THE LOOS FALLOUT

Victoria, who by then had had second son, Romeo, stayed in the UK initially while David found his feet in Spain.

She wasn’t happy about the move, she admits.

“It was less than ideal.

“Did I resent David? Yes, if I’m being totally honest, yes I did. I was probably the unhappiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

Then all hell broke loose. Rebecca Loos, one of Becks’ assistants, sold a story to the now-defunct tabloid News of the World claiming they’d had a passionate affair.

David has always denied there was romance, but the scandal, which prompted Victoria to hasten her move to Spain, hit the couple hard.

Victoria, fighting back tears, says it was the hardest time of her life.

“Up until Madrid it felt like us against everybody else, but we were together, we had each other.

“But when we were in Spain it didn’t really feel like we had each other either. And that’s sad.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was. And how it affected me.”

David admits he was lonely when he moved to Madrid on his own.

“It was difficult because I’d always been part of a club and a family for my whole career.

“I get sold overnight. The next minute I’m in a city; I don’t speak the language.

“More importantly, I didn’t have my family.”

Things were rough when Victoria moved over, he adds.

“Every time that we woke up we felt there was something else.

“We both felt we were not losing each other, but drowning.”

He still doesn’t know how they managed to get through it.

“Victoria is everything to me. To see her hurt was incredibly difficult, but we’re fighters and that time we needed to fight for each other.

“We needed to fight for our family.”

Compounding Victoria’s misery was the fact the Spanish fans battled to warm to her – especially after it was reported she didn’t like Spain because

“it smelled like garlic”.

“More often than not I was always the villain,” she says.