HOW COCAINE DESTROYED THE GILDED LIFE OF A MUM-OF-THREE

Three beautiful children, a wealthy and devoted partner, and the sort
of millionaire trappings most women can only dream about: it's fair to
say that Kelly Thompson had an idyllic lifestyle.

Home was an electronically gated and fully staffed white-washed
mansion in the Spanish playboy beach resort of Marbella.

Her days were spent entertaining friends over lunch, working out in
the private gymnasium or relaxing in the family's personal cinema complex.

The long sunny days and immaculate sparkling terrace and pool were a
perfect backdrop for the champagne gatherings Kelly and her partner
Tony held for their equally well-heeled friends.

In the evenings they threw parties around their second swimming pool.
It seemed a gilded existence and it might have remained so but for the
involvement of another 'friend' - cocaine.

For one day, eight months pregnant with her third baby and feeling
frumpy while lunching with a friend, Kelly ordered a dessert with a
difference.

Giving no thought to the safety of her unborn child, she snorted
cocaine.

Even now, Kelly, 38, attempts to defend her callous behaviour. It was,
she insists, 'only' a tiny amount. But it was a reckless action which
was to have devastating consequences.

Not only was she to lose her beautiful home and also her sons, Sam,
when he was four, Josh, eight, and Christopher, ten, it was to lead to
Kelly's swift expulsion from the Marbella set.

Life today is a far cry from those heady days when, at one party, she
took her diamond studs out of her ears and gave them away to a friend
who simply had mentioned she liked them.

In place of the five-bedroom, four-bathroom Mediterranean villa bathed
in sunshine, home is a small rented semi in the West Midlands.

And these days, rather than caviar and champagne, a modest supermarket
steak is the biggest occasional treat Kelly can afford for herself and
her four-year-old daughter, Molly.

The story of Kelly's social descent makes salutary reading for anyone
who is under the misguided impression that social cocaine is somehow
harmless. Or, for that matter, that gaining a lavish and monied
celebrity lifestyle will be their passport to true happiness.

"I wish with all my heart I could turn back the clock," says Kelly.
"Losing my sons was absolutely heartbreaking and although now I don't
even drink, let alone take drugs, I will never get over it.

"Not a day goes by when I don't regret what happened or think how
different my life would have been had I not taken cocaine at lunch
that day.

"Mostly, I can never forgive myself for taking it when I was pregnant
- - and I have never told my sons the real reason their mummy could no
longer care for them. I am too ashamed of myself."

Kelly was just 18 and the eldest of six children when she moved with
her family to southern Spain. Her father, who owned a carpet shop, and
her mother, a housewife, had decided to retire from rainy Britain and
so relocated to Marbella, where they bought a villa.

"I didn't want to move from my friends in Britain, but within weeks I
absolutely loved my new life," says Kelly.

"I got a job working in a beauty salon and I adored the old town of
Marbella, with its little streets and designer shops."

It was in a nearby al fresco cafe that Kelly, then 20, met Tony, a
British expat who was living in the resort.

"At 30, he was already on the road to success. He owned a designer
boutique in nearby San Pedro and, ten years older than me, seemed more
sophisticated and worldly than any man I'd ever met.

"He had the most amazing piercing blue eyes - it was love at first
sight for both of us."

Within weeks, Kelly had moved into his house and then into a quaint
finca - a Spanish farmhouse - in the nearby mountains. Three months
after they met, Kelly discovered she was pregnant.

"We were thrilled when Christopher was born," she says. Josh followed
two years later. By then Tony had a string of shops along the coast,
and the couple were able to move into their dream home.

"Although it was already beautiful, with a staff flat and immaculate
grounds, Tony had it fitted out in pure luxury.

"So we had a vast kitchen, and balconies and terraces for virtually
every room. Tony indulged his love of antiques and paintings - he even
owned a Picasso and a Goya, his pride and joy, which hung in our huge
entrance hall," says Kelly.

"We employed a big staff. As well as gardeners and people to maintain
the two swimming pools, we had a cleaner, people to do all the
laundry, a full-time cook and a live-in nanny. If I wanted something
done I just had to ask.

