Anita Harding

What drove this pregnant lingerie model and her fiance to take their own lives?

by BARBARA DAVIES

Last updated at 00:59 08 September 2007

Two lovers, two suicides - the parallels with Romeo and Juliet are haunting. So what drove this pregnant model and her fiance to take their own lives?

By rights, Anita Harding and her lover should have lived happily ever after. All the fairytale ingredients were there.

The 20-year-old British model and the dark-eyed rock musician were expecting their first child together - a daughter.

Anita had started a new life in the idyllic medieval hill town of Ascoli Piceno, where her Italian fiance's respected family have lived and worked for three decades.

She was learning Italian as she awaited the arrival of the baby girl she planned to call Letizia. She thought she could look forward to the future with Giacomo Agostini, the 31-yearold man she planned to marry.

But last week, it was revealed that Anita had taken her own life - and that of her unborn child - by taking a drugs overdose when she was eight months pregnant.

Her body was found inside a caravan belonging to her parents at a Cornish holiday park.

In a further tragic twist, it was revealed that her suicide came just three months after the death of Giacomo. Messages Anita left made it clear that she couldn't live without the man she adored.

A tragic story, for sure, but what none of her friends in her hometown of Plymouth knew was that Giacomo had taken his own life in the same way.

The Mail has learned that his body was found in the bathroom at his home in Italy by his devastated mother.

The double suicide has all the hallmarks of a modern-day Romeo and Juliet.

In the Shakespeare play, two youngsters from different worlds meet and fall in love in Italy. They develop an intense relationship until a misunderstanding leads to tragedy. Believing Juliet to be dead, Romeo takes his own life. When she learns of his death, consumed by anguish and despair, she, too, kills herself.

On Easter Saturday, Anita sobbed over her lover's coffin at San Simeone and Guida Church in Ascoli Piceno.

Afterwards, she followed him down the steps of the ancient church, while the crowds outside chanted Giacomo's name.

Onlookers expressed pity at the sight at the drawn, pale-looking expectant mother, but no one could have guessed that her grief would drive her to such extremes.

Certainly, it seems hard to comprehend how two young adults, so passionately in love, could have ended up killing themselves in such terrible circumstances.

The couple met last year in London, where Anita was living with her three-year-old son Jerome, from her first marriage, and pursuing a career as a model. Giacomo, a fun-loving Italian, was in London to take a hairdressing course.

When they met, say friends, it was love at first sight.

"She was absolutely besotted with him," says photographer and friend John Tisbury. "And they seemed perfect together."

Back in Ascoli Piceno, a town in the rugged Marche region of Italy, Giacomo was telling friends that he had "found the one".

Anita, it seems, felt just as strongly.

Within months, she had gone with Jerome to Italy to live with him.

Perhaps it was not surprising that the pair were so drawn to each other. Fragile is a word that friends use to describe them both.

Certainly, behind the ready smiles and talk of future happiness, there was an underlying darkness in both their lives.

The youngest of three children, Anita's childhood in Plymouth had been dogged by unhappiness.

Despite growing up with loving parents, motor mechanic Steve Harding and his wife Tina, and adored by her sister Cheryl and brother Matt, by the age of 13 Anita was a chronic anorexic.

She was forced to take a year off from Stoke Damarel Community College to recover from the debilitating illness.

Molly Lavin, who was in the same year as her at college, recalls: "She was terribly, terribly thin, even when she came back. Anita was lovely and chatty, but no one ever really knew what was going on her life."

By the time she finished sitting her GCSEs, she was pregnant.

Jerome was born in November 2003, and she married the baby's father, Hugh Phillips, in February 2005.

"She was really happy about it," adds the friend.

"She contacted me when her little boy was born and seemed to be overjoyed about it."

But a second pregnancy ended in miscarriage and the marriage was desperately short-lived.

By this time, she had set her heart on becoming a model - perhaps not the wisest career choice for someone who had suffered from anorexia - and she moved to South London.

Giacamo's early life was also troubled. From the age of 16, he became a drummer in a rock band, and as a result dabbled in soft drugs.

A local priest and family friend, Father Luigi Nardi, says: "He was a good lad. But like many other young people, he also had his problems, which made him a little fragile."

When they met then, Anita and Giacomo had disappointment in common.

Anita had dreamed of becoming a fashion model, but had found her particular looks made that impossible.

Anita eventually found work as a lingerie model but never gave up hoping that she would one day appear on the catwalk.

When she and Giacomo met, it is perhaps not surprising that "they found comfort in each other".

According to friends, Giacomo had, with the help of his parents Vincenzo and Emilia, weaned himself off drugs.

His father had also handed over the hairdressing business to his son in the hope that it would help keep him clean.

When Anita made the decision to go and live with Giacomo, they couple moved into an apartment on the second floor of a threestorey block belonging to the Agostini family.

