Heather back on McCartney estate

Heather Mills has got back to where she once belonged. She is living less than 200 yards from Sir Paul McCartney after returning to his Sussex estate.

The former model had been staying at the couple's £2million seafront home in Hove following their decision to separate in May.

But she says she lacks privacy there and has now moved into a lodge on the 160-acre estate with their daughter Beatrice, while Sir Paul is in residence in the main farmhouse.

Friends say that the move was designed to make joint access to Beatrice easier and take some of the animosity out of the McCartneys' increasingly bitter divorce battle.

It has not been entirely successful in that respect, however, after the couple had a row over a phone conversation in which Sir Paul's daughter Stella criticised her stepmother - a tape of which found its way to Heather.

Stella is said have told her father how she believed Heather, 38, had consistently lied about her past.

She also told him she believed stories about her stepmother working as a prostitute, a claim Heather has always denied.

The fashion designer is also understood to have made a scathing remark about Heather's charity work. It is not known who recorded the conversation or how the tape somehow got into Heather's hands.

She is understood to have forced Sir Paul to listen to it and he is said to have been 'shocked' at his private conversation being bugged.

It is a criminal offence to intercept calls whether made on a landline or by mobile, punishable by up to two years in jail.