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This evening, the woman has spoken out about her torment at the hands of the man German police suspect of murdering Madeleine McCann in 2007. Terrified of Christian B, she agreed to talk about her ordeal only on the condition of anonymity.

She has told of being “constantly” stalked by the German suspect after they split up and her struggle to “cope” knowing her former boyfriend is suspected of Madeleine McCann’s death.

Admitting the suspect as being “very charming, very funny” when they first met, the British woman has described how she came to fear than man she was dating.

In one violent incident, she claimed the suspect repeatedly smashed her head against a wall after he saw her innocently hugging a male friend.

The petite barmaid said she returned home only to find the German had broken in through a window and was hiding under the bed.

The woman feared Christian B was lying in wait to attack her again if she brought a man back to her studio flat close to the bar in Algarve, Portugal, where she worked.

The terrifying attack is said to have happened in 2005 and bears chilling similarities to Madeleine’s disappearance in nearby Praia da Luz two years later.

The little girl’s father Gerry has previously said he believed her kidnapper was hiding behind a door when he went to check on her on that fateful night in May 2007.

Police strongly suspect the intruder broke into the family’s holiday apartment through a window.

The British woman has said she was stunned to learn he is now the prime suspect for Madeleine’s kidnap.

The woman, now 45, said: “Until now I’ve refused to believe someone I was involved with could commit such a horrible and disgusting thing like hurting a child.

“But I’m not sure anymore. I’m starting to wonder if he did do it. And if he did, he needs to be really punished for it.

“It’s chilling to think my ex is suspected of abducting Madeleine McCann. I can’t cope with it.”

She spoke after it was reported how the German man allegedly told a second British girlfriend over dinner how he had a “horrible job to do in Praia da Luz” the night before Madeleine went missing.

He allegedly added: “It’s something I have to do and it will change my life. You won’t be seeing me for a while.”

Christian B is known to have been near the crime scene an hour before Madeleine was snatched when he had a 30-minute mobile phone conversation.

The following day he re-registered his dark-coloured Jaguar into someone else’s name and was not seen in the area for the next three years.

A friend of the woman commented: “What he said over dinner suggests he planned the whole thing very carefully and that he might even have stolen Maddie to order.”

Shortly after he returned to the area in 2010, he was said to be drinking with a group in a bar in Lagos – about six miles from Praia da Luz – when the Madeleine’s disappearance was mentioned.

A woman suggested Christian B was similar to photofits of suspects in the inquiry and jokingly asked: “You did it Christian, didn’t you?”

The German is said to have first “blanked” the question, shrugged his shoulders and then replied: “Just don’t go there.”

The woman, from Berkshire moved to Lagos in late 2003 after spending several years in the Netherlands.

She landed a job in the Taberna de Lagos restaurant – where, alongside Christian B, she was working as a waiter.

“At first I didn’t actually like him that much,” she recalled. “Not for any reason, I just didn’t like him.

“I was 28, he was a couple of years younger than me. Everyone called him Chris.

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“We slowly became friends in the spring of 2004.

“Chris could be very, very charming, very funny and very smooth in the way he talked.

“He always dressed nicely, holding the door open for women, that kind of thing.

“I was alone here in Portugal, no family around and a bit lonely and I was getting all this attention from this guy.

“We got together romantically and at first it was great. The relationship was very nice.”

The woman stayed over regularly at Christian B’s rented farmhouse on the outskirts of Praia da Luz, less than a mile from the Ocean Club complex where Madeleine was snatched.

“I was living in a little flat by myself on the same road as the restaurant where we worked,” she said.

“He was living on his own. He wasn’t sleazy in the beginning, he was very charming, even chivalrous.

“He drove the nice car – the black Jaguar – and was very gentlemanly and spoke properly.”

She described their love life as “normal” and added: “He wasn’t into anything weird with me.”

Christian B enjoyed taking her out to restaurants and to the beach, prefering areas that were not full of tourists.

