In My Shoes: A Memoir (2 page)

He smiled a lot in that polite, Asian way, but despite his repeated, “Yes, yes, yes,” I had no idea how much of what I was saying was actually sinking in. Sandra never looked up until we were leaving, and then she nodded and gave a faint smile.

Desperate as I was to find a new direction for my life, I was not going to be easily deterred. Still, I knew that building a business with this reclusive, even resistant, Chinese cobbler was not going to happen overnight. Even getting him to participate was not going to happen overnight.

•  •  •  •

IN THE MEANTIME, I WAS
still working out a number of personal issues and adhering to my own well-established, though self-destructive, regime of treatment.

A few days after my first, post-
Vogue
meeting with Jimmy, Damian Aspinall, son of the casino owner John Aspinall, flew a bunch of us to Paris for a weekend at the Crillon. Damian was a few years older than the rest of us, but of far greater distinction, he had entirely given up drugs and drink. He could still enjoy himself at a party, but he did so while remaining sober.

The rest of the guys on that trip were also abstaining, at least from drugs, but not me. On the second night we were at Les Bains Douches in the Marais, the house music blaring, and I was fighting my way through the boney elbows of fashion models to do lines in the ladies’ room. I’d just come back to our table near the dance floor when Damian turned to me and said, “You’ve got a problem. You need to go to rehab.”

I was gobsmacked. This comment came at me completely out of the blue. Yet I was also touched that he’d noticed. We didn’t have any kind of special relationship, so why was Damian suddenly taking an interest?

All my life people had described me as being remote, as if living behind glass. In case of emergency, break glass. Damian had just
thrown a brick, and the sudden honesty and clarity cut through years of passivity and denial.

“You’re absolutely right,” I said.

It was simply the perfect moment for me to hear a statement of the obvious, and my mind was utterly receptive. I was at a point of surrender, not in a spiritual or romantic way, but in the B movie way of “You’ve got me surrounded. I give up.”

“Brilliant,” I went on. “I’ll do that. I’ll check into rehab and get well. Where should I go?”

Damian mentioned the name of a place down in Surrey, and I breathed another great sigh of relief. There was a solution to my problem after all—I’d simply never thought of it. So that was that. I’d get myself into rehab as soon as I was back in London. But then the sudden clarity itself was cause for further celebration, and whatever my plans for sobriety, there was still plenty of coke in my bag and limitless vodka at the bar.

On Sunday, our very hungover group had a late lunch and then flew back to England, and on Monday I contacted the treatment facility Damian had recommended. After that, Cedric and I went to Spain for a couple of weeks, staying with friends in Marbella. I did cartloads of drugs, partly because I knew this was going to be my last hurrah, and not just coke but Ecstasy, all with my preferred chaser from the Russian steppes. It’s a wonder I made it out alive.

We returned to London, and Cedric took me to dinner at San Lorenzo in Knightsbridge. I had a last glass of red wine—a fond farewell, that one—and the next morning we were in his little Golf GTI, motoring out the A24 to Surrey.

Farm Place is in the village of Ockley, and though it’s only a short distance south of the city, it is profoundly “English countryside” in the manner of picture postcards. Roses twine along old rambling houses and boys amble in cricket whites on the village green.

The rehab center itself is in a shabby Tudor house with cigarette burns in the sofas in the drawing room, neglected green lawns, and a filthy swimming pool that no one ever used.

In the driveway I said good-bye to Cedric with slight trepidation. This was a little like being left at school, but I was ready to clean up on day one without any kicking and screaming. In fact, the therapists were quickly amazed by my enthusiasm and resolve—they said they’d never seen anyone so determined to get well.

I didn’t know why I’d been acting out, but I did know that it wasn’t just for the “fun” of it, because at this stage of the game it was anything but fun. I couldn’t articulate what they were, maybe I couldn’t even see them, but certainly I had more than my share of demons. One of them was, of course, my mother and the enigma of why she’d always despised me so. But the other force at play was a demonic drive for the financial security I hoped would keep me out of her clutches.

