My Fight to the Top (19 page)

‘But it’s our company,’ I pleaded.

‘I don’t care. You’re not doing it,’ he said and walked off.

Why couldn’t he understand? Why couldn’t he just support me? Sod him. I’ll do the photo shoot anyway and then when I show him the pictures, he’ll change his mind
.

I called Dan, who had been a friend and photographer for Ultimo for years, and sneakily arranged a photo shoot without Michael knowing. We did it in the May Fair, a beautiful five-star hotel in London. I flew down the day before, and I was calm until it came to bedtime. I lay awake for hours, turning everything over in my head. I could hear Michael’s words, ‘Over my dead body’. I could hear my own voice, doubting whether I could appear on the other side of the camera. Somewhere, I still felt like a fat person in a thin body.

Dan Kennedy turned up at the hotel the next morning and I freaked out. ‘I can’t do this,’ I said, shaking my head in fear.

‘Why?’ he flashed his cheeky grin.

I broke down in tears. ‘I just can’t do it, Dan,’ I sobbed. ‘Michael doesn’t know I’m here. He’d kill me if he knew I was here. I hate lying.’

Dan gave me a cuddle and told me to take my time. ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked.

‘I really really want to do it, but I don’t know if I can do it,’ I explained. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

‘Well, if it’s always been your goal, you should do it,’ Dan said. He knew I had the fighter inside me.

I nodded my head and wiped my tears. It was 9.30 am and I ordered a bottle of wine. I sat in my dressing gown, in the suite, drinking wine, as the hair and make-up team worked their magic. The same talented team that had worked with Rachel, Sarah and Mel B were now working on
me
, transforming me, with a completely different look, into a model. They added hair extensions that tumbled halfway down my back. They coloured my eyes to look smoky and sexy and swept bronzer across my face to give me a healthy glow. They finished off my look with a slick of nude lip gloss.

Everything was beautiful; I’d changed my image completely. I’d never been done up like that before. I felt like a movie star. I put on the lingerie and I couldn’t believe how much weight I’d lost. It moulded to my figure perfectly. I’d designed all the pieces as one-offs for the shoot. They weren’t for a collection – they were just for me, to show off my transformation. I’d even designed a bow of black feathers on one of the black bras. I felt amazing. I wanted to cry but I bit my lip because I didn’t want my mascara to run!

I’d almost drunk the whole bottle of wine by the time I emerged from the bathroom. I had my dressing gown on and Dan turned to me. ‘Right, I’m ready,’ he announced. I looked at all the photo equipment and my heart raced. I was so nervous. There was no way I could do this in front of everyone.

‘Could you all please leave? I have to do this alone,’ I said. They all wished me luck while I was shaking.

Dan came up to me and said, ‘Okay, take it off.’ He pointed to the dressing gown.

‘I… I can’t,’ I said, clinging to it.

‘Take it off,’ he said.

‘No, I can’t,’ I said.

‘Yes, you can, take it off,’ he said.

So I took it off. I was shaking like a leaf and the first few pictures were awful. After about half an hour, I got into the swing of it. I remembered all the things I’d learnt in the years of directing our photo shoots – how to pose, how to not to hold your hands like a fan. I think the wine might have helped a bit too!

I left the shoot thinking, Yee hah! I did it. I decided on the plane home that I wanted to find 20 women, real women, and transform them for a photo shoot to make them feel as incredible as I had felt today. I pulled out my notebook and started making a plan for our next campaign.

I came back with all the pictures and showed them to Michael, smiling, ‘I’m sorry, but I wanted to do it. What do you think?’ I wanted him to tell me how beautiful I looked after all those years of calling me names. These pictures were so classy and tasteful.

Instead, Michael shouted at me and he threw the pictures across the room. ‘You are not releasing those pictures. You put them in your top drawer and never bring them out again,’ he ordered.

‘No, Michael, I’ve worked for years to get to this.’

He went around all of our friends, telling them how I had betrayed him; how he couldn’t believe I’d done it behind his back.

