What does the ideal kidnap victim look like? Nothing like Chloe Ayling, apparently. The glamour model made the headlines in August last year, when she walked into the British consulate in Milan and claimed she had just been released after six days of captivity. She had turned up for a modelling assignment in Milan, Ayling told officials, been injected with the tranquilliser ketamine, stuffed into a holdall bag and driven 120 miles in a car boot to a remote farmhouse near Turin. She said she had been gagged, was unconscious for much of the journey, and was later told she would be auctioned as a sex slave on the dark web for €300,000 (£265,000).

Ayling spent three weeks in Italy while police investigated, before returning home to Coulsdon in south London. Then 20 and a mother of one, she recounted her story to TV reporters in her mother’s front garden. Wearing hotpants and a low-cut top, she smiled, posed with her dog and seemed to enjoy the attention. “I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour,” she said. But she might as well not, because the image – of a young woman basking in the spotlight – overpowered her words.

Reporters started to scrutinise Ayling’s story. If she was telling the truth, why had she been caught on CCTV footage in an Italian village, holding her kidnapper’s hand? Why did she agree to share his bed? And why did she go shoe shopping with him while captive, but not mention it to the police?

Before long, the questions became accusations. Ayling’s alleged kidnapper, 30-year-old Lukasz Herba, claimed in court that they had dreamed up the project together, to help her out of financial difficulties. He also claimed their plan was based on the plot of a recently released film, By Any Means, in which a minor celebrity is kidnapped, and that he was in love with her.

Last October, Ayling appeared on the ITV show Good Morning Britain, where she was interrogated by host Piers Morgan. “Why would you lie to the police about such a key thing?” he asked. “It’s not insignificant to be going shopping with the alleged kidnapper and buying new shoes.” When she protested, he pushed back: “If you’re going to conduct media interviews where you’re being paid money, and you’re doing a book for thousands of pounds before there’s even been a trial, I think we’re perfectly entitled to ask you difficult questions.” Ayling was defensive and not entirely convincing, though she stood her ground. “It will all come out in the end,” she said.

And it did. Last month, Herba was convicted of kidnapping and extortion, and sentenced to 16 years and nine months in jail. Prosecutor Paolo Storari described Herba, a Pole based in the UK, as “a fantasist with narcissistic tendencies”. The court said the length of the sentence reflected the fact that Ayling could have been killed by the ketamine, or suffocated in the car boot.

It’s now almost a year since she was kidnapped. Today, we meet in a ramshackle photo studio in east London, reminiscent of the lockup where she was drugged in Milan; the place spooks her slightly, she says. She is here with her agent, Adrian Sington, who masterminded her book deal – another thing she has been criticised for. Soon after the kidnap, she dumped her modelling agent, Phil Green, for Sington. Sceptics said this was a sign of her ruthless ambition; Ayling said it was because Green had compromised her safety in setting up the shoot from which she was abducted. The more you look at it, there is not a single aspect of the Chloe Ayling story that is controversy-free.

When I arrive, Ayling is mid-shoot, laughing and smiling. The stylist suggests she buttons up her dress, but she prefers it a little open. She stands side on, shoulders back and pouting. “Do you think it would be possible to stand a little less ‘glam’?” the photographer asks. She tries but fails, and laughs.

He told her that if she was sold into slavery, she would be fed to tigers when her owners grew bored with her

It is Ayling’s 21st birthday the day we meet, and in some ways she seems so young – giggly, naive. In others, she seems older than her years. Ayling has a two-year-old son, Ashton, and has been modelling since she was 18. She has a lovely face, but today it is a little swollen and lopsided, a look that suggests she has recently used dermal fillers.

I ask what the past year has been like. “Crazy,” she says. “I’ve done so much, because I’ve spent it travelling a lot.” She reels off the places she has visited – Milan, New York, LA (three times), Miami, Vegas, Dubai, the Maldives – mainly to give interviews. It sounds as if she has had a fabulous time, until she explains why: “I’ve travelled so much to put it all to the back of my mind, as much as possible.”

