Former Beatle Paul McCartney and his estranged wife Heather Mills met in court on Thursday to hammer out details of potentially the costliest ever divorce settlement in British legal history.
Media reports suggest that Mills is seeking up to 60 million pounds (85 million euros, 120 million dollars) from McCartney's 825 million pound fortune to end their five-year marriage, which collapsed last year.
The couple spent all day in behind-closed-door hearings at the High Court in central London. Even the small spy hole in the door of the courtroom had been covered to stop prying eyes.
By late afternoon on new details had emerged, although McCartney emerged briefly inside the building to ask a couple of journalists if they were enjoying themselves, before going back into court, Sky News reported.
At the start of the day Mills, 39, arrived at an annexe of the High Court in central London and was ushered into the building with a blanket covering her head as a scrum of photographers clamoured for a picture.
McCartney, 65, arrived soon after. Both used an entrance normally reserved for judges to get to courtroom number 16 and avoided any contact with the waiting media.
Media reports here speculated that the hearing was almost certainly about money -- how much Mills wants and whether McCartney wants to shell out for further court hearings.
If the case were to go to the Court of Appeal, it could be held in public.
The Sun newspaper said Thursday that the pair had agreed a 50-million-pound (72-million-euro, 102-million-dollar) deal in order to shield their three-year-old daughter, Beatrice, from a lengthy legal process.
Negotiations to finalise the agreement, which if confirmed would be the biggest-ever in Britain, were to start Thursday and could last for a couple of weeks, the paper added, citing an unnamed source close to the case.
The Daily Mirror said the figure could be as high as 60 million pounds.
McCartney and Mills, a former model who lost a leg in a 1993 road accident, married in 2002, four years after the musician's first wife Linda died of breast cancer.
Since they split last year, the couple's divorce has been played out acrimoniously in the public eye, with Mills saying in March that securing a divorce deal was like "getting blood out of a stone."
McCartney has kept largely quiet during the proceedings.
In May, insurance broker John Charman, 53, was ordered to pay his former wife Beverley 48 million pounds in Britain's biggest contested divorce settlement.