Sophie's secret heartache

Last weekend, an intriguing scene unfolded amid the opulent splendour of London's Savoy Hotel. Surrounded by guests gathered there for the South Bank Show Awards, supermodel and author Sophie Dahl - fresh from presenting the award for literary achievement - was struggling to maintain her composure.

'I feel so faint, I must sit down,' she told one group, before being ushered to a chair to recover. Understandably, her apparent frailty was the cause of much concern. It was not, however, a surprise, for many of the guests had spent the previous couple of hours remarking that statuesque Sophie was worryingly thin.

Clearly, it was something the 27-year-old was self-conscious about. Despite the warmth of the hotel dining room, she kept on her woollen Chanel jacket throughout the awards and told fellow guests that if she was looking 'slimmer than usual' it was not because she was dieting but instead a combination of her age and stress, due to a forthcoming book deadline.

Sophie, as we shall see, has long been uncomfortably aware of - not to mention irritated by - what she perceives as constant, unnecessary speculation about her weight. And on the surface, there seems little reason to believe events in her life are going anything less than swimmingly.

After years of unsatisfactory flings, Sophie has a steady boyfriend with whom she has set up home in New York, she has a book deal for an eagerly awaited second novel, a number of lucrative modelling contracts and has dipped her toes in the acting world to some acclaim.

According to loyal friends, she is healthier than she has ever been, and 'barely gives her weight a second thought'.

A glance at the pictures of her over last weekend would, however, seem to suggest otherwise. And well they might. For Sophie is, in fact, under a terrible private strain which is overshadowing all her personal and professional success.

Her beloved 46-year- old mother, Tessa, the author and daughter of literary giant Roald Dahl, has for the past few months been ensconced in the exclusive Cottonwood clinic in Arizona, which specialises in treating drink and drug problems. Her family fear she may not leave for some time.

'Tessa is a long-term patient at the clinic and it is not clear when she will leave,' says a source close to the family. 'All the family, but particularly Sophie, who is very close to her, are worried sick. They don't know how they're going to help get her back to a normal life.

'It is the most bizarre situation. Tessa basically upped and left the family home last summer and hasn't been back since.

'Her youngest children, nine-yearold Ned, and Luke, who's 17, are being looked after by the family nanny, Maureen Noble. It's all extremely difficult, but particularly for Sophie because she's the eldest and closest to her mother. She feels a huge responsibility for her.'

Tessa, of course has had a well documented history of alcohol and drug problems and depression, but this latest decline has lasted longer than other episodes.

The crisis, according to friends, was triggered last summer when she was left alone at the family home in Wheatley, Oxfordshire. Maureen, the nanny and housekeeper on whom Tessa has come to rely, had gone away for a few days.

Quite what occurred is still shrouded in mystery, but what is known is that Tessa was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Her worried daughter flew to England on Concorde and within a week had taken her mother back with her to the States and checked her into Cottonwood. Tessa told friends she would be staying for three months.

But six months later, she is still there. Telephone calls to her home are answered by the redoubtable Maureen, who tells callers that Tessa is 'not here'. When pressed, she will say only that 'she's away'.

The situation is, understandably, difficult for all the children, but a particular blow to Sophie, who had developed an extremely close bond with her mother - a bond rendered all the more precious after their oftenturbulent relationship while Sophie was growing up. Sophie, the product of an affair between her then 19-year-old mother and actor Julian Holloway, was brought up by Tessa alone after Holloway walked out on them.

She spent much of her early childhood travelling the world at her mother's heels: she moved home 17 times, attended ten schools around the world, and, over the years, acquired three half-siblings from her mother's two marriages, at which she was bridesmaid.

The psychological impact of this unorthodox upbringing can only be speculated on, but what is well documented is that by her mid-teens, Sophie was battling anorexia.

One former friend of the family recalls visiting the Dahl household to find the teenage Sophie 'sitting at the kitchen table with the lights off'. 'It was clear she'd been sitting there for ages, just staring into space,' says the friend. 'She was extremely thin but wouldn't eat anything. The fridge was bare - just about the only things in it were ice- cream and sorbets. Sophie would only be persuaded to eat a sorbet on the basis that there was no fat in it.'

Notably, when the friend mentioned to Tessa that she was concerned about Sophie's weight, her response was to say it was a 'phase' that all girls go through and Sophie would 'snap out of it'.

So it is not difficult to see that even at an early age, Sophie's weight, and her relationship with her mother, seemed to be inextricably entwined. As one childhood friend points out: 'She was desperate for her mother's approval.'

