HANNAH Spearritt has shared details of the moment she and Paul Cattermole held clear-the-air talks ahead of signing up for the S Club 7 reunion tour.
The 42-year-old was left devastated last week when Paul was found dead at his home in Dorset aged 46.
Paul and Hannah had not spoken for eight years after a bitter break-up in 2015.
Things ended so acrimoniously that her management team organised the meeting with a mediator in London back in January to find a way through their issues.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Hannah said: “It was important for me to see him and to know that we could work together and not make the band feel awkward.
“I wanted to put everything behind us and look to the future.
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“Ultimately, you only know when you see someone and look them in the eye, in terms of how things are going to be. It was a heart to heart and we spoke about everything that had gone on. We spoke about how we both felt about doing the tour, our reasons for doing it and if we would be OK to work together again. There was a lot at stake.”
While she was initially nervous about the meeting, the pair were soon reminiscing about their early days in the band in the late 1990s.
Hannah smiled as she recalled: “Paul spoke very fondly of those early days. We then found ourselves laughing a lot. We were there for about an hour.
“We sort of had this awkward hug at the end. When I got home that evening to my partner Adam and our two little girls, I knew then that I could do it.”
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In her emotional first interview since Paul's shock death, Hannah confessed: "I can't stop crying."
She said: “It’s still so raw and I have these moments where I don’t quite believe that it’s real. I still can’t believe I will never see him again.
“It’s all the more tragic because he was looking forward to the tour the most out of all of us. He just wanted to have fun and enjoy it.”