Читать книгу Kim Kardashian - Sean Smith - Страница 12

Kim wanted to be a housewife when she grew up. She was a sweet and thoughtful little girl who dreamed of being not Madonna, but a wife and mother, and maybe a grandmother one day, just like her nanas whom she adored. ‘I always thought I would have lots of kids. Be getting up going to the gym every morning – super early. Coming home, making breakfast for everyone. Packing lunches and driving the kids to school.’ It must have been very bewildering for a girl who wanted to play happy families to witness what was going on within her own home.

It wasn’t long before Bruce was practically living at Tower Lane. The mansion was much more comfortable than his Malibu home. Robert Kardashian wasn’t especially pleased by the turn of events. He blinked and his wife was having an affair with Todd. He blinked again and Bruce Jenner was sitting on his sofa.

Todd alleged that at this point he was still involved with Kris: ‘I wouldn’t say we were dating … she was still coming over to the apartment and we were still sleeping together when she had started dating Bruce.’

Todd found the situation troubling. It began ‘messing with his head’, as he puts it. Kris has never commented on his allegation, but described in her book how he arrived at Tower Lane one night and caused a scene. He subsequently moved to London to forget her and later became a successful animator.

Financially, things improved for Kris when Robert agreed to a monthly settlement, but the divorce trauma was ongoing. In the divorce papers, Robert commented on her new relationship: ‘My children are exposed to another man living with their mother. I believe that is inappropriate …’

The arguments, which were inevitably about money, and who was finally going to get Tower Lane, were apparently ended when Bruce and Robert thrashed things out over dinner. Kris gave up any claim on the house and settled in Malibu with Bruce. She observed, ‘There was a period of a couple of years where it was really ugly and hard and you didn’t want the kids to take sides.’

By the time the divorce was made final in March 1991, Kris and Bruce had been engaged for four months. They were married four weeks later, on 21 April 1991. Kim was 10 and a half.

Bruce had managed to persuade his own children’s nanny, Pam Behan, a student from a small town in Minnesota, to leave his ex-wife Linda’s house and go to live with his new family. Pam adored Bruce, her first platonic male friend. Only in Los Angeles could the attractive new nanny be enjoying a fling with Sylvester Stallone.

Linda Thompson had previously been dating the star of Rocky and Rambo, but had moved on to the multimillionaire music producer David Foster. They eventually married and formed a formidable songwriting partnership, writing, among others, ‘I Have Nothing’ for Whitney Houston and ‘Tell Him’, a hit for Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion.

Pam was responsible for making sure Kris’s daughters didn’t get chocolate down their pristine white dresses before the wedding ceremony. Bruce’s eldest daughter Cassandra, known to everyone as Casey, was also a bridesmaid and, like the others, wore a garland of white and pink flowers in her hair. His three sons, and three-year-old Robert Jr, looked dashing in black tuxedos and pale pink bow-ties that matched the groom’s. Only Kourtney, still missing her dad, looked slightly uncomfortable about the happy family day out, She did, however, manage a weak smile for the wedding pictures.

Kris and Bruce were married in the garden of the Bel Air home of Terry and Jane Semel. He was the boss of Warner Bros, and subsequently chairman of Yahoo! This was the orbit of extreme wealth and influence the Kardashians already inhabited. In the world of the Kardashians and Jenners, everyone is a ‘dear friend’, but the generosity of the Semels was obvious.

After the divorce, relations between Robert and Kris settled down for the sake of the children. Kourtney still had a problem with Bruce taking her father’s place, but they saw plenty of Robert. He had moved back into Tower Lane and was in charge every other weekend, a time when he played the devoted dad.

Robert tried to keep everything as normal as possible. As always, he took the children to church at weekends and, if they were with him during the week, he made sure he drove them to school. He was very popular with Kim’s friends and would entertain them with a variety of spoonerisms – if he was going to take a shower, he would tell them he needed to ‘shake a tower’ – the sort of harmless sense of humour he had always had.

