Please Let It Stop (9 page)

Looking back, I wish I’d made a clean break with Ben. I was still in love with him and always hoped things would change back to what they once had been. Paul was actually on the scene for two months before we started seeing each other regularly. I liked him but knew in my heart that he wasn’t right for me. He had a totally different lifestyle and outlook to mine, one that mostly involved going down the pub and drinking, which I really wasn’t into. I guess he was my bit of rough. At one stage I thought I’d fallen in love with him but it was just unadulterated, pure lust. He was sexy, tactile, had the right moves and said the right things – what you’d call an excellent diversion.

Ben had been having affairs for years but I didn’t know this when I came clean and told him about Paul. The motivation for telling someone you’re cheating on them is an interesting one and I guess it can vary from needing to unload your guilt to hoping to galvanise them into action and making them realise what’s at stake. My own desire to tell Ben probably arose out of the latter. When I told him
he went ballistic. I felt very bad about it and we decided to split up for two weeks during which time he went off to Ibiza with his friends for a break. While I knew it would involve drugs, I didn’t even consider it would involve other women. He returned from Ibiza the day before we were supposed to be going away to Hawaii for a holiday. Despite everything that was going on we had not changed our plans, but I was worried about him. He seemed unwell and again I had no idea it was because of his drug use. I ended up calling the doctor who examined him and probably knew drugs were involved. He told Ben to make sure he drank lots of fluids. After the doctor left Ben confessed he had been taking five ‘E’s a night.

The next day we set off for the airport to catch our BA flight to Hawaii. Ben began to get very restless and just couldn’t settle in his seat. At one point he got up to go to the toilet but he didn’t get there. Much to my horror he was talking and gesticulating to the stewardesses in a state of what I started to realise was now serious agitation. In fact, he was having a panic attack. I immediately knew the drugs were still working on him. By this time the stewardesses were starting to get anxious. They asked him nicely if he would go and sit down. His reply was that he couldn’t because he was going to have a heart attack and they would have to stage an emergency landing. I approached them and asked them to let me calm him down. They were not too pleased but eventually I persuaded
them. I took him into the toilet, talked to him calmly and gave him water until I could see he was starting to settle. Eventually he calmed right down and the rest of the flight continued uneventfully. It was one of the scariest episodes I have been through. The inside of a plane is no place to be coming off a major drug trip.

Hawaii was beautiful but I don’t think we enjoyed it as much as we should have since Ben chose the holiday to confess he’d been having an affair. He assured me they had only met a couple of times and he blamed it on me neglecting him because I was too preoccupied with my work. I really think that is one of the weakest excuses you can make since it could apply to most people! It’s just too convenient. I was devastated because I felt it was partly his behaviour that had driven me to the affair with Paul. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done; in fact, I was really upset that I’d had an affair. I just wanted us to be how we used to be. We argued constantly and in the end I came home early, leaving him there on his own.

Unfortunately, the airplane experience made little difference to Ben and he wasn’t going to stop taking drugs – definitely not in the near future anyway. Our relationship was pretty well doomed from that point on. I still didn’t know about the other women in his life but there was at least one other occasion when I had strong suspicions about an affair. He managed to convince me nothing was going on. Consequently I began increasingly to blame
myself for much of what had gone wrong with our relationship. I took responsibility for our problems because I was the one having an affair. Instead of being angry about the effect that drugs were having on him and subsequently our relationship, I looked upon his drug taking as something I should be helping him with.