"I always had the latest cars - a Jag, a top-of-the-range Land Rover -
and although Tony and I did enjoy staying in, we were constantly
invited to parties and social gatherings."

Though at first Kelly enjoyed her life of luxury, kitting herself out
in designer clothes and having the manicures and beauty therapies that
were essentials for entrance into the super-rich Marbella set, by the
time she was pregnant with her third son, she was deeply unhappy.

"I began to feel that life in Marbella was plastic," she says. "I
didn't feel we had any real friends. Everyone was obsessed with what
they looked like and how much money they had.

"I grew bored of the ladies' lunches when the topics centred on which
designer dress they should wear to the next party. Our great social
life began to grate - the same faces at the same old parties - but
there was no one I could really talk to or have a laugh with.

"At the same time, Tony's business was soaring. He was out all day,
leaving me pregnant and with two little boys.

"I know people will think I was spoilt, and Tony couldn't understand
it. He would buy me diamond necklaces or a car to try to cheer me up.

"And yes, I took money for granted - I never knew the price of
anything and began to lose interest in spending it.

"Once a friend came up to me at a party and said she liked my diamond
earrings. They had cost Tony thousands, but I just gave them to her as
if they were nothing."

By the time Kelly was eight months pregnant with Sam, she was
depressed.

"I was incredibly vulnerable," she says. "I had made one friend who
seemed different. Sue was down-to-earth and although I felt fat,
frumpy and fed up, lunch with her was always a laugh."

It was during one of these lunches that Sue, who Kelly later came to
learn was a professional drug pusher, offered cocaine as a dessert.

"At first I said no," says Kelly. "I was pregnant and it was the last
thing I thought I'd find myself doing. But then, foolishly and
naively, I suddenly thought, why not - just a tiny amount can't do any
harm.

"My baby was almost due and Sue said it was such a small amount it
would be no worse than having a glass of wine.

"With hindsight I cannot believe I was so stupid, but it seemed
decadent and somehow, in my dreary life, exciting to snort that white
powder from a UKP50 note.

"Immediately it made me feel more relaxed - I didn't care so much
about everything."

Kelly vowed not to take it again but, shockingly, she admits she
snorted the class A drug several more times before Sam was born, with
the drug provided each time by Sue.

"I felt as if I was the worst mother in the world," she says. "Sam was
born weighing around 7lb, the same weight as my other sons, but he was
a colicky baby and I convinced myself I'd damaged him.

"I even went to a private doctor to confess what I'd done. He told me
Sam was completely healthy, but to this day I will always worry."

After Sam was born, Kelly's UKP25 half-agrama-day habit snowballed into
a UKP160-a-day addiction.

"The villa staff were so meticulous I had to go to great lengths to
hide my stashes of cocaine," she says. "I'd cut a hole in a mattress
or wrap it in tissue and secrete it under the carpet.

"I lived a secret life. My mind was constantly on how to get my next
fix and cover up where I'd been. And if my nose was runny - one of the
classic symptoms of drug use - I said I had a cold.

"Tony, who abhorred drugs, never guessed. I never did it in front of
the children. But I felt constantly sick with guilt.

"Other mums would drop their children round to play and I would think:
'Do you realise you are leaving them with a coke addict?'

"In hindsight, I can see I was groomed to be a lucrative client by
Sue, but at the time I was too self-obsessed to see it.

"I gave my boys everything and loved them dearly. I did my best to
ensure my habit never affected them. To this day they don't know about
it."

Kelly managed to conceal her double life from Tony for two years
until, during a row, he confronted her.

"He said I seemed different," she says. "I remember him saying: 'Are
you taking something? Are you on drugs?' Of course I swore I wasn't,
but he insisted on searching me and found a wrap of cocaine hidden in
my knickers.

"I told him it was the first time. I begged him to forgive me and said
it would never happen again, and he believed me.

"But I couldn't stop. I loved the way the powder looked, especially if
it was wrapped neatly in a new high-value note."

Eventually, the cocaine took its inevitable toll. "It was the
beginning of the end," she says. "I longed for Tony to take me in his
arms and tell me he loved me, but he'd never been a touchy-feely
person. Now, unsurprisingly, he became colder."

