Cold-hearted Nigella abandoned me

Divorced: Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson Source: Getty Images

THE decree nisi took a mere 70 seconds to be formally waved through the High Court, with neither party present. As for discussions over their assets, this took even less time, he keeping his 135 million pound fortune, she content with her own hard-earned 20 million pounds.

No wrangling, no demands. It may have been a ghastly, and very public episode over lunch two months ago, when Charles Saatchi was pictured with his left hand grasping his wife Nigella Lawson by the throat, but at least they have now gone their separate ways with good grace.

Well, not quite. Privately, a very bitter war goes on.

Even though he accepted a police caution for assault, Saatchi, 70, continues to insist to whoever will listen that the incident was nothing more than 'a playful tiff ... my actions were not violent'.

He is said to be seething that, after ten years of marriage, most of it happy, Nigella hasn't uttered a single word in his defence.

In fact, Nigella, 53, whose own lucrative television image as a flawless and desirable Domestic Goddess can hardly have been helped by her being seen as a victim of domestic violence, has, in all this time, said nothing publicly about the incident to anyone.

'To talk about it would only make things worse for everyone,' explains one close figure. 'Better to say nothing, let it die away.'

For Nigella Lawson this is probably a sensible business strategy as she continues her assault on the huge American market, having conquered Britain. She is in Los Angeles making the second series of the ABC-networked reality cookery TV show The Taste, in which she both stars and is joint executive producer.

Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson divorce papers have been released by The High Court on July 31, 2013 in London, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images

'Her silence is torturing Charles,' says one of his friends. 'Surely she must realise this.'

Now, into this traumatic impasse, a new voice has suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, decided to speak out - Saatchi's pretty 18-year-old daughter Phoebe.

She was just seven when her father married Nigella in 2003. Nigella was newly widowed after her first husband, journalist John Diamond, with whom Saatchi played Scrabble, died of cancer. She was left with their two children, Cosima and Bruno, who were aged eight and six.

Phoebe is Saatchi's only child, the daughter of his second marriage to American art expert Kay Hartenstein who - like his first wife, advertising executive Doris Lockhart - does not get a mention in his Who's Who entry.

Phoebe, who has just left school and is going to university, has grown up living mostly with her father and Nigella, and her stepbrother and sister to whom she is close. In recent times, they have all been together at their 14 million pound house in Chelsea, West London.

Thus far, the three children have been kept well out of this domestic tragedy. But yesterday, Saatchi brought Phoebe to the telephone in Italy, where they are on holiday, for her to read out a brief statement that she volunteered to the Mail. With her voice trembling slightly, she said: 'The statement is: "Nigella has not spoken to me since she left our house on that Sunday when the newspaper story appeared. She has behaved in a very cold-hearted way. She has been my mother since I was seven or eight and has just abandoned me." That's it.'

This was an extraordinary intervention by the very last person one would have expected to put herself at the centre of this saga.

So just what drove Phoebe to publicly condemn her stepmother so intensely?

She would go no further. Politely, after reading out the statement, she said she 'cannot answer any questions, I'm really sorry'.

Friends of Nigella, however, claim that Saatchi is using his daughter - or at least encouraging her - to attack her stepmother.

'The divorce is really sad for the children but Charles should have known better than to let Phoebe get involved in such a grimy situation,' says one close observer.

But a family friend of Saatchi says that it was entirely Phoebe's own idea to speak out. 'She's completely devastated that she hasn't had a phone call from Nigella,' says the friend. 'Whatever issues Nigella has with Charles, she doesn't have them with Phoebe.

'And on top of this, Phoebe is furious with Nigella for not saying anything to defend her father and just leaving him to hang out to dry.'

It should be said that Nigella has not been entirely out of touch with Phoebe.

A month after the infamously photographed incident at Scott's restaurant in Mayfair, by which time Nigella had returned to America to continue filming her television show, it was reported in a Sunday newspaper that she had invited Phoebe to join her and Cosima and Bruno at the house she was renting in Los Angeles.

The invitation came in a text message. Phoebe did not accept it.

Instead, according to a family friend: 'When Phoebe saw an item about the invitation in a newspaper, she felt she was being used. She texted Nigella to say she didn't want to be part of her publicity machine.'

Nigella replied that it was nothing to do with her.

'The trouble is, Phoebe misses her so much,' says the friend. 'She was like a second mother to her, though she didn't call her "Mummy" as she has her own mother. It was "Nigella" or "Nige", and sometimes even "Darling".

'And, of course, Phoebe misses her stepbrother and sister, too. She just finds it inconceivable that Nigella hasn't been in touch on the phone. She feels very let down.'

For her part, through her public relations adviser Mark Hutchinson, Nigella declines to respond to Phoebe's charge of 'abandoning' her.

Given a copy of Phoebe's statement, Hutchinson replied half an hour later: 'We continue not to comment on personal matters.'

Understandable, perhaps, because Nigella is said to be anxious about being drawn into an emotional telephone conversation which is bound to be upsetting on both sides.

No one doubts that Phoebe has been very close to her stepmother for most of Nigella's marriage to Saatchi, and misses her. Friends do say, however, this closeness had changed a little in the past year.

'Nigella seemed to be a bit distracted at times,' says a Saatchi friend. 'We put it down to her ambition to become a superstar, you know, to conquer America and become the transatlantic goddess. She's certainly worked very hard at it and deserves success.'

As for her 'abandoning' Phoebe, it is only fair to point out that Saatchi himself has said that he invited Nigella to 'pack your bags and go' when they argued on the day the pictures of him grabbing her throat were published.

She stormed off that afternoon with a few belongings and moved into a rented flat.

Her friends still say, of course, that she had been willing - right up to the end - to give the marriage another chance. His friends, though, say she used the restaurant incident as the perfect excuse to get away from him.

To cap all this confusion, Saatchi, who slapped in a divorce action long before the dust had had much time to settle, is now telling friends that he didn't really want the marriage to end.

But he says: 'However disappointed Nigella may have been with me as a husband, I'm heartbroken that Phoebe has been totally abandoned in this way.'

This is, of course, a classic example of how children, of any age, can be deeply wounded by warring parents. As always, it is difficult, and dangerous, for outsiders to make judgments.

After all, for many years they were one of the capital's most glittering and fashionable couples. They seemed completely contented in each other's company, enviously at ease with each other's foibles, the age difference of 17 years an insignificant detail in their lives.

Saatchi, always good at one-liners, liked to chaff his pneumatic wife with observations such as: 'She's too good for me, I know, but she knows it, too, and reminds me every day.'

Nigella, famous for her curves, would say that this was how Charles liked her to be: 'He would be very dismayed if I suddenly turned into a lean, mean, fighting machine.' Intriguingly, in recent months that is just what she did.

'I just got thinner,' she told an American television audience. She blamed it on having foot trouble which left her unable to walk to the fridge to help herself to cake and other favourites. But she has also admitted having hypnotherapy to help her lose weight.

There is one other puzzle. About a year ago, in an interview, Nigella described herself as: 'Very, very conflict averse ... I go a bit ice maiden. I withdraw.'

Yet she certainly had not withdrawn six days after the 'choking' incident, because Charles and Nigella were back at Scott's, having dinner with a group of friends. Ostensibly, at any rate, all was well.

But that was before those reputation-scarring paparazzi pictures dropped on the nation's breakfast tables.

One is entitled to wonder: if that hadn't happened, would they still be together now? And would Phoebe's shattered world still be in one piece?

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