We had decided it would be better if Ben moved into his own place, which he did in November 1994. When we weren’t busy splitting up I would go round there. I thought it was very odd that when I came over the phone was always off the hook. When I questioned him about it he said it was because his drug dealer kept pestering him. He obviously thought I was stupid enough to swallow anything but this time I wasn’t convinced; I knew something was up. One night when I was there with him he’d forgotten to unhook the phone and it started ringing. He refused to answer it, again saying it was the drug dealer annoying him. He then made the crucial mistake of getting into the shower. I dialled 1471 and got the number. Then, in a move which would make any private detective proud, I waited for his phone bills to arrive. All I had to do was check his front porch when he was out, which was quite often. When his Vodaphone bill arrived I methodically went through the numbers and there was one that seemed to come up about the same time as he was doing shows. I didn’t stop there: I scanned his credit card bill and found he’d been to Interflora. I went to the florist but they wouldn’t tell me who received the flowers so I
offered them a goody bag of Ann Summers products, which made them very helpful. The card for the flowers had been written to a woman called Kate. It said, ‘Sorry for last night, hope you’re feeling better. Lots of love. Ben.’ The flowers had been sent to a Lloyds Bank in Leeds.

I knew Ben had just done a show at a hotel in Leeds so I decided to challenge him. He went into a wild temper, ranting both at me and the florist. He was furious and immediately went on the attack. His story was that one of his friends had been having an affair with this girl and Ben had felt sorry for her one night when his friend hadn’t been nice to her. So he thought it would be a good idea if he sent her some flowers. Now, I may have led a sheltered life but, honestly, did he think I was going to buy that? He evidently didn’t because when I rang Kate he had obviously primed her. She told me exactly the same story. I later found out that the real reason he’d sent her the flowers was because of something that happened when they’d all been taking a drug called GHB, also known as the ‘date rape’ drug. Three of them – Ben, Kate and one of Ben’s friends – had then passed out on the bed. During the night the other guy had sex with Kate, without her knowledge. In the morning she realised what had happened and was naturally very distressed.

I didn’t learn the full extent of Ben’s various infidelities until after we’d split up for good in April 1998. I’d carried a lot of guilt because I thought I hadn’t put enough effort
into the relationship. I have since wondered if that was a little of my mother coming out in me. Although I hated the fact that she spent so much time trying to please John and feeling bad when he wasn’t happy, here I was doing exactly the same. I know Ben had treated me badly but I was also wrong in having the affair with Paul. In the end I told Ben I wanted a break. Meanwhile I decided to make a proper go of it with Paul. It all became very messy when Ben caught us together and insisted that I had not said I wanted a break when I took up with Paul! I ended up splitting up from them both, which was probably the best thing that could have happened.

My view is that we both contributed to the breakdown of our relationship. I wish I could have accepted it wasn’t going anywhere earlier but hindsight is a wonderful thing. In many ways we were so compatible but unfortunately Ben’s drug taking overtook the relationship and became the central focus of our life, so we really didn’t have a chance. Somewhere in the middle of it all was the real Ben, the funny, stimulating, charming man I had fallen for. After I left him I think he made a big effort to settle down. He’s doing well as a salesman, has a lovely wife and they have a baby. Due to health problems, he’s also stopped doing drugs.

CHAPTER SIX

The latter years with Ben were dramatic enough but, as we know, life likes to deal challenges out in job lots. In 1997 I found myself being held to ransom by two people who thought they could coerce me into doing what they wanted. Since becoming successful and having a public profile, I’ve increasingly encountered people who take the attitude of, ‘I’m poor, you’re rich, therefore you can afford to pay.’ Some of these have been friends (not any more). Despite what people may think about my dad’s influence, my achievements are not the result of being born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I would not want it that way. I admire my dad immensely and his support and advice have been invaluable, but I have had to prove myself. Even so, I had to put up with a lot of scepticism – and sexism – to get to where I am, probably more than a lot of people, and I still encounter resistance from some quarters. I’ve paid my dues and the idea that
opportunists can just come along and try to take advantage really angers me.

One of these was Dominic O’Shea, the photographer who’d worked for us at Ann Summers and who’d taken the sexy pictures of Vanessa and me four years earlier. We hadn’t heard of him since he disappeared after his accident in 1993, and when he returned the rumour was that he was broke. In February 1997 I received a letter from him. It said that he wanted £2 million for all the photographs he’d taken for our catalogues over the years. The modus operandi of catalogue shoots is usually this: when we do a shoot, the photographer takes the photographs, gives them to us and we pay an agreed fee. The photographer owns the copyright but it’s largely irrelevant since we don’t use the photos for anything else – they’re just stuck in the archives and left to gather dust. Then, six months later, we do a totally fresh shoot and the same process takes place. Photographers will not usually demand the photos back.

