How an actress who was seduced and then spurned by one of Britain's leading composers humiliated him on the internet

Perhaps, when she embarked on a love affair with one of Britain's best-known composers, actress Jane Slavin was right to wonder if their blossoming relationship was too good to be true.

Michael Nyman, 63, is the musical maestro who famously wrote the score to Oscar-winning film The Piano.

That unforgettably haunting composition is one of 37-year-old Jane's favourite pieces of music. She believed that a man capable of producing something so tender, so beautiful, could be trusted with her heart.

Scroll down for more...

And so when Nyman responded to a message she sent to his internet page on the social networking site Facebook and asked her out, Jane agreed to meet him.

She even wondered if they were fated to be together.

"It was an amazing adventure," she says.

"It all seemed so magical to be with someone so hugely talented."

But as experience and hindsight so often show, cold reality rarely lives up to such rose-tinted expectations.

In the end it went wrong in the most ugly - and public - fashion.

Suddenly and inexplicably spurned by Nyman, Jane returned to the internet, this time posing as a beautiful woman named Lucia, to find out why.

The fictional "Lucia" began a flirtatious online relationship with Nyman, who began bombarding Jane's alter ego with explicit e-mails.

The crowning moment of her revenge came when "Lucia" agreed to meet Nyman in a little cafÈ near her home in Crouch End, North London.

At the appointed time, of course, Jane walked in.

"You're an absolute genius," conceded a defeated Nyman after she confronted him.

"It's a brilliant story."

"If I write the film will you compose the music?"

she joked sarcastically. His response, says Jane, was: "Of course I will."

The final humiliation for Nyman came in the shape of an online diary Jane wrote which doesn't name him but is clearly based on their relationship.

She says she wrote the "blog" for her girlfriends as a kind of catharsis to help her get over Nyman.

Scroll down for more...

She never intended her words to be public and insists that it was not she who leaked the story of her sting to a Sunday newspaper last weekend.

Nyman refuses to comment on his alltoo public humiliation. But looking back at the events of the past few months, it is impossible not to feel that the whole sorry saga is a warning to all about the dangers of romance on the internet, where nothing and nobody are quite what they seem.

The fact that the main protagonists are one of the nation's most respected musicians and a former leading lady with the English Shakespeare Company only serves to make the tale even more gripping.

Jane, who will be seen in Coronation Street from next week, first posted a message on Nyman's Facebook page last July.

Scroll down for more...

It said: "Assuming you are the real Michael Nyman, you are one of my favourite composers."

Like all Facebook messages, it carried her photograph.

Nyman instantly replied: "You have pressed all the right buttons."

Within minutes he had added her to a list of cyber "friends" on his page.

"I wasn't even sure it was the real Michael Nyman," says Jane.

"There are lots of impostors on Facebook. I even ignored him at one point because he was sending so many e-mails and I thought the real Michael Nyman would be far too busy for that.

"He said: 'I'm not a complete stranger. I'm Michael Nyman. What do I have to do to convince you I'm the real thing?' And he sent me his mobile number."

Jane didn't call, but within 24 hours, Nyman had e-mailed her asking for a date. At first, she declined.

"He invited me to his house; he even gave me his address, which I thought was a bit foolish. I could have been anyone and I would never have gone to a complete stranger's house."

"I wrote back: 'Are you desperate, lonely or mad?' and he said: 'I am all of the above.' It was endearing that he was brave enough to admit that."

A few days later, at the end of July last year, he invited her to the opening night of Bizet's opera Carmen Jones at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank.

"It was a public place so I thought it was safe," recalls Jane, who had been single for a year.

"And it was an opportunity and an adventure, although I was terrified at the prospect of meeting him. I was worried that I'd be incredibly disappointed because I'd admired his music so much and I didn't want to spoil that."

They met outside Foyles bookshop on the South Bank.

Dressed in canvas trousers, shoes without socks and a stained linen shirt, balding Nyman was hardly the stuff of a woman's dreams.

But Jane says: "I did that thing that all women do, I ignored all the alarm bells.

"He hadn't bothered to dress up. He was a bit cross because I was late, but I didn't see all of that at the time. I just thought he was terribly sweet and fragile and a bit bumbling. I thought he was lovely, for all his little faults."

