Love, Lipstick and Lies Read Online Free Page A

mentioned my name, the press had done such a good job of making me out to be a bitch, but Alex stood up for me, told them to stop because they didn’t know me. I was really touched by his support – my fighter, fighting for me. I’d already had the ordeal of being booed at the National Television Awards earlier that month, and however brave a face you put on, it’s a deeply horrible experience. I’d love to know why the people who booed thought it was okay to do that to someone they didn’t even know. It was just like being bullied at school. And as Alex said, these people didn’t even know me. Whenever I meet new people they always say that I’mvery different from the way they expect; usually they comment on how down-to-earth and nice I am, after the press have made me out to be a heartless, publicity-seeking cow.
    A few days after Alex was crowned the winner of Celebrity Big Brother we flew to Las Vegas and got married. It was a real spur-of-the-moment decision, and it felt really romantic and special. I was excited about our future together. The photographs of the wedding were lovely; we looked so happy together.
    Now that we were married the time felt right for me to have another baby. We had been trying for several months, in fact, and I was starting to feel concerned that I hadn’t become pregnant yet. At that time, I still had no idea how significant a part his cross-dressing and wanting sex as Roxanne played in Alex’s life. The year before, I’d suffered a miscarriage, which as any woman knows who’s been through one is heartbreaking. I kept worrying that there might be something wrong with me as I hadn’t fallen pregnant since, though I’d never had a problem conceiving before. By April I was so worried that we sought medical advice.
    After we’d both had a series of tests it was decided that we needed fertility treatment, something called ICSI. It’s used where a man has a low sperm count or where the sperm have low motility (are poor swimmers). Basically the best sperm are selected and then injected into the egg. I would have to take hormones to stimulate egg production, and that meant that I would have togive myself daily injections and would have to inject myself in the stomach. I have a life-long phobia of needles and, while I can inject my son Harvey with the daily growth-hormone drugs he needs with no problem at all, I absolutely hate being injected myself. I don’t think Alex quite understood how I felt and what a big deal this was to me. But I put that down to him being a man. I don’t think many of them understand the emotions women experience when they are trying to get pregnant, or even while the pregnancy is progressing. The significance of it all doesn’t seem to hit most men until they are presented with a real-life baby.
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    A week or so later we went to Egypt on holiday, along with my friend Polly and her husband Andrew, who was also my riding instructor, my son Harvey, and Polly and Andrew’s two children. I had been good friends with the couple (and I still am) since I decided that I wanted to take up dressage in 2008, and we had stayed friends throughout my traumatic break up with Pete, when the newspapers were full of speculation about why my marriage had broken up, and were persistently trying to link me to Andrew. They had tracked him and Polly down in Spain where they were on holiday, and contacted Polly’s friends on Facebook and tried to dig up dirt on the two of them, and on me, but of course there was nothing to find out.
    The doctor thought that our Egypt trip in April wasperfect timing as then we would be relaxed during the treatment to follow. As things turned out, that wasn’t the case. This was partly due to the volcano erupting in Iceland that caused all flights to be grounded, which resulted in me getting back late for the next stage of my treatment. Anyone who has ever had fertility treatment will appreciate exactly how stressed I was about the delay. If