A few weeks later, the shattered remains of his kayak washed ashore.

A coroner declared Darwin dead in 2003. His two grown sons, Anthony and Mark, feared that they had lost their father.

Just over a week ago, on Dec 1, Darwin walked into a London police station alive and well, but now he may have lost his sons.

Yesterday, his wife admitted to British newspapers that her husband had been living right next door to her for three of the five years that he had been missing. He had faked his death as a way to solve financial problems.

On Wednesday, the police arrested the 57-year-old former prison officer - who had initially claimed amnesia to explain his five-year disappearance - on suspicion of fraud.

'For three years, while virtually everyone close to us believed John was missing, presumed dead, he was actually at home with me,' said Mrs Darwin, 55, who recently left Britain for Central America, to the Daily Mirror.

She described how her husband had avoided discovery by using a small passage to an apartment in an adjoining house owned by the couple.

'We were living as man and wife, although it was far from a conventional life.'

In another interview, she told the Daily Mail: 'There were a few hairy moments and I lived in fear of being found out.'

Her husband had turned up at her house a year after he disappeared.

'I didn't even recognise him at first,' she told the Mirror. 'He was an absolute mess, all dishevelled. I was relieved he was alive, of course, but I was also very angry with him.'

She added: 'We had a lot of debt, in the tens of thousands. He said there was only one way out of the situation and that was to fake his death.

'I said it was the wrong thing to do and could not go along with it, but he badgered away.'

Mrs Darwin spoke to the Daily Mail in Miami where she had travelled from Panama. She was apparently heading back to Britain, after telling reporters that she had been 'living a lie' and feared her children would never forgive her.

She was forced to leave Central America after a photograph showing her and her husband in a rented apartment in Panama City in July last year was splashed across British newspapers last Thursday.

She told the Daily Mirror that her husband had partly lived with her in the family home. If visitors called, he fled through a passage hidden by a wardrobe with a false back. It led to one of several apartments which the other house was divided into.

When he was outdoors, Darwin would use a woolly hat, upturned collar, walking stick and limp to disguise himself.

Later, the couple headed to Cyprus with a view to moving there, before turning to Panama City, where they bought an apartment for US$97,000 (S$140,000) in April this year.

'For the first time in years, John seemed relaxed and happy again,' Mrs Darwin said.

'It was as if our marriage was reborn, as if a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders.'

When he had to return to Britain as his visa was expiring, he told his wife that he was going to re-emerge and claim amnesia.

She said that her husband 'desperately' wanted contact with their sons and thought he could 'pick up the pieces' of his life.

Mrs Darwin said that when he was 'missing', he would insist she put the telephone on speaker mode when his children called so that he could hear their voices.

But Anthony, now 29, and Mark, now 31, have expressed their anger, disbelief and confusion. They want no further contact with their parents, they said.

'Now everything is a mess,' said Mrs Darwin, who is likely to be arrested if she returns to Britain. 'I am just so sorry for all the upset I have caused my family and friends, but most particularly my boys.'

Reuters, AFP

2002
MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

JULY 2006
PHOTOGRAPHED IN PANAMA

DEC 1, 2007
TURNED UP AT LONDON POLICE STATION

DEC 5, 2007
ARRESTED BY POLICE ON SUSPICION OF FRAUD