Dominic, however, had something else on his mind, namely
money
. His premise was that if he didn’t get all the photographs back he would sell the intimate pictures of Vanessa and me. I had no choice but to bring in lawyers, which was somewhat embarrassing since they insisted on being shown the pictures Dominic had taken of us. They seemed to scrutinise them a bit too slowly. That was probably one of the most uncomfortable meetings I’ve ever had in my
life! The whole episode was especially distressing because the photos had been taken by someone who was, at the time, a friend. In the end, I called his bluff and asked my staff to search the archives for every catalogue picture he’d ever done. We sent him everything we had along with a confidentiality agreement and £2,000 for the rights. It worked.

I don’t know what was in the air in early 1997, but about the same time as Dominic resurfaced I received a very odd letter at my home address in Caterham. It was written in a childish hand and was signed by someone called ‘Jason’. Jason wrote that he had a brother ‘who was out of control’, who was going to hurt me. It stated that if I wanted to know more then I should go to the Rose and Crown pub which was right next door to my offices in Surrey, where I would receive a telephone call on the pub’s phone at a certain time.

I was scared and, in retrospect, should perhaps have alerted the police at that point. But I was also curious because I couldn’t work out how someone had obtained my home address and my postcode. I wanted to take the phone call. I called my sister, told her what had happened and read her the letter. I told her I’d decided I would be in the pub to take the call and asked her to come with me. At the back of my mind I also had the thought that it might be something to do with Ben. At that point our relationship was on its last legs and, don’t ask me why, but I thought maybe it was the boyfriend of the girl in Leeds who’d cooked
up some sort of silly scheme. I had never set foot in the Rose and Crown, but that day, a Saturday, I went there in good time to receive the call. Suddenly the girl behind the bar called my name.

The caller sounded like he was about sixteen and had an air of innocence about him. The pub was naturally very noisy so I couldn’t hear him properly and had trouble making out what he was saying. At the same time the girl behind the bar was getting impatient and told me I had to come off the phone. I did something I probably would not do again: I gave him my mobile so he could ring me. I’ll admit I was curious but rationalised that I could always change the number. He told me he would call back in an hour so I went home and, sure enough, the phone rang. He explained that his older brother was a thug and had said he wanted to harm me. I still didn’t believe him. We talked for quite a while and he told me his brother had been paid to do a job on me. His reason for contacting me was that while he was terrified of his brother, he himself knew the difference between wrong and right. I felt a bit sick in the stomach listening to this but I wanted to keep him talking so I could find out exactly what he knew about me. He was in a call box somewhere and having to put quite a lot of money in the coin machine. He denied that he knew anything about me but as he spoke he let slip a couple of details that suggested he knew the house. He also knew that I had security cameras.

At that stage I was more convinced that this was a young boy with a crush who wanted to gain my attention. I said, ‘Look, I think you have a crush on me. I don’t want you to contact me again.’ I hung up on him. The next day while I was shopping in M&S in Croydon he rang me again. In fact, he rang me thirty times in one hour! I switched off the phone and decided to ignore him. I really felt this guy was a teenage crank.

On Monday morning, however, all that changed. I received a call on the office phone from a woman claiming to be Jason’s mother. She said that everything he was saying was true. She sounded older – she was sixty-four, as it turned out – and said Jason was upset about the whole thing. He suffered from asthma and was having really bad attacks because he was worried about me. It was at that moment I realised it wasn’t just a teenager with a crush but something much more sinister. The woman begged me to talk to Jason again. I said I would, and when he called he told me that his brother was planning to ram my car at the traffic lights. ‘It won’t be at your house because you’ve got CCTV there,’ he said. He also said he knew that my boyfriend at the time was doing drugs. He told me he lived in Caterham, near the local chippie. He then suggested that we meet in a local churchyard. It was time to go to the police.