That April evening was one of the highlights of my life … until it was ruined. It was certainly the pinnacle of the band’s trajectory. It was what we had all fantasised about since our days in the squat, nine years previously. Secretly fantasised about. None of us ever articulated it, beyond a vague ‘we want to get the message out’ and an earnest agreement that, should we ever hit the big time, we would use the money to help the needy. But we’d come such a long way since the days of really having a message, of ranting about consumerism and elitism and cronyism. Perhaps if we had been more honest we would have admitted the truth: Yeah, and obviously it would be great to be millionaires too.

Our progress had been slow and steady, but what Cohen had worked and argued and sacrificed for finally paid off. All those circuits of the country in the knackered, old red van; the student unions and pubs and crappy festivals; the flexi-discs and home-printed T-shirts, building up our rabidly loyal fanbase, Goth by Goth.

That momentous evening saw the launch of our album, our third, but the first of a new deal with a major label, and said label had pushed the boat right out. They’d given us a five-million-pound advance for it, so they had to make sure they did all they could to recoup it – and the marketing and promotional spend started with the launch.

It sounded a lot, five million, we all agreed, almost sheepishly. And it was, of course. We rationalised it by pointing out that those were days of stupid advances. Bowie and U2 got close to forty million for deals in the late eighties and early nineties.

The launch was held in a swanky recording studio venue in Chiswick, the live room decorated with huge floor-to-ceiling black-and-white photographs of each of us. People milled around – other popstars, looking haughty and vaguely peed off that they weren’t the centre of attention. Journalists, TV celebrities and record-company staff from bigwigs to postroom boys had all just started arriving. The plan was to do an exclusive full playback of the new album, once enough free champagne had been circulated, followed by us performing an acoustic version of the first single, ‘Old Boys’ Club’.

Marsh was grumbling about the champagne and ‘fuckin’ ridiculous canapés’ that a dozen besuited waiters were offering on silver trays. ‘It’s not right,’ he kept saying.

‘Oh, chill out, Marsh,’ Webbo said, swigging back a full glass of fizz. ‘We’ve been over this a thousand times. The more well-known we are, the more of a platform we have to effect change.’

I took a glass of orange juice from a passing waiter’s tray. I didn’t like champagne, and didn’t want to drink anything alcoholic before we performed to such a starry and select crowd. Even though it was just one acoustic number, I wanted to give the best performance I’d ever given.

‘Or,’ I said, ‘we could’ve done a press release saying that we were offered this big swanky launch with ten grand’s worth of booze and cocktail sausages, but we turned it down and gave the dosh to homeless people. That’d get us publicity, right?’

‘Might do,’ said Marsh, lighting up his rollie and using an empty glass as an ashtray, ‘but it’s a bit late now.’

‘Shame,’ said Spike. ‘It’s a top idea. Wish we’d have thought of it earlier.’

The boys, once more, all looked slightly sheepish. I knew that our huge advance didn’t sit well with many of our fans either, who’d been very vociferous about it – sending letters written in green ink to the NME about how we’d sold out, and so on. But as Iain McKinnon, our new marketing manager, explained, the size of the advance had a direct correlation with how much the company would promote us, so in terms of giving our music the best possible chance to reach a big audience, it was the one thing that could ensure our worldwide success.

‘Give the money away if you don’t want it, hey?’ he’d said, his smooth forehead furrowed with confusion at the idea that anybody would be that insane.

In the end we all agreed to make sizeable donations to charity, and I actually did it. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that the boys had got around to it yet, but that was for their consciences to worry about. None of my business. Marsh bought his parents a new three-piece suite, so perhaps that was his idea of ‘giving back’.

They were here tonight – a nice middle-aged couple, her in pearls and twinset, him in slacks and a tie, standing awkwardly against the wall, drinking juice and looking nervous whenever a waiter appeared with canapés. ‘You should talk to your mum and dad,’ I chided, poking Marsh in the side.

