The blonde Israeli spy who seduced and helped to capture Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s nuclear whistle-blower, remains haunted by the fear of exposure, it has been revealed.

The mysterious "Cindy", an agent for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, has changed addresses countless times as the international media tracked down the femme fatal who posed as a 26-year-old US student to lure Vanunu to his seizure in Rome.

A day before his release the Israeli media once more unearthed her. Yet now Cheryl Bentov, who uses her maiden name Hanin, is a slightly podgy 44-year-old mother of two daughters living the quiet life with her husband, a former military intelligence major, in Orlando, Florida.

A pillar of Orlando's Jewish community - her daughters aged 12 and 16 speak Hebrew - Mrs Hanin is wary of friendships to the point of paranoia, fearful that her part in the snaring of Vanunu will once more come back to haunt her.

"She left Israel to flee the media and the people who burrowed into her life," a friend in Florida told the Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.

"This bothered her a lot. She was terrified. She felt the need to run. Since this affair Cheryl only wants one thing: a normal quiet life."

She has been trying to do that since The Sunday Times, which blew the lid off Israel's nuclear secret in October 1986, traced her to a suburb of the northern Israeli city of Netanya, 18 months after the story first broke.

The family fled their home for Florida where Mrs Hanin had spend the first 17 years of her life, a fact that made it easy for her to pass herself off as a American when she caught Vanunu's eye and he approached her in London's Leicester Square.

Even before The Sunday Times published the story of Israel's development of plutonium for nuclear triggers at its Dimona plant, Vanunu was being drawn into her "honey trap".

She rejected his sexual advances but suggested they fly to her sister's apartment in Rome, where Vanunu was drugged and beaten by two Mossad agents.

She has been trying to put it behind her ever since. "For me this story is a black story and I just want to erase it and forget it," she said.

Blotting out the memory is difficult when all the neighours in the small community know her background. Out of politeness none ever bring it up in conversation, allowing the family to live a comfortable lifestyle with all the "best America has to offer".

They live in a residential compound dedicated to golf lovers just north of Orlando. Their £550,000 ranch-style house overlooking a pond sits in the midst of golf course where white golf carts silently whisk the residents around the prestigious neighbourhood.

The Mossad allowance she receives after her retirement when she was first exposed would go some way to paying for their lavish life-style. But her successful career as a real estate agent that she left some years ago no doubt contributed to their wealth.

The family donates generously to a prestigious Scouts camp in Atlanta, Georgia, where their daughters go each summer to learn about Zionism from Israeli councillors and meet Jewish youngsters from all over the US.

Yet for all the outward trappings of the good life Cheryl Hanin cannot relax, always wondering when next her past will catch up with her. Vanunu's release tomorrow brings the prospect into view once more, though his brother Meir is adamant the former nuclear technician has no desire to get even with her.