You Only Get One Life (8 page)

The hospital had nothing to treat us for shock and we ended up with coffee – probably not what our nervous systems needed but we were grateful for any liquids by then. We sat quietly and watched as patients were wheeled in, among them a local boy who couldn’t have been more than eight. He had a gaping hole in his stomach. It still wasn’t safe for us to be so close to the fighting and as soon as we were up to it, we were moved to a hotel in a secure area.

The American counsel and assorted dignitaries were already there. They’d been transferred from their quarters in time. My first thought was for my parents. I begged the US authorities to let them know I was okay. We learned that the airport was badly damaged, phone lines were out and a 24-hour lockdown had been imposed. The 12 mercenaries had been killed, but none of us were allowed to move from the hotel.

I was still very scared and shocked and would jump when anyone so much as knocked over a glass. It seemed as if we were hiding in our accommodation forever, though it was probably less than a week before the curfew was relaxed. At last we could go back to our photoshoot and get on with the job.

But when we returned, the photographer was furious.

‘Where have you fucking been?’ he shouted. ‘This campaign is costing us a fortune and you never got in touch once to say what was going on!’ Miserably I thought to myself that this was almost worse than what I’d been through. If I’d been older I’d like to think I’d have slapped
him back much harder. As it was I started to explain, stumbling over my words, but he didn’t let me finish. They knew all about the coup, he said dismissively. His only concern was that I should have tried harder to get a message through to them.
The fucking phone lines were down!
I thought, but he just didn’t get it. What could I do? I got back to work.

We worked from early morning until 11.30am when the light became too strong and we broke until 4pm: you’d get the best light and finish around 7pm. In the last couple of days of the shoot I became sick – probably as a result of the conditions I’d been held in at the airport. Despite that I still think some of the photos were pretty good. There was one of me draped over a palm tree, the curve of its trunk contrasting with the arch of my body; you wouldn’t know what I’d been through. I look back at that and admire the resilience I had when I was young, or at least how well I was able to disguise the fact that I was about to drop with exhaustion… My fever hit 42 degrees before I was totally laid out.

I wasn’t recovered by the time we were due to fly back, but the Seychelles government had just declared that you couldn’t travel if you were ill. I had to pretend to be a hundred per cent healthy in the little orange shorts and T-shirt that were the only clothes I’d brought with me. I shivered my way through customs and did my best not to vomit, with the photoshoot crew all the while hissing at me to stand up straight and look relaxed.

I made it onto the plane which was to go to Frankfurt, where we would change for Milan. It was winter in
Germany. Snow fell and nobody offered to help me when we disembarked to board the transfer bus. I shivered uncontrollably waiting for everyone to get on for the short ride. The photographer looked at me contemptuously. ‘You stupid little girl,’ he said. ‘You knew how cold it would be here. Why didn’t you wear something else?’ I cried, silently. I didn’t say anything to him but I promised myself I’d never go back to the Seychelles – and I never have.

Mum and Dad were waiting for me in Milan. There they were, smiling faces at last! The American Counsel had managed to make contact and the media back home had reported, ‘The Danish hostage has been reported to be okay,’ which was when they knew. My then boyfriend, Luca, was also there to meet me. We celebrated, but I got back to work all too quickly. If something like that happened now I am sure I would be in post-traumatic stress counselling straight away. Who knows, I might not have gone on to develop my problem with noise. I did get over it for a while and it’s only as I get older that I find it’s come back. Perhaps I think about things more these days.

The modelling agency were happy to see me back, at least superficially. As far as they were concerned I had survived so now I could get on with my job. They never really asked me what had happened; that was the modelling world all over. You’re back! You’re still gorgeous! So now get with the programme… it’s a new day today, baby!

M
y success as a model never fulfilled me, though I grew up fast, got to see some amazing places and became friends with famous people. I’d done more than most girls had by their late teens and I had all the things I’d never been able to afford when I was growing up, but I was beginning to discover that it didn’t compensate for feeling the emptiness of the business I was in. Instead, it actually made it seem worse.