She remembers looking at Nyman when they sat together in the audience.

"It was surreal," she recalls.

"I wondered what I was doing there and what he wanted from me."

That question, she says, was answered when Nyman reached for her arm.

"Before the music even started, he grabbed hold of it hard and started kneading it.

"I didn't want to rebuff him but then he grabbed my hand so hard it clicked. I peeled his hand off me. In the interval I said to him: 'You are so bold!' and he said: 'Well you're beautiful and we have a connection.'"

Jane was clearly swept away by the romance of the balmy summer evening. After the performance, she and Nyman went for a meal - she tried to ignore the fact that he complained about the cost of her £8 glass of wine - and then sat by the side of the Thames, talking into the night.

She asked him if he had been out with other women from the internet.

"I said: 'Do you do this all the time? Do you meet women from the internet?' He said: 'I'd be lying if I said no, but it would negate what we have if I told you how many.'

"I knew it was an alarm bell I should listen to because I wanted to be special and exclusive. But I wanted adventure and it was such a romantic evening, magical, although I don't think he even remembers it."

Eventually they shared a cab home.

"He made a grab for me in the taxi and wanted to know why I didn't want to kiss him," recalls Jane.

"I said it was because we were in a public place but in fact, he was a bit slobbery."

Nyman asked to be dropped off at his house in Islington and gave Jane £20 towards the taxi, which had already clocked up £30.

"I thought perhaps he'd misread the meter. I was happy to split the cab, but it wasn't exactly romantic.

"By the time I got home, I had four emails from him. They said I wish you had come back, I wish you'd come in with me, what a wonderful evening he'd had."

Over the next few days, Jane says she was "wooed on the page".

"He sent beautiful e-mails and around 20 to 30 a day," she recalls.

"He said he was 'longing for me' and 'excited about possibilities' and ' perhaps our lives will change'.

"He even said: 'It's not about sex but this brilliant teenage longing.'

Their second date was two days later.

"He invited me to his house to sit and watch while he edited a Mozart CD. It was a beautiful CD. We went for lunch to a salad bar near his home."

On the third occasion they met, the pair became lovers.

"We were sitting in his garden talking and laughing," says Jane.

"It was very romantic. Laughter is a great aphrodisiac. I found him very attractive by then.

"He was all over me and we ended up kissing so hard that his lip bled. It appealed to the drama in me. I thought we were like Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes because she bit his cheek and made it bleed, forgetting, of course, how badly that relationship ended.

"I felt as if I'd had life and fire breathed into me. I thought anything was possible. He took me to bed and I felt wonderful, it would be disingenuous of me to say otherwise. I felt wonderful at the time and that he really adored me."

But with a verbal twist of the knife, she adds: "It was very quick but it was a glorious few seconds."

For 24 hours afterwards, says Jane, Nyman seemed depressed.

"I think perhaps once he had conquered me he was disappointed. The thrill of the chase was over. But then he was all loving again. He invited me to a prom and it went on from there. We started a relationship."

The pair saw each other every couple of days and spoke on the telephone and e-mailed several times a day.

The longest they were apart was a week in August when Nyman went to stay in his house in France with his family - including his children, his sister, his brothers and his ex-wife, who, according to Jane, he referred to as "Mrs Nyman".

Jane wasn't bothered by the fact that he was holidaying with her.

"He invited me to go, too, although he knew I couldn't," says Jane, "so I just assumed that it was all cool between them, but I've since learned that she wouldn't have been happy at all if I or any other woman had been there."

And so, Jane believed that all was well.

At one stage, she says, Nyman even suggested that she move in with him.

"He said I was beautiful, funny, resilient and brave.

"I was just on the point of admitting that he was making me happy. But the moment I admitted to myself that I adored him, it all went wrong."

Three months into their relationship, at the end of October 2007, Nyman, who was away on a three-day business trip to Luxembourg, simply stopped e-mailing her.

"I went from 30 e-mails a day to nothing. No phone call, no texts, no e-mails. I almost collapsed. I thought he'd died.

"I phoned and asked if everything was all right and he said: "Yes, fine," as if nothing had happened.

"I asked why he was ignoring me and he said: "I wasn't aware I was ignoring you."

