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?’
CHAPTER 3
THE HOMING PIGEON WHO DIDN’T COME BACK
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 t
o 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.
‘I wish they could talk,’ I’d say.
I wondered about the men who sent them off and what they thought. I’d hear the wings flutter when they were readied for release and hear the excited noises from the birds. When they circled ready to make their journey I wanted to clap, jump and shout encouragement – but I was always too shy.
My own attempts to make a break for it were rather less successful. I started early, when I was just three. Liselotte was my best friend and she came from a wealthy middle-class family, with a father who was a dentist. She was the opposite of me, small and quiet while I was the tomboy. Liselotte was a year older but it was me who convinced her to go on an adventure with our tricycles. ‘We’ll go and see my grandmother,’ I told her and we set off to find the lake.
I have no idea how we got away with it, but we did, and Grandma gave us juice and cake. I savoured every mouthful, all the while knowing that I was going to be in big trouble with my parents who were already on their way to pick us up. I got a smack off my dad but it didn’t put me off adventuring. Liselotte and I stayed friends for years and I was always hungry for excitement. I liked nothing better than to pack a bag with some supplies and head off into the unknown with my trusty bike. One time we somehow managed to find our way onto a motorway. The police found us and there was definitely no cake. I was always the one who was being reckless. The result was another smack and one week grounded.
When I was on my own I often cycled about five kilometres to Heden, a beautiful open space, flat and tranquil. I got off my bike and lay on the grass, gazing into the white clouds and daydreamed. One day a handsome man would ride up on his horse and take me away from all the bad things to a magic land. Rødovre was safe, it was all right, but I was never comfortable. Something about the place didn’t agree with me.
For a start, I was always sick. As a baby I had streptococcal blood disorder which affected me for a long time around the age of two. My hair fell out and I had a very high fever. I was in and out of hospital for months while the doctors tried to find out what was wrong with me. Three years passed and they prescribed so much medication that I had to go to a specialist hospital reserved for children so sick that they can’t live normally. I was five, but I was still the size of a two-year-old and very thin. ‘Will I be like this forever?’ I asked. It was a pretty big question for a five-year-old.
I later discovered myself as a mother of four that kids are amazingly resilient. They can survive the most devastating illnesses and I did get better. I didn’t even remember much about the sickness myself. It was very different for my parents, who found it unbearable to watch their child suffer. They felt completely helpless that whatever they tried to do didn’t work. I realised just how bad it must have been when my youngest son Raoulino was diagnosed with a noncancerous brain tumour at the age of eight. As it grew he was at risk from bleeding in the brain and he was sick for two years. He’s fine now, but at the time they told us he could die at any moment. I felt that gnawing terror that my parents felt at an illness which doesn’t seem to have a cure.
My own memories of being a very young child were happy ones. The best times were when our yearly holiday took us to Orø. We never had the money to go on foreign holidays and instead we went to this tiny island north of Copenhagen. We piled into the old, embarrassing car with all the luggage tied on top with a rope; at least my parents allowed me to take Liselotte with us.
The holiday home was old and little more than a not particularly large, wooden box. One room included the kitchen with its single-ring stove while the toilet was outside with a hole, but it made for the most memorable vacation even if you’d swear our cramped quarters could never hold all of us. It didn’t matter though, because for once the rules were relaxed and that was enough to make it paradise.
I was allowed to hide, to run around and – my favourite thing – to climb trees. As a kid, I was like a monkey and I would lose myself for whole days at a time and could be as dangerous as I liked. The island was only about 14 kilometres in total, small enough for the adults to be reassured that we were probably safe but large enough for it to be an exciting wilderness for us. It was warm and I was surrounded by the people I trusted the most. Mum and Dad were relaxed and in a good mood and nothing could hurt us. We’d head off with backpacks stuffed with food and drink. Liselotte was by my side just as she’d always been since we were little.
We went down to the water to laugh at birdwatchers. All were totally absorbed in what they were doing, some motionless, gazing straight up with their noses in the air while others stared intently for minutes at a time, seemingly at a patch of sand. They had no idea that they were providing the cabaret: they were hilarious in their seriousness and the way they seemed completely oblivious to anything if it didn’t have feathers or live in an egg. You could get right up close to them and they wouldn’t react at all. Then we ran off to throw ourselves in the sand dunes and look for seals in the water.
