Since this is a forum and i dont know you personally, i do not know for sure that your debt is genuine and i'll never know if (when) the collectors will catch up with you.
If the debt is genuine, then i know you will be found out at some point.
Debts like this dont just go away because you want them to.
Im actually starting to feel a bit sorry for you, to be honest.
You keep going on about this 6 year thing, but you dont know enough about law to know all the ins and outs about debts......so you are going to spend the rest of your life with this whole scenario in the back of your mind and it will play on you every time you want to purchase something.
You will always have to pay by cash, always have to "hide", just in case it does come back to you.
Im positive you will absolutely deny any "hiding" or insist that you dont go out of your way so you wont be caught, but if you really do owe �40K, then that is exactly what you do and will continue to do for a long, long time.