Shame on you, JT.

Vanessa Perroncel's story: John Terry offered shoulder to cry on in her split with Wayne Bridge EXCLUSIVE by Kate Mansey 7/02/2010


For the last eight days, the delicately beautiful features of Vanessa Perroncel have stared out from the front pages on every newsstand across the land.

Overnight she has become a household name, the woman at the swirling, dizzying centre of the John Terry sex scandal.

Now, for the first time, her story can be told – by two women who have been at her side constantly since the extraordinary story broke of her affair with sacked ­England captain Terry.

Vanessa’s friends Antonia Graham, 29, and Nadean Moses, 32, reveal today how the four-month fling began as Terry played cupid to her and boyfriend Wayne Bridge, Terry’s best pal and England teammate.

We can reveal Terry phoned Vanessa, 33, last July as she and Wayne were splitting – and pledged his help to get them reunited, insisting they were a “great couple”.

“John was playing the caring friend,” says Antonia. “He called Vanessa up. Vanessa told me, ‘John is being the peacemaker. He said Wayne and I are great together’.”

Antonia added: “Vanessa was sad and lonely, she loved Wayne and still does. She thought Wayne was the one and she never thought they would ever split.

“John said he wanted to help – and she took him on his word because he was Wayne’s best friend. It cheered her up because she was alone. She thought John wanted to get them back together.”

Vanessa and Wayne, who have a three-year-old son Jaydon, lived in a suite in the five-star Lowry Hotel in Salford for six months after Wayne’s ­£10million transfer to Manchester City from Chelsea in ­January last year.

By July, after six months of trying to find a suitable home in the North-West and with their relationship beginning to crack, ­Vanessa returned to Oxshott, Surrey, where Terry and his long-suffering wife Toni, 28, are her near-neighbours.

Then, we can reveal, just a fortnight later, Chelsea ­skipper Terry made the first of his clandestine trips to Vanessa’s home to offer his “comfort and support” as Vanessa struggled with the break-up.

And it wasn’t long before Terry had ­seduced lonely Vanessa and began a ­passionate four-month relationship with the woman who until so recently had been his best friend’s partner.

“He would pop round a couple of times a week, offering a shoulder to cry on,” says Nadean, who has know Vanessa for eight years. “He brought DVDs for her son.”

Cynics would suggest the “good neighbour” was keen for little Jaydon to be as occupied as possible during his regular visits.

To go undetected he would text Vanessa before he arrived so she could open the security gates in front of her and Wayne’s home.

Then, he would glide up the drive in his Bentley or Range Rover, each with blacked out windows, and carefully park out of sight.

And here, with photos of his best friend staring down from the wall, Terry and Vanessa would talk for hours over tea in the ­kitchen — before their relationship moved into the bedroom.

Careful to shield her son from the affair, she and Terry were ever cautious of not being seen outside the house together, with no goodbye kisses on the doorstep.

Nadean and Antonia are adamant that the femme fatale image of Vanessa in some quarters could not further from the truth.

They say she has lost half a stone, unable to eat or sleep since news of the affair broke when Terry’s heavy-handed lawyers went to court to try and keep it quiet but ended up alerting the media to it.


All the problems date back to that transfer, says Antonia. “Footballers are away a lot of the time and she felt a bit isolated.

"Soon the distance came between them while she was back home and he was away and there were lots of reasons why their relationship ended. Vanessa put her whole life into that relationship with Wayne. She was devastated when they split.”

Around September the secret lovers knew the relationship was getting more and more intense. Then Vanessa was ­devastated to learn she was pregnant with father-of-two Terry’s child in October.

Antonia said: “Vanessa is a very good mother and she would only want to have a baby with someone who she was serious about. She didn’t want a child to be brought up with two separate parents as she was.”

Vanessa knew she was getting further and further from a reunion with Wayne and was deeply regretting their split.

Antonia says: “She realised how much she was missing Wayne – she was alone with Jaydon in her house on Christmas Day.”

Terry, of course, was playing happy families with Toni, his sweetheart since they were teenagers, and their twins ­Georgie John and Summer Rose.

“Vanessa told me she would rather stay single forever if she couldn’t have Wayne back,” says Antonia.

By this time her fling with Terry was over but the damage was done.

Rumours were circulating in the dressing rooms of English football.

Wayne confronted Terry about them, only for Terry – sacked as England captain on Friday – to lie that nothing was going on.

