Heiress discovered affair via phone call at Martha’s Vineyard during pandemic
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When New York heiress Belle Burden and her then-husband Henry Davis decided to quarantine their family in their Martha’s Vineyard home when the pandemic first began, she had no idea it would be the end of her marriage.
The grandson of legendary magazine editor and heiress Babe Pailey wrote in an excerpt from her new memoir, “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage,” published in 2014: Sunday Times Six days after their family arrived at their holiday home, after a regular dinner in the kitchen, he received a phone call from a number he didn’t recognize, so he didn’t answer.
When she listened to the voicemail on the left, it was a male voice.
“He said, ‘I’m trying to reach Belle.’ He paused,” she wrote. “‘I’m sorry to say this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife.'”
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Belle Burden with ex-husband Henry Davis in 2008. (Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
She didn’t even need to confront her husband, who seemed to know what he knew.
He claimed that the relationship, which he initially said had only been going on for weeks, meant nothing and that he only loved her.
While she was still trying to hide her shattered world from her children and cook them turnovers to their liking that night, she called her husband back and he explained that he couldn’t talk because his wife had just tried to kill herself.
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He spent the next few hours in a daze; After sleeping separately and staying up most of the night trying to decide if she could forgive him, he gave her another shock.
Belle Burden’s book “Strangers” was published Tuesday. (Belle Burden/Instagram)
The heiress wrote that her husband of 20 years entered their bedroom, fully clothed, told her very simply that he wanted a divorce, and apparently left at that exact moment.
He then told her that she could have custody of her children.
“In the following days, I tried to hide the truth from the girls,” he continued. “One therapist I talked to said I should wait to tell them until the pandemic is less scary.”
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“But instead of getting better, the pandemic got scarier. So I went out to dinner with swollen eyes and unwashed hair. I cried while doing laundry and scrubbing our toilets. I spent hours behind the closed door of my bedroom. I decided not to drink because I knew it would upset me even more, but I also found it difficult to eat.”
Belle Burden with her 21-year-old daughter this year. (Belle Burden/Instagram)
She said her husband never explained to her what went wrong, and after initially supporting her, her husband’s family eventually broke off contact with him.
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“If life were normal, if we were in New York, if I could find him on the street and get him to look me in the eye, maybe I could understand a little bit of what was going on,” he thought. “But I was on one island, and he was on another, and I didn’t know anything; only the shock of his disappearance.”
Burden is the grandson of famous heiress Babe Paley. (Getty)
Five years later, he says he no longer has any idea what went wrong.
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Burden wrote that her husband did not remarry, worked at a hedge fund and traveled. He sees his children occasionally but hasn’t changed his mind about not co-parenting.
“I don’t know why he left,” he added. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that.”
“Strangers” opened Tuesday.