According to his father: "We all had great affection for Anita.

"It really was love at first sight for Giacomo. As soon as they told us how serious they were about each other, we let them have the apartment. We were all trying to help her find a job here."

By the end of last year, Anita discovered she was pregnant.

"Giacomo was ecstatic when he learned he was going to be a dad, and so was Anita," says Alessandro, a friend of Giacomo's.

John Tisbury adds: "Anita was so looking forward to the birth of the baby. And she loved her little boy.

"She was so happy about making a new start in Italy."

By spring, however, there was the first sign of tension in the relationship. Anita returned to Britain with Jerome to buy everything she needed to give birth in Italy.

She was also trying to enrol for a beautician's course, which would have started next year. Similar courses in Italy take three years, and Anita told Giacomo it made sense for her return to London to study.

John Tisbury recalls that Anita told him Giacomo would join her in London. But back in Italy, Giacomo was telling friends he was afraid that Anita would not be coming back.

Alessandro says: "She seemed to be taking a very long time.

"Giacomo was getting very worried and it was making him depressed.

"He was calling her all the time, and she wouldn't give him an answer on when she was coming back.

"In the end, Giacomo said he was going to go to England and bring her back. He seemed to have perked up."

Giacomo's father says: "I don't know what happened to Giacomo at that point.

"He had got depressed because she wasn't coming back, and then we convinced him to go over there at Easter to bring her back. That's how it was left."

But then came a final phone call on April 3, the day before Giacomo died.

No one knows for sure what words passed between the lovers, but just 24 hours later he was dead, his body pumped full of drugs.

Alessandro recalls: "His mother found him.

"She'd been calling him all morning and was frantic. When she got into the flat and found the bathroom door locked, she went and found two workmen to break the door down.

"They found Giacomo dead on the floor."

Anita was utterly devastated when Emilia and Vincenzo Agostini broke the news to her of Giacomo's death.

She returned to Italy for his funeral on Easter Saturday, and sat sobbing alongside his parents at the front of the church.

Father Luigi Nardi, the priest who conducted the service, says: "She was clearly in a lot of pain. She was distraught and crying all the way through the service."

Though Giacomo's family hoped she would stay on in Italy, she wanted to go home to Plymouth, to her parents Steve and Tina.

But signs that she was struggling with her lover's death were all too clear.

The saddest part about what happened next is the knowledge that both deaths were needless.

There is little doubt that Anita and Giacomo loved each other, but somehow in the end, it seems, they doubted their own love.

And whatever their misunderstanding was, it ultimately had fatal consequences for both them and their unborn child.

On an internet tribute site she dedicated to Giacomo, Anita wrote: "Giacomo, I have no words to explain the greatness of our love, the happiness, nor the pain and devastation of you leaving.

"You are my fiance, my lover, my soulmate, my best friend and my protector. You are so many things to so many people.

"You are the best son, brother, uncle, fiance and daddy in the world, a heart of gold, the most beautiful smile and the laughter most contagious.

"You lit up the world and now heaven.

"We hope in heaven you are happy. Watch and protect us, I love you forever. Per sempre uno di noi - Forever one of us. I love you forever."

Ominously, 18 days before her own death, she added: "We will be together again soon."

 

Giacomo's father says: "After Giacomo died and Anita returned to England after the funeral, we still kept in touch.

"We spoke on the telephone every week. Then the last few times I called, she never answered.

"I thought immediately that something serious had happened - but I never imagined that she would commit suicide."

By July 12, Anita's agony was over, passed on instead to the devastated family she has now left behind.

As one friend puts it simply; "She died of a broken heart."

Anita's body was discovered at the family's caravan at Perran Sands Holiday Park in Perranporth. The Cornwall coroner's office says the suspected cause of death was "overdose of opiates".

An inquest into her death has been opened and adjourned.

Vincenzo adds: "In the past few months, I have lost my son, his fiancee and my grandchild. It's all too much to take in. I will never see my little granddaughter Letizia."

Anita's grieving family have decided not to speak publicly about her death, but in another internet tribute site set up for Anita, her parents wrote: "Reunited with Giacomo now, a family of angels soar above."

Her 26-year-old sister Cheryl and brother Matt, 23, wrote: "Little sister, Anita, words cannot express the emptiness we feel without you here.

"We hope you found peace where you are. Our happy memories of you will live for ever. We love and miss you."

There was a heart-breaking message, too, from Jerome, her three-year-old son, who is now being cared for by her parents at their home in Plymouth.

It reads: "Mummy, I will remember you when I see the sun and the stars."

For Jerome, who will grow up without a mother, and for two families all but destroyed by tragedy, the story of these two star-crossed lovers is simply too painful to bear.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-480420/What-drove-pregnant-lingerie-model-fiance-lives.html#ixzz3Rv0UvuV5