That holiday was also the first time I fell in love. Vesti was the son of the shopkeeper who ran the island’s tiny supermarket. He had dark, curly hair and dark eyes and I remember their long, dark eyelashes, they were so beautiful. And he made me laugh. I dreamed about him the whole summer.
I was only nine years old but I can still remember the way he smelled and a wonderful feeling of tingly excitement, like I had something sparkling and fizzy in my stomach, every time I looked at him. It was a confusing sensation that I first got to know in the shower when I was eight.
I’d spilled marmalade all over my clothes and my mother got me to take off the sticky things and clean myself up. I never needed any encouragement to get in the water and I loved to bathe – I was a real waterbaby. My hair was washed in the shower and I got soap all over myself. I directed the showerhead all over my body and when the jet played between my legs, I felt this jolt of excitement.
I had no idea what I’d discovered with my showerhead, but I liked it. The warm sensation was strong and tickly all over my body if I kept the showerhead in a particular position and whatever it was, it felt fantastic. After a while it would get to be almost too nice. I had to change position occasionally otherwise it felt like I might go crazy – but I always brought it back again. How long was I doing it for – five minutes? Ten? I don’t know; I lost all sense of time.
The experience opened a door to a completely new world and I was eager to understand what it was all about. In some ways I was already an experienced young lady by the time I got to meet Vesti: I had already met the feeling that he aroused in me and I knew myself quite well by then. The physical world I was exploring and the world of love came together in Vesti. At the time, I just wasn’t old enough to make a conscious connection between the two. I couldn’t quite work out what the difference was between the love I felt with my trusty showerhead and the love in the presence of Vesti. The best I could work it out was that the feeling I got in the shower would always end quite abruptly. When it was over – it was over. What I felt around Vesti lingered on. I was to spend many years later on trying to bring the two worlds of the physical and the emotional together.
The love I found on holiday was new. It was warm, exciting and it was a comforting sensation. I felt safe, although I know many women wouldn’t compare love to safety. For me it was everything. And of co
urse that kind of love only works when the other person feels that safety too and you get the feeling returned. Vesti seemed interested to me but I’m now sure that it was basically just me who was in love. We were, after all, only nine and I don’t think he had much to return to me. I was just ecstatic to have those feelings – I felt so proud, so grown-up. This was the thing that meant the most to me in my life – and it has done ever since then.
Love has come and gone over the years, but I would never have wanted to have lived without those sensations, no matter how hard it’s got at times. Maybe Vesti was something of a red flag if only I’d been old enough to understand it. Love requires all the energy I have in my body and soul. Even at nine it demanded everything of me and I felt that slight edge of madness that comes with it. I think I was even then somewhat addicted to that tremendous kick. That was an indication of a less healthy side of love. But if Vesti had been a warning of what was to come, do I regret ignoring it? No. I wouldn’t have missed out on any of my adventures in love. They took me to surprising places and even if they were on occasion places I wouldn’t want to go, that’s just the way it was: you can’t control where love takes you.
I never got to hold Vesti’s hand and we never kissed. He probably just thought I was stupid for being so interested in him. But in our eight- and nine-year-old ways we expressed our feelings. He chased me, we’d tease each other and hang out. We were just doing normal kid stuff but holding Vesti’s attention was what gave me that special tingly sensation.
The other love that started that summer would prove to be life-long. Liselotte and I found a farm with a couple of ponies, which the owners allowed us to ride. I was instantly smitten and fell for a pony called Magic. I don’t know what kind he was or how old, but I wanted to be with him as much as possible. I looked after him, fed him and would take him out for rides. Sometimes I would just push my face into the warmth of his mane – I loved the intoxicating smell of horses all over me. I’ve been mad about riding ever since. Everything about horses is wonderful – hugging them, taking them out to gallop over the hills or just listening to them after a ride in the evening when they’re chomping feed in the stables.
You Only Get One Life Page 2