Paul McCartney (104 page)

Nancy, too, had been diagnosed with breast cancer, a year after Linda but at a much younger age and with a type which, fortunately, responded to treatment. Since then, she and her husband had been prominent supporters of the Long Island Breast Cancer Action Coalition and its resources centre, Hewlett House.

Paul had reportedly turned to this familiar but still highly attractive woman for solace after the stressful courtroom scenes behind closed doors with Heather. She, in turn, was said to have reacted to the East Hampton kissy-photo with ‘tears and tantrums’, and now to be hell-bent on scotching the romance by warning Nancy Shevell just what she was letting herself in for.

A week after her appearance on Britain’s GMTV, she was back on the show, no longer tearful but feeling ‘like a prisoner who’s been let out on parole’. Signatures to her online anti-tabloid petition had been flooding in, she said, and personal messages of support had come from the McCann family and the prime minister, Gordon Brown. When she’d taken Beatrice to Disneyland Paris on the Eurostar a couple of days earlier, her fellow passengers had given her a standing ovation.

Though she’d still heard nothing from Paul about security arrangements–or anything else–she adopted a magnanimous tone about his East Hampton trysts; far from erupting into ‘tears and tantrums’, she’d wished him ‘all the best’ when handing Beatrice over to spend time with him.

As the sub judice rule was flouted time and again, the British legal profession could only watch, stupefied. ‘It has spiralled out of control,’ a leading divorce lawyer, Virginia Platt-Mills, told People magazine. ‘I can’t remember such a high profile case being splashed in the papers like this. It’s Armageddon.’

‘His wife, mother, lover, confidante, business partner and psychologist’

Paul maintained a typically upbeat exterior as the climactic hearing approached. ‘I’m going through great struggles but I’m feeling pretty good,’ he said. ‘I have a lot of good support, particularly from my family… There is a tunnel and there is light and I will get there.’

Actually, the stresses of 2007 had contributed to his only recorded health problem since 1973 (that ‘bronchial spasm’ from the Nigerian heat and too many cigarettes while making Band on the Run). In November, feeling vaguely unwell, he’d consulted a Harley Street cardiologist, who discovered an obstruction in the blood-flow to his heart. Unknown to anyone outside his family, he’d undergone a coronary angioplasty, in which a fine tube, or stent, is threaded into the aorta via the groin, then inflated like a balloon to disperse the build-up of fat.

The procedure had been completely successful, with no lingering after-effects: he was well enough to perform at London’s Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in December and to appear with Kylie Minogue on Jools Holland’s BBC2 New Year special. When the story finally got out, he minimised what had been a potentially grave condition, writing on his website that he hadn’t had surgery–only ‘tests for a minor irregularity’–and was ‘feeling fine… and enjoying all the sympathy’.

The divorce hearing began on 11 February 2008, in court number 34 of the Royal Courts of Justice and, like its two preludes, was closed to the press and public. At its outset the judge, Mr Justice Bennett, warned sternly that any further leaks could result in prosecution for contempt of court. It still risked turning into a litigational sieve, thanks to Heather’s libel actions against the Daily Mail and Evening Standard (for printing the leaked claims from her cross-petition) which were due to start in open court any time now. And if either side in the divorce appealed against Bennett’s judgement, that, too, could be fully reported.

In addition to the Prince of Wales’s solicitor, Fiona Shackleton, Paul’s courtroom team comprised Nicholas Mostyn QC–known as ‘Mr Payout’ for his success on behalf of wives suing affluent husbands–and a junior counsel, Timothy Bishop. But Heather was no longer represented by Anthony Julius, Shackleton’s highly effective opponent in the Charles–Diana divorce. She had dismissed Julius after the failure to reach a private settlement at the preliminary hearings–and now faced a bill of around £2 million, for which his firm, Mishcon de Reya, was on the point of suing her.

Instead, she chose to conduct her own case, supported by what British law in such situations terms ‘McKenzie Friends’: her sister, Fiona, a British solicitor named Michael Rosen and an American attorney, Michael Shilub. So, as well as being cross-examined by Paul’s barristers, she would be directly cross-examining him.

