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expense of the giraffe? But they failed to materialise. The rest of the town went about its business and the universe appeared to be functioning as normal.
    Susanne looked at me as if she too couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. She was the pretty one, but she wasn’t mean-spirited. ‘Gitte, you’ve got to do it!’ she said. ‘That’s amazing!’ She was really happy for me and grabbed my hand warmly. I loved Susanne – she was the only girl I knew who I could really trust.
    By now it was getting quite late and we had to run to catch the bus to make my father’s deadline. I spent the entire journey looking at every poster we passed. Beautiful women everywhere, each one advertising a different product. They were in the bus, on the streets, high up on the buildings…smiling, flawless creatures from another planet. With a lurch of disappointment I realised that the chancemeeting had to be a big mistake; they couldn’t ask me to be a model. How could I be up there? At this I glanced through the brochure again and now I thought about it, the production was a little cheap. I was preparing myself for the worst and this was my way of making the evidence fit the low expectations I always had for myself.
    My parents were incredibly positive about the news. Even my dad, who had always had a conventional life and as an engineer was practical and orderly, was pleased. He knew that I’d finished the 10th grade at school with top grades and he gave his permission for me to follow up the invitation after a long conversation with Trice Thomsen, the director of Copenhagen Models. They agreed that I would go into the agency the following week to have a few test photos done.
    ‘If you feel like doing it,’ said Dad, ‘I think you should.’ It was a done deal.
    Jan thought the sound of a door opening into the modelling world was the most fantastic thing he had ever heard. I’m not entirely sure he was thinking only of me. Two years younger, he was then in the middle of puberty and I have a feeling he was interested in making the most of sharing the limelight with a big sister with lots of gorgeous modelling friends.

    I sat on the bus to Copenhagen Models with just my mum and the butterflies in my stomach for company. They took a series of black-and-white Polaroids and I had to fill out endless forms. Then there was nothing to do but wait. Trice Thomsen wrote to say that she couldn’t promise anythingbut she would do what she could. ‘You have the perfect body,’ she explained, ‘but just because you look great in person it doesn’t mean that you will work in photos. But I’m sure you have it in you.’
    She was right. Things started to move at an incredible rate. There were more professional tests soon after the first visit to the agency and within two weeks of that first meeting on Gråbrødre Torv, I was offered a job. I found it hard to keep up with what was happening: I’d seen those Polaroids and I thought I looked utterly ridiculous. I’ve no idea what I was expecting. Perhaps I thought that I’d be transformed into the potential model that Marianne Diers had seen, but even though the tests looked more professional I was wearing the same old clothes I always had and I had the same old face. Who’d want that?
    Everything for Women wanted it, as it turned out. This was a Danish lifestyle magazine with interviews and fashion features. With the help of a fantastic Swedish photographer called Steen Andersson, I was about to become one of their most important models. My mother came along to the first shoot and I desperately wanted to hold her hand, though I knew I couldn’t do that now I was a proper model. But the other girls were so beautiful: they looked so relaxed and professional; they knew exactly what they were doing. I could tell they knew how stunning they were. But I had no idea what I was supposed to do and I felt so ugly next to them – I was still waiting for someone to take me to one side to