Love, Lipstick and Lies (4 page)

I sensed my friends looking at me as if to say, OMG! It was my house and my garden and my boundaries! It was nothing to do with him; none of it belonged to
him. Again I had this uneasy feeling about Alex and money. Again I pushed it to the back of my mind.

But back to April … When we returned to the UK it was time to harvest my eggs and inject them with the specially selected sperm. Three days later I had to return to the clinic to have the embryos implanted – an important and significant moment in the treatment as I think anyone would understand. Anyone apparently except Alex, who said, ‘If you want me to come with you, I’ll come. If not I’ll go training.’

Training? At a time like this? How insensitive was that! I was probably my own worst enemy because instead of saying, ‘Yes, please come with me,’ I told him it was up to him. If he didn’t want to come, then he didn’t have to. Though I did point out that if I were a man in this situation, I would be there for my partner.

Alex chose to go training. I was really upset. In spite of what I had said to him, it should have been obvious that I wanted him to be with me. I’ve always done these tests on the men in my life; I think it must be down to the insecurity I’ve felt with them. I remember how they react and store it up for future use, as if to say to myself: See, you knew that was going to happen, you knew you couldn’t trust him … This had been my little test for Alex, to find out if he would put me before his training and support me. Because he hadn’t, I did start to doubt him. If he didn’t even want to see our embryos being implanted, what would he be like if I actually had a baby? Would he give me the support I needed then?

I knew that at least one member of his family wasn’t happy with him about this. They made it clear to him when they found out, and he called me to apologise, telling me that he hadn’t realised it was such a big deal. Now I can’t help thinking that if he had been paying for the treatment, he would have been there … sorry, can’t help having a dig. So, yes, he should have come with me. However, I know that I don’t like to show it when I’m feeling vulnerable or when something is really bothering me. I will deny it and make out that I’m fine. I’ve always done it, even though so often it has led to me being hurt.

A few days later the press reported that I had been having fertility treatment. I was deeply distressed that they had got hold of this fact, which was so personal and so private. I felt as if they were always digging away at me. I actually broke down in front of Alex and my mum one morning in early May.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that I have engaged with the press and enjoyed the benefits of doing so. I am not a hypocrite and know I have to take the rough with the smooth. But the whole way they had treated me around that time, and frequently run negative and untrue stories, was taking its toll on me. It was all rough and no smooth at all. Pete had walked out on me and I was hounded by the press for an entire year. And now here I was, waiting to find out if I was pregnant and
still
under attack. I felt so vulnerable; I didn’t know how much more I could take. And then I started experiencing
stomach cramps and bleeding. The treatment hadn’t worked. I wasn’t pregnant. I was really upset. It was a tough time. And then I did feel that Alex was supportive. Again, I had the feeling it was us against the rest of the world. I needed him by my side.

And still the fall-out from my first marriage wouldn’t go away. There was so much stress. Both Pete and Claire Powell sued me for comments I had made very early on after the breakup of the marriage. I was already at rock bottom because of the battering I had received from the press; this almost made me feel as if I couldn’t go on. It’s no exaggeration to say I felt suicidal, and it was only my children and the support of my family and friends that got me through. Instead of fighting Pete in court, I settled with him. I didn’t have the strength for a battle at that time.

He was a good father figure to Harvey while we were married. The issue with Pete seeing Harvey after the break-up was not about that. There has to be a fully trained special needs nanny to accompany my son on any visit. His medical condition simply requires it. My mother and I have interviewed and identified suitable candidates and given Pete the details. It seems the nannies have not worked out for him and nothing has happened to resolve the situation. The longer it has gone on, the less Harvey wants to go and see Pete. Now, you mention Pete’s name and Harvey kicks off because he doesn’t want to go there for the weekend. It is a shame that this is the situation as Pete was good for him.

And even when my ex-husband wasn’t threatening or taking legal action, there was a constant stream of negative comments about me from him, or his ‘friends’, in his magazine column or the tabloids. This was particularly upsetting when it was anything to do with our children. For instance, he had a go at me in the media at the beginning of 2010 when the press picked up on a picture of Princess that my sister had on Facebook. She didn’t realise that it could be seen by everyone.

