You Only Get One Life (2 page)

One of the first to discover the charms of Lugano was Charlie Chaplin. Singer Robert Palmer lived and died here. Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky composed on its shores in the shadows of the Alps. It’s almost too pretty, a chocolate-box scene that could seduce anyone.

Our house had been owned by a Swiss baron who was
ruined in the casinos back in the 1920s. The building fell into decay until Raoul and I fell in love with it and set to work. We were on the border with Italy where I was doing a lot of TV work. Switzerland was popular with high earners – and it was where Raoul came from. He had to return home and Lugano seemed like a good place to start our life as a married couple. The paparazzi never made it out there and I could escape the stress of my high-maintenance lifestyle. We were secure. You could wander around completely naked if you wanted. Here I could live out my dream of being a normal wife and mother with an ordinary family: I would be Gitte at last.

It wasn’t to be. I should have listened to the voice inside me which was screaming for me to grab the kids and get out of there, but I was determined to make it work and I used everything, all my money, all my energy. Now I had nothing left and I realised that there was no other way out.

I thought our marriage was exactly what I needed, but we haven’t had sex for more than two years. We’ve all heard about cults that brainwash people into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. I didn’t believe that really happened, but now I understand. I can’t bear what I have become and I no longer recognise myself: when I look in the mirror I don’t see smart, strong, independent Gitte. Where is she? I don’t have the strength any more – I’m broken. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I’m on a treadmill fuelled by alcohol – that’s all there is in my life now.

Now I’m sure of what I want: I know I’m doing the right thing. It doesn’t seem selfish to me and I’m not thinking about the kids. Everything makes sense. I haven’t got the
resources to plan so there won’t be anything as organised as a suicide note, no instructions for my funeral service, no thought about what should happen with my remains and there’s nothing significant about choosing today to die. It might just as well have been yesterday and it might have come over me tomorrow. Maybe it’s the way the sun is shining through the windows this morning or the quiet drone of activity from the village or the gardener working downstairs. I’m not really sure. I just need peace: I want to smell it, taste it, feel it.

I had considered drowning myself in the lake but the thought of the ice-cold water put me off. I’d heard that death by drowning is the worst of all ways to die. The pills just make me feel light, sleepy. This is the peace I am looking for. I will drift off and never wake up again.

I’m a bit disappointed that it hasn’t happened yet – I thought it would be quicker than this. But now it’s coming. I feel really relaxed and I’m not at all scared. For the first time in a long time there is pain neither in my mind nor my body. I get a strange sensation, something turning in my stomach. I’ve cried so many tears – it feels like I’ve cried every day for years. I’ve become so used to unbearable pain that the sudden absence makes me realise how hard it has been to be me.

No more lies, no more guilt, no more feelings. The world is closing down around me and that reflection I didn’t recognise in the mirror is disappearing as well. I’m smiling, smiling, backing out of the picture. My last thought is of Marilyn Monroe and how she took an overdose. I’ve fallen over again but I don’t feel it.

I
  come from a very small suburb to the north-west of Copenhagen called Rødovre. Pretty middle class but not exactly glamorous. There’s a lake there and if you were Danish, you might pay it a visit on a day out.

My destiny in life was to be a librarian like my mother or maybe a shop assistant. I had a job in a bakery and I wouldn’t have minded staying. I’d have been content to save up for my yearly package holiday and I doubt I’d have dreamed of anything more ambitious than a slightly bigger house or a better car. Everyone would know me for being reliable at work and a good mother to my 2.4 children. The kids would have been good at sports and they’d have had a talent for music which might get them onto
X Factor
. They’d be popular, the neighbours would remark on how well-behaved they were, they would eventually go to university and they would get good jobs themselves. My script for life wouldn’t have made a
blockbuster movie but that’s what should have happened.

But it didn’t. My story was shaped partly by luck and in large part by me. In the alternate reality, little Gitte grew up and never left Denmark and she’s running around after her kids and she’s perfectly satisfied. Even now I still think that I might go back and work in that library or be the neighbourhood baker.

