Looking back on 2004 I’m left with a sense of wonder. I just don’t know how I coped. Although I’m always one for asking questions, “Are you using hard drugs?” and “Are you injecting?” were questions to which I couldn’t bear to hear Peter’s answer. It was easier not to ask . . . for a while, at least.

It was awful to discover that year that Peter had progressed (if that is the word to use) from smoking heroin to injecting it. I simply don’t have the words to articulate how learning that Peter was injecting heroin affected me: perhaps only another parent in the same circumstances could fully understand. The thought that a child of mine could do this to themselves causes me to shudder. Why? Why? WHY?

Peter began 2005 with a chest infection that laid him low for a few days. He moved in to a newly built apartment and my husband and I drove up to London on a Saturday in mid-January to spend some time with him. We found him well and in good spirits. The flat was nice and clean, if a little sparse, and he was positive and felt that things were going well. Peter looked fine. We didn’t stay very long as he was dashing around, about to travel up to Oxford to sing that evening at the model Kate Moss’s birthday party. Peter mixed in different circles from us and knew lots of celebrities. We promised to return the following week with tea towels, bookshelves and kitchen utensils. It was a positive visit.

If the press had hounded us before this day then nothing could have prepared us for the onslaught afterwards. Purely because of Peter and Kate’s association, suddenly the phone was ringing non-stop, letters were arriving, extended family members were doorstepped and my mother-in-law was being harassed daily.

There were so many things happening in early 2005: court case after court case, arrest after arrest, utter mayhem. Peter was stalked by fans, followed by film crews recording his every move, “papped” by opportunists. It was all getting out of hand. So much was going on in our lives, and in Peter’s life, that every day was a huge challenge.

As his troubles were spiralling out of control again there was a window of opportunity to get him into rehab again. I don’t know how this came about, but once again I travelled up from Dorset to be with him and, while I was with him, he made the decision to have an implant.

An implant is usually surgically placed in the stomach or leg just beneath the skin. It releases Naltrexalone, which blocks nerve transmitters in the brain and spine and prevents heroin having any effect. There are dangers: should an addict then take a further dose of heroin in the hope of its having an effect, they run a high risk of death.

Peter instigated the implant with the thought, the belief, the hope, that this would really help. In many ways, I suppose it did. There was indeed a difference in his behaviour: he was glad to be free of his dependency on heroin, he was in love and Babyshambles were doing well.

Babyshambles. It has been a concern of mine that the mothers of the other young men in the band may worry about their own sons being associated with Peter; perhaps they are petrified at what they read or hear. But these are lovely young men, as were the rest of the Libertines.

At the end of 2005 Jacqueline Doherty was overjoyed to learn that Peter had gone to a rehab clinic in Arizona. Her relief was short-lived:

I was at work when a colleague told me she had read in the paper that Peter had left Arizona. She must be wrong, I thought. I would have heard. I tried to call the rehab centre but they wouldn’t release any information: the nurse on duty kept saying that she was not at liberty to confirm or deny that Peter had even been there, never mind whether he’d discharged himself.

My boss was by my side as I made my final appeal: “Please, I am his mother and the papers are saying that he’s been sighted in London. I just need to know the truth.”

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