You Only Get One Life (9 page)

I felt transformed. For weeks I’d thought nothing special about Luca except that we’d got on very well and we’d seen a lot of each other. We’d got hot and sweaty dancing, we’d had dinner with his parents but every echo in my soul had told me that he could never be someone I would go for. And now we were together, everything was bright and vivid and each day was beautiful.

I moved in with Luca and his family and for the next year my life was anchored. Luca drove me to work and every evening, whenever I wasn’t away, we’d have delicious homemade pasta at their place before going out dancing. We went to football matches and visited the busy market that ran every third Saturday throughout the summer on the piazza nearby. Mercato dell’antiquariato di Brera was full of beautiful Italian antiques and Luca’s neighbourhood was very bohemian. I thrive on the energy of cities, their sounds, their inhabitants and their smells.

Living with Luca provided a way of combining the high drama of modelling with the security of a warm home. His parents were very typical Italians, down-to-earth and loving. I didn’t speak the language, so daily activity was accompanied by miming and picking up words as we went along. Luca was an only child and I became the daughter that his mother never had – she was very kind.

We spent a lot of time in San Siro, a very attractive part of the city packed with lovely cafes. There were shops selling expensive handmade clothes by top designers and the area was also known for its gigantic football stadium. I had limited time to enjoy it. Quite often I’d have to go back to Paris to do shoots or spend days on some exotic island and increasingly I was being asked to do a lot in the US. If it hadn’t have been for Luca, I would probably have relocated to New York as the second fashion capital of the world after Paris, but it was still one of the happiest periods of my life, even though the constant travelling was a strain and in the end wore away at the relationship.

Towards the end of our year together, he and I began arguments which over time escalated into full-on fights. I was losing weight that I really couldn’t afford to lose and was becoming irrationally jealous. I accused Luca of playing around. I became quite miserable and it couldn’t last. I’ll never forget the day we finally broke up. Meat Loaf was at the height of his pomp and Luca had a tape player in the tiny room that had been my home with him for getting on for two years. As I angrily pulled my clothes out from the small cupboard, I knew it was over. Luca put on ‘Paradise By The Dashboard Light’ from that timeless paean to
doomed teenage love,
Bat Out of Hell
, which had provided a deafening soundtrack to millions of youthful bedroom dramas in the ‘80s.

I grabbed a handful of T-shirts and said goodbye to it all… the happy home… the dancing… the motorbike rides through Milan… everything we shared that meant so much. It hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary, Meat Loaf articulated it so well, but it had been the world for me. I was at an age where everything seemed more emotional but in truth I do think it took me years to get over Luca.

My anxiety attacks returned. I didn’t have anywhere I felt safe and although I threw myself into my work, I was very vulnerable. I got huge rushes of homesickness rising up through my body like a huge bubble. After one severe episode when I passed out, I ended up in hospital. My blood pressure went sky-high and I developed a fever. My mother flew in and the doctors told her I was suffering from stress. When I got out, I felt tired of everything: the superficial lifestyle of the model was hollowing me out. The constant travelling, the demands of casting agents and the agencies, the ever-present playboys, the photographers impatiently waiting for me the second I’d got off the latest plane. And I felt the lack of intellectual stimulation. Perhaps it was seeing my mum which reminded me of the love of books I’d grown up with; there had always been something new and interesting to absorb in the library. I was in need of that again. I wanted to be creative, to write songs, to see my family and to find stability again so I called the agency and told them it was over. Stop.

They had never heard anything so shocking: they told me
it was depression, that a lot of girls got the same way. I was at the height of my career, they said. I was 20 years old and I had an unrivalled portfolio. This, they informed me, would be a bad time to call a halt to my career. But I was serious. They kept on – I was earning so much money, I had so much work coming in.

‘Are you bullshitting us?’ they asked.