I had spent my childhood in preferred postal codes—Beverly Hills, Belgravia—but somehow along the way I had inherited the fear of destitution that sometimes comes from growing up in an entrepreneurial household. My father had made a lot of money, but it never flowed in a steady stream, and it never seemed to be quite enough. In the late eighties he’d been heavily invested in London real estate, but in the crash of the early nineties, he had to unload his properties at half value. But no matter my parents’ circumstance, feast or famine, I didn’t want
to remain dependent on them. My worst fear was remaining under my mother’s thumb. My second worst fear was giving her the satisfaction of seeing me wind up in a council flat, which some of the well-born girls I did drugs with actually managed to do.

Other than Damian and Cedric, nobody knew about my sudden conversion to the cause of sobriety. When I mentioned rehab to my father, he told me not to do it. At that time, residential treatment was still virtually unknown in the UK. “You’ll be branded a junkie,” he said, “and no one will ever talk to you.” He also refused to pay, but, happily, Damian agreed to cover my costs, and I agreed to repay him later.

For the first two weeks at Farm Place we weren’t allowed to contact anyone, but as soon as that quarantine was lifted I rang my parents. My mother answered, and when I told her where I was she said, “This is not our cup of tea.” Then she hung up.

Nevertheless, I remained genuinely excited by the prospect of moving beyond the slough of despond into which I had fallen. Rehab, of course, was not only an escape from drugs but from certain relationships. I welcomed six weeks without the temptation to self-medicate, and six weeks without any of the stimuli that had encouraged my destructive patterns in the first place. The “time-out” in this rural confinement gave me the cozy, protective feeling that I assume most people associate with home. I also knew that it was the only chance for me to get my life together. Certainly it was the only chance for me if I wanted to start a business with Jimmy Choo, or with anyone else for that matter.

Farm Place dealt with only a couple dozen patients at a time, with roughly an equal mix of men and women. The treatment began with a
five-day detox, which I didn’t really need, because I’d never drunk enough to create a physical addiction. I was a party girl, not the kind of alcoholic who would sit at home,
Lost Weekend
style, scheming to get my hands on a bottle of booze. I never had a drink alone my whole life, but when it came time to binge, I could keep up with the best of them.

The housing was four to a room, and my particular ménage seemed like a setup for Bridget Jones. There were three beds in a row: an anorexic on one side, a compulsive overeater on the other, and me in the middle. The codependent was over by herself, near the window.

The only one of us still in denial was the anorexic, who had been forced in by family and friends. She was horribly thin, but she thought she looked fantastic. She’d nibble a few morsels of food, then speed walk around the grounds. We all had to share one bathroom, so happily she was not bulimic. And just as happily she and the overeater got along famously.

Each of us began the day by making her own bed. We also did the dishes, mopped the floors, cleaned the bathrooms, and did our own laundry. This was new for me, this concept of chores—known in the vernacular of recovery as “therapeutic duties”—but I sort of enjoyed it. It all seemed in keeping with my newfound motivation to change, and the need to dig my way out with my fingernails if need be.

After this spot of housekeeping we’d have morning readings, with affirmations, daily meditation, and then breakfast. Then we’d break into groups for discussion and lots of assignments, working hard on the twelve steps, with emphasis on step #1: Admit you’re powerless over
your addiction and that your life has become unmanageable. The irony, of course, was that there were so many other ways in which I remained voiceless and powerless—even as I began to acquire the trappings of success, which, as you’ll see, made my path to redemption a somewhat bumpy road.

The residents of Farm Place came from all classes, ranging from wealthy brats like me to those whose fees were paid for by the local health authorities. In group meetings for peer evaluation, one person would tell his or her life story and the rest would give feedback, and I was fascinated by listening to their problems, knowing that while there might be cheap seats and luxury boxes, out on the playing field we were all the same. The focus was on the feeling, never the material stuff, and the strangest combinations of people got on.