Her claim amounted to around £125 million, far outstripping Charles and Diana and almost tripling insurance magnate John Charman’s recent £48 million payout to his wife, Beverly, to date the largest divorce settlement in British legal history. She estimated her ‘reasonable needs’ for herself and Beatrice as £3.25 million per year. These included £499,000 for holidays, £125,000 for clothes, £30,000 for ‘equestrian activities’ (although she no longer rode), £39,000 for wine (although she did not drink alcohol), £43,000 for a driver, £627,000 for charitable donations, £73,000 for a business staff and £39,000 for helicopter flights to and from hospitals. The most important component was round-the-clock security for Beatrice, on which she claimed to have already spent almost £350,000 from her own pocket and estimated at £542,000 per year in the future.

As well as her present homes in Hove and Pean’s Wood, she claimed two American ones of Paul’s: 11 Pintail Lane, Amagansett, and the ‘Heather House’ in Beverly Hills, which she said had always been promised to her. She was seeking £8–12 million to buy a home in London, £3 million to buy a property in New York and £500,000–£750,000 to buy an office in Brighton, plus title to the houses Paul had provided for her sister, Fiona, and cousin, Sonya. In all, that would give her seven fully-staffed properties with full-time housekeepers costing £645,000 annually. She further asked the court to ‘place a significant monetary value on compensation for loss of earnings, contribution [to his career] and [his] conduct’.

Paul had come back with an offer worth around £15 million, giving her Angel’s Rest, the Hove seafront property, Pean’s Wood, the inland one, and both the Fiona and Sonya houses. He would also pay ‘a balancing lump sum’ on condition that ‘certain art’ (the paintings by him that adorned Angel’s Rest) was returned to him. His provision for Beatrice, over and above her school fees, health insurance and ‘reasonable extras’, would be £35,000 per year plus £20,000 for a nanny, to continue until she was 17 or finished secondary education, whichever came sooner, and the security costs for her and her mother for two years at a limit of £150,000 per year.

His lawyers claimed this was not a case where marital assets should be shared because of the wife’s contribution to the husband’s success. He had been enormously wealthy before meeting Heather and their relationship of only short duration. Indeed, one of the bones of contention was whether they had cohabited for four years or six. According to Heather, they had begun to do so when Paul bought Angel’s Rest in March 2000, whereas he said it had not been until their marriage in June 2002.

Each side accused the other of misconduct and leaking the sensational claims in Heather’s cross-petition which had found their way onto news agency fax machines in October 2006. She stood by her accusations that Paul had treated her abusively and/or violently, abused drugs and alcohol, been jealous and possessive and insensitive towards her disability and failed to provide her with proper security and protection from the media. He countered that her ‘leaks, lies and breaches of confidentiality’ since their separation had been part of ‘a concerted campaign to portray herself as a victim and him as a hypocrite and a monster’ and were in themselves tantamount to an act of violence.

Crowds massed in the Strand for each of the hearing’s five days. Heather arrived in a black 4x4 with blacked-out windows, preceded by a white van which was used to block photographers as she disembarked. With her, she brought an entourage of five: her three ‘McKenzie Friends’, plus a Hollywood beautician and her personal trainer, Ben Amigoni.

Paul by very deliberate contrast had no visible security, strolling in through the Gothic front entrance with a smile and a wave or thumbs-up.

Wearing a pinstripe trouser-suit and peach-coloured shirt, Heather opened her case by showing Mr Justice Bennett a short video film of the photographers who pursued her, often in atrociously-driven high-speed vehicles like those which had harried Princess Diana to death in a Parisian underpass. At the film’s end, however, it was a paparazzo who suffered a car crash. Alas, that would be a metaphor for much of her subsequent performance in the witness box.

Her contention was that when she met Paul, her modelling, charity campaigning, TV presenting and public speaking had made her almost his equal as a celebrity (in proof of which she carried a large folder marked ‘fan mail’). She’d also been independently wealthy from her autobiography and sponsorship deals with a penthouse flat in London’s Piccadilly, two cars, a driver and assets worth £2–3 million. One year, she’d once earned $1 million for just 14 days’ work. Paul’s attitude to her during their marriage, she said, had been one of ‘constriction’ and her career had declined as a result. She thus merited compensation for ‘loss of career opportunity’ and ‘commensurate with being the wife of and the mother of the child of an icon’.