"But the silence continued. I was beside myself. He came home and said he had impetigo, so he couldn't see me. But he used to phone almost every hour and that all stopped. I begged him to tell me the truth but he said I was imagining things."

Without seeing Jane, Nyman set off for another business trip to Shanghai.

After ten days with no contact, she sent him an e-mail confessing her feelings for him and pleading to know why he was ignoring her.

She recalls: "I said: 'You breathe life into me and I am mad for you.'

"I thought that if I didn't tell him at that point, I would never tell him."

But despite the fact that she could see from his "online" status on MySpace and Facebook that Nyman was receiving his e-mails, he still ignored her.

And so, in desperation, Jane conjured up "Lucia Keenan".

"It was 2am. I was feeling a bit down.

"I hadn't slept for three nights. I couldn't eat. I put the words 'lovely lady' into Google and downloaded a stunning looking photograph of a woman and I gave her a name."

The e-mail from Lucia said: "I don't have any friends on MySpace. I'm a great fan of your music. Will you be my friend?"

Within ten minutes, Nyman replied: "I'd be happy to take your MySpace virginity. Let's keep talking."

Jane says: "He was happy to e-mail a complete stranger, but he wouldn't email the woman he'd been sleeping with for three months."

By the end of the first day, Nyman had sent Lucia more than 100 emails.

"I didn't really disguise myself, apart from the picture," says Jane.

"But he didn't pick up on anything. All he wants is adoration and Lucia gave him that.

"She said she'd just come out of a relationship with an old man who hadn't even had the decency to dump her, he'd just gone off without saying goodbye.

"Michael said: 'What are you doing with a man like that? Let me protect you from him.' He didn't even recognise himself."

As the e-mail dialogue continued, Nyman claimed to Lucia that his ex-girlfriend Jane "was just casual".

On another occasion he wrote: "Jane was terribly domestic."

"It was so outrageous," she says."

Finally, Lucia asked about the last time he had sex.

Jane recalls: "He said it was with a singer song-writer in Luxembourg. He referred to her as 'a needy Frenchwoman who is probably in love with me, too.'"

Within a couple of days, Nyman asked Lucia to meet him, saying he would cut short his Shanghai trip to see her.

"Some of my friends suggested going instead of me," says Jane, "but I wanted to do it myself."

They arranged to meet at a cafè near Jane's home in Crouch End at 1pm on November 1.

"He didn't suspect-anything," says Jane.

"I wandered past the coffee shop with lots of shopping bags as if I was just passing and stopped and said: 'Hi how are you? I've not heard from you for ages.'"

My heart was pounding. He looked horrified.

"He said he was meeting a new PA. I said: 'Do you mind if I sit down?' and he said: 'Yes, I do, she's going to be here any minute now.'

"I said: 'I'll sit for just a second.'

"I opened my bag and pulled out a ream of paper with all his messages to Lucia with his photograph next to them.

"At first he thought I'd hacked into his computer. Then he asked: 'Is she a friend of yours?'"

Jane leant across the table and whispered to him: "Lucia is all Jane."

Then she added: "You underestimated my intellect Michael and you underestimated my big heart."

During the conversation that followed, Nyman admitted he wasn't interested in having a relationship with anyone.

"It was clear he had never loved me in any way," she says.

"He may have thought it was just sex but it wasn't like that for me."

After her confrontation with Nyman, Jane spoke to him a couple more times.

"He e-mailed to ask if Lucia would like to go to the opera." She didn't.

Writing as Lucia, she began a fictional weblog diary on December 10. But she denies leaking the story to a newspaper diarist.

"Lucia was the revenge," she says.

"It didn't need to be made public, but now that it is, I feel I have to explain why I did it. It was a way to find out what he really thought of me and it helped me get over him. I have no regrets."

The last time she heard from Nyman was on Christmas Day when he e-mailed to ask when she would be appearing in Coronation Street.

"It's his favourite show," says Jane.

"I just e-mailed back 'Happy Christmas' and left it at that."

In the end, then, they were both fooled and both made fools of themselves.

Jane admits she fell in love with Nyman's image, not the real man, and Nyman certainly fell for a fantasy when he was seduced by Lucia.

Such are the dangers of the internet. In cyberspace, it's all too easy to fall in love with something that doesn't exist.