I was happily married until my sister stole my husband..twice

Sunday Mirror, Apr 27, 2003 by DENNIS ELLAM

BOTH of Kim Murphy's husbands cheated on her. Both her marriages ended in betrayal and deceit.

But for Kim the pain was even deeper - because the other woman in both cases was her own sister.

"My heart has been shattered, my world has fallen apart," Kim says. "She has ruined my life.

Now Kim, 41, no longer speaks to her ex-husbands, Mike and Brian...or to Pamela, the woman she calls her ex-sister.

"Twice I thought my life was mapped out and twice I saw it all come crashing down around me.

"I don't even have anyone left to share my memories with. My ex- sister has managed to steal that as well..."

In March, 1986, Kim saw only happiness ahead as she wed her first husband Mike, whom she had fallen in love with almost instantly when she was just 18.

Kim wore white for the traditional ceremony at St Julian's Church, Shoreham-on-Sea, Sussex. Sister Pamela was the bridesmaid who shared her joy and excitement as they planned the big day together.

She had met Mike, then a 22-year-old patrolman with the AA, through their shared hobby of CB radio.

They began chatting over the air then arranged to meet. "I wasn't really expecting anyone special, but I had a real shock - there was this tall, gorgeous man with brown eyes and dark hair, standing by the bar," Kim recalls.

"He proposed four weeks later, and I had no hesitation - I was ecstatic, I thought I'd found the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with."

The newlyweds moved into their own home and settled down to married life.

Then, in January 1987, there was a call from Pamela - she had split from her boy friend, she told Kim, and needed somewhere to stay.

"We had a spare room and so I told her she could come and stay with us until she sorted herself out," Kim says. "It's what a sister would do. But soon I began to notice that Pamela and Mike were getting a lot closer. They would stay up after I'd gone to bed watching TV and chatting... but stupidly, I was pleased. I was glad that the two most important people in my life were getting on so well. I wasn't to know, but it was a bit too well."

The bombshell came just three weeks after Pamela had arrived - without any warning Mike announced he was leaving.

"I just don't love you any more," he told Kim and left her distraught, weeping on the floor. That evening when Pamela came home, she seemed just as shocked at Mike's departure.

"He's bound to come back," she said, as she whispered words of consolation to her sister. But the next day, the awful truth became clear when Mike didn't come home - and neither did Pamela .

"There was just a phone call from Mike, blurting out 'I want to come and pick up our stuff'. OUR stuff - in that moment, everything fell into place. I realised what they had done to me."

Kim came close to a breakdown then. She was prescribed anti- depressants, had to take time away from her work as a graphic designer, and eventually moved back to live with her parents. "I would go shopping just to get out, but everything around me seemed so big and threatening," she says. "It sounds silly, but Mike and I had planted some bulbs together and now I had to keep the curtains closed because I couldn't cope with seeing them flower."

She discovered through mutual friends, that her husband and sister were living together in Brighton. Once, three months later, Mike called and told her he had made a terrible mistake and pleaded for another chance, but Kim turned him down.

"Obviously it was over with Pamela and he thought he could come running back to me, but he was wrong. I was stronger. I didn't want him. And I didn't want to hear from her, either."

The sisters broke all contact for the next five years until, in 1993, Kim broke the silence and invited Pamela to her second wedding, this time at Worthing Register Office.

It was an emotional reunion. Pamela fell to her knees, begging her sister's forgiveness. Kim stroked her hair, and said that sisters should always be there for one another.

She had met Brian at work in the traumatic months after her first marriage ended and gradually found she was rediscovering happiness. "It was never the passionate relationship that I'd had with Mike," she says. "But Brian was reliable - or so I thought - and I felt loved." She and Brian had two sons - Connor, now seven, and Jordon, five - home life seemed content, and the sisters were once again becoming close. But then, as Kim can recognise now, a familiar pattern began to emerge.

Pamela had since married a man named Barry, but in 1999 that relationship hit the rocks. She called to say she had nowhere to live.

Once again, Kim took pity on her sister and invited her to stay. And once again, her sister was to betray her trust. This time, Brian was in her sights.

"There was one night when I realised they were getting it together," Kim recalls. "I had gone to bed, got up to go to the bathroom, and in the reflection of a glass cabinet saw them cuddled together in the living room.