As Sam reached the age of four, Kelly's addiction had grown so bad
that she and Tony decided for the children's sakes that she should
move into a local apartment they owned.

"One day, we had the most almighty row about my drug-taking and I fled
to the apartment," she says.

"It was meant to be a temporary split - we told the children mummy and
daddy weren't getting on very well and mummy was depressed."

At the same time, in a bid to rid herself of her habit, Kelly came
back to Britain, checking into Clouds, the rehabilitation clinic in
Wiltshire used by celebrities such as Robbie Williams. Tony agreed to
pay UKP7,000 for five weeks of treatment.

"By then, my parents had moved back to Britain, and when they saw me
they were absolutely horrified," she says.

"I'd lost weight and must have looked terrible. I went into the
clinic, but I missed my sons desperately and longed to go back to Marbella.

"Cocaine was becoming harder to get hold of and I had pretty much
stopped anyway, so after three weeks in the clinic I flew back to Spain."

Kelly hoped that as she was off drugs, she could go back to her luxury
villa with Tony and her sons. But it wasn't to be. Tony told her the
split was to be permanent.

"I was heartbroken. Worse, he told me that although I could see the
boys whenever I wanted, I wasn't fit to look after them myself," she
says.

"He thought it best I stayed in the apartment while they remained in
the villa. I was so angry and upset because I felt my drug taking was
under control.

"My sons were my life and the thought of not being there for them
every day was heart-breaking.

"I felt as if everyone must be thinking I'd left my sons and I was a
bad mother. I felt so humiliated and ashamed by everything that had
happened that I spiralled out of control, taking huge amounts of
cocaine. I didn't care if I lived or died.

"With hindsight, that reaction was a vindication of Tony's decision to
keep me away from the children. I was in no state to go to court to
fight for custody - I was a drug addict and a wreck."

It was during one of these binges that a doorman called Ben helped
Kelly home one night. "I had virtually collapsed in a nightclub in
Marbella," she says. "I was at rock bottom."

Ben was concerned enough to check up on her the next day and from
there a relationship blossomed.

"He was fantastic, helping me to come off the cocaine. But I couldn't
carry on as I was. Just the thought of getting a fix brought me out
into a shaking sweat.

"Then one day I took a long look at myself in the mirror, and the
lined, pasty face of a stranger stared back. I knew I had to stop."

With Ben's support, Kelly managed to wean herself off cocaine. The
couple moved into a townhouse and within a year she was pregnant with
her daughter, Molly. However, the painful legacy of her cocaine habit
lingered on.

"By then, Tony was with someone else, and although I had Ben and
Molly, it ate into me," she says.

"What made it worse was that Tony's new partner was wonderful with the
boys and loved them dearly. I knew it was selfish of me, but I hated
her for it.

"The thought of my sons took over my life. I desperately tried to
think how to get them back. But, as a former drug addict, I didn't
feel I had a chance of winning any custody battle.

"They were so happy with Tony - I certainly couldn't give them the
sort of luxury life they were used to. I woke every day wondering if
and when I'd see them."

It was Kelly's obsession with her old life that led to her moving back
to Britain.

"My relationship with Ben wasn't working," she says. "Perhaps it was
the age gap - at 29 he was much younger than me. But I was neglecting
him and Molly. I just wanted to see my sons."

Eighteen months ago, Kelly moved back to Britain, leaving Ben in
Marbella but bringing Molly.

"My sons, now 17, 15 and 11, were growing older and obviously didn't
need me as I felt they did when they were younger. I needed to make a
fresh start and be closer to my parents and the rest of my family.

"I have been clean for seven years. I found a house with three
bedrooms so the boys can come and stay with me.

"I went for counselling and to a psychiatrist to come to terms with
everything that's happened. And in September, when Molly starts
school, I am hoping to enrol on a counselling course - I would like to
help other people come off drugs.

"Having money gives you nothing to work for and makes life empty -
ultimately, I believe it was the reason why I turned to cocaine."

She hopes one day she will find the courage to tell her sons the
truth.

"I want them to know I didn't leave them out of choice," she says.
Whether her sons are quite so charitable when they discover the truth
remains to be seen.