When I said, ‘No,’ I meant it. I got on a plane to Denmark: I wanted to find some peace and to work out what I was going to spend the rest of my life doing. It was time to think about picking up my studies again and maybe go back to university. The only thing that would stand in my way was my heart – as ever, it had its own plans for me and it was to insist on being heard.

I
  arrived back in Denmark in 1983 and I was filled with plans for going back to university. I’d earned a lot of money in my years as a model. Once I’d got a few covers for magazines like
Vogue
under my belt, for which I’d earn as little as $50, I could get from $1,000 to $3,000 a day doing the really high-paying catalogue jobs. They only touch you after you’ve done the big fashion mags.

I hadn’t kept a huge amount: a full 50 per cent of every job went straight to the agencies to start with. I’d also spent a lot on flights home and was always buying presents for friends and family. Then there were holidays in Ibiza with girlfriends, taxis and clothes. I didn’t care because I had chosen to leave that life and what was important was being home again.

I had time before the academic year began and filled in the gap modelling in Denmark while I decided exactly what it was I was going to do in the long term. A campaign for Levis
featured me in a stark photo wearing jeans and a plain, simple white T-shirt, one hand reaching for the sky as if I was carrying the world and one of my breasts was exposed. It became a huge success and there were massive posters everywhere. My mum just about passed out when she saw it.

I was treated like a conquering hero: I’d helped to make Denmark look cool to the rest of the world and when everyone sat up, I turned their requests down and came home. My career had the opportunities more usually only open to men; I could pick up work when I wanted and I was independent. When a smart new Copenhagen bar and restaurant called Cafe Victor – still going today – asked me to represent them, I did a publicity shoot wearing a jacket by a top Danish designer and walked a runway set up to show off the long bar.

I was very excited about going to the opening night party because it was in my home town; I felt like a kid again. A girlfriend and I made our way through the crowds and the smoky bar to the staircase at the back leading up to a level where there was a small area with a couple of tables. ‘Look at him!’ I whispered to my friend. I indicated a well-dressed young man at one of the tables. ‘That guy with the long hair and the blue eyes.’ He was part of a group but the others deferred to him and he looked comfortable holding court. There was an air of quiet authority about him. Everyone else knew who he was.

My friend looked at me like I was very strange for not recognising the man, but I had been out of the country a while. ‘That’s Kasper Winding,’ she said. Three years older than me, at 23 he was a songwriter and a multi-instrumentalist
who had found fame as a teenager in Denmark drumming with a band called Shu-Bi-Dua. He’d made many albums and with his own band, he was one of the hottest things in the country; he’d also written for musical movies and had hits over a number of musical genres. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do. And here I was getting ready to pass out like a swooning fan in the front row of one of his gigs. But I had to meet him.

My friend and I circled his table in a self-conscious version of a casual stroll. Each time we passed him, we’d smile directly at him like delirious schoolgirls. It was ridiculous. At the last pass he favoured me with a relaxed smile, introduced himself and asked us to join him. I came over all shy in my overwhelming desperation to sit next to this mature young man with his crowd of friends. Kasper was enjoying a post-gig beer and before I knew it, we had been chatting until midnight and the place was closed. We went on to a pizza restaurant at Nyhavn, an old part of Copenhagen by the river.

There the evening opened out. It was like a first date, with me still feeling stupidly shy and awestruck. Kasper was the first of those men I would be drawn to who were not only interesting but also stood out as excellent in their field: he was phenomenally talented. And despite my embarrassment, I always pushed to meet this kind of person – I had done everything I could to make absolutely sure that Kasper noticed me. I knew what I wanted. After the meal we walked back along the river and it was a warm night (for Copenhagen, anyway – probably freezing cold by anyone else’s standards). We kissed and it felt good.