All I was doing was celebrating saying goodbye to all of the years of trauma, the years of heartache, the years of being miserable and the years of being depressed. I just felt that by finally ticking the big box of doing this shoot I had changed my life.

You will not speak to me like that
.

‘I am proud of these images and I want to encourage women to do the same,’ I stood my ground. But my words fell on deaf ears.

‘You will ruin this business. There is no other businesswoman who strips for their brand,’ he blasted.

I threw my arms up in despair. ‘This is the business I love. These are the bras that I started designing ten years ago. This is the brand I started and I love this business. I’m doing it for me, I’m doing it for the business and I’m going to release these pictures,’ I told him.

So fuck you
.

‘No, you will not,’ he said, shaking his head like I was bluffing.

‘You want a bet?’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘You watch this space.’ It was my turn to turn and walk out.

The next day I chose nine of the best photos. My favourite was a shot of me standing at the end of the bed. I didn’t look slutty in them and it wasn’t as if I was wearing see-through underwear showing my nipples. You’d show more flesh in a bikini on the beach than I did in that hotel room. I told my PR girl, Claire, to release the pictures.

‘I can’t,’ she protested. ‘I’ll lose my job. He’s threatened to sack me if I do.’

‘Claire, I’ve worked so hard to get to this. I want you to release them,’ I ordered.

I released the pictures on 26 October 2010. I wasn’t going to be controlled or bullied any more.

There are two types of pain in this world: pain that hurts you and pain that changes you.

I
had organised my own photo shoot and the pictures went everywhere.

M
ICHELLE
M
ONE HIRES HERSELF AS AN UNDERWEAR MODEL AFTER LOSING SIX STONE
, was just one of the many headlines splashed across the papers all around the world. The best thing was that the press were so complimentary and so supportive. It was such a relief because it could have gone the other way. They could have asked, ‘What the hell does she think she’s doing? She’s a businesswoman not a model.’

I’ve always been a risk-taker and this one paid off. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Richard Branson – he does things for his brand all the time. I love my brand and I don’t mind if the world sees me in it. I felt confident wearing my own underwear for the very first time in my life and I wanted to shout from the rooftops, ‘I’m not fat any more.’ I was like a wilted flower that had grown again.

I received an incredible 17,000 letters of support from the public. There was only one bad one out of all of those. I’ve kept them all and I haven’t forgotten about them. If I ever feel a bit low or in need of a confidence boost I pull out the letters to remind myself of what I’ve achieved. ‘Good for you, Michelle. You’ve really inspired me and you’ve really encouraged me,’ were just some of the many words of support.

One letter that really moved me came from a woman who, just like me, had no confidence. She described how sad and lonely she’d felt but how I had finally given her the courage to lose the weight. I can’t tell you how emotional I felt reading these letters from women who had been through everything that I had suffered.

Those pictures of me did wonders for the brand, but I’d say they were the nail in the coffin for my marriage. Things just got worse and worse after that. I did an interview in which the journalist asked me, ‘Was your husband proud of you for doing this?’ I was standing at a crossroads. Do I tell the truth or do I pretend everything is okay?

‘No, actually, he didn’t want me to do it,’ I admitted.
I’m not going to lie. Why should I?
I was proud of those pictures and Michael had tried to stop me helping other women do the same. ‘He was appalled I’d posed in my underwear. He didn’t speak to me for days,’ I said.

Michael went mental when he read the headlines. ‘Why did you tell the press that?’ he shouted.

‘Because that’s the truth,’ I shrugged. ‘And don’t think that I’m going to lie for you.’ I’d had enough. The worm had turned.

I threw myself into thinking of ways I could help more people. I’d got a huge rush from all the women telling me I’d given them courage and confidence to change their lives and I was thinking, What next? Who can I help next? I suppose it also went back to
71 Degrees North
and those feelings I had had when I was sleeping in a freezing tent on just rock and snow. I’d decided then that I was going to give more to my family and to those who needed my help.