I asked myself why things developed the way they did when I sat down to write my story: I was trying to make sense of some of my darker experiences and I thought that it could all have been so different. Then I became convinced that I didn’t have so much control in what I was doing. You only have one life and it never runs as smoothly as you think it’s going to. It is made up of all these different threads and they have knots which you don’t even see until you step back and really take a good look at yourself. When you’re in the moment you just get yourself past the knots somehow and move on to the next thing. Most of us just don’t have the time to think about our motives. You simply live the life you have with all your mistakes and flashes of genius. Writing about yourself is a really weird thing to do because you get to think about it all properly for the first time.

At least I don’t have any doubt about where it all began for me. I was 16 in the summer in 1978 and I was heading straight for a famous square in Copenhagen we call Gråbrødre Torv. Full of bars with music always playing, it’s popular with tourists and young girls from the suburbs who are desperate for a bit of excitement in their lives. It was a Thursday and the endless playground bullying and ridicule I’d endured for so long was about to come to an end. I was
going to be appreciated; I was about to become someone to look up to, whose every whim would be indulged. This would be a fairy tale. And, as in any fairy tale, there would be a huge price to pay.

I was with my girlfriend Susanne and we had spent a couple of hours looking for clothes and shoes in local shops before taking the bus into town. We were so excited. Coming from the drab end of the city, the centre of Copenhagen was always bustling and full of life. We didn’t have much money to spend but we loved to window shop. Copenhagen is a very old town with beautiful churches and I liked looking at all the statues and the buildings with their characteristic copper roofs. You look up and you know you’re somewhere special. My neighbourhood seemed so sad and dark by contrast. We weren’t allowed out often and there was a bit of a thrill about hanging out in town – it felt illicit and very grown-up. We had on the nearest we could get to cool clothes and we knew loads of other teens would be showing off with a beer in Gråbrødre Torv.

Susanne and I always headed for a big tree in the square which was popular with young lovers. We made our way purposefully, arm-in-arm and deep in serious conversation about – what else? – boys. Our first stop was to get a beer at a bar where I was hoping to see a certain tall and blue-eyed bartender named Christian. Between us, Susanne and I had enough for one beer and two bus tickets home. It was all very silly, but it meant everything to us.

We felt at the centre of everything, surrounded as we were by busy people and traffic; it was where all the action in Copenhagen was. I blended in here. Nobody was going to
laugh at me for being too tall or too skinny. I could wear whatever I wanted, I could lose myself in the crowd. People here didn’t have the time to stop and be idly malicious. In Rødovre they called me a ‘
giraffen
’ – Danish for giraffe. I was an awkward, strange creature who always felt out of place.

Copenhagen was where it all came together for me and we were having the best time. Nothing looked more sophisticated, more gorgeous than the square. Apart from Christian. I smiled at him and when he came over to serve us I melted, grinning like an idiot. I was quickly dizzy from my half-a-beer and I didn’t even like the taste of it, but I felt older and it helped my self-esteem. Drinking beer felt like the sort of thing that Christian would approve of and my heart beat faster every time he looked my way.

I made the most of my freedom. It was almost 5 o’clock and I would have to be home by 6. This was my father’s deadline and there was no excuse for missing it. He was unbelievably strict. I would have to be at the dinner table and sitting up straight. Properly straight – Dad had taught me and my brother by making the pair of us sit still with a book on our heads. He had some old-fashioned ideas about parenting and I’m sure he didn’t intend the advantage his lessons gave when I started modelling. While the other girls would be learning how to walk neatly down the runway, I was already on lesson two. Dad’s rules at mealtimes extended to ensuring that our elbows were always down and we used knives and forks with equal elegance. That was just Dad’s way.

Five o’clock and my fairy tale, as usual, was going the way of
Cinderella
. I was young and excited and in love with
the world but I knew I had to get home before my dad turned me into a pumpkin. As much as I loved him, I was afraid as well and I would never have dared to cross him. All talk of boys and dreams about Christian fled from my mind as I prepared to head home. The party was over.