Everything seemed fine between them until the winter of 2004, she said. Her first inkling of the German suspect’s jealous streak came when she bumped into a male friend in Lagos.

“We were chatting and suddenly he stopped talking to me, like he was spooked or suddenly remembered something,” she said.

“Someone later told me Christian had previously threatened the guy because he’d seen us speaking before.

“We also started to argue in the late autumn, early winter.

“It would be small things. He would get angry about really small things and I would get upset.

“I remember he lost it once because I didn’t clean his house. I said ‘I’ve got my own house to clean, I don’t live here.’

“He was like, ‘You should clean my house, you’re a woman’.

“He said he had two Portuguese girlfriends before me and they both cleaned his house even though they never lived there.

“I remember saying, ‘but I’m not Portuguese’, and he replied saying ‘English women are all lazy’.

She added: “He started to get possessive but it wasn’t to my face, it was behind my back.”

Despite his jealously, she suspected Christian B was seeing other women as he flitted back and forth from Germany.

“I remember feeling suspicious, like something strange was going on, so I looked at his phone.

“I found messages in German from someone saying ‘Ich liebe dich’ – I love you.

“It was a German number, and obviously he had been going back and forth to Germany, so I put two and two together.

“I confronted him about those and he went crazy, completely crazy. We had a huge fight.”

The woman claimed how the German attacked her in a jealous rage in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2005 in a jealous rage at the Metro Bar in Lagos.

“Chris was at the bar and was drunk,” she said.

“Some really nice guys I’d made friends with came in from the bar next door to say happy New Year and gave me a hug.

“Chris just suddenly came round the bar in a crazy rage and dragged me out in front of everybody.

“He grabbed me by the neck, pulled me into the girls toilets and was ramming my head against the wall.

“There were people pulling him off me, I think it took four big guys to get him off me.

“They called the police and some officers came. I was on the floor and couldn’t move because I was in shock.

“I didn’t talk to the police because I was scared of what he would do if it meant he got arrested.”

Friends later walked her back to her flat. “I was sure someone was either in there or had been in there,” she said.

“I started looking in the cupboards and then thought I’d check under the bed.

“I peeked under and got the shock of my life. He was hiding under there, lying on his back, staring at me.

“I just froze. I didn’t know what he was going to do to me.

“He got out from under the bed, acted like everything was normal, said goodbye to me, walked out and closed the door behind him.

“I was there all alone, just shaking and shaking.”

Christian B later begged forgiveness and friends were stunned when the couple got back together.

They split up for good in mid-2005 when she found women’s underwear in his bag.

But the German stalked her, often staking out the restaurant where she worked. One day I was carrying a big tray of drinks and because I wouldn’t talk to him he knocked them out of my hand and they went everywhere.

“The police were called and he was banned from coming inside.

“So he would wait outside and follow me. Sometimes it would be begging me to go back with him.

“But other times it would be him threatening me or saying I’m going to find out where your parents are and do something to them.

“People had to walk me home each night. There was someone each night. Eventually it stopped but it went on for a long while.”

The woman made statements to police as they investigated Christian B over the rape of a 72-year-old American widow in Praia da Luz in 2005.

But she only discovered the link to Madeleine McCann when British and German police made their dramatic appeal last week.

“Of course I would never have guessed it. How can anybody imagine something like that?

“There was absolutely no sign of him being into young children or young girls.

“I find the Madeleine thing really shocking. It’s shocking to discover he was a paedophile.

“I find it absolutely disgusting. It makes me feel sick. Not just sick, angry too.

“If the British police want to speak to me of course I would talk to them.

“If there is anything I can do to help find her or find out what happened to her then I’ll talk to them.”

Investigations into the German suspect’s possible involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance are being co-ordinated from the prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, his last German address.

Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: “My private opinion is that he relatively quickly killed the girl, possibly abused her and then killed her.”

Christian B as not commented on the allegations, hi lawyer threatened to take legal action against anyone who makes false statements about his client.

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