Geri Horner 'faces the biggest decision of her life': The humiliation of husband Christian's text scandal is 'hard to bear' for ex-Spice Girl, her friends tell ALISON BOSHOFF and KATIE HIND. Could she end their marriage for good?

Read exclusive details from Geri's friends  and why they 'expect that there will be some sort of a separation'

Geri Halliwell-Horner would usually be at her husband’s side during the qualifying and practice stages of the Grand Prix. Yesterday afternoon though, there was no sign of her.

She had arrived in Bahrain on Thursday, late at night, on a private jet. The idea, sources say, was that she would show solidarity with Red Bull boss Christian Horner who had been cleared in an internal investigation the previous day of any wrongdoing following a grievance procedure brought by a female colleague.

He had promised her that there was no truth in the allegations against him, and that he would ‘make them go away’ — and it appeared that he had been as good as his word.

However, with the most unfortunate timing, while Geri was in the air an immense data breach took place.

Sexually suggestive WhatsApp messages between her husband and a female colleague — which were at the heart of the scandal — leaked first via email and then circulated around the world on social media. It amounts to a global PR catastrophe and the aftershocks were playing out on X, formerly Twitter, all day yesterday.

Former Spice Girl Geri Horner at an F1 event last year

Geri tied the knot with Christian Horner in 2015 without a pre-nuptial agreement

The embarrassment would be enough to make anyone quail, not least Geri, who has always been an emotional person. Friends of Geri’s say that following a ‘meltdown to end all meltdowns’ late on Thursday, she simply couldn’t face the F1 world on Friday.

Husband Horner, his eyes shielded by dark glasses, was left to oversee Red Bull’s preparations for the first Grand Prix of the season alone. At one point he left the paddock to take a crisis meeting with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

It’s thought Geri will most likely now return to the UK as quietly as she possibly can and take her time to work out what to do about her marriage, behind closed doors at their country house in the Cotswolds. She knows she is facing the biggest decision of her life, one of her close friends has told the Mail.

‘She acts on impulse a lot,’ says one. ‘She has a temper on her, that’s for sure, and doesn’t Christian know it.

‘But the question now that her inner circle is asking is whether Christian will be sent to the doghouse for a few days or whether this is it for good. She worked hard for all of this, she jumped through hoops to get him, so will she dump him? Probably not.

‘That said, Geri is wondering how on earth this all happened. She very much believes that things happen for a reason and so she can’t understand why this has been thrown her way and what it all means.’

Friends say it would ‘break her heart’ to end her marriage to Christian — the man she sees as the ‘Prince Charming’ she has longed for since she was a little girl.

‘She was over the moon when she married him, all of her dreams had come true.

‘Geri can absolutely turn on a dime, one minute you can see her dumping Christian, the next you can imagine her doing a David Mellor [the Tory minister who had an affair with a young actress in the 1990s] and holding a press conference with Christian and the kids at the front gates of their home. Geri has always liked everyone to think that her life is perfect.’

Certainly, few are in any doubt the late-flowering love match between herself and Horner — both in their 40s when they wed — looks to be in serious crisis. It may not survive, with friends saying that for the first time, the union ‘looks like it is in trouble’.

These same friends point out that the couple married in 2015 without a pre-nuptial agreement. Horner, worth £41million, is marginally the wealthier — Geri has more like £30million in assets, although the funds will not be a driving issue if there is to be a split.

‘The humiliation is very hard for Geri,’ says a pal. ‘I think that will be the main problem. The other Spice Girls are very sympathetic and all feel really conflicted about Christian now. All those celebrity friends of hers who were happy to hang out with him will also be steering very clear.

‘It’s a bad mess.’

Christian Horner (pictured breaking cover today)  was left to oversee Red Bull’s preparations for the first Grand Prix of the season alone in Bahrain

Friends of Geri say it would ‘break her heart’ to end her marriage to Christian – the man she sees as the ‘Prince Charming’ she has longed for since she was a little girl

It can also be revealed that Geri knows the woman who has been on the receiving end of Horner’s alleged ‘inappropriate behaviour’ and was even supportive of her working with her husband.

One friend said: ‘They actually have a mutual friend and Geri liked her. In fact, she would speak positively about her.

‘She heard she was in line for the job and randomly, one of Geri’s old friends from her Spice Girls days knows this woman, so Geri put a word in. Geri likes to think she is a girl’s girl in many ways and thought she was doing a good thing back then. You can only imagine how she may regret that now.’

It can also be revealed that Geri has been engaging with lawyers about how she is being perceived publicly. Indeed, as ever in cases of celebrity scandal, the only winners seem to be lawyers themselves.

Horner’s £900 an hour legal team at Harbottle & Lewis have been fighting since 7.27am on Thursday to keep the contents of an email out of the public eye.

That email, headed ‘Christian Horner investigation evidence’ reads simply: ‘Following Red Bull’s recent investigation and statements you will be interested to see the materials attached.’

A link takes readers to 79 files uploaded to Google Drive. These purport to show, in devastating and embarrassing detail, hundreds of WhatsApp messages between Horner, who earns £8million a year, and a female employee.

