Free You Only Live Once by Katie Price

would be friends if she didn’t manage me because we really did get on so well. I always thought we would, but I was to be proved wrong on that score as you will find out later . . . I think, looking back, that I made a mistake by being so open with our management. If Pete and I rowed, as sadly we came to do more and more in our marriage he would immediately get on the phone to Claire to let her know, and then she would call me to see if we could patch things up. And I would frequently end up phoning her as well, asking her to talk to Pete and calm him down. Claire knew him so well that she was especially good at talking him round if we’d argued.
    ‘We’re like family,’ Neville Hendricks, Claire’s fiancé and business partner, was fond of saying. ‘And we look after our family.’ But I already had my own family and my children; I didn’t need another one. I’ve always been someone who likes being surrounded by people, but I was increasingly to feel that Pete and I were always with other people and that we never had any quality time on our own.
    And even when Pete and me were on our own, the sad thing was that we hardly ever went out together as a couple. Back then because Pete rarely drank – years earlier he’d had a severe panic attack – he didn’t like going out anywhere where people were drinking so we’d have friends over for dinner or barbecues, or chill out watching films. Sometimes I felt I was getting old before my time. I thought about my friends’ lives and they all seemed to go out way more than I did, both with their partners or on nights out with their girlfriends. Even my mum and dad seemed to go out more than I did! I come from a very sociable family where my mum and dad often have dinner parties and are probably out most weekends with their friends and I expected to have that kind of social life myself – it was how I was brought up. But it certainly wasn’t what my married life was like. I loved Pete so much, don’t get me wrong, but after a few years together, when you’re working with someone as much as we did, you need a break, a change of scene. Occasionally I’d go out clubbing in London with my girlfriends but this was always a huge issue for Pete because of his fear that I would get drunk and cheat on him.
    I admit that when I went clubbing with the girls I would have a few drinks, and because I was such a lightweight with alcohol it really wouldn’t take much to get me drunk. And then I would drive my girlfriends mad as I’d be the one who wanted to stay out all night. As nights with the girls were such rare events for me, I wanted to make the most of each one as I didn’t know when I’d next be able to go out. And I would want to club hop – to pack in as much fun as I could. In fact, my girlfriends would tell me it was an hour later than it really was, to try and get me out of the club, otherwise I would have been there until it closed! But cheat on Pete? Never in a million years. All I wanted to do was get glammed up, let my hair down, hit the dancefloor with my girlfriends and have a laugh.
    But that night out would cost me far more than a hangover and would inevitably lead to a row with Pete. Two days after my night out there would almost certainly be pictures of me in the tabloids. Of course, they would never choose ones where I looked good, they would always go for ones where I looked blearyeyed, so they could print some crap about how I was out of control, and pissed, when most likely I was just blinking because of the flashes going off in my face. Pete would see the pictures and say, ‘Look at the state of you! I thought you said you weren’t that drunk?’ And then he would be really angry and wound up about it.
    If there were ever any well-known men in any of the clubs I went to, the press would make out that I had been chatting them up, when I probably hadn’t even said as much as hello to them. And that would piss Pete off as well.
    I got to the stage