Susanne knew the score and we set off in plenty of time. It was always the same…until someone prodded me forcefully in the side. That had never happened before. I looked around sharply to see who was being so rude and what they wanted.

‘Would you like to be a model?’

I
  was born on 15 July 1963 to Hanne and Svend Nielsen. Back then, the Danish state provided a lot of help for newlyweds. They would automatically be offered an apartment if they were expecting a child. Our family was assigned a home in Rødovre.

Mum had a very easy pregnancy but my actual birth was horrendous for her. They ended up having to yank me out with forceps after she had battled for a couple of days to get me out on her own. I was just over 3kg and 50cm tall at birth, with blue eyes and black hair. I was an active baby, though with my round face and baby fat there was no sign that I would grow up to be 190cm tall.

After a year we moved to a nondescript two-storey house that was a popular style at the time. It had the red bricks that marked ‘50s construction in Denmark and it consisted of a long narrow kitchen, two small rooms for us kids and another bedroom for my parents. There was also an L
shaped living room and a terrace. Outside was a little shed.

When I got a brother, Jan, soon after our little family unit was complete. Jan and I were very close. We had to be – I didn't have many friends and Dad's strict rules meant we were rarely allowed out to play with other kids. Dad had some very weird ways. We would always have to clean the house after school, unlike most of the other kids. Danish society has a reputation for being laidback but you wouldn't have thought it, had you seen the Nielsen household.

Jan and I would entertain ourselves by playing cards or having fun out in the garden, finding amusing things to do or playing football together. We had a cocker spaniel which we'd take out for walks and we both liked to cycle. I was very protective of my little brother and always made sure that nobody hurt him – apart from me. Whenever we fought he'd invariably get a big-sisterly beating from me. I was terrible! He used to irritate me but at the same time we were a team. You'd never have got between us at school or in the neighbourhood streets, but at home whenever one of us did something wrong, we'd always blame the other. Quite a lot of the time we'd confuse our parents so much that they quite forgot about punishing us – either that or they'd punish us both. At least then we weren't suffering alone. I was often the one who would lead us into adventure and mischief then and although these days we don't see each other so much, we still feel as connected. He's a successful businessman based in Denmark and he travels a lot, but we're soul mates and when we get back together, we fool around as if we were still kids.

My room was on the first floor backing onto the garden. I was miserable most of the time and it was there that I gazed out over the middle-class neighbourhood. The gardens were always well-maintained and as it rains in Denmark almost as much as it does in the UK, they were always green. The really smart homes would have a flagpole planted in their gardens. Strange, huh? If you had a flag in your garden it meant you thought you were a slightly better class of person – that's just a very Danish thing! I would stare into the distance, past the flags and the neat little patches of grass, and I daydreamed my childhood away.

We were seven kilometres from Rådhuspladsen, the centre of Copenhagen and the square at the heart of the business district. It might as well have been seven light years. We were much closer to the Damhussøen lake. That was my escape from the identikit houses that looked as if they were out of some science-fiction nightmare where everyone was the same. The lake was where I got away from our strict house rules and my unhappiness with my physical appearance.

My grandmother lived in a house just by the lake. It was magical for a little kid. Whenever I could, I would take my bike and cycle as fast as I could to see her. She was on the far side and I would have to go all the way around. There was a little fun park near the lake and I always stopped at an aviary where they had homing pigeons. In a tradition dating back years, the birds were released each week and my dad explained that some of them would fly some 500 kilometres to get back home. They had probably once served an important purpose for the town but now it was just done for the sport. None of that mattered to me – I was
just amazed by their bravery. Imagine being hundreds of kilometres from everything you knew and having to find your way back! It was so romantic for me as a child who was often sickly. When the birds were due back I would speed down on my bike and stare hard, heart pounding, as tiny black dots against the expanse of sky resolved themselves into the familiar shapes of those bold scouts making their return. They'd always come back with messages. I imagined they would be bringing fantastic stories of faraway lands where daily life wasn't measured by the size of your flagpole or the shape of one's lawn.