She’s regularly mistaken for her 18-year-old fiancé Michael Smith’s mum, but Vicky McLeod still wants to spend the rest of her life with him – despite a 30-year age gap.
Michael was just 17 when they started dating – but he lied to Vicky about his age. By the time he came clean four months later, the pair were in love and Vicky asked him to move in with her and her three daughters.
Incredibly, Vicky, 48, admits her teen toyboy jokingly calls her “Mum.”
Vicky admits she sometimes fears Michael fancies her daughters
“Although I’m old enough to be Michael’s mum we truly love each other,” Vicky insists. “The sex is amazing! I’m looking forward to marrying him next year. But when he leaves his clothes on the floor I tell him off and he’ll say: ‘Sorry Mum!’”
Michael adds: “Some of my mates have called me a ‘Granny sh*gger,’ but I’d rather be with Vicky. Girls my age are immature.”
Vicky – who shops at New Look and has posters of Robbie Williams on her bedroom walls – was out clubbing with her two eldest daughters, Lianne, 22, and Natalie, 20, in July 2009 when she first met Michael.
“I saw Michael across the bar and he was gorgeous,” says Vicky, a credit controller from Luton, who hadn’t had a serious relationship since splitting from her ex-husband in 2000.
Vicky started chatting to Michael, then asked him to pose for a photo with her.
“I didn’t think he’d go for me, but we snogged and I took him home that night and we slept together. He had so much stamina!” she grins. “When we met I assumed he was around 25, but I never asked his age – if I’d known he was 17, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Although her elder daughters were fine about it, her youngest daughter Danielle, now 16, was furious. Vicky says:
“She went to stay with my mum. I was upset, but I wanted to do something for me.”
To Vicky’s surprise, mechanic Michael – who lived with his mum at the time – wanted to see her again. They started dating and he told Vicky he was 20.
She says: “I felt I deserved some fun. Danielle didn’t talk to me for a month and my mum was disappointed, but I met Michael’s mum Cora – who’s 56 – two months later and she was fine with it.”
“Some of my mates have called me a ‘Granny sh*gger,’ but I’d rather be with Vicky. Girls my age are immature.”
Michael finally revealed his true age before his 18th birthday last November.
“I thought, ‘What have I done?’ But I’d fallen in love and couldn’t end it,” says Vicky.
In May, Michael proposed, and Vicky asked him to move in – with her daughters’ approval. “Danielle had got used to our relationship by then,” Vicky says.
But she admits Michael has a lot more in common with Danielle, saying: “They like dance music – which I hate – and they say words I don’t understand like ‘innit,’ and if I try to talk like them, they tell me not to!”
Vicky admits she sometimes fears Michael fancies her daughters, though he’s assured her he doesn’t.
She says: “I do question why he wants to be with someone older, but he says he really fancies me. The sex is the best I’ve had – he’s always Googling new things for us to try out in bed.”
And Michael insists he doesn’t want to have children in the future.
“He says he won’t change his mind. If it’s a choice, he’d rather have me,” she says, before adding: “I do worry he’ll want babies one day and I’ll have robbed him of that choice. But he promises to look after me when I’m old and be there for my girls after I die.”
For now though, Michael seems happy.
“I love Vicky’s body – I prefer a bit of meat,” he says. “And we don’t just have sex – we make love.”