A very tawdry catfight: As the wife of a Lib Dem MP is found guilty of stealing his mistress's cat, the eye-popping inside story of a most unedifying menage a trois

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Christine Hemming with one of her six cats. She was found guilty of burgling the home of her love rival and stealing a four-month-old kitten called Beauty

Less than a mile separates the two houses MP John Hemming calls home. Both are in Moseley, a leafy and affluent suburb of Birmingham, but one is rather grander than the other.

The first, an eight-bedroom, three-bathroom affair, is the residence of Christine Hemming, 53, John’s wife of nearly 30 years, the couple’s three children and six contented cats.

The second — a mere 20-minute walk away — is a modest red-brick semi, inhabited by Hemming’s 36-year-old mistress, Emily Cox, their five-year-old daughter, Isabel, and a solitary cat, Twinkle.

When he is not on parliamentary business in London, the 51-year-old MP for Birmingham Yardley spends week nights here before returning to the marital home at weekends.

It is, as Ms Cox admits, an ‘unconventional’  set-up and one which has been subject to much tension over the years.

But even the most colourful imaginations would struggle to summon the affair’s latest chapter, which unfolded in Birmingham Crown Court this week.

There, Christine Hemming was yesterday found guilty of burgling the home of her love rival and stealing a four-month-old kitten called Beauty.

The court heard how she crept through Ms Cox’s back door, scooped up the tabby and tootled away with her through the back garden. Beauty has not been seen since, leaving Twinkle as the sole feline in the house.

Nabbed: CCTV images show Christine Hemming at his mistress Emily Cox's home in Moseley, Birmingham, walking away with the cat

Walkabout: Christine Hemming can be seen striding around the garden of Emily Cox's home trying to avoid CCTV Camera's, making her way up to the door of the house - even crawling at one point

And although Mrs Hemming denied the charges, the act was caught on CCTV. In scenes bordering on farce, she is seen sneaking around in the shadows of her love rival’s garden. As she passes a window, where a light shines from inside, she gets down on her hands and knees to avoid being spotted.

After several minutes, Mrs Hemming enters through the unlocked back door. Then, wearing a skirt, jumper and sensible shoes, she leaves with Beauty,  worth £20, under her left arm. As she walks back to her car, bespectacled Mrs Hemming looks up — straight into one of the four cameras installed by Ms Cox.

The jaw-dropping 16 minutes of footage was played to the jury yesterday on day three of the trial and called ‘compelling evidence’ by prosecutor Jason Pegg.

A rather sorry incident, certainly — despite its faintly comic undertones — and one which has highlighted the Liberal Democrat MP’s unorthodox domestic arrangements.

For the past few years, he has openly divided his living arrangements between the homes of his wife and mistress. They, in turn, have veered from begrudging tolerance to open warfare, with no love lost between the two women.

John Hemming with his mistress Emma Cox. Even now friends say he remains a 'committed flirt'

‘Mrs Hemming has not and never will be welcome in my home,’ Ms Cox said. ‘The way she has behaved is appalling.’

This accusation could be levelled at all parties in this set-up — particularly Mr Hemming, a bespectacled and slightly portly figure who makes for a rather unlikely Casanova.

Even now, friends say he remains a ‘committed flirt’, who likes nothing better than the company of pretty young women.

Take Mr Hemming’s blog. He recently posted footage of himself playing the keyboard alongside a sextet of young female saxophonists at this year’s Lib Dem party conference. Billed as ‘John Hemming And The Sisters Of Jazz’, the MP looks like the cat who got the cream.

How, though, did this rather extraordinary set of events unfold?

There cannot be many wives who would put up with Mr Hemming’s shenanigans. Then again, Christine Hemming is more determined than most; in the words of one friend, she ‘decides what she wants and makes it happen’.

This certainly seemed to be the case when it came to her husband, whom she set her cap at more than 30 years ago after reading an article he had written for the Oxford University magazine Isis in 1981.

John was at Magdalen College studying physics, while she pursued her studies in Edinburgh.

So impressed was Christine by Hemming’s weighty rhetoric that she travelled from Scotland to Bridlington to meet her future beau at a student conference where he was speaking.

Six months later, the couple were married, John only 21 and she just 23. They settled in Birmingham, where Hemming started to pursue his political career at a local level, while establishing the software business that would make him a millionaire.

The couple had three children — Marion, 21, Alex, 18, and 11-year-old Alice — and, when not being a full-time mother, Mrs Hemming worked as her husband’s company accountant.

To neighbours and friends, it seemed a contented, even enviable, set-up: a growing family, a flourishing business, a burgeoning political career and that nice, big house. Yet, behind the scenes, all was not well.

By the late Eighties, Christine realised her husband had a roving eye. He apparently confessed to a number of flings and she agreed to ignore them for the sake of their children.

But by the Nineties, the strain was too much and she served judicial separation papers.

As one friend told the Mail this week: ‘She didn’t want to go the whole hog and file for divorce, but she did want to draw a line.’

In what would soon become a pattern, she changed her mind and they decided to try again for the sake of the children. The arrival of the couple’s third child, Alice, in 2000, seemed to herald a period of calm. However, Mrs Hemming was not to know her husband had by then already been romancing Emily Cox.

A Devon-born history graduate from Warwick University, Ms Cox was Mr Hemming’s personal assistant — a position that had become vacant in 2000 after Mrs Hemming decided to step back from overseeing her husband’s financial affairs.

