want to lose his family.
“I was so angry. I started thinking of all the times he went to pick up the kids and spent time with Joanne.
“Who knows what they were getting up to when our kids were in the house.
“Our children were playing with their half-brother and didn’t even have a clue they were related.
I just don’t know how he could have done that.
I tortured myself with all the times they had met up at the school gates.
“Ashley and I went on holiday a few weeks before we split and she was telling my friend she hoped we were having a good time. All the while she had been sleeping with him.”
Emma tried to make the relationship work for the sake of their unborn child but when the baby was born in January 2019, she kicked him out for good.
“Having our child made me realise that I couldn’t carry on being with him after what he’d done,” she said. “I couldn’t trust him any more.”
Ashley, who now works in a factory, last night admitted to the affair – but said it was his decision to leave.
He said: “I left Emma because she was an emotional bully. She didn’t throw me out.
“Joanne and I are together because she provided me with someone who was there to talk to.
“I wish I that I’d had the courage to leave before things happened, but it’s how life is.
I didn’t know what to do to end the relationship with Emma because I didn’t want to lose my children.
“Emma used to say, ‘If you leave me, you don’t get to see the children again’.”
Joanne said she was gutted when she found out Emma was pregnant and cut off contact with Ashley for six months.
She said: “He got back in touch with me when he left Emma.
“He’s not living with me – he’s still at his parents – but we are together.”
“I met Ashley at the bingo where I was a customer.
We got talking, then friended each other on Facebook and got talking at the school gates.
We were just friends but then we started having feelings for each other.
And I would have preferred things to have been different rather than how it all happened.
“I’m happy that Ashley and I are together now and that everything that happened did not happen for nothing.
“I don’t condone what we did. I thought he would leave Emma because, for me, if you have to look elsewhere you are not genuinely happy at home.
But I am sorry for how it happened though.”