In the photo Princess was wearing make up and fake lashes. The picture had been taken when I had been shooting my style book and Princess had wanted to dress up like Mummy; she was playing, nothing more than that. She was the one who stuck on the lashes and put the make up on herself. She was only doing what so many other little girls do. We were actually still married when that picture was taken and Pete didn’t have a problem with it then. Instead, I remember he laughed and said how cute she looked. I’d even done an
OK!
shoot with Princess when Pete was there, with me putting make up on her, as a bit of fun, and he didn’t complain then either, because he knew our daughter liked playing with it. Then, when we split, suddenly Princess messing about with make up is not okay and Pete’s on GMTV talking about it, followed by child psychologists commenting, and I get slated by the media.

He also criticised me publicly in his column for using straighteners on Princess’s hair. Usually I straighten it simply by brushing it out with a bristle brush. I had
corkscrew-curly hair just like her when I was growing up and before I discovered extensions, so I’m something of an expert in straightening curly hair with a brush! It really wasn’t a big deal. I’m not trying to make her grow up more quickly, or turn her into one of those children who take part in American-style beauty pageants. And it certainly isn’t as if she plays with make up all the time; she’s just as happy playing outside, collecting eggs from our chickens and going for a ride on her pony.

Pete didn’t need to express his concern by writing about it in a magazine and talking about it on TV; he could have spoken to me and we could have sorted it out between ourselves, like grown ups. But no. It felt as if yet again he was portraying himself as the perfect dad, and me as the bad mother. I hated that because it wasn’t true.

On another occasion, in April 2010, an hour after Princess had arrived back at Pete’s house after being with me, my lawyer phoned because they had received a letter from Pete’s lawyer saying that they were concerned about marks they had found on her. This was a new low. Immediately I phoned Pete and said, ‘What are you talking about?’

He told me that she had a black eye and bruises.

‘Pete, she was playing around with make up this afternoon! It’s probably smudged mascara!’

I was so outraged that he could be suggesting that Princess could have come to any harm with me, I called the police myself.

‘You need to go and check on my daughter,’ I told them. ‘My ex is saying that she has bruises on her, and there is no way that she does. I want to clear my name. I’m not having it said that I have harmed my little girl, when there is no way that I have.’

Child Protection Officers went that day and checked Princess, and of course they found nothing wrong. They said it was perfectly normal for a young child to have a couple of bruises on her legs from playing, and there was nothing visible on her face at all. I hadn’t wanted to go to the extreme of involving the police, but I feared if I didn’t a story would have been leaked to the press that Princess had left my care with bruises on her. As it was, one did appear in the tabloid press, and let me tell you, that didn’t come from me … I’m not accusing Pete, and he did say that he wasn’t accusing me either, but sometimes it’s very difficult trying to live normally when someone sells a story like this to the press. The story appeared in the
News of the World
saying that this incident was caused over some smudged mascara. Pete then came out in his
New!
magazine column a few days later, saying that the bruises were not smudged mascara and how upset he was. Astonishingly, the
Daily Star
(published by the same organisation that publishes Pete’s column) featured a front-page story that screamed ‘Jordan baby’s bruised face and body: Andre shock at injured tot’. The story claimed that Princess had been covered in a ‘bizarre’ set of bruises, and there were pictures of a ‘concerned’ and ‘devoted’ Pete – together
with an invitation to read his new magazine article. That story was written by one Gemma Wheatley – more about her later, she now works for Pete and Claire Powell – though the
Daily Star
later admitted that it was untrue.

* * *

Having Alex by my side helped me through those tough times, when I felt everything I did was picked apart and criticised. But since we had got married in Vegas there were things that had started to concern me about him. For instance, there were several more times when he’d wanted to dress up as Roxanne. It wasn’t so much the dressing up that was disturbing; it was his behaviour at those times. I could always tell when he wanted to dress up: there’d be that vacant look in his eyes that I’ve already mentioned. It was really starting to unsettle me; I thought he maybe needed help in dealing with this side of him, which no longer felt like a bit of fun.

