And, he makes no bones about it, he still adores Linda, seeing her in squirrels in the trees, talking to her every day, seeking her approval for marrying Heather. So life with McCartney will not always be easy.What is it then, that causes us to hang back, to pause a little? The answer is Mills herself There is something about her that is almost frightening. She seems too perfect, her story too colourful, too dramatic. Few people, say her critics, are as driven, as single-minded, as strong-willed as she And we find that unsettling, hard to cope with. When her father comes out to say his daughter is not a gold-digger who hunts down rich men, there are some who wonder if he protests too much.For one so young (she is 33), her odyssey seems truly extraordinary.

She was abused as a child, ran away from home at 13, joined a funfair, slept rough in London and, at 14, was woken one night by a tramp urinating on her hair. Blessed with a striking figure and fierce ambition, but lacking any formal qualifications, at 16 she became a model, posing, sometimes topless, for swimwear and lingerie shoots.By an amazing coincidence, her mother also lost a leg in a road accident, and later died from her injuries. Despite her looks, Mills realised she was not perfect enough to make her fortune from modelling At 18 she was running her own model agency. A year later, she was moving among London’s cosmopolitan party set, associating with the likes of Adnan Khashoggi, the Middle East arms fixer.She married Alfie Karmal, a computer sales director, an older man with children from a previous marriage. After two years and two ectopic pregnancies, their relationship was over. She became a volunteer aid worker, delivering supplies to refugees in war-torn Croatia.Then, in a cruel twist of fate, considering she had spent much of her time travelling across Balkan minefields without a scratch, Mills came back to London in 1993 and was hit by a police motorbike, sustaining head and chest injuries, as well as losing a leg.If all this is not breathless enough, Mills herself is happy to spice up the story, telling how she lost her virginity at 16: “Lovemaking was incredible, sex was everything I’d ever dreamed of.” Her breasts were too big, so she had an operation to take them down from 32E to 32C. Her memory of the accident, she says matter-of-factly, was of seeing her leg in the middle of the road.

And she was self-possessed enough to sell her story, regaling the world with how she and her boyfriend made love in her hospital bed.”By the time he left, he looked in need of crutches himself,” she said. If anything characterises her story, apart from being incident-packed, it is her intimidating self-discipline “I have always wanted to be in control,” she once said “I didn’t drink for years. Even now I can’t handle anyone having a joint.” Even when sleeping rough she was not depressed, because “I always knew I was going to go somewhere”.A lesser person might have crumpled after her accident, but that singlemindedness saw her emerge even stronger: “What is the point of sitting around feeling sorry for yourself? Even if you are a mother or disabled, there is always work you could do to help the community.”She resumed her modelling career with limited results, and became a public speaker with far more success (“I am the No 1 woman speaker in Britain, No 3 in Europe and No 7 in the world,” she boasted) and argued passionately for the disabled and against landmines. She swam, danced, played tennis, rollerbladed and fell in love, again and again.She called one wedding off in 1995 and another, to Chris Terrill, a TV documentary-maker, in August 1999.