Nikki Lund, whom he insisted on calling Dicky, recalled that Robert was always stricter than Kris: ‘He was a fun kind of guy, but he had a responsibility as a man to daughters as beautiful as these. He would take us to church. He prayed and read the Bible. He was a really good dad. Kim was a sensitive girl and definitely spiritual.’

Robert gave Kim a Bible, which he signed, and it became her most treasured possession. The word Bible is one of her favourite expressions, said at the end of a sentence to indicate that she swears it’s true. She, Nikki and her other friends were young Christian girls, although they possibly liked church more because they could wear jeans there on a Sunday.

Kim was one of those girls who could fit into any group. She had her circle of friends, like Kimberly Stewart and Nikki Lund, but she was equally as happy mixing with Kourtney’s group – the nerds, as she called them. With her closest pals, she devised a special sign language that they all learned so they could ‘talk’ about people who were in the room or class with them. Nikki recalled, ‘It was a way of being in a group. It was our little thing. We were obsessed with it.’

Kim was becoming fascinated by clothes. She and Kourtney barely had time for breakfast in the mornings, because it took them so long to get ready. They would grab a vanilla sandwich cookie on the way to Pam’s car for the morning school run from Malibu to Beverly Hills. Pam, who wrote a book called Malibu Nanny, was thrilled to discover the house they were then living in used to be home to Sean Penn when he was courting Madonna.

Kourtney was definitely the boss, perhaps because she was older and a little brighter; certainly, she was the fastest reader in the household. The two sisters used to play fashion games together. One favourite, at least with Kourtney, was when she pretended to be the leading fashion designer Donna Karan, creator of the DKNY label, and poor Kim was her beleaguered assistant. Kourtney used it as a means to make fun of her. Kim recalled, ‘She would just make me do anything she said. She would do it on purpose and embarrass me in front of her friends.’ Despite the natural sibling rivalry, the two girls were very close.

At their new home, they had use of the obligatory pool and Jacuzzi, as well as a magnificent view of the ocean from the patio. Kim preferred to spend a lot of her free time in her room, however, indulging her passion for making things, particularly jewellery. She had every conceivable size, shape and colour of bead and would carefully sort and select them to make the right necklace, earrings or bracelet.

One of the jobs of the nanny was to make sure the children were tucked up comfortably in bed at night. Kim would often talk in her sleep. Sometimes she would even have a conversation with Pam, even though she was in a deep slumber. On one occasion, she shouted out, ‘There’s an elephant on my desk.’ Pam told her to get it off the desk, whereupon Kim, still fast asleep, replied, ‘Help me. Help me. Get it off.’ Pam had to leave the room before her laughter woke up her young charge.

Kim may have been a quiet girl when she was 10, but she had blossomed into a much livelier teenager by the time of her eighth-grade graduation from her junior school El Rodeo in Whittier Drive, Beverly Hills, in 1994. She was filmed at the party afterwards by another student eager to make a movie of the night. There’s always one home-movie maker who wants to be the next Spielberg.

The already curvy 13-year-old Kim is excited and enjoying herself, dancing madly, in a white blouse, perfect make-up and a shorter than usual bob haircut. She is talking straight to the camera, ‘Is anyone getting a tape of this? I hope you do, because when you see me when I’m famous and old, you’re gonna remember me as this beautiful little girl.’

She continues to lark about as the cameraman starts to walk away: ‘Excuse me, are you leaving? My name’s Kim Kardashian. I’m the dopest of the ropest person in this class. I’m dope on a rope.’ When someone off camera interrupts, ‘Define “dope”, Kim’, she answers, ‘Dope is Kim.’ She seems to be displaying a confidence she says she never had as a girl. She ends the clip by comparing herself to a classmate: ‘I’m more popular than she is … everyone loves me. I’m so popular and everyone loves me …’

She’s just a schoolgirl having fun on a big night out, but it’s interesting that she should be using ‘dope’ as hip-hop slang for excellent or wonderful. Perhaps she picked it up from her first serious boyfriend, Michael Jackson’s nephew T. J.