I asked him why he wanted to dress up, so many times, but he couldn’t explain it. Whether it was a release from stress after his fights, or a way of dealing with his emotions, I have no idea.

We watched a couple of documentaries about couples where the man liked to dress up as a woman, and the women would talk about how they felt. They all sounded exactly like I had at the beginning of my relationship with Alex, when I’d said that I supported him. And it was as if the documentary was saying that you could be a cross-dresser and still have a happy marriage. But
these men were different from Alex; they would wear women’s clothes but still be themselves. There was no personality change, and it didn’t seem to be a sexual thing for them.

I felt the sex we had when Alex was being Roxanne was becoming more extreme. I would be the one doing things to him, things that I wasn’t sure I wanted to do, things that I found increasingly weird and disturbing. It wasn’t as if Alex ever sat down and said, ‘Right, now I want you to do this to me …’ They just happened, over time. I ended up doing things I wish I had not done because I wanted to please him; I’m always a pleaser in any relationship. And then, as I’d done it once, he expected it to happen again, and that’s what he always wanted, whereas once would have been enough for me. More than enough …

I’ve tried a few things in my time, but I’d never before f***** a man dressed up as a woman who happened to be my husband. I felt as if I was crossing a line, going to a dark place where there were no boundaries, where there was no normal. It felt seedy and dirty. It frightened me. I realised that each time we had sex with Alex being Roxanne he wanted me to do something else, or the sex lasted longer. There was none of that banter we’d had the first few times, and it definitely wasn’t a laugh. I kept thinking, Kate, what are you doing? This is not normal. But still I went along with it. I wanted to make him happy. It will be all right, I would tell myself. We can sort this out. You may wonder why I didn’t get out
then, but I genuinely thought I loved him and was still reeling from the end of my first marriage. I needed this relationship to work.

But looking back, it was as if my marrying Alex had made him feel secure enough to unleash the side of him which usually he kept well hidden. I still didn’t really know what I had let myself in for, but even though there were some doubts in my mind about him by then I went ahead with planning our wedding blessing in July. I wanted to believe that we could have a future together.

On the morning of the wedding blessing my mum remembers seeing me in my bedroom, just before we left for the church, standing in my wedding dress. And there was something about the expression on my face apparently that made her wonder if I was going to turn up at the ceremony or if I was going to back out. She has that special intuition only mums have, knowing deep down when something isn’t right. In fact, my feeling was that I might as well go ahead with the blessing because we were already married, but I wasn’t happy about it. I felt that Alex was not the man I had first met. There was a shadow over our relationship.

I remember him being quite emotional during our wedding blessing and later during the speeches, when he declared his love for me, telling everyone that he was like
an oyster: rugged on the outside while inside there was a pearl in his heart, and I was that pearl. Did I feel that he was my pearl? I can’t say that I did, but I was happy to be surrounded by my friends and family all day.

But later that night I didn’t want to go to bed with Alex. Instead I stayed up with my friends, dancing and drinking and enjoying the party. Wasn’t that a sign that there was something wrong? Shouldn’t I have wanted to be with my husband on this day that was supposed to be about celebrating our life together?

We went to Thailand for our honeymoon, though maybe ‘honeymoon’ wasn’t the right description because we had the film crew with us, from my production company, making a three-part special about our wedding for ITV2. And thank God we did, because I had a better time talking to them than I did to Alex …

First we flew to Bangkok and went to some of the eye-opening shows there. It was meant to be a laugh, though I found Alex’s behaviour a little strange. He kept looking at all the men who were dressed as women, the ladyboys, and flirting with them. To be honest, I found that quite disturbing. He also bought himself, or rather Roxanne, some g-strings made specially for men, so that they can tuck everything away. I can’t say that I felt comfortable with that either. It was like Roxanne was spilling out into the rest of our marriage, and I didn’t want her to. It didn’t feel as if the Roxanne side of him was private any more because he was becoming so blatant about it.