I launched the Ultimo Real Women search. I wanted to find 20 women whose confidence I could help to boost with a makeover and a photo shoot. I felt it was my duty to showcase women of all shapes and sizes and make them feel good about themselves. I wasn’t necessarily looking for sad stories, but I did hear some moving accounts from some of the women we discovered. One woman had breast cancer. Another women had been bullied for being fat. They were real stories that so many women could relate to.

One story in particular sticks with me to this day. It was a woman whose husband walked out on her and the kids. She was 46 and had no confidence whatsoever but she met someone four weeks after appearing in the Real Women campaign and she’s now remarried and happy.

I’d always been caring but I started to care a lot more after the campaign and I had money to help others. One morning I was listening to the radio as I was making breakfast for the kids. Michael was in the kitchen when the 7.30 am news came on. There was an appeal for a girl who desperately needed help. The poor lassie was only 24 and dying of leukaemia. She’d gone away with her friends on a snowboarding holiday but hadn’t bothered with travel insurance because she thought there was no point with her terminal illness. She went on to have this really bad accident and was now in a coma. Her family needed £20,000 to bring her home and they were pleading for people to ring in with donations. It was heartbreaking.

I turned to Michael as I was buttering the kids’ toast. ‘I want to bring her home,’ I said.

He looked up at me. ‘Okay lets do it,’ he nodded. For that brief moment we put our differences aside. I phoned the radio station and they were really shocked. I told them not to mention my name because I didn’t want it to be a publicity thing. I didn’t want it to be about me. I just wanted to get this girl home. Giving that money made me feel much better than the feeling I got when I bought a flashy car.

Whoosh
, a rocket had taken off inside me. There was no stopping me now. I was on a path to helping others and at the same time helping myself grow stronger. It sounds cheesy but I was like titanium – nothing could touch me. I stood up for myself in every way imaginable and my confidence led to constant fighting in the office with Michael. Some of those arguments were disgusting. Our weekly boardroom meetings couldn’t go on for longer than 15 minutes because we would explode. He’d walk out or I’d walk out and going into work became similar to walking through a minefield.

I began to associate a bad feeling with our new office in East Kilbride because of all the fighting that was going on. That office didn’t feel right. It had never felt right, if I’m honest. It was too big and too segregated – too show homey. Just like the house I’d built, it was the biggest and the best but it was where I was at my most unhappy. I would go from one show home to the other. From one battleground in the day to another in the evening. Michael would go to bed and turn the other way and I would do the same. There was a cold front between us, with most of the arguments taking place in the office. We tried to keep our fighting away from the kids as much as possible.

Looking back now, I really don’t know how I put up with it for so long. I guess a lot of people reading this might be asking why I didn’t just leave and why I didn’t get a divorce. I suppose the simple answer is that I never give up. I keep fighting. It’s all I’ve ever known and I thought, If I keep fighting, somehow everything might turn out okay in the end.

It soon became clear that Michael had a different approach. It must have been around summer 2011 when I hired Samantha Bunn as head of design. She had previously worked for us and I’d been trying to get her back ever since she left a year and a half earlier. I suppose I took her under my wing. I spent a lot of time training her up. We got on well so I said she could stay in our guesthouse next door to our place. Sam, who was 31 at the time, confided in me about her boyfriend troubles, how he wouldn’t ask her to marry her. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t be on your own,’ I reassured her that we were only next door if she needed us. I felt sorry for Sam, so I invited her for dinner with my family on some nights. Michael would do the cooking and we’d all sit around the kitchen table, chatting and laughing.

I let her stay with me when we went on business trips to London. I gave her the spare room at my new flat in Mayfair and we would sometimes stay up talking about her relationship problems. I treated Sam like a family friend. I trusted her. I thought everything was hunky-dory and then all of a sudden, Sam started pushing the boundaries. She would pop around for dinner with Michael and the kids while I was away in London on business.

That’s just stepping over the line
.
If I invite you into my house then come, but don’t just turn up for your dinner when I’m not there
. I felt like she was weaving her way into my territory and my hair started to stand up on end. It wasn’t long before I sensed something was going on between her and Michael. She was always chatting to him in his office with the door shut. There was no reason for her to be there when she was my designer.