He rolled his eyes. ‘Man, it’s so embarrassing they’re even here. I didn’t think they’d really come when I invited them. They hardly ever leave Northamptonshire.’

‘You’re lucky to have them,’ I said wistfully.

I was the only member of the band who didn’t have anyone there to support me. Webbo and Spike were both with their girlfriends, and at least Marsh had a mum and dad to be there, even if he was mortified by them. Despite the fact she’d turned out to be a two-timing bitch, I had a flash of wishing Samantha could be there to see us. But Marsh had heard on the grapevine that she’d gone back to the States and was now working at a Californian university as a lecturer in English literature.

Mum had passed away two years ago from a sudden stroke. I’d been on tour in Japan at the time, Cohen’s first international tour, supporting Radiohead, and I hadn’t even been able to come home for the funeral. I tried to explain to Pete on the phone, but he’d just shouted at me – the same old stuff: how selfish I was, how I never thought of anyone but myself, until I slammed down the phone.

I hadn’t spoken to him since. The band were my only family now.

Once everyone had downed a few drinks, Ray Newton-Berry, the company MD, gave an effusively OTT speech about Cohen and our ‘incredible’ first album for the label, how honoured they were to be releasing it, how he was sure it was going to be a worldwide smash, how delighted they all were to be working with us … blah, blah, blah. Marsh was staring at his shoes, Matty and Webbo were smirking delightedly at each other and Spike was examining the end of a dreadlock between his fingers, twirling it like a little girl fiddling with a ringlet. All the while, a photographer discreetly snapped away at us, standing under our huge monochrome portraits on the walls. We weren’t asked if we would like to speak – which was fine by me – then the album was duly played out at top volume through the studio’s sound system. I had to admit it sounded pretty amazing, and I could tell from everyone else’s expressions that they thought the same, as they whooped and hollered with genuine enthusiasm between every track. When it was over, Ray got back up and announced, to yet more ecstatic applause, that we would perform ‘Old Boys’ Club’.

Spike heaved up the string bass he was playing on this pared-down version, and Marsh sat down with the bongos rammed between his knees. Webbo and Matty slung their guitars round their necks, and I took my place at the microphone, taking a few belly breaths as the boys began the intro.

Some songs just flowed out of me on a river of emotion, and that was one of them. It wasn’t a sad song, but it resonated deeply; a tale of privilege versus hardship and poverty; a postcode lottery in which plenty was given to the few but denied to the many. You could have heard a pin drop in the room as I howled out the chorus. Even the too-cool-for-school celebs and supermodels were transfixed. When we finished, there was a second’s silence, then a roar of approval, far more genuine than the applause at the start.

I felt a moment of pure happiness – followed instantly by a stab of grief so deep I wanted to double over.

I wanted Pete to be there, clapping. I wanted Mum to be wiping away a tear of pride, just like Mrs Marsh over there. I wanted Dad to be nodding slowly and appreciatively. I wanted someone to give me a huge hug, in the way that Spike’s girlfriend was embracing him.

So it was with a mixture of delight and a dragging sense of loss in my belly that I left the venue a couple of hours later, walking with the boys through the studio doors and along a short pathway to the pavement, where the uniformed drivers of several executive cars waited to whisk us home.

That was when it happened, as we were all milling around, ignoring the paparazzi gathered outside the gates.

Later, I remembered it was a balmy evening – the sort of June night England does so well, when the air was warm yet still fresh and redolent with the scent of petrol, fast food and cut grass.

I’d just been chatting to Webbo, discussing when we’d next meet and what a great night it had been, when a huge and sudden howl of rage made us both swing around, jerking our heads with shock. The security guard at the studio doors started to bolt down the path, but he wasn’t quick enough: a bulky person in a clown mask leaped out, literally from the bushes he’d been hiding in a few feet away, we realised later, and threw something. At me.