From a young age, Kim preferred black men. She wasn’t brought up in the Deep South like Britney Spears, where racism was still rife. This was Beverly Hills, where black families had just as much money and prestige. Lionel Richie and Sugar Ray Leonard were good friends and neighbours of the family. Lionel was the father of Nicole Richie, whom Kim was at school with. Sugar Ray was so close to the Kardashians that he was Khloé’s godfather. Most of the Jackson clan lived in the area. And there was Uncle O. J., too, of course. He lived on North Rockingham Avenue, in exclusive Brentwood, with his wife Nicole, whom he had married in 1985. The sociable Nicole had become very much part of Kris’s wide circle.

By 1994, the Kardashian family had undergone much change. Kourtney had started high school at an all-girl Catholic school called Marymount, on Sunset Boulevard, and Kim would be joining her at the start of the next academic year. Kris and Bruce had decided that travelling to and from Malibu was becoming too much of a logistical challenge and had rented a house in Benedict Canyon.

The most dramatic change was that Kim’s father had a new woman in his life. He had sold Tower Lane and leased an enormous 15-room house 10 miles away, in the pretty suburb of Encino. He was making a fresh start with his fiancée, Denice Shakarian Halicki, a graceful blonde, who wore very short skirts and was generally described as a ‘knockout’. She also happened to drive a Rolls-Royce, which had been left to her by her late husband. She was Armenian on her father’s side, but didn’t have the exotic features of the Kardashians. Instead, she had inherited her Norwegian mother’s looks. When she was 16, there had been talk of an arranged marriage, but that had come to nothing and she was able to pursue a career as a model and actress.

In 1983, she met Toby Halicki, who had become a multimillionaire thanks to his stunningly successful cult film Gone in 60 Seconds. He was a larger-than-life character, one of 13 children, who, in a great Hollywood story, came to Los Angeles, aged 15, with nothing but an extensive knowledge of automobiles and the salvage business that his family ran in New York.

His hit movie cost under $100,000 to make, but grossed more than $40 million at the box office. There was little in the way of a script, but there were lots of cars. For the film’s finale, Toby performed an amazing 39-metre jump, which resulted in him compacting 10 vertebrae and walking with a permanent limp.

He married Denice in May 1989, just before starting work on the sequel Gone in 60 Seconds 2. She was to be one of the stars, while he would again write, direct and perform most of the stunts. He had already bought 400 cars to be sacrificed in an orgy of vehicle destruction. He was preparing for a stunt during filming near Buffalo, New York, when a telegraph pole snapped and fell on him, killing him instantly. They had been married for three months.

Denice met Robert Kardashian through mutual Armenian connections, and they helped each other at a difficult time in their personal lives. Her late husband’s considerable fortune was tied up in probate for many years and she went to Robert for legal advice. She wasn’t the super-rich widow many might have assumed she was – at least not then. She had a traditional Christian upbringing and the couple shared a strong religious connection.

While relations had improved a little with his ex-wife, it wasn’t a case of coffee mornings and trips to the beach together. It was awkward, especially if Bruce was around. When Robert went to their house to pick up the children, the two youngest, Khloé and Robert Jr, would be waiting outside. He would then honk the horn, which was the signal for Kourtney and Kim to run out of the house to join them.

The journey back to Encino took no more than 30 minutes. The new house was on Mandalay Drive, in a very quiet neighbourhood with manicured lawns and his and her luxury limousines in the driveway. While it didn’t have the extreme privacy of a gated community, the residents kept to themselves and tended to live in the same house for many years. It was very comfortable, but you were only likely to speak to your neighbours if you met them while you were collecting your letters from the mailbox.

Robert suggested that Kourtney and Kim might like to spend more time at his house, as the peaceful surroundings might be better suited to the serious study he wanted for his daughters. Kourtney was particularly keen, as she was still reluctant to accept Bruce. Kim wanted to stay close to her sister, and both girls enjoyed Denice’s company.

The new house was just a short 10-minute drive from Uncle O. J.’s mansion in Brentwood, but Robert had seen his old friend only twice in two years. O. J. put in an appearance at a surprise fiftieth birthday that Denice had thrown for Robert in February 1994, and gave him an autographed football jersey. They also bumped into each other by accident in Palisades Park in Santa Monica in May, when they were both playing with their children. Robert was throwing a baseball with his son, while O. J. was helping his daughter Sydney practice her basketball skills. The two children knew each other well and were happy to pass the time together while the two men chatted on the grass about their troubles with women.

