Kim Kardashian. Sean Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ 5 and, most aptly, as far as Kim is concerned, Kanye West. Irving and Kanye were brought together by Kris, who has been best friends with Irving’s wife Shelli for more than 30 years.

      The Azoffs and the Kardashians lived near each other in Beverly Hills, so it seemed natural that their children would grow up together, spending time at each other’s houses. Kim used to enjoy exploring Shelli’s wardrobe and jewellery box, in particular, and trying on her diamond rings for size.

      Kim has always been respectful of Allison’s desire to keep a low profile and the pair are seldom pictured together, even though they still speak all the time. Kim often says that she and Allison ‘met the day I was born’ and leaves it at that. Other friendships with equally famous people may receive far more publicity, but Allison is her oldest and dearest.

      This rarefied upbringing relied on Robert continuing to make plenty of money without having to go back to the meat-packing business. Not all of his investments went as well as Radio & Records. Irving Azoff observed, ‘Some have and some haven’t been successful. But he’s real dependable and honest and quite an entrepreneur.’

      The Kardashian family were firmly entrenched in Beverly Hills society. They were established in the pool and party circuit, with four lovely children and all the trappings that success could bring. This happiness didn’t last. In 1990, the Kardashians’ world fell apart.

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       A Complicated Affair

      The Kardashian family always ate dinner together, even when the children were young. After prayers, Robert would go round the table for ‘The Peak and the Pit’. Everyone in turn had to declare the highlight and lowlight of their day. When Kim revealed on television that they used to do this, it was copied in homes around the country.

      On one particular day in 1990, there were no peaks. That was when Robert and Kris sat them down and explained quietly that they were getting a divorce. Robert Jr was only two, so he wasn’t involved, but the three girls were in floods of tears. Their parents tried hard not to reveal the true extent of their own anguish.

      They wanted to cause as little disruption as possible to their children’s lives, having vowed that their welfare would remain the most important consideration and they would try to act as normally as possibly. That was easier said than done: divorce papers would later make clear just how upset Kim had been by the course of events.

      Robert was completely devastated. Kris had been having a tempestuous two-year affair with a younger man called Todd Waterman, a very fit and handsome footballer with a soccer team called LA Heat. She was 33 and he was 10 years her junior.

      He had spotted her first in a photo at a friend’s house in Beverly Hills and liked what he saw. She evidently felt the same way when they got together during a night out with friends. Their versions of events are different. She says they kissed for the first time in the hall closet of her friend’s house. He says they had sex for the first time in said closet, adding, gallantly, that it was ‘magical’.

      They both agree that they subsequently had a lot of sex. In her memoir, Kris, who once again gives her former lover a false name – this time Ryan – recalls less coyly that they had ‘wild’ sex in almost every imaginable location: tennis court, pool house, garage, back seat of the car and up and down the stairs. ‘Sex everywhere, all the time,’ she added.

      Todd confirms that the sex was adventurous, both outdoors and indoors. ‘We were pretty prolific,’ he remembered with understatement. His memory failed him when he was asked if they had made love in the marital bed at Tower Lane. He did say he was sure they’d had sex in the house, but he didn’t recall anything specific.

      They were clearly very much in love and, as sometimes happens in those circumstances, they became foolhardy and indiscreet. Todd was like a trophy boyfriend, always on Kris’s arm at celebrity parties and barbecues. She was behaving like a woman obsessed. She was seeing so much of Todd, even taking a skiing holiday with him, that his mother Ilza thought Kris and Robert were already separated: ‘She wouldn’t talk about her husband with me. If she did, I would have said, “What are you doing coming after my young son, with all these kids?”’

      Not surprisingly, Robert became suspicious. He kept seeing Todd in the company of his wife, especially at the house, where they would play tennis together. Todd amusingly recalled that on one occasion Robert decided to umpire their game and kept calling foot faults against him.

      More seriously, Robert hired a private detective to follow his wife to the modest apartment in Studio City, which she and Todd were using as a love nest. The inevitable clash with Robert is another incident that the two lovers remember differently. She recalled that it was in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, where they were having a cosy breakfast together. Todd said they were pulling out of his garage in an open-topped Jeep, when Robert dashed up in a convertible Mercedes, jumped out and started swinging a golf club at the back of the car. Todd was all in favour of stopping and confronting Robert, but Kris was worried that her distraught husband might have a gun, so the two vehicles set off on a high-speed car chase through Beverly Hills, which ended when Todd swerved into another road.

      Todd, who only came forward in 2012 after he featured as Ryan in Kris’s book, was concerned for his personal safety, especially after a phone call he claims he received from O. J. Simpson warning him to stay away from Kris. O. J. apparently invited Todd over to his house to discuss things further – an invitation he had no trouble turning down.

      One of the cruel ironies of the affair was that Kris paid for almost everything. But she, by her own admission, had no money. She was using credit cards that were paid for by her husband. The first thing Robert did on discovering the affair and deciding on a divorce was to cancel all of Kris’s credit cards. The financial implications would eventually lead to bitter and acrimonious divorce proceedings.

      The whole sorry saga was shaping up like a bad episode of Dynasty (or a good one, depending on whether you were living it or just watching). To her credit, Kris hasn’t tried to justify her behaviour other than to acknowledge how unbearably miserable she had become in her marriage. The shattering effect her affair had on her family, particularly the two eldest girls, became clear when divorce papers were revealed in Star magazine in the US and published in America and the UK.

      The most heartbreaking incident occurred in May 1990, when Kimberly, as they called her then, found her mother crying after a ‘brutal’ conversation with Robert. He was so emotionally distraught by what was happening that he would call Kris some horrible names whenever they tried to speak to one another. In her statement, Kris said, ‘She became so upset I had a difficult time getting her to her [school] carpool on time.’ She added that Kim called twice that afternoon begging her to come home. Clearly the young girl was worried that her mother was going to leave them.

      Khloé, being that much younger than her sisters, seemed fine with Todd and would happily sit in the back seat of the car if he was going out to lunch with her mother. He thought she was smart and ‘just the cutest kid’.

      Robert moved out of Tower Lane, leaving Kris to manage on her own. In the divorce papers, her sworn statement details what she termed was a ‘luxury lifestyle’. The mortgage payment on the house alone was $15,000 a month and then there were wages for the gardener, a maid and a housekeeper, as well as $800 a month to pay for the children’s clothing and $2,000 a month for herself. Credit card debts on various store cards had grown to more than $21,000.

      The unhappiness that both Robert and Kris were feeling didn’t end with her sailing off into the sunset with Todd – far from it. At first, they carried СКАЧАТЬ