One of the reasons Ayling came over badly on television is that her story appears not only unlikely, but also incredibly complex. Even when she talks about it now, there are times when she seems to confuse reality with the fantastical web of lies Herba created to brainwash her. Herba told Ayling he belonged to an organisation called Black Death, a violent group of Romanian traffickers that he was desperate to leave. In order for her to be released, and for him to be freed from service, he would have to raise the €300,000 and hand over the 20 properties he owned, he said – so their fates were inextricably intertwined. He told her that if she was sold into slavery, she would be fed to tigers when her owners grew bored with her.

Herba told Ayling that she had been kidnapped from Milan by two Black Death foot soldiers. He said that, when he heard about it, he travelled from Rome to rescue her, because he realised she had been kidnapped by mistake: Black Death regard the kidnap of young mothers as unethical and unprofitable (they aren’t worth as much on the dark web, Herba said). The initial kidnappers knew him as a more senior member of Black Death, he said, and he had given them permission to leave the farmhouse while he took over. To ensure she did not escape, Herba told her that there were Black Death agents everywhere; she had to trust him, he said, because he was risking his life to help her.

‘It’s made me a lot stronger. And wiser.’ Photograph: Perou/The Guardian

Only Herba made it all up. Black Death does not exist. Yes, there were two kidnappers, but it was revealed in court that one of them was Herba in a ski mask; the other is alleged to be his brother, Michael, who was extradited from Britain to Italy last month to stand trial. Herba believed that if Ayling was terrified of Black Death, she would do anything for him – and so it proved. “He always made out that he was the one who saved me. I looked at him like, what would I do without him? He said that if I escaped, not only would I die, he would as well. He was the only person who seemed to care that I would be free.”

Ayling says she spent the first day and night handcuffed to the furniture, crying. On the second day, Herba asked if she would like to share his bed. Of course she agreed, she says. “I’m not going to be, ‘No, I want to stay handcuffed to the furniture.’ I would never object to something he wants me to do in that time, because I didn’t want to upset him or make him angry.” He made it obvious he wanted her to sleep next to him? “Of course. And I’m not going to say, ‘No, I don’t want to sleep next to you.’ Why would I be a bitch about it? Why would I be nasty to him, when he is my only way out?” At times, she still talks about her ordeal in the present tense.

She had only one strategy: to make Herba feel sorry for her, to make him believe she was worth saving. And, over the days, it was apparent that his feelings were becoming more tender. He would ask whether they might become a couple. “I’d say, ‘In the future, when I’m released.’ Then he’d get excited about the thought of it, and him being in a happy mood was better for me, because then there’s more chance of him releasing me.” So she made him believe they might have a future together? “Yes. Obviously, I had no interest, but I had to play it as if I did. It was the only thing I had to focus on to get out.” Is she a good actor? She laughs. “No. I hated drama at school. I’m too shy for that.”

Then the story became even stranger. Herba told Ayling that she had already met him, a few months earlier. In April 2017, posing as a photographer called Andre Lazio, he had lured her to Paris for a fake photo shoot. The agency paid £2,000 up front, but the shoot was called off when “Andre” called to say his equipment had been stolen. Ayling briefly met Herba when he turned up to apologise and give her money for a taxi to the airport. Ayling says she never recognised Herba as Andre, because he had been wearing sunglasses.

I relied on this man totally. I couldn’t bear to be separated from him… He said if I escaped I would die

But while she was captive in Italy, he told her a different story. He said that he had been ordered to kidnap her in Paris by Black Death, but refused when he discovered she was a mother. In court, yet another story emerged: that Herba had indeed planned to kidnap Ayling at the time, but panicked when a terrorist attack on the Champs Élysées left Paris flooded with police. The fake modelling assignment in Milan (again, he paid the agency £2,000 up front) was his second and more successful attempt.