Their mutual business interests had dwindled, mainly through lack of success. In the 1980s, O. J. had joined Robert in a venture called Concert Cinema, which screened music videos in cinemas before the main feature. It was early days for MTV, but demonstrated how Robert thought ahead. In this case, what was clearly a good idea proved too expensive to run, and after a year they closed the business without making a profit.

The blossoming friendship between Kris and Nicole had made it difficult for the two men to remain buddies. O. J. and Nicole had struggled with marital problems, which culminated in their divorce in 1992, after seven years of marriage and two children together. Nobody knew that their strife included domestic violence.

Since his divorce from Kris, Robert’s social circle had inevitably changed. O. J. was more likely to bump into Bruce Jenner on the celebrity circuit, although, as a football hero and movie star, O. J. was still far more famous than the former Olympic champion. Surprisingly, Robert didn’t even know that Nicole was living in a condo in Bundy Drive, Brentwood.

The morning of 13 June 1994 started like any other for Robert Kardashian. As he always did, he said his prayers and then worked out for 30 minutes before starting work in his large office in the house. He no longer kept any business premises. Just after 10 a.m., the phone rang. It was Shelli Azoff, buzzing with the story that Nicole had been killed. She had just found out about it at the hairdresser’s, so the whole world, except Robert, had heard the bombshell news. He phoned Kris and discovered it was true. His ex-wife had been due to lunch with her friend that very day.

Without being asked, Robert rallied round his friend of 23 years. He invited O. J. to stay in his home to escape the media storm that inevitably exploded around the murder. It transpired that Nicole had suffered horrendous stabbing injuries, including one violent open wound that exposed the larynx and spinal chord. A local waiter and aspiring actor called Ron Goldman was also found dead outside the home on Bundy.

Four days after the murders, Robert had to stop his friend from killing himself, when he found O. J. in the bedroom with a gun. He told him, ‘You can’t. This is my daughter’s bedroom.’ Both Kourtney and Kim were staying in the house, but neither registered the magnitude of what was going on.

A warrant was issued for O. J.’s arrest and his chief lawyer, Robert Shapiro, was told his client needed to turn himself in at a police station. Shapiro had co-opted Robert on to the team, realising that Bobby, as O. J. still called him, had a special relationship with Simpson and would be useful to him. It also meant that they would now be protected by attorney–client privilege. Robert would need to reactivate his law licence, which he had allowed to lapse.

He was still concerned that his friend was going to end his life after O. J. disappeared from his house when he was supposed to be leaving for the station. He had apparently made a run for it in a white Ford Bronco driven by his buddy Al Cowlings. It became the most famous and bizarre slow-speed car chase in history, as a flotilla of police vehicles, with more than 20 helicopters soaring overheard, followed them down Interstate 405 at 35 miles an hour. The police didn’t want to intercept the 4 x 4 because O. J., who was lying low on the back seat, reportedly had a gun and they wanted to avoid a violent end. Thousands lined the route and stood on overpasses to cheer him. Eventually, after 90 minutes, he gave himself up outside his Rockingham home. Millions watched on television, mesmerized by what they were seeing. It was described by one lawyer as ‘the day Los Angeles stopped’.

Meanwhile, Robert was in front of the TV cameras for the very first time, reading a handwritten document that O. J. had left at the house. It was his suicide note to the world. Robert, in his steady deep voice, read the letter in front of more than 100 members of the media: ‘… Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve had a great life, made great friends. Please think of the real O. J. and not this lost person. Thank you for making my life special …’

This was the exact moment when life changed for the Kardashians. Now the media were shouting out and asking Robert how he spelled his surname. They mostly got it wrong. Kim and her siblings became the children of the famous lawyer Robert Kardashian. He would sit beside O. J. Simpson throughout the ‘trial of the century’. O. J.’s confidante and erstwhile manager, Norman Pardo, observed drily, ‘The Kardashians would be nothing without O. J. Simpson.’