Other than go to meetings, just about all we did was eat and sleep. We consumed mountains of pork chops and mashed potatoes, fresh from the farm, but I don’t think anyone gained weight because there was still a net reduction in calories due to the subtraction of alcohol. (Cases of mineral water were stacked in the kitchen.) Exercise was not encouraged, mostly because those with food issues might use it to try to control their weight.

Every Saturday was visiting day, and though my parents never came, Cedric drove out each and every weekend to bring me cigarettes, to walk around the grounds with me, and to make increasingly awkward conversation. He was very sweet and very supportive, but he really didn’t understand what I was doing or why I was doing it.

And I must say I found my whole predicament rather bewildering
myself. “How did I end up here?” I kept asking myself. But then I’d rearrange the grammar. I hadn’t “ended up” here. I was determined to make sure this was the beginning.

The most productive thoughts available to me to punctuate my long periods of self-doubt and self-loathing were about my business plan. The idea of starting a luxury shoe line was my one ray of hope, a beacon toward which I could steer. I can do this, I told myself. This is something meaningful I can apply myself to and accomplish.

The therapists tried to be helpful in keeping my mind on a positive track, but their horizons were always remarkably limited. When I’d say, “I’m going to start a luxury shoe brand,” they’d say, “Perhaps you might take a job in a shoe store.” In other words—don’t be grandiose. Think small. One day at a time.

My response to that was, “No fucking way. I’ve put in nearly ten years in the fashion industry. I’m not getting clean and sober just to go backwards!”

Their analysis of my condition was also far too reductive for my taste. They wanted to focus on my chemical addiction. “You are helpless in the face of this compulsion,” they said, and fair enough. But then they went on to insist, “You can’t blame your parents. We don’t want to hear about your crazy, alcoholic mother who tortured you. You’re just an addict—that’s it.”

That one-size-fits-all, no-need-to-look-beyond-the-brain-chemistry assessment didn’t sit well with me because to me it simply didn’t ring true. I wanted my own particular experience to be validated. And validating my experience would mean someone saying to me, “It’s not all just chemicals. Your mother’s always been a fucking sadist where you’re
concerned. That demon is not in your head, and it’s going to take more than therapy to get rid of it.”

Most people go to halfway houses after rehab. Instead, when I got out, I threw myself into trying to win over Jimmy Choo. This was still part of my therapeutic effort to shut down the old habits and rebuild the new, and it was still propelled in large part by fear. I was determined not to get stuck in my mother’s world. I was determined not to end up as a junkie in a council flat. And yet it still took every bit of my strength. At times my energy seemed so depleted that it was all I could do to get out of bed, but I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

•  •  •  •

WHILE I’D BEEN AT FARM PLACE
my parents had sold their big house in Chester Square and bought two smaller ones nearby, one on Chester Row and one on Gerald Road, which were sort of back-to-back. We’d probably lived in about seven different houses in Belgravia at one time or another because my father would buy a place, do it up, live in it for a while, and then sell it for a profit.

When I came out of rehab, I moved into the main house on Chester Row, my parents lived in the place on Gerald Road, and now my brother Daniel took up residence in their basement. The free rent was good for keeping my overhead low, but not so good for my state of mind. My mother still came around every day, and still let herself in, unannounced, presumably to explore my underwear drawer and God knows what else.

At night I went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and then each morning I’d take the tube from Sloane Square to Hackney to spend the
day with Jimmy. He still seemed incredibly nervous and guarded, and to this day I don’t think he ever fully understood what I was proposing, and where it might lead. So my first task, really, was to convince him that I was serious and that I meant him no harm. Quite the opposite, my most heartfelt intent was to make him a lot of money. But I couldn’t win him over by taking him to a smart restaurant for lunch. He needed to get a better sense of me as a person and to see a demonstration of my commitment in action. He wanted me to “smell the leather,” or perhaps the glue, so the only way to demonstrate what I was about was to hang around down there with him and to really get my hands dirty.

Every day, then, for three months, I went down to get my trade school education, but also, in a way, to continue my therapy. My past defenses had been stripped away at Farm Place—I was now experienced at making beds and cleaning toilets—which had indeed left me ready to rebuild on a more solid foundation.