DURING her abusive marriage to Stephen Belafonte, Mel B was cut off from her family.

Today, in another exclusive extract from her new autobiography Brutally Honest, she details more of Stephen’s controlling behaviour – and how her dying father gave her the courage to leave her toxic marriage behind.

"THEY call it the circle of life. Nature’s way of taking and then giving life back. And it took the death of my father at 3.15pm on March 4, 2017, to get my life back.

I always knew there was only one man who could save me. Martin Brown. My dad. I hadn’t spoken to him since that awful row at our old house in Leeds in December 2014, and the anger and disappointment I saw in his eyes stabbed at my heart like a knife.

Despite all of that, I was his daughter, the little girl he had adored more than life itself. He might hate me, but I knew that his love still burned away underneath. In the end, it was my dad who gave me the strength to leave Stephen.

My father had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer [a type of bone marrow cancer] in 2012 after an op on his spine led to further medical investigations. In 2013 he had a stem-cell transplant, which was traumatic for him and also for me because he wouldn’t speak to me when I called the hospital.

“Face it. He doesn’t give a f*** about you,” Stephen told me, as I cried myself to sleep.

“When my dad dies, I’m divorcing you,” I told Stephen by the end of 2016. He laughed, but I think he was nervous. I had stopped answering all his calls. He could sense I didn’t care.

When I left LA for New York [to play Roxie Hart in Chicago], Stephen knew it was all over bar the shouting. I impressed the critics and I was away from Stephen. Every night, however, I would get messages from my sister telling me how ill my dad was.

He was admitted to St James’s University Hospital in Leeds. As January [2017] wore on, he was getting weaker and, by the beginning of February, the few words he could say were, “Where’s my daughter?”

I knew I had to go, but I had to finish the run of the show, which ended on February 19. Otherwise I would be sued because it was in my contract and, also — I have to admit — I needed to finish the job.

I also knew my dad would wait for me and would understand I had to finish it. This was a man who’d never taken a sick day in his life.

I got in my car and drove to Utah to pick up Phoenix. I could not go back to my father without my daughter. His first beloved grandchild.

We drove to LA airport and took the first flight to Heathrow.

I had booked train tickets but reckoned I wouldn’t be arriving in Leeds for at least four more hours.

“I’m going to hire a jet,” I told Phoenix, who looked at me open-mouthed.

It took 27 minutes to get from London to Leeds-Bradford airport.

As I opened the door to my dad’s room, I grabbed Phoenix’s hand. Planet Radio’s Magic Soul was playing the classic songs my dad loved.

“Dad, it’s me.” He opened his eyes and looked at me. Phoenix was by my side, but I barely even noticed she was there.

“I love you.” The words came out in the faintest croaking whisper. I held his hand, my heart breaking. I was actually terrified he was going to die right there and then, he looked so unbelievably frail.

My dad could no longer speak, but neither could I. What the hell had happened in my life that my daughter and her grandad would only meet on his deathbed?

The doctors said he had only days left. I went — as I do — into organisational mode. We all slotted into our old roles. My mother shaved him, my sister brushed his teeth. Each task filled hours of the day.

I told [sister] Danielle we needed to get some Special Brew. Dad couldn’t even swallow, so we wiped it over his lips with some cotton wool. I told him I was leaving Stephen and I felt his hand tighten slightly on mine.

On Saturday, March 4, 2017, I knew it would be his time to go.

We were all in the room, everyone was talking, and the Stylistics were singing “You Are Everything” on the radio. It was 3.15pm.

I leaned over him. “Dad. You’ve had your hair cut and a shave. You’ve got a fresh shirt on. We have prayed. We are ready. You are ready. But I can’t start my divorce until you die.”

His eyes opened for a second, we looked at each other, and there was a moment in which I felt every ounce of pain that had ever passed between us disappear. Then he took one last, very slow breath. “He’s gone,” I announced to the room.

They all stood around the bed in disbelief. I didn’t want to cry. My dad was out of pain. He was free. We had made our peace and I had made him a promise.

Now, I needed to go and do what my father wanted me to do: Get Stephen out of my life. I said goodbye to my family and took the first plane back to LA.

I didn’t go to my father’s funeral. I found a house and a divorce lawyer. I moved myself and my children out and asked a judge to put a restraining order 7 on Stephen.

'I am adventurous with sex...I like it'
MEL is not shy about being an “extremely sexual person” and reveals in her autobiography that she and her husband had regular threesomes with other women, which he would film.

She says: “I have no issues with my sexuality. I’ve been in relationships with men and women. I don’t think it’s shameful to like sex, I don’t think it’s shameful to experiment . . .

“I like sex. I am adventurous with sex. I have enjoyed threesomes and initiated threesomes.

“I enjoy a woman’s body and I enjoy a man’s body.

“In the very early days it was fun. We’d go to a nightclub and pick out girls we found attractive.

“We had similar tastes – toned bodies, an air of confidence, a couple of tattoos and a sexy way of dressing. I preferred blondes.”

Mel says she had no trouble attracting women.

“It’s pretty easy when you are Mel B – people are really happy to talk to you. We’d have a drink and a chat and I’d see if I liked them.

“If it felt right, I’d ask them, ‘Do you want to come back to our room?’”

Sometimes it was arranged in advance with women they knew – “lap-dancers we’d come across, or one of the very many LA party girls”.

Mel admits she and Stephen would even have a threesome while the children were asleep. “Sometimes we would invite people to our house. We were always on the top floor, several levels above the children.

“I would always make sure I got the girl home, that she was OK, that everything was OK.

"I grew quite close to some of these girls. I still see them every now and again and we talk. They are glad I’ve left him.

“I know there are a lot of people out there (my mother included) who would never find this funny. Just seedy, sordid or another word beginning with ‘s’, like sleazy.

“And I know there’s another layer of people thinking, ‘What about her kids?’ And that’s where you have me.

"That’s what I’m dealing with now.“I thought, I genuinely believed, my children were completely protected from the toxicity of our relationship.”

Mel claims her husband has 64 videos of them having threesomes.

She was often unaware the tapes were being made as she was high on drugs or drink and, once their relationship soured, became terrified Stephen would leak the videos to humiliate her.

'It wasn't the answer'
LIFE got so hard for Mel that, in 2014, she attempted to take her own life by downing 200 painkillers just days before The X Factor finale.

She writes: “Behind the glitter of fame, I felt emotionally battered, estranged from my family.

“I felt ugly and detested by the very man who once promised to love and protect me.

“A man who after ten years of marriage had a library of sex tapes that could – as we both well knew – ruin my career and destroy my family.”

She even wrote a suicide note to her daughter but, as she swallowed the last pill, realised she did not want to die.

“Suicide was not the answer. I had to make my life count,” she recalls.After passing out she woke up surrounded by doctors and her hysterical daughter.

She knew “the fightback had to start” and appeared on The X Factor two days later, clearly sporting the cuts and bruises sustained from blacking out and no longer wearing her wedding ring.