What it’s like to fall in love with Pete Doherty.
By the time I took to the stage at the Rhythm Factory, a tremendous thunderstorm had erupted, cracks of lightning flashing through the window – the perfect accompaniment to our first headline set.
Through the magenta haze of strobes, sweat and cigarette smoke, I felt the glare of a lanky waif by the bar. Finishing the show in a howl of squealing feedback, I crowdsurfed over to where he was standing. He had a cherubic face, looking very beautiful in his red fusiliers’ jacket, ripped jeans and brogues. In a soft, whimsical voice, he introduced himself as ‘Peter Doherty’, and complimented the gig and my Victorian corset. ‘I’m going to call you Katie Corset. What are you doing now? Would you like to join me at the Albion Rooms?’ Not knowing what he meant, and thinking it was some trendy new club, I wrinkled my nose. He fixed me with a doe-eyed look. ‘It’s where I live in Bethnal Green… we can have an afterparty.’
Following a magical rain-soaked snog in the middle of a street made famous by Jack the Ripper, we flagged down a taxi, stopping off for the essentials – fags and booze – along the way.
Pete’s digs didn’t disappoint my bohemian expectations, with piles of my favourite books on the floor. I picked up a dog-eared copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray and skimmed through the heavily underlined pages until a square of heroin-stained tinfoil, used as a bookmark, abruptly fell out, causing Pete and me to collapse in a fit of giggles. He then informed me that he’d acquired some opium from a Lebanese bloke in Brick Lane, along with a 19th-century Chinese pipe to smoke it with.
When in Albion, I told myself. After the obligatory puke that comes from smoking opiates, Pete and I lay sprawled across the floor, Billie Holiday providing the soundtrack, as I quizzed his knowledge on the Pre-Raphaelites. High as a kite, I believed I had met my soulmate that night – the Rossetti to my Lizzie Siddal – and told him so, to which he declared feeling the same.
During the first six months, we forged a deep bond, writing each other poetry and staying up all night talking. We would hang out a lot at my flat, which Pete renamed the Elysian Fields. On my hot pink wall he spray-painted ‘The Libertines’ in gold, surrounded by a heart, along with ‘Katie is a sweet, sweet girl’ above my bed. We shared the same sense of humour, talent for mimicry and desire for approval. There was The Libertines’ first performance on Later with Jools Holland, which he asked me to attend ‘in all your fishnet finery’; the nights spent dancing to Mouldy Peaches at Trash, whizzing around Camden on his moped and watching the sun come up on Parliament Hill as we came down from ecstasy.
But while I lived for the music – Pete often mocked how seriously I took it – I noticed a shift in his personality around the recording of The Libertines’ debut album. Although we both dabbled, neither of us had a drug addiction when we first met. Pete, however, did not adjust well to fame; he remedied this with the smoking of copious amounts of crack.
Pete would carelessly give out private details on Libertines online forums, including his and my address, enticing his fans to turn up, demanding to see him. On one such occasion, Pete passed out in my bed after a four-day bender. He hid my keys somewhere on his person and would not wake up.
Having not been online for a few days, a posse of worried fans turned up at my place; when I wouldn’t open the front door, they proceeded to break the living room window and let themselves in, upon which Pete miraculously rose from the dead to entertain them with his acoustic guitar.
Slowly but surely, all of the youthful joy of the early days was sucked out and replaced with increasingly dangerous situations. One night he decided to hire a rickshaw from Soho to Bethnal Green, decked in boas and lights. Pete was toking from his crackpipe all the way when, out of nowhere, a gang from an estate began to chase us with machetes. I was petrified; Pete was laughing his head off.
One evening I found myself at the Whitechapel flat of Paul Roe, also known as Paul Roundhill, who Pete had declared to be a ‘literary genius’. The front room had ten young ‘working girls’ injecting heroin and smoking crack. Pete said Roe was writing a book about prostitution and charged a ‘Roundhill tax’: 20% of their drugs as the price of admission.
I sat on Pete’s lap and said I felt very uncomfortable. Pete, however, was clucking, and wanted to wait until the dealer arrived. At some point, two burly Bangladeshi guys turned up, and promptly offered Pete £200 of crack to sleep with me. I burst into tears, ran out, got lost, panicked, and ended up in hospital after someone called an ambulance.
It was all spiralling out of control, and I wanted to get clean. On one of my last evenings with Pete, the drugs had run out and the sun was coming up, while I vomited profusely into a champagne bucket. I cried as I retched, feeling sorry for myself. Pete’s answer was to pick up his bloody guitar. ‘What you gonna do Katie? You’re a sweet, sweet girl, but it’s a cruel, cruel world.’ I wanted to kill him. I was writhing in agony, snot running down my face, wishing I was dead, and he was singing away.
Cut to 2005, and I was sitting in a café on Upper Street when a song on the radio caught my attention. It was Pete’s new band, Babyshambles, and their song La Belle et la Bête. It hit me with nostalgia; I remembered riffing similar words with Pete after a toxic row. I had since formed a new musical project after splitting with my first band, yet even after playing the Wireless Festival at Hyde Park, I failed to recapture the early elation I felt on stage at the Rhythm Factory. The scene felt like a jaded cliché, fodder for the tabloids. All focus on drugs; little time for music.
Then, out of the blue, I received a hysterical phone call from my mother. I knew it must be bad news, as we hadn’t spoken since I started seeing Pete, for which she had effectively disowned me. My father had been found dead. At the time, I wanted to join him. I had been drinking as a substitute for drugs, and one evening arrived at the Bricklayers Arms intent on oblivion. A foppish guy at the bar offered me a drink. ‘You’re Kat, aren’t you? I’m Steven. Big fan of your music!’ I was an emotional wreck. We talked, he bought drinks, I ranted. The following morning I awoke with a bone-shuddering, suicidal hangover, when the phone rang. It was Steven from last night. Steven was a journalist for the Daily Mirror.
There was nothing I could do. Stories about Pete and Kate Moss were selling a lot of papers. A friend went to the corner shop and brought back the Mirror, and there, splashed across the front page, was the most unflattering picture ever taken of me, alongside the atrociously clichéd headline: ‘my drugs hell’.
The fallout was catastrophic. I had to disconnect my home phone after a barrage of threats. On the Libertines forums, fans fantasised about how my murder might take place, how my breasts would be cut off, etc. The press attention refused to die down; after attending the nme Awards one year, I chatted outside with Rupert Grint. The following day, the Mirror ran a story proclaiming me his new girlfriend, directing a new wave of hate towards me – this time from Harry Potter fans.
The last time I saw Pete was also, regrettably, a tabloid event. Backstage at the Reading Festival, he approached me with a huddle of paparazzi trailing behind him, shaking a bottle of beer. I stood up, knowing what was coming, and shouted, ‘It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t say those things!’ But he proceeded to soak me while I jumped over the barrier trying to calm him. Those photos are still on Getty Images and cost a minimum of £300.
Disillusioned with England and the whole sordid scene, I relocated to Italy for a fresh start, signing to Sony as a songwriter, and coaching a fledgling band called Måneskin on the Italian X Factor – but that’s a story for another time. As for Pete, I haven’t seen him since.