Sophie did, of course 'snap out of it'. Indeed, by her late teens, she had acquired the voluptuous, womanly curves that were to thrust her into the modelling spotlight and enable her, for a time, to become the definitive catwalk poster girl for 'real women'.

Discovered, as legend would have it, crying in the street at the age of 17 by the maverick fashion designer Isabella Blow, Sophie was snapped up by modelling agency Storm and wowed the fashion world during her catwalk debut at 1997 London Fashion Week, revealing her size 16 curves in a crochet mini-dress.

Yet while her natural glamour drew comparisons with Marilyn Monroe, Sophie struggled to accept her label as the 'plus-size' model, as her friend and former flatmate Euan Rellie reveals: 'It was hard for her to carry the mantle of spokeswoman for overweight women. She never sought that role and she hated it. She always felt people were being snide about her weight behind her back.'

Another friend recalls how Sophie was under constant pressure to slim down: 'She told me one of her bookers had said if she lost a bit of weight she'd still be booked for being big, which really upset her.

'At the time, she was a size 10-12 which, as she admitted, was big for modelling but actually underweight for her height. Sophie kept saying it was because she had such a chubby face that everyone called her fat, although she wasn't fat at all.'

In 1999, determined to regain control of her life, she left her flat Battersea, South London, and moved to New York. She went on a diet, hired a personal trainer and dramatically lost weight. Her svelte new look secured her the cover of Italian Vogue and catapulted her into the New York fashion elite.

Writer Toby Young, her flatmate for a time, recalls: 'In the 1999 social season, there wasn't a party worth going to that she was not invited to.'

Yet being apart also allowed her to rebuild her previously strained relationship with her mother. Indeed, the two were speaking two or three times a day, making the latest enforced estrangement - Cottonwood has strict rules about interaction with the outside world - all the harder.

'Sophie has seen her mother only a handful of times over the past year, and cannot speak to her as much as she would like to because of the clinic's rules,' says another friend. 'It is extremely hard for her.'

The situation is all the more poignant because, for the first time in years, Sophie seems to have found the stability she has long craved in her personal life.

After a string of high-profile affairs with, among others, Mick Jagger, actor Griffin Dunne, model James Gooding (former boyfriend of Kylie Minogue), playboy Tim Jefferies and aristocrat Freddie Windsor, she has settled down with Dan Baker, a little known American actor.

The two have been dating for a year and have set up home together in New York's fashionable West Village, as well renting a three-bedroom house in Hollywood.

Professionally, Sophie's prospects are bright: as well as poster campaigns for, among others, Pringle and Versace in the past year, she has branched out into the literary and acting worlds.

Her first book, The Man With The Dancing Eyes, described as an ' illustrated adult fairytale', was favourably received last year and she is about to submit the manuscript for her first novel, to be published later this year.

She has taken a part in a new Hollywood film, produced by the team behind Bend It Like Beckham and Monsoon Wedding, and is fielding a number of offers from Hollywood agents. So life should be good - but the problems surrounding her mother are, in the words of one friend, 'casting a long shadow'.

'Things are going so well for Sophie, but it is all overshadowed by this terrible fear that her mobile will ring with bad news,' says the friend. 'At the moment, anything is possible. It is really getting to Sophie.'

Her concern was further deepened in December with news of the death of the actor and producer David Hemmings. Her mother had conducted an on-off love affair with him over the years and remained besotted.

'Tessa was distraught by Hemmings' death,' reveals a family friend. 'She still had this fantasy going on in her head that some day they would end up married - then she read about his death in the newspapers at the clinic. It has really set her back.'

The fact that she did not go to his funeral was, says the source, an indication of how difficult she finds it to leave Cottonwood. Little wonder that Sophie, a fundamentally fragile personality whom her mother once said was 'the most complicated and interesting' of her children, is feeling the strain.

Close friends are defensive, citing her 'healthy appetite' and emphasising that her weight has actually been 'pretty constant' for the past three years.

'I saw her recently and I think she looked terrific,' said one. 'She's got loads of great things going on in her life at the moment and her weight is the last thing she's thinking about.'

But recent pictures would seem to say otherwise, as do the opinions of those who saw her at the South Bank Awards last weekend.

'She really did look horribly thin,' said one guest. 'It's hard to convey quite how much, but the first thing people said was: "Can you believe how thin she is?" '

For Tessa's sake and that of her beloved eldest child, one can only hope Sophie's mother manages to overcome her problems, and in turn help save her daughter from her own.