We met a couple of days later, before I had to go to New York for a full week that felt more like an eternity. I was in love with Kasper and it already hurt to be apart from him. We both cried when we parted – it felt so intense but we had just met and our passion was only beginning. Anyone watching us would have thought we’d both suffered some bereavement – we wanted one another so badly. I can still remember what he was wearing that day: he was always so well-dressed, with his long hair covering the trendy scarf that everyone had to have at that time. I felt very alone in the hotel in New York, but I was prepared for it so I was surprised when someone knocked at my door on the first day. Which was nothing to my astonishment at opening it to Kasper, smiling at me in the Manhattan hotel room. The guy with the scarf had followed me!

Kasper missed me so much he’d taken the next flight out to be with me for a couple of days. All those thousands of miles! It was an outrageously over-the-top thing to do and the time we spent together in New York was the most romantic I’d ever had. Kasper had lived there before and showed off his local knowledge. He took me to places he’d played and he knew his way around the New York music scene. His acquaintances included The Rolling Stones, soul singer Teddy Pendergrass, jazz guitarist Ray Gomez, disco queen Narada Michael Walden and musicians who’d worked in a studio band called the Brecker Brothers.

I felt secure with Kasper. His outlook was cosmopolitan, our conversations were all about music and he was so different from those people who never seemed to see – much less approve of – anything that happened outside of their
neighbourhood in Denmark. Before he even left New York we had somehow decided that I would leave my parents’ place and move in with him on my return.

His apartment was spacious and airy. It was beautifully situated, overlooking the
Kongens Have
, or King’s Garden, in the heart of Copenhagen. He had furnished it in a welcoming bohemian style. Instantly recognisable as the home of a musician, it was packed with piles of old vinyl and books and quite a contrast to the way I lived. I looked rather out of place at Kasper’s with all my designer dresses, which I liked to have packed away neatly in my room. Often Kasper didn’t even iron his shirts – but he was wonderfully free and a true creative spirit. The two of us were very different but whatever we both brought to our party just worked. I opened my suitcases in his bedroom and unpacked my carefully folded Gucci dresses; I lay down on sheets which were as creased as anything else in his laundry, but I didn’t care – I loved everything about my new home.

It was important to me that we were both independent: we made our own money and we had our own lives. Kasper also thought that it was working because it was only about four months into our relationship that he asked me to marry him. That was him all over, he was a very impulsive sort of guy and I was a girl who listened to her instincts, but this time we both got it very wrong.

Kasper and I really should have got to know each other a bit more, just given ourselves time to enjoy our relationship and let it blossom naturally. Every time I looked at him I felt that frisson bubble up through me and
it felt right. I couldn’t control those feelings and I didn’t try to think it through – or rather, I made an effort not to think about it. I’ve always had a quiet warning voice in me that tells me to take a step back and consider situations. I was taught the value of rational thought through my upbringing but I always listened to my instincts. When Kasper proposed I leapt up in a second and immediately yelled, ‘Yeah! Let’s do it!’

We got married in a church in Christianshavn in the oldest part of Copenhagen. It couldn’t have been more romantic. It felt like this was going to be forever. My guests were Mum, Dad and Jan, my grandparents, uncle and aunt. Kasper, on the other hand, could have filled the entirety of Christianshavn itself. He had a lot of friends and a huge family, but mostly he stuck with record industry friends and we had a lot of really cool music to accompany our celebrations.

My mum and I found my dress in a tiny little shop and it was extremely simple with little in the way of accessories. Kasper had a very elegant jacket and seeing him there made me so glad I’d agreed despite the speed of our wedding. Back at our apartment my mum and Kasper’s family had set out tables of flowers and rather than have the traditional style wedding band, 60 of us danced into the night to the sounds of the Stones, Bowie and Dylan. It was perfect.

I was on my own in a German hotel room. In my hands was a little plastic indicator: it was telling me that my life was about to change forever. I had been married for two months. Already I knew something was up – my periods had always been so regular and I quickly took the test while I was away
on work. A lot of young working women would have been horrified by the implications for their career, particularly those involved in physical trades like modelling, but I felt complete happiness come over me. It just didn’t seem to be a problem. I looked forward to a peaceful family life: this would be my new focus.