For legal reasons it is not possible to reproduce the content. However alongside a large number of practical messages involving his office and work, some appear to be of a sexually suggestive nature.

The data leak also includes a number of images. Again, these have been freely circulating on social media.

Horner’s legal team have not been able to deny that the messages and pictures are genuine.

By yesterday morning it is fair to say everyone in the world whom Horner would rather not have seen the messages — from his wife Geri to rivals at other race teams and the F1 ruling body — had helped themselves to a look.

The email was sent to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali, all the team principals including Toto Wolff at Mercedes and Zak Brown at Ferrari, Red Bull’s star driver Max Verstappen’s father, Jos, and a number of journalists.

One wit wrote on X, formerly Twitter: ‘If next year’s Drive To Survive [a Netflix series about F1] doesn’t show the moment Toto Wolff opened the email containing Christian Horner’s texts they may as well cancel the whole series.’

The message boards of F1 websites were quickly full of comments about the leak, which has spread so quickly and so widely that Horner’s legal efforts appear a Canute-like enterprise.

One poster offered the opinion: ‘Christian Horner is toast after this. He has nobody to blame but himself. Red Bull also has some serious questions to answer about their KC’s report and internal decision, because it’s looking like a whitewash at the moment.’

Geri was said to be ‘over the moon’ when she married Horner as ‘all of her dreams had come true’

To recap, Horner was accused in early February of ‘controlling behaviour’ towards a female colleague and then of ‘wrongdoing’ with an element of alleged sexual harassment.

He denied he had done anything wrong. Red Bull investigated, with the aid of a KC who interviewed Horner.

A 150-page confidential report was prepared which Red Bull said was ‘fair, rigorous and impartial’.

The company released a statement on Tuesday to say he had been exonerated although it never actually said what the ‘allegations’ were.

It ran: ‘The independent investigation into the allegations made against Mr Horner is complete, and Red Bull can confirm that the grievance has been dismissed. The complainant has a right of appeal.’

It added: ‘The investigation report is confidential and contains the private information of the parties and third parties who assisted in the investigation, and therefore we will not be commenting further out of respect for all concerned.’

It seems that at this time, Horner’s wife Geri began to make preparations to join him in Bahrain. His assurances that there was ‘nothing to’ the allegations had been endorsed by his bosses.

Then came the leak. It’s not clear when Geri caught up with the bad news about her husband which spread rapidly across the internet from Thursday morning.

Soon after the leak, Horner released a statement which did not deny the tranche of texts was genuine. He did, though, repeat his denial of any wrongdoing as set out in the complaint.

It ran: ‘I will not comment on anonymous speculation, but to reiterate I have always denied the allegations.

‘I respected the integrity of the independent investigation and fully cooperated with it every step of the way. It was a thorough and fair investigation conducted by an independent specialist barrister, and it has concluded dismissing the complaint made.

‘I remain fully focused on the start of the season.’

By that point, Geri was already in the air, travelling on a private jet owned by the property magnate Sir Tony Gallagher, a Tory donor worth around £425million.

Sources yesterday insisted she had not read the messages before setting off, and had planned the trip to show she was standing by her exonerated man. After the data leak, things looked different. Geri was said to be extremely distressed and to want to spend time with Horner.

However, sources say that Geri has known for some time that the scandal was likely to break and had been sticking particularly closely to Christian and refusing to make any career plans for the latter part of this year as a result.

Some friends are also concerned that Geri — always a chameleon — has fallen very far under Christian’s influence and sway.

He’s a charismatic and powerful individual and Geri, eternally doubtful of her own value, has felt herself a part of his ‘team’, possibly to the detriment of her own sense of self.

Many Spice Girls fan sites claim she could even be ‘patient zero’ of Horner’s ‘controlling’ personality.

Friends of the star say that they are ‘deeply concerned’ for her. They say she appeared ‘fragile’ some weeks ago when they saw her; one friend even claimed that Geri appeared to have lost weight after learning that Christian was at the centre of an investigation.

‘Geri has always been thin but she looked even thinner recently. She is the type to hold things together in public so you wouldn’t necessarily have known anything was up in how she was talking but she looked physically different.’

The associate, who saw the couple in London last month, also said Christian appeared far more gaunt than usual.

I’m told that there have been tensions in the marriage, stoked by her unfollowing Horner’s star driver Max Verstappen on the Instagram social media site about a fortnight ago.

That was, it seems, in reaction to suggestions that he or his father Jos might have been in some way involved in the initial reports of an investigation into Horner’s conduct. Horner found the actions of his wife embarrassing, and the timing of them really poor, too.

One friend said: ‘I would expect that there will be some sort of a separation for Geri and Christian while they see if they can work things out.

‘A lot of people think he will also have to step down from the job which he loves, too.

‘Everyone feels desperately sorry for Geri as the messages are very embarrassing and she will know that people are talking about them.’

In a recent interview, Geri spoke about a kinship which she feels with Henry VIII’s wife Anne Boleyn, saying: ‘I felt deeply sorry for this woman. She was smart and kind and just got caught up in someone else’s narrative.’

Which sounds, sexting and beheading aside, very much like the fate which has now befallen her.