It was the early days of the virus and nurses and orderlies donned rubber gloves or “space suits” before entering her room, and wiped the phone every time she used it.One nurse, not knowing who she was, chatted about how a local photographer wanted to take some photos of her daughter. Her symptoms were those of pneumonia, but blood tests showed she had Aids related complex (ARC), a precursor to Aids. But when she left treatment six months later she went back on the heroin, and in increasing amounts A year later she was in hospital She had been sleeping outside in the rain Bruises on her body suggested she had been badly beaten up And she had been raped. It was that which led to her finally being blackballed by those who only months before could not get enough.By the end of 1984 Gia had entered a vastly different world. After pressure from her family she entered a rehab programme – and declared herself penniless to enter treatment on public welfare. “The problem was that people were more interested in hiding the marks than helping her,” said Gia’s former lover, Elyssa Stewart, who says the problem persists in the industry but that models now shoot heroin under their toenails or tongue, where track marks cannot be detected.What changed was that Gia started going directly from $10,000-a-day fashion shoots to the heroin shooting galleries on New York’s Lower East Side.One top photographer called her “a trashy little street kid” She made several comebacks, but each time relapsed And then word leaked out that she might be HIV positive.

At one major magazine shoot an editor supplied Gia with a bag of cocaine and some heroin on the set. Her drug use was preventing her from working at anything close to her full capacity as a model.In those days using heroin was rather glamorous And Gia was in demand as the look of the moment Fashion editors knew about all the drugs but did not care. In May that year, at just 21, Gia required surgery on her hand because, according to Stephen Fried, “she had injected herself in the same place so many times that there was an open infected tunnel leading into her vein”.Things were starting, just two years in, to fall apart Her moods were swinging wildly She walked out on shoots or fell asleep during jobs. In 1981 she was arrested – for driving under the influence of a narcotic.

We brought a whole medicine kit.”Gia’s appointment book from 1980 contains a misspelt reminder to “Get Heroine”. So many! We were both constantly on trips, which I think saved my life, because you don’t do drugs when you travel Except when I travelled with Gia. “She could’ve used a friend.” Instead she turned to the drugs that others in the fashion world used only at parties.”Gia and I were like lion cubs having fun,” one contemporary said “We got a reputation because we didn’t hide anything We did a lot of drugs and went to a lot of parties. For even at the height of her fame much of the time, Gia was alone She had friends in the profession, often make-up artists.

But her schedule didn’t allow her the time for other activities. At the end of a day’s shooting she often went back to her empty New York apartment. “The biggest mistake we made was that nobody went up there with her,” her brother, Michael, told her biographer, Stephen Fried, later. “Gia did a lot of things just to get her mother’s attention,” one friend later said.

“The one person Gia always wanted something from was her mother – and she just never felt like she got it.”Her public wildness was underpinned by a private loneliness. The abuse occurred only once, but she was traumatised by the incident. So was she when her mother left her husband, home and children for another man. Though, later in life, her mother returned to her, Gia never got over her sense of abandonment. Or maybe I’m just stoned again, hahahaha!”Yet there was behind the wanton lifestyle a deep unhappiness At the age of five she was sexually abused by a man. Forget everything else.”And she did not take too much trouble to hide her use of recreational drugs “I am finally really starting to dig being different Maybe I am discovering who I am.