Terry’s advisors visited her to ask her to sign a confidentiality form saying she would not speak about any private matters between the pair of them.

Antonia said: “Vanessa was in a playground with her little boy when they met with her. She looked at the form and signed it ­because she would never do a story about John’s personal life. She was ­absolutely gutted by the stories about her.”

Next, in a dramatic showdown, Toni, who has now fled to Dubai to get away from the scandal, called Vanessa on her mobile, demanding to know what had been going on.

Nadean said: “Toni called her before she flew off to Dubai and talked to her. Apparently it was quite calm. They’re both adult and Toni is lovely so it was very civil.”

There is of course no chance now that Vanessa will ever again be on speaking terms with Toni.

As news of the scandal broke, friends advised her to turn to PR Max Clifford for advice.

Nadean says: “When Vanessa first met Wayne she found that he and John Terry were almost inseparable.”

The best friends introduced their partners to each other and they spent days away at a theme park together with Jaydon and Terry’s twins.

Antonia says: “Toni and Vanessa got ­together because John and Wayne were such good friends and they both had ­children the same age so it made sense that on occasion the two couples got ­together, although they were never ­extremely close.”

She adds: “Now it’s all been ruined. ­Vanessa only cares about Wayne and her son. She was really sad when John lost the captaincy. She knows he is an excellent footballer and he loves his career. Vanessa told me she hopes he gets back ­together with Toni because of the children and because they’ve been ­together forever.”

Nadean insists: “Vanessa is in pieces about this. She is not your typical WAG – she hates that phrase – and she didn’t want to hurt anyone, she didn’t want to let ­anyone down. I think she’s slept about four hours in the last week, I’ve been round or on the phone all through the night worried about what she might do.”

Antonia said: “When I met Vanessa she was bright, looking forward to marrying Wayne and creating a stable life for her little boy. She was in most nights and didn’t like the nightlife much. She didn’t have a nanny and insisted on being with Jaydon.”

“She speaks to him in French and it’s just adorable to see how much she dotes on him. She is so protective she would only trust a few people to look after him.

“One thing that really struck me about Vanessa was that she loved shopping – she is the Queen of shoes and lip gloss – but she is very conscious about what things cost.

"She liked hanging out with the other WAGS but that was more because their boyfriends and husbands were mates more than anything else.”

Nadean, who worked with Vanessa at celebrity hangout Elysium nightclub in 2002, said: “Vanessa and I got to know VIPs working at the nightclub. We chatted to them but she was never out to bag a rich man.

"At that time we were friends with John Terry and we would go out after work with him and Wayne long before they got together. It seemed very innocent. Then when Vanessa started ­dating Wayne she became friendly with ­Cheryl Cole and Carly Zucker.”


Antonia says: “She was friendly with Toni, but they weren’t particularly close – they got on because their partners were mates and that was really it. They had their own lives and they are pretty different characters.

"When Vanessa got pregnant with Wayne she was over the moon. It was perfect. They were so excited about having a little boy and called him Jaydon Jean-Claude Bridge – his middle name is after her father who unfortunately took his own life when she was 22.

“Vanessa has always told us how she came from a broken home and didn’t want that for her children, which was why she was all the more devastated when things broke up with Wayne. She never really saw the split as permanent.”

Vanessa, who was born in Bandol in South East France, moved to Paris when her parents split aged six.

She spent her childhood years shuttling between her mother and father, spending half a year with each parent.

When her father died she moved to London to pursue a career in modelling, her beauty and Gallic charm winning her jobs on a James Bond set and lingerie shoots.

Keen to make something of herself and stand on her own two feet, Vanessa spent her weeks on modelling shoots and weekends earning money at Elysium.

Nadean says: “I remember this one night Wayne had broken his leg but he was so keen to see Vanessa he came in to the club to meet her on his crutches. It was so sweet but you could tell he’d fallen for her.”

Their romance quickly blossomed and within six months – in February 2006 – Vanessa fell pregnant.

Antonia, who shares a personal training session with Vanessa three times a week said her friend was now considering ­quitting England for good, possibly moving back to her native France.

She said: “Vanessa doesn’t know what she’s going to do now.

“One thing is for sure – she won’t be going to South Africa for the World Cup and she’ll be cheering for France.”


kate.mansey@sundaymirror.co.uk