OK, let's put it this way. If Mrs P did behave that way, she had undergone a massive character transplant since 2002, when the pair of them were well within our social circle. We've been ski-ing together for weeks at a time, spent loads of time in each others' company and always went to the mess together. I just cannot give this tale any credence whatsoever.
Funny story about him though. During SAIF SARREA II, in 2001, we foremen had a secret 'engineering' laptop that we could use to send e-mails, browse t'internet and so on. Unfortunately it wasn't the best laptop and, with all the sand, the keys started to stick if you didn't give them some definite pressure. One day, my wife called me on Ptarmigan, through the cleverly set-up bridge we had put in place, to tell me that his wife, C****, had phoned her in tears telling her that her husband had sent her a message, "I can live without you!" She was devastated and my wife asked me to speak to him to see what had brought him to this conclusion. Was it the separation, was it 9/11 (Which had just happened), was it something else? I found him over in the Joint HQ tent and took him outside for a quick chat. His face dropped and his eyes turned to dinner plates. "Shit! That bloody 'T' key! I meant to write I can't live without you!"
Oh how we laughed.