Last Saturday I wrote – in inflammatory terms – about Lauryn Goodman, the former mistress of footballer Kyle Walker, who had taken their four-year-old son Kairo to England’s match against Denmark on Thursday evening.
She had dressed him in an England shirt with his father’s number 2 on it, and the words ‘Daddy’.
Knowing that Walker’s wife Annie would be there with three of her four sons and Kyle – Roman, 11, Rian, seven, and Reign, five – in almost identical shirts, I wrote: ‘What drives an ex-mistress to to humiliate a football player? ? How could she be so cruel?’
And then I read Lauryn’s own story, as told to my colleague Katie Hind, about why she took Kairo to Frankfurt to see his father play that night. I felt…well…ashamed and began to question my opinion of this tasteless saga.
Lauryn Goodman with son Kairo before watching his father Kyle Walker play against Denmark
Kairo is said to have been promised by his father that he would be able to stand in the stands the next time he played in a major tournament
According to Lauryn, when Kyle played for England at the 2022 Qatar World Cup – and while she was secretly pregnant with their second child – Kyle promised Kairo over a FaceTime call that he would make sure his son was in the stands afterwards to sit. time he played in a major tournament.
Needless to say, Kyle – who earns around £9million a year as a Manchester City player – never kept that promise. Little Kairo resigned himself to the fact that his best hope of seeing his father during the tournament was a pack of football cards for his Euro sticker book.
But Lauryn was determined to keep Kyle’s promise from her ex-lover, so she took Kairo there herself, along with her grandfather – without Dad’s help.
She insists that the reason she came to the match in Frankfurt and sat on the other side of the stadium, opposite Annie and her sons, was not to draw attention to herself or make a point – although in doing so she achieved both – was that Cairo would do that. Don’t be confused when Dad went to hug Annie’s sons in the stands after the game, and not him.
As his father played, she told the Mail that Kairo shouted: “Yes daddy… Brilliant shot, daddy… My daddy is in the right corner.”
But she added that she took him out of the stadium five minutes before the end of the match to avoid Kairo having to watch his father with another family. She didn’t want to ruin ‘his perfect day’.
It’s heartbreaking.
Lauryn is accused by her detractors, of whom there are many – and here I must admit mea culpa! – of not helping but hurting her son by making his father’s extramarital affair so public.
There is some truth to that accusation: she is a high-profile influencer and model who gained a lot of publicity by going to Frankfurt.
But the question: was this the act of the vengeful former mistress or that of a loving single mother trying to fulfill the dreams of her young son, whose greatest wish was to see his heroic father play live for England in the European Championship as vice captain? ?
Lauryn claims that Kyle’s betrayed wife Annie made conditions if they wanted to repair their marriage. One was that Kyle has no contact with Kairo, nor his ten-month-old daughter with Lauryn, barely older than Annie and Kyle’s new son Rezon.
Kyle with wife Annie Kilner and family after last Thursday’s game
For Kyle to agree to such terms, if indeed he did, is not only cruel but also cowardly.
What father could betray his own flesh and blood in this way? And Annie also has to bear some responsibility. As much as it hurts her, what mother can insist that her husband no longer has contact with his children, even though they were born out of wedlock?
Let’s not forget that when Lauryn became pregnant with Kairo, he and his long-suffering wife Annie were on a break. He had been thrown out of the family home after numerous lurid accusations about his insatiable sexual appetite.
Lauryn claims she was not Kyle’s mistress at the time, but his girlfriend, in what she says was a loving, meaningful relationship.
Yes, during the brief second affair, which led to Lauryn becoming pregnant with a girl, she was the mistress and he was a married man – and there is no excuse for either of them for that behavior.
But how heartbreaking for Lauryn to hear the man she loved later dismiss what they had experienced as nothing more than a moment of madness as he tried to save things with his wife.
He rubbed salt into a raw wound and said, “There was no relationship, would she even know how much sugar I have in my coffee, if I have sugar?”
It’s telling that Neanderthal Kyle thinks the proof of a loving relationship is that a woman knows how he likes his coffee.
That’s the cake of pride, with a dash of narcissism, that is all too common among football stars like him.
At the heart of this psychodrama is just a little boy desperate for his father’s recognition and love. How sad for Kairo when Annie maintains her alleged restraining order, being estranged from his father.
How terrible for Annie’s children too. It won’t be long before her eldest, Roman, now 11, will find out through social media and the schoolyard about the antics of his faithless father and the half-siblings he never knew about.
Not Lauryn, not Annie, but Kyle is the real monster here. He must take the blame for his cruelty to them and the children.
They will all suffer the aftermath of his weakness, his betrayal, and his abandonment.
And if he tries to reconcile with them in the years to come while he’s a washed-up nobody who caused so much pain, then good luck to him.