Vanessa - take your pick: Man-eater or loving mum?

Vanessa Perroncel's much-publicised decision not to sell the story of her affair with footballer John Terry - apparently after receiving £750,000 in 'hush money' from the sacked England captain - did not stop the two big Sunday tabloids telling it for her.

Both the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror boasted 'exclusives' on their front pages yesterday - but neither paper had any input from the lingerie model herself. Instead, they talked to her friends.

Intriguingly, for students of the affair, the two papers painted wildly different pictures of the 33-year-old Frenchwoman who had an affair with the married England and Chelsea defender after her relationship with his England team-mate Wayne Bridge broke down.

VERSION A: THE MAN-EATER

In the News of the World version, Perroncel is a remorseless man-eater who used Premier League fixtures lists to target her men. She has been involved with five other Chelsea players as well as Terry, though only two are named. She is "hated" by other footballers' WAGs (wives and girlfriends) who "feared she was a home-wrecker from the start".

A source told the paper: "When Vanessa came to London from France she was obsessed with dating players, especially the boys from Stamford Bridge [home to Chelsea FC]. She'd go on the prowl, checking out fixtures lists to see which teams would be out on the town.

"If the London clubs were at home or not too far away, she knew they'd probably be out after the match. And make sure she was at the right nightspots to meet them."

For a while, Vanessa worked as £100-a-night hostess at the Elysium nightclub, a favourite haunt of the Chelsea players. The paper claimed it was there that she met the former Chelsea striker Eider Gudjohnsen and he began to smuggle her into his room at the hotel where the players stayed on the night before matches. "At the end of the affair, he handed her £10,000 to draw a line under everything," the paper's source said.

As well as Gudjohnsen, a married father of three, and Terry, the father of twins, Perroncel also had a fling with the Romanian striker Adrian Mutu and with an unnamed French international. "She's a massive flirt," the source reported. "Whenever she was out she'd be the girl making the most effort, flicking her hair back and making come-on eyes at the players."

VERSION B: THE DEVOTED MOTHER

The Sunday Mirror spoke to two friends of Perroncel, Antonia Graham and Nadean Moses, who claimed the affair with John Terry only began because he was visiting the Frenchwoman to comfort her in the wake of her split from his pal Wayne Bridge. Terry apparently thought Bride and Perroncel were "a great couple" and pledged to do his best to help reunite them.

He would visit Perroncel's home bearing gifts for Jaydon, her son by Bridge. "He would pop round a couple of times a week, offering a shoulder to cry on," said Moses. "Be brought DVDs for her son." They would sit in the kitchen and talk for hours about her problems with Bridge.

Only after a while did Terry seduce her and the relationship moved from the kitchen to the bedroom upstairs.

Both Moses and Graham claim the image of Perroncel as a femme fatale is all wrong. "Vanessa put her whole life into [her] relationship with Wayne," said Graham. "She was devastated when they split - I don't think I've ever seen anyone so low."

Graham, who shares a personal trainer with Perroncel, said: "When I met Vanessa she was bright, looking forward to marrying Wayne and creating a stable life for her little boy. She was in most nights and didn't have a nanny and insisted on being with Jaydon all the time."

Just in case readers were getting the false impression that this paragon of virtue had nothing in common with other WAGs, Graham added: "One thing that really struck me about Vanessa was that she loved shopping - she is the queen of shoes and lip gloss." ·