Anna thought she was building a life with her construction boss boyfriend. But were they on rocky foundations?
Scrolling through the dating app, Bumble, I paused on Tom’s profile.
He looks a bit like my secondary school boyfriend, I thought, swooning.
It wasn’t the same guy but he was really dishy, and I reached out to him.
I’m moving to your area soon, he wrote.
Tom told me he was going to be taking over his uncle’s construction company nearby.
And with his sexy broad shoulders and the muscles rippling under his T-shirt, I wasn’t surprised.
The more messages we exchanged, the more it seemed we had in common.
I was a huge animal lover and Tom’s family owned a farm.
Tom told me he was the primary carer for his dad, who had cancer.
I was very family-oriented, so I was bowled over by how caring he seemed.
After chatting for two months, he came to visit.
‘Hi, gorgeous!’ he grinned.
He was just as fit as his photos and I blushed as I imagined his strong arms erecting fences.
We stayed together for a blissful five days.
‘I’m not seeing anyone else,’ he said one night. ‘Let’s be exclusive.’
‘OK,’ I beamed.
When I felt I could trust him, I invited him out to dinner with my mum and five-year-old daughter.
They both loved him and we had a great evening together.
‘I can’t believe you don’t have kids,’ I said afterwards. ‘You were so good with her!’
When Tom left, he promised to keep visiting until he moved down permanently.
In the meantime, we FaceTimed.
'I'm not seeing anyone else'
Tom lived with his dad in a big house, several hours away.
‘Wow, your place is amazing,’ I said, as he gave me a virtual tour.
‘We inherited it from my grandad,’ he told me.
I even started chatting with Tom’s father.
He seemed lovely, and I thought he looked great for someone who was so unwell.
Tom also sent plenty of videos from his construction job.
‘You look spotless — are you boys getting anything done?’ I asked, laughing.
‘We haven’t started yet,’ he replied quickly.
Tom came to stay with me for a week or two every month.
He invited me to visit him, but I had my girl to think about.
But his plans to move to the area kept being delayed, and something was beginning to seem a bit off.
Three months into our relationship, I decided to have a look at the Facebook pages of some of his relatives.
As I scrolled through photos, I spotted a little girl who was the spitting image of him.
I recognised his sister’s name in the caption, but this girl looked way too young to be his sibling…
My stomach churning, I called Tom.
‘Do you have a daughter?’ I asked him.
There was a brief pause before he dropped a bombshell.
'That's my mum's loser boyfriend'
‘I was just so worried you wouldn’t be interested if you found out I had four kids,’ he said.
‘Wait, four?’ I asked, gobsmacked.
Tom told me he’d been too embarrassed to tell the truth.
‘I didn’t want you thinking I was trashy,’ he said.
Though I was completely blindsided, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Eight months into the relationship, Tom was due home the next day after staying at mine for a few weeks.
‘Can I borrow £2,000?’ he asked.
‘What? Why?’ I replied, shocked.
‘My cousin crashed my car back home and I need a new one,’ he replied.
I was taken aback.
Isn’t his family’s construction business virtually his? I thought.
‘We’re selling my grandad’s house,’ he told me. ‘There’ll be more money after that.’
But I knew something was wrong.
After Tom had left, I did some digging online.
I knew vaguely where his grandad’s house was, so I searched property sites.
Adrenaline rushed through me as I found the listing and, clicking the link, I began going through the photos.
It was definitely the same house I’d seen in Tom’s video calls.
Then, something in a picture of the living room caught my eye.
The mantelpiece was lined with family photos, but there was just one problem. It wasn’t my fella’s family!
Instead, the photos showed an older woman with her kids.
Stunned, I stared at the screen for a minute.
Then I searched the address online to find out who was registered as owning the property.
It came up as belonging to a woman called Lisa, whose name I didn’t recognise.
It didn’t take long to find her on Facebook, though.
Lisa’s page featured plenty of photos of her in ‘Tom’s house’.
And then in one image she was wearing a denim jacket that I recognised as his.
My mind spinning with questions, I messaged her.
Do you know a man named Tom? I asked her.
When she didn’t reply, I contacted her adult daughter, Dani.
An hour later, Dani got back to me.
What’s this about? she asked.
As I explained the situation, the truth came tumbling out.
‘That’s my mum’s loser boyfriend,’ she told me over the phone. ‘He’s been living off her since last year.’
My jaw dropped as she revealed more details.
Tom had started dating Lisa a few months before we met.
He’d moved in with her straight away, which is how he’d taken all the FaceTime videos.
‘She gave him huge loans which he’s never paid back,’ she said. ‘Mum even paid his phone bill.’
He was basically her sugar baby.
‘There’s no construction company. There’s no family farm,’ said Dani. ‘He lives off her.’
Talk about concrete evidence.
Dani told me that far from being at death’s door, Tom’s dad was totally fine.
When I got hold of Lisa, she confirmed everything her daughter had said.
‘I found out about you a month ago,’ she told me.
She’d seen a photo of us that Tom had accidentally posted to the wrong social media account.
He’d been telling Lisa he was going away for work whenever he came to stay with me… the lying toad!
‘Will you stay on the phone for a minute?’ I asked her.
Then, shaking with rage, I added Tom to the call.
‘I know everything,’ I said.
At first, he tried to deny it, but the moment he heard Lisa’s voice, the coward hung up.
I was heartbroken but determined to get more answers.
To my surprise, his dad picked up when I rang him.
‘Yeah, I knew about it all,’ he admitted. ‘He’s spent his whole life living off older women.’
He also told me Tom was actually 35, not 30, and sometimes went by the name of Trev.
I was speechless.
How had he just sat idly by while his son lied to my face?
The following day, I confronted Tom on the phone again.
‘What were you going to do if I agreed to come and visit you?’ I asked.
‘I knew you wouldn’t have time,’ he replied.
Disgusted, I hung up.
It became clear how deep his deception had gone.
He must have taken photos with workers at random building sites to prove he had a job.
I posted about him online to warn others.
Eight women contacted me to say they’d been talking to him on a dating app during our relationship.
He’d been spewing out the same lies to them too.
Now, it’s been almost a year since I last spoke to Tom.
My daughter adored him, and it breaks my heart whenever she asks where he is.
But I know I’m well rid of him.
See you later, excavator!
Anna Zalewski, 33
*Tom/Trev, Lisa and Dani’s names have been changed.