I saw a flash of lime green and put my arm up over my eyes, just in time as it transpired, before I was completely drenched with paint flung from a five-litre can. The assailant’s aim was deadly accurate; there was barely a square inch of me that he hadn’t coated. Thankfully I had managed to protect my eyes, but it was in my open mouth, my nostrils and ears, deafening and humiliating me. Bright green, stinking, dripping off me, splattering everyone in a seven-foot radius.

Later, I remembered the gasp that went up, followed immediately by shouts and uproar, and the click-click-click of the camera shutters as the delighted paparazzi got the scoop of a lifetime. I remembered the balmy London night smell was eradicated in a second, replaced by the oily pungent stink of gloss paint – it was gloss; the bastard wanted it to be almost impossible to get off. The venue staff had to call an ambulance and take me away to make sure it hadn’t poisoned my blood. You couldn’t just wash off gloss paint, as I discovered – the hard way.

The A&E nurses were amazing. They stripped me off and sponge-bathed me with white spirit, which was cold and stung like buggery, three of them wiping me down as fast as possible to minimise the exposure to both the paint and the astringently toxic white spirit. I was too shocked to cry, but all I was thinking about was Pete.

I yearned for my twin then, with a longing stronger than I’d felt in all the years since we’d fallen out. I’d have rung him then and there and begged him to come and see me, thrown myself on his mercy, apologised till the green on my face turned to blue, but I was too busy vomiting into a cardboard kidney bowl.

The paint was so difficult to get it out of my hair that I told them to just shave it off. All of it. I didn’t want it.

I’d have got them to shave my skin off too, if they could.

Everything was ruined.

From the peak straight into the trough.

Spike and Webbo came to the hospital with me that night – Marsh had to take his folks to their hotel and Matty had apparently crashed out somewhere, too stoned to be any use. After my hosing-down, we gave statements to the police in a small, private visitors’ room. They had to keep the windows wide open, because even after a long, hot shower to wash off all the white spirit, my skin still stank of it to the point that the fumes were making everyone else feel slightly dizzy too.

It was in every pore. I felt as if the spirit and the paint were coating my internal organs too, as if I’d been glossed inside and out. My scalp was the only place that felt clean, and I kept obsessively rubbing my newly bald head. I was dressed in paper knickers, braless in hospital scrubs and borrowed flip-flops, my launch-party black dress now in an incinerator somewhere. I felt like a convict.

‘They’ve caught him, right?’ Spike demanded when the two policemen turned up.

But it turned out they hadn’t. And they never did. My assailant had dropped the paint can and legged it before anyone, even the security guard, had managed to catch him. He’d been wearing gloves, so there were no retrievable fingerprints, and no description other than a vague ‘six feet tall with broad shoulders’ – no idea of ethnicity or age or anything. The recording studio was in a residential area, so he could’ve disappeared into any front garden to hide, or into a waiting getaway car. It wasn’t a murder or even serious GBH, and the cops clearly weren’t going to deploy the resources to try and find him.

Everyone assumed it was an aggrieved fan protesting at our perceived sell-out. Although, even then, I thought differently. The attacker hadn’t shouted anything. Those sorts of protests weren’t usually solo; they were carried out by small groups not afraid to let their grievances be known. The point of protest was that there was a point.

As it turned out, I wasn’t wrong. The paint incident was just the start of a whole campaign of harassment that, on numerous occasions, made me wish I had never joined the band in the first place. Anonymous vitriolic letters, vandalism of the tour bus, violent threats to my safety – always mine, never the boys – until we had to have 24/7 security whenever we went anywhere; the cost of extra security at our gigs almost made it financially unviable for us to play in the UK.

The worst thing was the fear. The cold finger of dread on my spine, which had me constantly looking over my shoulder, unable ever to fully enjoy the buzz of playing stadiums and appearing on Top of the Pops, always thinking the masked assailant was out there, waiting to pounce, next time maybe with a knife or a gun.

I hated him for this. He ruined what ought to have been the most incredible time of my life.

The threats stopped as abruptly as they’d started – a year or so after the green paint incident, but my fear and sense of foreboding never went away.

With good reason, as it turned out.