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tom paulin haunted by rumour::When heather mills went skiing in the balkans, the war in yugoslavia broke out.
When she visited india, the country immediately suffered a major earthquake.
Sir paul mccartney is clearly not a superstitious man.
Heather mills came to fame when her modelling career was curtailed after she lost part of a leg in a road accident.
But, in a way, it has been the making of her.
Such adversity, and the steel she derived from it, began as a child.
Heather mills was born in washington, tyne and wear, in 1968.
Her mother abandoned her at the age of nine after suffering regular beatings from her father, a former army officer who was to serve time for fraud.
Stapley claims a lot of this is exaggerated and that heather never really left home until she was 20.
Neither, he says, is her assertion correct that her mother, too, lost a leg in a road accident.
This included turning briefly to crime.
Yugoslav mission with a precocious entrepreneurial spirit, she set up her own model agency in 1986, at the age of 18.
A year later, she married alfie karmal, an older man with children of his own after suffering the pain of two ectopic pregnancies, the marriage ended after less than two years.
She began to move in richer circles, associating with the likes of arms dealer adnan khashoggi.
But her life changed when she took a job as a skiing instructor in yugoslavia in 1992.
Civil war broke out and heather mills was compelled to help with the ensuing refugee problem.
She set up a refugee crisis centre in london and helped 20 people escape.
With undoubted courage and determination, she would collect aid and drive the thousand miles to croatia, often going via austria for modelling assignments to fund the trip.
Then, in 1993, disaster struck when she was knocked down by a police motorcyclist answering an emergency call.
As a result, she lost her left leg below the knee.
Her reaction was unusual.
Public speaker she sold her story to the news of the world, even boasting that she made love to her fiance, italian banker rafaelle mincione, in her hospital bed.
The injury refocused her philanthropic instincts.
She established the heather mills health trust which recycles prosthetic limbs.
She has become a prolific public speaker, and has received innumerable awards for her charity work, even being nominated for the nobel peace prize in 1996.
More recently, she has taken up the mantle of princess diana in raising consciousness for the landmine problem.
She has broken off two engagements and reports of her engagement ring being thrown out of a florida hotel room following a row, has provided more grist to the rumour mill.
But heather mills is her own woman, as was linda mccartney before her.