Peering through the kitchen door, Scarlett McKendrick’s heart lurched. Ahead of her, reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows, the 17-year-old could see three men wearing balaclavas crouching behind the fridge. She froze in horror.
Moments earlier, she’d been snuggled on the sofa watching TV with her mother Priya in the living room of the family home in affluent Alderley Edge, Cheshire, while her father, Robert, was away on business.
Suddenly, the cat bolted from the room and their dog started to growl. ‘I went to check the kitchen to see what was wrong,’ Scarlett recalls. ‘Then I saw them . . . and started to scream.’
Priya McKendrick, left, with daughter Scarlett, who were both tied up and robbed at the orders of the ex-mistress of Robert (pictured)
It was to prove the start of a terrifying four-hour ordeal in which the petrified mother and daughter were tied up, blindfolded and gagged while a trio of intruders ransacked their home.
In a scene of unimaginable horror, Scarlett was dragged into another room where she feared she’d be raped, and her mother was almost suffocated with Clingfilm to silence her hysterical pleas for the robbers to leave her girl alone.
Robert’s former Russian lover, Karine Solloway, who ordered the thugs to terrorise the mother and daughter
‘All I could think of was Scarlett,’ says 54-year-old Priya. ‘I was begging them not to hurt her. I was so frightened that we would not get out alive,’ she recalls, shaking.
Thankfully, their lives were spared and the gang finally left, taking with them tens of thousands of pounds worth of goods. In the bewildering hours that followed, as she relived her ordeal in a three-hour police interview, one thought crystallised in Priya’s mind.
‘I had this lightbulb moment. I thought, “My God it’s HER. It has to be,” ’ she recalls.
‘Her’ was her husband’s former mistress, Karine Solloway, whom Priya had assumed was finally out of their lives. For three years, demonstrating incredible restraint, she’d turned a blind eye to Robert’s relationship with the 59-year-old Russian businesswoman.
The home in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, where Priya was almost suffocated with clingfilm
Now, three years after the affair had ended, she was back and had exacted her revenge in the most terrible way. She had hired a team of men — among them a fantasist by the name of Paul Prior who claimed to be an ex-SAS hitman — to stage a raid on her former lover’s home.
This week, the extraordinary drama reached its apex at Chester Crown Court where a jury took just two hours to convict Solloway of conspiracy to rob. She now faces a substantial prison sentence.
Today, at the family’s £1.5 million home, the events of October 6, last year are still painfully raw for all concerned.
Curled in front of a roaring fire, both Scarlett and Priya are reflective and still obviously angry. Robert, meanwhile — a tall, clean-cut, outwardly patrician man — prefers to absent himself after bringing in tea and biscuits. ‘I think it is probably easier if I am not here for this,’ he mumbles.
Little wonder. While relations with his wife and daughter are cordial enough on the surface, there is no mistaking the depth of their feeling over his betrayal.
‘I tried so hard to make the marriage work but how much can you come back from?’ Priya says. ‘There is so much resentment that I cannot shake off. He has put us through so much.
Robert McKendrick with his children (left to right) Ella, Scarlett and Robbie on holiday in Tobago in 2000
‘I feel humiliated and I still don’t feel entirely safe in my own home. At the moment I can’t imagine I will ever fully forgive him.’
Nor, indeed, can Robert forgive himself.
Up until seven years ago, the McKendricks had enjoyed a gilded life. Married in 1991, the couple settled in Cheshire and took over Robert’s father’s textile business.
Their three children were all privately educated. Ella, 23 runs her own nutrition business; Robbie, 20, is studying at the London School of Economics; and Scarlett, who, despite her ordeal, went on to get three A-grade A-levels, is now also at the LSE studying finance and accounting.
There were expensive cars and luxury holidays. ‘I used to tell myself how lucky I was,’ says Priya.
Over the years, Robert’s business interests diversified into investment opportunities in Africa, which frequently took him abroad.
Robert McKenrick’s ex-lover Karine Solloway ordered three men to invade his family’s home in Cheshire
Despite her husband’s regular absences, Priya insists that she had no reason to doubt him. But, by 2010, he’d embarked on an affair with Karine Solloway after meeting her at an event at the Russian Embassy in London.
