Mills denies telling lie about nanny’s boob job
Speaking at the third day of an employment tribunal brought by Sara Trumble, 26, Mills said they were “very close” but their relationship turned sour when she refused to give her £4,000 (€4,500) to undergo breast enlargement surgery in the spring of 2008.
Mills, cross-examined by Trumble’s solicitor Nick Fairweather, said: “I had a breast reduction when I was 21 and I couldn’t pick anything up for weeks because it was so painful.
“I didn’t criticise her wanting to have a breast enlargement, I just felt it would have been wrong of me to help with something that could have been a reaction to her boyfriend or her hormones.”
Fairweather accused Mills of making up the issue as a way of explaining why Trumble turned against her.
Disputing the date that Mills said she asked her for the money, he said: “I suggest that your previous comments were to intimidate and bully and belittle her to stop her from going on with this claim.
“I suggest that you’re telling a very, very unpleasant lie.”
Mills answered: “I’m not telling a lie. She asked me for £4,000, how on earth would I have known that amount when I put my statement together?”
Fairweather continued: “If this tribunal finds that you lied about that, would you agree that this is a despicable thing to do?”
Mills said: “I never did it.”
Trumble, who was employed by Mills and her former husband Paul McCartney as a nanny to their daughter Beatrice, now six, from April 2004, alleges that Mills discriminated against her when she had her own child, relegating her to domestic duties until she was forced to resign.
She has claimed the former model reduced her to tears and made her feel awkward by making her lie to her ex-husband when he came to pick Beatrice up or drop her off after their split.
But when questioned about this, Ms Mills said: “No, I think you’ll find that I did everything to make sure that she was not put in the middle and I always said that if he asked her questions just say I don’t wish to discuss it.”
Concluding his cross-examination, Fairweather said: “After Sara became pregnant your attitude towards her cooled and you dispensed with her services. You thought she was a pushover and would never stand up for herself.”
As she left the hearing, Mills read out a two-page statement.
“The only conclusion I can come to, sadly, is that Sara wanted this case to come to open court so that she could make more money from selling her story by adding what some people may believe as irrelevant and sensational claims in her statement, and because I cared for her so much, I find this deeply, deeply distressing.”
She claimed that the tribunal was disrupting her charity work, “harming thousands of people’s lives along the way”.
She added: “I only hope that if justice prevails and we win this case, others considering court action will think twice before they invade the privacy and intimacy of family life.
“This case is not about money. If I allowed this claim to go uncontested, it would have set a precedent for all families who have domestic help to be held to ransom.”
A reserved judgment will now be made with the verdict expected to be given by the end of May.
