‘Linda was an inescapable presence’ : Heather Mills ‘struggled’ to live in Paul McCartney’s family home with love notes and photos of his first wife Linda and felt like an ‘extra’ in their ‘volatile’ marriage, her friend claims
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Heather Mills ‘struggled’ to live in Paul McCartney’s family home which displayed love notes and photos of his late wife Linda, a friend of the star has claimed.
The former model’s ghostwriter and confidante Pamela Cockerill appears in the new documentary The Trials of Heather Mills, which airs at 9pm on Channel 5 this evening.
In the 90-minute TV special, the author – who wrote Heather’s 1996 biographer Out on a Limb – opened up about the early days of Heather’s marriage with Paul McCartney.
The couple – who had a 25 year age gap – first met in May 1999 at the Pride of Britain Awards in London, just over a year after Paul’s first wife Linda died of breast cancer.
Following their lavish wedding in Glaslough, Ireland in 2002, Heather moved into Paul’s home in Rye, East Sussex – which he bought with Linda in 1973.
Paul McCartney and Heather Mills pictured at the 2002 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. The couple had married the year before
Pamela explained: ‘I think Heather found it quite hard to live in the same house that, only a couple of years before, Linda had been living in.
‘And the house hadn’t been changed that much. [Linda] was an inescapable presence because obviously, she was a big part of Paul’s life.’
What’s more, Heather’s friend claims that Paul had included tributes of his love for his first wife into the design of some of the rooms.
She continued: ‘There were little plaques saying “I love Linda” over the doorways and photos of her around.
‘It must have been very hard to deal with.’
When Linda passed away at the age of 56, the couple had been married for 29 years and shared their three children Mary, 53, Stella, 51, and James, 45. Paul also adopted Linda’s daughter Heather from his wife’s first marriage to Joseph Melville See Jr.
What’s more, author Howard Sounes – who wrote the biography Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney – added: ‘I’m sure it must have been very difficult for Heather to move into the life of a man who had been famously happily married for years.
‘They had children together and I’m sure he was still in love with Linda. He probably hadn’t got over it.
Paul McCartney pictured hugging his first wife Linda in 1989. The couple had been married for 29 years when she passed away in 1998
Paul McCartney and his wife Linda with their daughters Heather, Stella and Mary at the family’s home in Rye in April 1976. A new documentary claims Heather ‘struggled’ to live in the family home
‘He kept Linda’s ring on until the day before he married Heather.’
Elsewhere in the documentary, Pamela described how Paul and Heather’s relationship was ‘volatile from the beginning’.
She explained: ‘They were such strong characters.
‘They were both used to having their own way. Before they got married, there was a big row in a hotel room in America and [Heather’s] engagement ring got thrown out of the window.
‘I don’t know who flung it out but the next day, the staff were all going round with metal detectors and they recovered the ring.’
Paul McCartney and his ex-wife Heather Mills exchange a kiss outside Castle Leslie in Glaslough, Ireland ahead of their 2002 wedding
Meanwhile, Heather’s friend said she struggled with Paul always being the ‘centre of attention’ when he started getting involved in her charitable causes.
Before meeting Paul, Heather had worked with Cambodia Trust and Voluntary Services Overseas to help them establish schools of prosthetics across South East Asia – having lost her leg in collision with a police motorbike in 1993.
In the early noughties, Heather started working with Adopt-A-Minefield to help landmine survivors – which was also a cause close to Sir Paul’s heart.
Discussing the impact this had on the marriage, Pamela continued: ‘She wanted to still do her charity work.
‘She still wanted to be who she was and for that not to be forgotten and it was quite hard to carry on doing that.
‘Once he started to get involved in the charities, he became the star of the show and she was just an extra.’
Heather Mills pictured at the UK premiere of Marlowe in March 2023. The former model was given £23m in cash and assets in her divorce settlement from Paul McCartney
Left: Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell at their wedding in 2011. Right: Heather and her new partner Mike Dickman
In 2003, Heather gave birth to the couple’s daughter Beatrice. The pair announced their separation three years later before their divorce was finalised in 2008.
As part of the agreement, Heather was given £23million in cash and assets in their divorce settlement.
Paul McCartney went on to marry his third wife businesswoman Nancy Shevell, 63, in 2011.
In December 2021, Heather Mills was rumoured to have married her businessman boyfriend Mike Dickman.
The couple started dating in the spring of 2019 and Mike, who is 17 years her junior, had been seen wearing a gold wedding band.
The couple got engaged just before Christmas 2020, and were on holiday together in Dubai when news of the engagement broke in January. At the time she wrote: ‘What better way to spend my birthday than with the love of my life.’
Friends say that they had a beachside ceremony in the Maldives in 2021, on the palm fringed sand at the Anantara resort, where rooms start at £450 a night.
Before Sir Paul, Heather was engaged to documentary-maker Chris Terrill, media executive Marcus Stapleton, and businessman Raffaele Mincione.
Her first marriage, at age 21, was to businessman Alfie Karmal. They split two years later.
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