At the time, Karine — whose surname comes courtesy of her marriage to a British solicitor 24 years her senior — ran an upmarket private healthcare scheme for wealthy Russian expats.
In a bid to spare his wife any more pain, Robert refuses to discuss his feelings for Karine, simply describing her as ‘impressive’.
‘I think my wife and family have been through enough, don’t you?’ he says. ‘The simple fact is that this woman and I were both married and we began an affair. I’m not proud of it — I feel like a total rat — but these things happen.’
Notably, he will not use her name, referring to her instead as ‘The Russian’.
For many years, Robert lived a double life — a couple of weekday nights with his lover, long weekends with Priya.
Who knows how long that may have gone on were it not for the fact that, while on a family holiday in Ibiza in August 2013, his eldest daughter spotted a text message on her father’s phone.
‘We were all sitting at dinner and she asked him who he was texting a message with kisses to,’ Priya recalls. ‘Abruptly he said it was no one. But in that moment I knew.
‘I demanded to know what was going on. He confessed that he had been seeing this Russian woman for a while. I felt like throwing up. I asked him if he loved her and he didn’t reply,’ she recalls.
Over the following tortuous hours, Priya found out more. She learned that the affair had been going on for three years and that Karine had accompanied Robert on trips to Africa.
Nor, she discovered, was her love rival the 30-year-old siren of her imagination but, at 55, was four years her senior.
‘I didn’t know whether that made it worse or better,’ she says. ‘I do remember a message flashing up on Robert’s phone as we talked. It was from Karine and it said: “Remember this mantra: I love Karine.” I said to him: “That is bunny boiler material.” ’
Robert McKendrick with his wife, Priya, on the couple’s wedding day at St Mary’s Church in Stafford, 1991
Still, Robert was smitten enough to admit he didn’t want to give his lover up, leading Priya to an astonishing decision.
‘I really loved him and I loved our family. I told myself she wasn’t going to ruin that. So I told him we would carry on as we were. I decided to throw myself back into the marriage.’
There was, however, another complicating factor: Robert’s work — which included a project called African Land, offering investors the chance to put money into thousands of acres of farmland in Sierra Leone and Liberia — had brought him to the attention of the Financial Conduct Authority watchdog and he was embroiled in an expensive legal action.
With mounting legal bills, Robert confided to his wife that Karine had loaned him £350,000, although it had, at least, been done through official legal channels.
By October 2013, the affair had fizzled out and Karine was demanding her money back — with heavy interest — amounting to £1 million. ‘She would phone Robert and the house at all hours, leaving messages going on and on about the money even though the legal agreement made it quite clear that it would be paid back.
But we could only do it in chunks because it relied on the sale of our rental property portfolio’ recalls Priya. A month later, a careworn Priya decided to take matters into her own hands and arranged a meeting with her husband’s former mistress.
‘We met for a coffee in a cafe in London’s Marylebone,’ she says. ‘I was a nervous wreck. I wanted to take control of the situation, and told her she could be reassured she would get her money back, but it wouldn’t happen overnight. We parted on amicable terms — so much so that her parting shot was that in other circumstances we might even be friends.’
By now, though, the McKendricks were fighting fires on a number of fronts. In 2014, a High Court judge concluded that Robert’s African business schemes were illegal. Judgement is currently pending following a trial over the extent of his liability. Nonetheless, marital equilibrium was restored over the course of the ensuing two-and-a-half years.
‘It wasn’t always easy. We had a big court case going on, money was tight and I was still reeling from the fallout of the affair, as were the children. But we managed to stick together as a family,’ she recalls.
So much so that, shortly before the break-in, she recalls enjoying a moment of self-congratulation in the garden of their local pub one summer evening.
‘I told him that whatever had happened we had done well to keep our family together,’ she recalls.
But then came the robbery. Pinned down on the sofa after the trio of intruders invaded her home, Priya could only look on helplessly as her daughter was bundled out of the room before she was forced to kneel against the wall, bound, gagged and blindfolded.
‘I felt so powerless and I couldn’t understand what they wanted,’ she says now.