I wasn’t lonely, there were always people around me, but I was still as solitary as I had been as a child; I couldn’t seem to learn how to reconcile those two parts of me. And that’s because I loved the lifestyle in many ways – I do love having nice things around me, I liked all the trappings and the glamour of being known wherever I went. When I finished a shoot one day, went out to a club and sat next to Robert De Niro it wasn’t an unusual evening. I loved to flirt and to dance and I hardly ever drank. Drugs were never my thing
– I tried cocaine on just two occasions but I never had the taste for it, which was a good thing because it was everywhere. It was like being a rock star at the nights I went to in the ‘80s. You could have anything you wanted; it was a time of excess and piles of coke were put out as if they were bowls of crisps at a cocktail party.

I was happy with the way I looked and when I wasn’t working, I felt freedom under my wings: I was the bird who had finally flown away. My dancing was wild and I was Danish – you know, I didn’t wear a bra – but I didn’t want that to mean I was available. A lot of men misunderstood – they thought it was an invitation to something more. And it never was, it just wasn’t, but I loved the attention; I liked having people notice me for all the right reasons. Off duty I was a tease and I just wanted to have fun. I’d got used to being praised for my great ass and my beautiful boobs – and I appreciated every moment of it.

I was good at the job, I was professional and agents knew that when I said, ‘Yes,’ to a job, I meant it. I worked even under the most difficult circumstances. It wasn’t enough just to have a great body either: I took care of myself and I could transform in front of the camera. Health, strength and discipline were vital to keep up with the demands of modelling. I was up at 5.30am, in the studio by 7am and working through until 9pm. I couldn’t have gone out partying all the time and going off to get fucked up without it having an effect on my ability to work; I ensured I was always on top of my game and constantly in demand.

Everything went in a blur but I do remember being asked to do a shoot for Rolex. I wasn’t feeling very well that
morning but the agent countered this by saying I’d be working with Helmut Newton. Suddenly, I felt better again! The chance to work with the legend and his wonderful wife June was too much and I didn’t need to ask anything else. Most fashion photographers do their best with light and clothes to make you look beautiful but it’s all very formulaic. Helmut demanded expression and feeling. He was direct, powerful and had an unassailable sincerity in his approach. You would end up in front of the camera with your limbs at angles which shouldn’t possibly have worked, but somehow he brought life and playfulness to every shot.

It was the same with Herb Ritts. Both were creative and demanding in a way that felt refreshing. There was always a sense of a story behind their set-ups but neither of them ever spelled it out while they were shooting. Working with them was more exhausting than regular shoots but also tremendously inspiring. Their assignments were all the more welcome because they didn’t come along that often and served to highlight the mediocre filler I had to do between times. I was easily bored and it hadn’t taken long for me to realise that modelling at any level quickly became routine: I needed something more artistic to keep my attention.

My days were usually busy but virtually interchangeable. By the time I was on set first thing, I would have had a bath and done legs, eyebrows, nails… everything perfect. I’d say ‘Hello’ to the photographer, get with the make-up artist, stylist… On with the first set of clothes and repeat various parts of the same old performance all day – with a half-hour for lunch. I was a highly-paid clothes hanger, which is, of course, the job, but it wasn’t very interesting. Some models
go on as long as possible, but while I don’t mean to suggest I was better than them, I guess the shine quickly faded.

The groupies could be particularly annoying. Girls had to watch out for handsome young playboys with good clothes, fast cars and practised charm. I instinctively knew that there was something to be wary of, but a lot of my girlfriends didn’t – particularly the Americans. We’d go to exclusive clubs where you paid an unbelievable amount of money to secure a table. The American girls would be demure and prim sitting down and reserved in their dancing, yet they’d always leave with the boys. ‘All that “shy” bullshit,’ I said to another of my friends when yet another left arm-in-arm with a charmer, ‘what’s that all about?’ I’d been an outsider for so long at school that I didn’t need the company.