Cross-examined by his silky QC, Nicholas Mostyn, she amended the tally of her pre-Paul assets, saying the £2–3 million had been money in the bank. She was asked for corroborative bank statements but could not produce any, explaining that as much as 90 per cent of her earnings had gone directly to the charities she supported. Again, there was no paperwork, such as effusive letters of gratitude, to prove it.

In a sworn affidavit before the hearing, she’d claimed she had to continue using her own money after marrying Paul but that he made her turn down ‘99 per cent’ of the business opportunities she received, on the grounds they were just attempts to cash in on his name. ‘When I was asked to design clothes, create a food line, write books, make a video, write music or do photography, Paul would almost always say something like “Oh, no, you can’t do that. Stella does that or Mary does that or Heather [his adopted daughter] used to do that or Linda did that.”’

In April 2001, she alleged, he’d vetoed a £1 million contract for her to model brassieres for Marks & Spencer. However, the only documentary evidence was an e-mail from an advertising man that made no mention of money, and Paul testified that he doubted whether it really had been worth as much as that. He said they’d discussed the M&S offer but agreed that, at a time when they were just starting a relationship, it would be inappropriate for her to start modelling bras, though he wouldn’t have stood in her way if she’d insisted.

An even larger business opportunity he’d allegedly denied her was a series of television ads for McDonald’s, promoting new vegetarian options in their restaurants. But a McDonald’s executive testified the project had stalled because of ‘her personal inability to be accessible as was necessary’.

In terms of her public profile, she said, Paul had ‘put a stop to my dream of hosting the biggest TV show in the world and what would have been a huge and lucrative career-move for me’. In November 2005, she’d been asked to become a regular standin for Larry King on his hugely-watched CNN programme. Paul, she claimed, allowed her to present one show but then said she’d be ‘a bad mother’ if she did the two or three per week that were proposed because they would take her away from six-month-old Beatrice. He’d then ‘dragged’ her and Beatrice around America on his current tour.

Paul denied ever suggesting she was ‘a bad mother’: he’d been sceptical about the idea because of negative reviews she’d received when she stood in for Larry King in 2004, interviewing Paul Newman. Nonetheless, in return for her company on the tour, he’d agreed to spend three months in Los Angeles to see how things worked out. King’s verbal offer had not turned into a contract and, anyway, they’d both decided that, for Beatrice’s sake, they didn’t want to relocate to LA. Heather, he said, had never mentioned the matter again–something she vigorously disputed in her cross-examination of him.

To complete the litany of selfishness, her affidavit said that Paul had ‘turned down many opportunities to help my charities’ and his ‘refusal to commit’ had made his appearances on behalf of a charity much less effective than they might have been. Further, he ‘often promised to make financial contributions to charities, but later refused to follow it through’.

However, in court she admitted that he’d donated £150,000 to her personal charity, the Heather Mills Health Trust, soon after they’d first met and that two cash gifts from him totalling half a million pounds had been partly to allow her to keep contributing to charities. She accepted his QC’s estimate that between 2001 and 2005 his direct or indirect contributions to Adopt-A-Minefield–from organising and performing at fund-raisers to wearing red ‘No More Minefields’ T-shirts throughout his Back in the World tour–had been worth around £3.5 million to the campaign.

By her own account, she’d been an ‘exceptional’ wife who’d rescued him from a morass of mourning for Linda, enabled him to ‘communicate better’ with his children (especially her namesake Heather) and given him back his confidence as a performer. She’d helped him write songs and accompanied him on all his tours at his insistence, contributing to their set-design and lighting, even suggesting he should wear an acrylic fingernail on his left (strumming) hand to prevent wear and tear on the real one. She had been, in her own words, ‘his full time wife, mother, lover, confidante, business partner and psychologist’.

Paul acknowledged that she’d comforted him in the aftermath of Linda’s death, just as his family and friends had done, but denied that he’d lost his confidence, that she’d encouraged him to return to touring or had any creative input into the lighting or stage-sets at his shows. A live album DVD which listed her as ‘artistic co-ordinator’ had, he said, merely been ‘a favour to her, a romantic gesture’.