Many of my and Kate’s first meetings were quite clandestine. We would find ourselves in the strange back rooms of London restaurants. Despite being this billionaire, I said that I was actually just a girl from a municipal estate in Croydon, so the first week we were together, I insisted that she get on a bus with me. I usually went everywhere in a limousine. We dressed up, put on our wigs and got on the bus to London. We laughed a little, really. The first week we also got matching tattoos. I think I insisted on that. I wanted him to show his love, so I told him, you have to get a tattoo with my initials, you have to mark yourself; it was more of an insecurity on my part.
I met her parents very early on and got along pretty well with her mother. My mom, dad, and little sister Emily came and met Kate in this new little apartment where I had moved to Islington. He had filled it with lots of red plastic furniture and a couple of inflatable chairs. My father said to Kate, “What are you doing?” She was small and he did not associate her with the newspaper supermodel. She just laughed.
I thought we could do it as a couple and fuck each other, that was my approach, but she was more like, no, you have to clean up and then everything will be fine. That was the battle for the next two and a half years, really, drugs and their obsession with the tabloids and their image. Kate’s most important thing was “don’t take her for a pussy.” It was his favorite expression.
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I’ve always wondered if Kate’s big show, where she was photographed pretending to inhale cocaine during a Babyshambles session, had something to do with Paul Ro. [Doherty’s acquaintance Paul Roundhill]. The images were supposed to be worth £ 300,000. They were used on the front of the mirror on September 15, 2005, under the title “High As a Kate”. Paul had everyone’s cell phone number and always tried to fix things with paperwork. He would say, “I’ve been in contact with a guy from the Mirror or the Sun and they want to do a positive piece,” and he would end up negotiating the deal.
After “High as a Kate”, she turned on me. He lost many charges, including a £ 4 million a year deal with H&M
There had been times in the past when photos were taken from my phone and used in the press, so after the “High As a Kate” thing Kate turned against me. She said, if you didn’t sell the photos, how did they get into the newspapers? And I wouldn’t know how to say it. I just assumed a friend of mine should have done it.
All of this made shit out of Kate’s contracts – she lost a lot of loads, including a famous £ 4 million a year deal with H&M, and all her people were furious with me. Police even wanted to talk to her, but she was not charged for lack of evidence. As a kind of mea culpa, he went for treatment at the Arizona Meadows, a well-known celebrity rehab site. He was also supposed to have left me, but in reality we were still in touch: the deal was that after I went to rehab, I would go there for a month too. In the newspapers there was all this nonsense about us breaking up, but it was all crazy.
When I left for my treatment in the Meadows, I had all my drugs hidden in my luggage and fell asleep on my shoulder on my way to Heathrow with my Jag. I had stopped for a pipe. I was awakened, with a cracked pipe in my mouth, by a policeman knocking on the window. He said, “Okay, Pete, are you going to rehab?” It was as if you knew what was going on, and then I followed the police car to Heathrow. It was so weird.
Doherty, photographed in France last month. Photography: Laura Stevens / The Guardian
When I arrived at the Meadows, they found all the pieces of my luggage, except what I had hidden inside the lining of my jeans: they really knew their stuff. It was a different environment to the rehabilitation of the UK – a mix of children with fully charged trust funds and people trying to avoid federal convictions by doing rehabilitation. After two weeks, Kate had to come and visit me and take me to the Grand Canyon by helicopter, and I had the right hump when she didn’t show up. In the end I made a runner.
When Kate found out she hadn’t finished treatment, she told me that was all, that there was no way to see us now. I said yes, but you’re supposed to pick me up by helicopter for a day trip to the Grand Canyon. The separation was all over the press. Kate was quoted in the Mirror as saying, “I wish I had never met him. He’s a user in every sense of the word.” Everything was falling apart.
Luckily, Kate came back to me for Christmas. He called on Christmas Eve and said, “I’m sending you a car to go down to the country.” Everything had to be secret. It was amazing, in fact. One of his security guards, this Maori, had his whole family there, and they sang the equivalent of carols in the large stone reception hall. After that, Kate and I would just have these clandestine meetings. James Brown [Moss’s friend, the celebrity hair stylist] he would contact me, call from a payphone with some keywords, and go to this Pimlico flat on the other side of the Battersea River. It was like a strange apartment that was used for this purpose: we met at night, or for a couple of hours sometimes, but I wouldn’t be allowed to tell anyone.
I loved her very much and knew she loved me; there was just all this mess between us
We were attracted to each other. I loved him so much and he knew he loved me: there was just all this mess between us, with all his chaos and my chaos. Sometimes we just needed to see each other. Basically, she clicked her fingers and I came running.
I think 2007 Glastonbury was the last time Kate and I went out together. Something of good memory, engraved in stone. Just strolling, enjoying a stress-free Glastonbury. I played the Green Field acoustic stage. I remember giving Stella McCartney’s husband a push from the caravan where we were staying after he made some weird comments about my health. I had them all taken out of the caravan. He had a huge shoebox full of drugs, very happy moments.
Moss and Doherty at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival, the last time the couple went out together. Photo: PA Images / Alamy
There were no specific incidents that ended the relationship. Our worlds were not really compatible in the end. There were all sorts of incidents. I had this panic button next to the bed and a panic button in the kitchen. One day, when she was out of nowhere and I was dodging by the side of the bed, probably from a fallen stone, I accidentally pressed the panic button and 12 armed cops ended up in St John’s Wood’s cottage. . She was really unhappy with things like that. It became a running battle, really, this relationship. It was always the same, all those years: highs and then crushers, violent lows. It was not sustainable.
I’m pretty fragile, really, inside of me. This kind of destructive relationship has nothing glamorous about it: in the end it wears you down and makes you unpleasant.
There was one last big old release. Kate desecrated this 30-year-old Gibson she had, she broke it. Then he covered this bear of mine, named Pandy, with gas, and lit it for him, no wonder. I was taking him with me to London.
Deep down I like to think it’s just a lie and Kate didn’t really destroy it, she still has it, but no, as far as I know, it’s dead, ashes. It still bothers me, it was the only thing that had held me back. The only time I’ve talked to her in eight or nine years was in Paris. He called me suddenly. I just said, “Do you still have the tattoo?” That was all I could think of to say.
This is an excerpt from A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty and Simon Spence, published by Little, Brown (£ 20) on June 16th. To support the Guardian and Observer, request your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Shipping costs may apply.
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