There was also something a bit tragic about the playboys. They were more to be laughed at than swept off my feet by but they weren’t bad people on the whole, though. I thought they were flattering and nice, apart those who had been doing it so long that they were getting a bit old and creepy, but they were revered in Italy. There, it was a serious business – a career for some of them. They had impeccable manners and their sole goal was to service the young models; that was basically their thing. What wasn’t so widely known was that they were paid by modelling agencies – even the wealthy lads. Their job was to keep the girls busy when they felt lonely. The models were either working hard or on the treadmill looking for assignments. They’d be distracted by the boys, they might have a little coke and most of the time, they didn’t care when they didn’t
make it. How could you resist a gorgeous guy when you were 17 and blue?

How it worked was the agency let new models know where the best clubs were located and these were the ones they packed out with their young men, champagne and exclusive areas. Used up after two or three years, most of the girls were never heard of again. The girls who didn’t come from Italy were the most vulnerable: they were in a strange land where they didn’t speak the language, maybe a continent from home and they weren’t really able to make a proper judgement about who they could trust. It was the side of the industry that didn’t get written about in the fashion editorials.

My daily conversations with my dad helped me in resisting the politics of the business. He underlined how important it was to call regularly and I always told him how I was doing and what problems I faced. He was so practical and always had a solution. His attitude towards me was so much more relaxed than I ever thought it might be growing up in our strict household. The big clubs were open every night and some girls were out all the time but my money was more usually spent flying back to Denmark. It was only an hour-and-a-half from Milan with a short drive and those visits probably helped to keep me out of trouble.

The boyfriend I got not long after I established myself in Milan also helped me keep my feet on the ground. I met Luca in a club that had become a favourite because it wasn’t plagued by playboys. The DJs were amazing and it wasn’t really somewhere to drink, you just went in to dance. And that’s how I met Luca.

There was something about him, though he wasn’t as handsome as some of the guys who would always be hanging around: he had a big nose for a start and big lips. Luca was very fit but definitely not what you’d expect me to be into as a model. He was an amazing dancer though: watching him move really kicked something into life in me. Night after night we’d meet after 11pm and dance and dance until we couldn’t any more and then we’d just go to sleep. I’d be up first thing in the morning for work. I was so happy; he was so natural and normal.

At first I didn’t want anything more than to be his dancing partner. He would often ask me out for a pizza but for a long time I held back until he finally asked, ‘Can I take you for a real dance?’ That was it – finally he’d got me on a date and it seemed right that it was about dancing. I was excited because he wasn’t like the regular Italian guys: he was straightforward and said we might go on afterwards to have something to eat with his parents. He was just a regular kid.

That evening we danced until 4 o’clock in the morning, then we slept together at his place – but it was only sleeping. We collapsed together on the bed and nothing more happened between us. I had to get up at 8am and Luca woke me, got my breakfast and drove me to the job. I was so used to everything in my world being a transaction that his kindness made me worry about what he expected in return. He picked me up and kept on doing that for the next couple of weeks. We’d have dinner together perhaps, but do nothing physical. It allowed time for me to get to know him and I didn’t feel pressurised. I got to like him in a very easy
way, but I didn’t feel much more for him until one rainy day when I was late for work.

Luca took me on his bike, speeding through the busy streets of Milan. Visibility was bad and we almost came off. Steam poured off us as we arrived on that cold day and he took his helmet off. His long hair tumbled down and his glance back at me changed everything: the world went in slow motion. Something hit me inside and I fell in love; strange that all my doubts about his looks should disappear. I had fallen for an 18-year-old boy who lived with his parents in a very ordinary quarter of Milan. He spent his days playing tennis – he was very good and his family hoped he would be able to become a pro – and by night, well, we know. He danced.