There's No Place Like Frome
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There's no place like Frome When Pearl Lowe abandoned her notorious Primrose Hill Fast Set for the slow, rolling hills of Somerset, she found the contentment she had always craved, she tells Kathryn Knight Given that Pearl Lowe's husband is a rock star and that she used to be in a band herself, it should be no huge surprise that the couple now live in a “very big house in the country”, as Blur once mockingly described the pop lifestyle. Nonetheless the idea still takes some getting used to: for many years Pearl and husband Danny Goffey, drummer with the indie band Supergrass, were confirmed urbanites, specifically urbanites living in one tiny hectic triangle of North London known as Primrose Hill. Here, alongside her close friends Sadie Frost, Kate Moss, Davinia Taylor and assorted other actresses, models and musicians, Pearl seemed to live a gilded existence as part of London's “It-crowd”. She had three gorgeous children, the rock star partner, the vast stucco-fronted house and a glut of A-list invitations cluttering her mantelpiece. Only those closest to her knew that behind the dazzling party smile Lowe was not just a “recreational” drug user at those all-night parties but hopelessly addicted to heroin and cocaine, and barely holding herself together. As she says today: “I was living a whole life that was fake, and that was really scary. Everyone told me I had the best life and actually it wasn't, it was vacuous and empty, a big bag of nothing. I'd pushed the people who really mattered away for people who didn't really give a s*** about me.” Many people with similar trajectories don't get their happy ending, but Lowe, 38, certainly seems to have found hers, in the environs of a three-storey Georgian sandstone house on the outskirts of Frome in Somerset. Set in an acre complete with swimming pool, it is here that the Goffeys, who wed in December, now live with their three children, Alfie, Frankie and Betty, as well as Maggie the Jack Russell-shitzu cross and Lily the Bengal cat. Daisy, Pearl's 19-year-old model daughter by the singer Gavin Rossdale, also has her own bedroom and stays often. Considering that the couple moved in only eight months ago, when the house was an eye-popping miasma of blue and purple walls and swirly carpets, it already feels theirs, a serene vision of whitewashed floorboards, vast fireplaces, muted walls and carefully distressed furniture. It's also very much the style you would expect from someone who can't quite shake off Primrose Hill; all Farrow & Ball walls and Uggs in the hallway. “We've only been here since April, so it's still a bit of a work in progress,” Lowe says. “It's a case of slowly doing it. But I've enjoyed being creative. Everything I've got has been from junk yards or 20 quid at an auction and then repainted.” The garden, too, is full of potential. “It's a bit of a blank canvas, which is great, so we are still working out what to do with it,” she says. It is certainly a world away from the old Pearl Lowe, the one who spent days “out of her mind” on heroin, who, she admits, neglected not only herself, and her musical career - she was formerly lead singer with the band Powder - but even her children in the pursuit of artificial highs. “I just felt constant guilt,” she recalls. “I was a really bad mum and that to me is the worst thing. I was always letting them down and I felt like a failure. It was just a nightmare, the whole thing. Living in London just meant there was too much temptation. I'd have agreed to bake a cake with the kids and then the phone would ring with a PR saying, 'Oh Pearl, we've got this party, we'll send a chauffeur-driven car and there'll be a Hermès bag there for you' and so it would be a case of 'sorry, kids'. She pauses and laughs. While there is more than an element of “rock chick does the country” to Pearl's not entirely muddy lifestyle, she says: “That scenario would never happen here.” It certainly wouldn't. While Babington House, country offshoot of the exclusive Soho members club Soho House, is just “down the road” (Lowe uses it as her gym, an option not available to the average country-dweller), most spare time is spent with the kids walking up the Tor in nearby Glastonbury, or pottering in the garden. “The kids love it here,” she says. “They've just completely thrived.” In fact, this is not the couple's first house in the country; three years ago the pair moved to a rented 14th-century cottage in Hampshire, tucked away down a winding, single- track lane. The move was part of a final bid to stay clean of drugs - Lowe had conceived Betty nine months earlier, on the day they first viewed the house - and although the house was rented, and a bit too dark for her liking, she had no doubts she'd made the right move. “I felt peaceful the moment I arrived in the country,” she says. “I removed myself from the world and it was great. I wrote my book, All That Glitters, about my time as an addict, staring out over the fields, watching nature, and it felt quite spiritual. I started to like who I was and reconnect with my family and my children.” In the meantime Lowe and Goffey continued to search for their dream home. “It took us three years to find it,” she says. “I thought it was going to be easy but there was literally nothing under £2million that was anything decent, it was ridiculous.” Initially concentrating round the commuter belt, the couple realised that it would help to stretch their wings, and focused on Somerset, an area they both loved. “We found this house on the internet first. When we walked round it was amazing. It has such a lovely feeling and we've got gardens all around, and the area is fabulous, with so much to do. The kids are really happy. One day I would definitely like to be even more rural and secluded, but let's see.” There will certainly be no return to city life. “I have to go to London from time to time for my work, but more often than not it feels like a chore,” she says. “I can't wait to get back and the minute I drive through the countryside I feel like I've arrived. In London it's all about keeping up with the Joneses, about being fabulous, all ‘Look what she's wearing' and you get really caught up in it. It's not like that here - it's just throw on your Uggs and an old dress and out the door into the fresh air.” With the exception of the actor Rhys Ifans, a great friend of Goffey's, she is no longer in touch with her old crowd. “There's no animosity - I've had e-mails and stuff from time to time and invitations to go places, but it's just not a good match for me,” she says, with typical candour. “They're all still friends together and doing the same things that we were doing ten years ago, up all night and whatever, and to me now that's not appealing, and it wouldn't be very good for me either. What matters is being healthy and being an amazing mother and making sure we're OK as a family. That's my social life now, it's not about going to this and that amazing party.” Indeed today only a collage of pictures of Kate et al, taken at assorted festivals and parties over the years and hung in the downstairs loo, hints at a more colourful past. “Everything I need in my life is here in Somerset. Work is going well, the kids are settled and happy.” Life is a mix of school runs, a gentle swim or jog and afternoons working in her airy office on her vintage clothing business. “We're usually asleep by 10.30 because everything's full on. Weekends we often have people to stay and it's a bit overloaded and hectic. But people who come here now know that they are not coming to a massive party, its more like a haven.” Daisy comes back when she can, clambering into her mum's bed in the morning for a cuddle alongside her younger siblings. “People say, 'Don't you worry about her with drugs?' and I say, 'No - I'd worry about other girls but not her.' She's just very sorted, very streetwise.” It is the kind of calm existence Lowe can once have only imagined. “People who know me down here say they can't imagine me as I was. I tell them, 'Well, believe me you wouldn't have been my friend'.” She pauses, and flashes her wide smile. “I know that I'm happy now, and that I wasn't - and that's the only truth I need to know.” A rock chick's rural guide: Pearl Lowe's tips for moving to the country Don't keep running back to town every chance you get. There's a real change of pace and you need to embrace that.