Katie v Peter. Emily Herbert
sangria at Es Vive, before heading off for a three-hour dinner at Angelos restaurant. Once again, Anthony Lowther was present and happy to confirm that they were having fun.
‘I’m having a great time with Katie,’ he said. ‘She’s getting on with her life and enjoying herself without Pete. I know her from a few photo-shoot jobs I’ve done with her and we’ve always got on. She’s having a blast and is enjoying being single again.’
The two were spotted taking a late-night walk around the harbour, before returning to the hotel. Friends, meanwhile, asserted that she had every right to behave as she pleased.
‘Katie is back to her best, being Jordan,’ said one. ‘She doesn’t care what people think, she’s out to shock. She may be in the middle of an acrimonious divorce, but it’s not getting her down. Instead, she joked she was horny and wanted to “get some” after a barren spell with Peter. Anthony picked up on the cue and was very attentive to her.’
The next day, the photo shoot moved to the nearby tranquil island of Formentera. Meanwhile, back in Britain, something of a backlash was beginning to develop. Every day, as pictures appeared of Katie behaving increasingly wildly, there were also shots of Pete, playing with the children in Cyprus. The contrast couldn’t have been greater, and not everyone was on Katie’s side – in fact, far from it. After all, technically, she and Pete were still married, and what about the kids? What would they make of photos of their mother so very publicly out on the razz?
What made matters even worse was that, while Katie looked as if she was having the time of her life (although, in truth, her out-of-control behaviour almost certainly meant that she was still not dealing with her grief), Pete was so visibly upset. On arriving in Cyprus, he discovered that his mother Thea had flown to Larnaca from Australia with his sister Debbie to offer him moral support. Visibly moved, Pete wept on his mother’s shoulder. ‘He had no idea his mum was coming, so, when he went to collect his sister at the airport and saw Thea, it was all too much,’ revealed a friend. ‘The emotion of the past six weeks caught up with him, and, as much as he tried to hold it together, he simply couldn’t. Thea will give him some much-needed TLC, and wants to look after him as only a mother can. She’ll do him a world of good!’
Meanwhile, back in Ibiza, love’s young dream was going through a sticky patch. Katie certainly wasn’t about to clean up her act: there was another drinking session, this time Jack Daniel’s and coke, as she informed startled holidaymakers, ‘I am Katie Price now – demure, sophisticated and elegant. I am going to walk properly, but, after midnight, Jordan is coming out and you know what that means! Have some of that, you motherfuckers! I can drink what I like, and do what I like. Sorry, Mum!’
Demure wasn’t quite the word for it: she flashed her dress at the camera crew before continuing to down some more shorts.
Katie was certainly as good as her word, however, when it came to turning into Jordan. A stream of bottles of Veuve Clicquot was seen being taken into her room, before she emerged at 10pm, already a little worse for wear. With her entourage in tow, she headed for Pacha nightclub, where she and Anthony danced between bouts of throwing back vodka lemonades. Katie was also seen kissing a strange girl, before she and Anthony headed back to the hotel, where they had one almighty row: ‘I don’t give a fuck any more!’ yelled Katie, and at around 5.30am fellow guests complained to the hotel management about the racket coming from her bedroom. Hotel staff banged on her door in an effort to get the couple to keep the noise down, but this was all to no avail.
Unsurprisingly, shooting for the calendar was scrapped the next day while Katie slept it off. Now the cluckerati in the UK press were really beginning to have a go, with Pete being congratulated for walking out on a woman who seemed out of control; all the papers, meanwhile, were covered in shots of Katie with her head in the sand, bum held high.
When Katie did eventually surface, she didn’t make matters any better for herself, though. First, she visited Sa Majesté, a specialist gay and lesbian sex shop, where she bought a range of PVC outfits, whips and so on. Next stop was Inkadelic Salon, where she had the tattoo of Pete’s name on her left wrist deleted with a cross.
‘She looked like she was on a mission,’ remarked an onlooker. ‘I think it’s fair to say she was trying to send out a message to Peter. She wants to leave him in no doubt that what they had is over. And there won’t be any fairytale reconciliation; that’s it now for her. Done and dusted!’
But it certainly didn’t look as if things would last with Anthony. The row they’d had the previous night appeared to have shaken him, and now he was backing off fast.
‘She’s a gorgeous girl and I’m looking forward to spending more time with her,’ he told a friend. ‘But she’s just getting over her split and she’s been through so much, so I’m not expecting anything serious to happen yet. I’m not really up for getting involved in anything too heavy at the moment. I’m not ready to be a dad.’
That row, ironically enough, had been about Katie’s totally OTT behaviour.
‘Anthony is really softly spoken and actually has a lot of mannerisms that would remind you of Pete,’ said a friend. ‘But Anthony and Katie fell out when he told her she was getting too lairy. He sees the good in everyone, but even he couldn’t handle her on Thursday night.’
Meanwhile, back in Cyprus, Pete’s family and friends were doing everything they could to protect him from what was going on, but there was only a certain amount of cover-up that they could manage, and, although Pete wouldn’t see the full reports about Katie’s behaviour in Ibiza, enough was getting through for him to be totally appalled.
‘It’s like a wild animal has been unleashed,’ he told friends. ‘I don’t recognise her as my wife. Has she no idea what this will be like for the kids? It was Katie who I fell in love with and married, but it looks like she just wanted all along to be her old self, Jordan. I can’t believe what I’m seeing – she’s like a caged animal that’s been let out.’
Among the people with Pete at the time was his friend Angelo, who became one of the first in his entourage to talk about what was going on. ‘Peter cannot believe what he’s witnessing,’ he said. ‘He is really, genuinely shocked. He’s been very upset, but this morning he simply said to me, “I’ve shed my last tear for her. Kate is right about one thing: there were three of us in our marriage – me, Kate and Jordan.” [a reference to an interview given by Katie the previous week].
‘Katie has shattered his world – I can’t keep quiet any more. I shouldn’t be saying anything, but I’m absolutely livid and someone has to speak up in Pete’s defence.’
In retrospect, the revelation of Katie’s behaviour in Ibiza might well have had a lot to do with Pete finally being able to move on. With each passing day, he understood more clearly that the woman he married had a very wild side to her, that ultimately she could never have been the one for him. At the time, however, it was devastating and everyone around him continued to try to protect him as best they could.
‘We dumped the papers in the bin to keep them from him because we knew it would break his heart,’ said Angelo. ‘But he found them and pulled them out. He couldn’t believe she was cavorting with male models, wearing sexy clothes and looking like she didn’t have a care in the world. Peter completely broke down.’
And it was certainly making him question the past. ‘It’s like my entire marriage has all been a sham,’ Pete told his family. ‘What is this going to be like for the children when they read how their mum behaves? Maybe she never really was Katie, maybe Jordan was the real her with Katie the pretend person, rather than the other way round. It feels like she’s been trying to force herself to live a life she didn’t want to live. Seeing all those pictures of her topless, then drunk and falling about, just makes me want to weep.’
At least his mother was there to help. ‘When Peter’s mum arrived, it sparked all the pent-up emotion from the past few weeks and he couldn’t stop crying,’ revealed Angelo. ‘It has killed me watching how sad Pete has been over the destruction of their marriage, but now he