As Mrs Hemming told the court this week: ‘I had access to his financial affairs, but when I served the judicial separation papers I don’t think he felt it appropriate I should be in that position anymore.’

Christine Hemming was caught on CCTV leaving Emma Cox's house with Beauty

Initially, Christine was not threatened by her successor, despite the fact she was staying in the top-floor flat of Hemming’s £600,000 detached office premises in Birmingham. It wasn’t until 2004 that Mrs Hemming grew suspicious.

As she related in court: ‘It was normal for me to accept John had late nights, but when it came to a Sunday and it was 11pm and I didn’t know where he was — and then I tracked it back to the office in Birmingham where there was also a flat where Emily lived — I thought there was more going on than paperwork.’ 

This time not only was her husband less forthcoming when she confronted him, but she felt less accepting, too. ‘At this point we had quite severe arguments about what he was doing,’ she said. 

Earlier this year, things came to a head when Ms Cox came to ‘have it out’ with her love rival at the family home. Although the police were called, nothing more came of it — unlike last year, when an irate Mrs Hemming turned up at Ms Cox’s home.

As the latter claimed in her court evidence, Mrs Hemming set upon her wielding a pair of garden secateurs and later received a police caution. ‘She assaulted me and committed criminal damage to my garden, which some of the plants are still recovering from,’ Ms Cox claimed.

By then, of course, Mrs Hemming had a lot more to be upset about. In June 2005 — one month after her husband had been elected to parliament for the first time — Christine learned Emily Cox was four months pregnant with John’s child.

Publicly, at least, she remained stoic, implying her rival had entrapped her husband and describing the affair as ‘about number 26’ on her errant husband’s list of infidelities. (Mr Hemming said this number had been ‘plucked out of thin air’ by Christine, as it is also the date of her birthday.)

Mr Hemming, meanwhile, pledged to stand by both women and ‘do the right thing’, although this did not preclude him later showing a degree of braggadocio about his activities. At the end of 2005, he voted for himself in a competition run by a Sunday tabloid to find the year’s greatest love rat.

‘People used to think of me as a bit of a geek,’ he declared. ‘But I’ve turned into some kind of James Bond character.’

Despite such insensitivity, his marriage seemed to be flourishing. In 2008, Mr Hemming booked a two-week trip to Mauritius for his wife’s 50th birthday — a ‘second honeymoon’.

But, the following year, Ms Cox expressed a desire to move out of her top-floor flat, triggering yet more aggravation. Mr Hemming discussed the dilemma with his wife.

Mrs Hemming revealed to the jury that after learning that her husband wanted to purchase a small house for Ms Cox, they pored over a local map to identify streets his mistress should avoid, to prevent Christine having to encounter her.

What Mrs Hemming did not know was that her husband went on to purchase a £212,000 property for his mistress in December 2009, using what she called ‘marital assets’.

Christine Hemming now has a criminal record. Some will feel this is a harsh outcome for a woman who has stood by her husband for so many years

The Mail revealed last year that these assets actually came about by Hemming raising a taxpayer-funded mortgage on a Covent Garden flat, which he claimed for under the controversial second homes allowance. 

Either way, in Mrs Hemming’s view, he had effectively taken money out of the marital purse to fund his mistress and, after discovering his purchase last summer, she finally asked John to move out. 

‘I came to a decision on September  26 — my birthday — that I wanted John to leave,’ she told the court. ‘I asked him: “As a birthday present, can you go?” ’

It was, she says, a ‘relief’ to have finally said it. Not, however, enough of a relief to draw a firm line: three days later, after a telephone argument with her husband, Mrs Hemming arrived at Ms Cox’s home, apparently to deliver some post.

As we now know, what she did instead was make off with Ms Cox’s cat after crawling through the undergrowth of her back garden.

She now must wait to find out if she will receive a custodial sentence after the judge adjourned sentencing until October 28.

It does not look good. The case went to Crown Court, as magistrates decided earlier this year it was not suitable for summary trial because their sentencing powers are limited to six months.

Burglary carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in jail, but sentencing guidelines state the starting point in Mrs Hemming’s case will be nine months’ custody. That could be reduced to a conditional discharge or a community sentence.

Either way, Christine Hemming now has a criminal record. Some will feel this is a harsh outcome for a woman who has stood by her husband for so many years and who, in different circumstances, might be celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary this autumn.

Yet it seems sympathy is lacking in her own neighbourhood. 

‘She’s a let-down to women,’ said one neighbour. ‘She should have thrown him out years ago.’

This sentiment was echoed a few doors down by another neighbour, who claimed both Hemmings did little to endear themselves locally. 

‘He and his wife used to be very involved in the community,’ said the neighbour. ‘But that stopped a few years ago.

‘The feeling is they are rather out for themselves. He is not liked at all around here. He walks around like he owns the universe.’

Last night, Christine Hemming linked arms with her son Alex, who had supported her from the public gallery, as she left court without commenting. She smiled as they drove off in a black cab.

Speaking on the phone, Mr Hemming, who was not at court yesterday but arrived with Miss Cox on the first day of the trial, told the Mail: ‘I’m not commenting on the case until I have spoken to both Emily and Christine.’

After this ignominious court case, you might expect him to feel a little humbled. But it seems he is not yet reduced in domestic circumstance.

Despite Mrs Hemming’s robust declarations last year, her husband still returns to the marital home at weekends.

Quite whether he will do so now remains to be seen.

Additional reporting by David Wilkes.