Sydney, April 19 (AFP): An Australian model who claims she had a three-year relationship with England football captain David Beckham said today that his pop star wife Victoria discovered their secret.

Malaysian-born Sarah Marbeck, 29, alleges she and the Real Madrid midfielder exchanged hundreds of text messages using the code names Peter Pan and Tinkerbell after they met in July 2001 in Singapore.

“I hadn’t heard from him in a while and he contacted me and I said: ‘Why haven’t I heard from you?’ and he said she’d (Victoria) found some of the messages,” Marbeck said in an interview with Australian Nine network television.

Marbeck was the second woman to sell a story of alleged infidelities by Beckham to the British tabloids after Rebecca Loos, the footballer’s former personal assistant. Beckham has denied all the allegations and he and his wife, formerly known as Posh Spice, have taken legal advice over the reports.

Marbeck, who admitted she had been paid for the television interview, said she kept three diaries containing text messages including comments like: “Baby I want you so much.”

Marbeck alleged she first met Beckham in Singapore in 2001 when he invited her back to his room. “My heart was thumping ... He’s a great lover,” she said. “He’s an amazing guy ... Not sleazy at all.”

Their second meeting came in Leeds, England, in March 2002 following a national match against Italy, she claimed. After she returned to Australia, she said she was thinking: “I don’t know what’s going on in his marriage but he’s calling me, texting me to come to England.”

“I was getting text messages from someone who was so powerful, so romantic, someone so great,” she added. But then Beckham stopped contacting her, Marbeck said.

Marbeck sobbed when she was asked how Victoria Beckham would have felt on learning of the affair but said she still wanted to know why Beckham had stopped calling her.

However the boss of an escort agency where Marbeck worked said she had confessed that she never slept with Beckham. David Wade, who runs the Miss Fleiss Escort Agency in Sydney, said: “She said to me: ‘I never had sex with him. I wanted him to think I was a good girl and not like that.’”