At the farmhouse, Herba asked Ayling who might pay a ransom for her. She named three older men. He emailed Phil Green (who was not one of them) to say she had been kidnapped and would be released for €300,000. Eventually, Green responded to say one of the friends she had named was offering £20,000 for her release. It wasn’t enough, but by now Herba seemed determined to let her go anyway. To this day, Ayling says she doesn’t know why. Maybe he believed they had a future together; maybe he didn’t know what to do next; maybe he was just crazy. She tries not to think about it, she says.

But even then he kept the fiction up. Herba told her that once she was released she would have to send him €50,000 in bitcoin, and help publicise Black Death as a leading terror organisation. “He said, ‘Because you’re from the UK and we don’t have an audience in the UK, I need you to promote Black Death. This is one of the conditions of me being able to leave the organisation.’ And I was like, yes, of course.”

I look at her, baffled. Why on Earth would that be one of his demands when the organisation didn’t even exist? Ayling looks equally perplexed. “I just don’t understand. I don’t understand anything he did.”

Herba drove her to the consulate in Milan. The initial plan was to drop her a short walk away and make his escape. But it was a couple of hours until the consulate opened, so he decided they should breakfast together. Witnesses later told reporters that they were laughing and joking in a cafe. Eventually, he decided on an even riskier course of action: he would walk her into the consulate and hand her in. He told Ayling to say he was her only friend in Italy and that, after escaping her kidnapper, she had borrowed a stranger’s phone and asked him to come to her rescue. Herba assumed he would simply be allowed to leave the consulate.

A police reconstruction of the kidnap. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Initially, Ayling stuck to this story. But she soon hit a problem. “The police were like, ‘OK, what’s his phone number?’ And I didn’t know it.” Was it apparent from the off that she was making it up? “Yes. They obviously knew. They’re not stupid. I said to Nicoletta, the translator, ‘I need to get this off my chest, but I’m scared.’ And then I said everything.” Only, she didn’t quite say everything, and the truth soon caught up with her.

When asked where she had got the new clothes she was wearing, Ayling claimed Herba had given them to her at the farmhouse. (She had been stripped of everything bar her underwear when she was abducted.) This was true of her tracksuit, but not her trainers; Herba had taken her shopping four days after she was kidnapped. Why didn’t she tell the police? “It was the end of the interview. I’d been speaking for 12 hours, and I just wanted to leave. I thought that would be another whole load of questions, and it would drag on for so much longer. So I just didn’t mention it.”

This was when the police told her they had footage of the two of them shoe shopping and holding hands. (They had been looking for her: after Green received Herba’s email a few days earlier, he contacted the Italian authorities.) How did that make her feel? “It was so bad. I was shocked. I had just spent 12 hours giving as much detail as I can, and there’s one thing I don’t mention. I broke down.” Because she thought she’d messed up? “No, I just thought, I’ve given so much information, even though I’m in so much danger, but at the end of the day, you’re not going to believe me. I was angry and frustrated for not mentioning something so minor.”

Did she think the shopping trip looked bad? Not at all, she says. “No one can say you should have acted in a certain way, because who the hell has gone through that? Something so crazy. So how would you know how to react? Anything you think will get you free, you have just got to do.” She says she is proud of the initiative she showed. “If you just refuse to do anything they say, most people wouldn’t come out alive. I’d rather have acted as I did and be here right now, rather than act as people say I should have.”

When Herba was arrested, Ayling felt confused; at the time, she believed he had rescued her from Black Death. “I was grateful to him. I felt sympathetic to the fact he was in jail, and the Romanians were still out there.”

In fact, she says, she felt terrified without him. “I relied on this man totally, even to the point where, when he wanted to drop me 20 minutes from the consulate, I couldn’t bear to think about being separated from him. Because I thought other members of Black Death would get me in the time it took to walk there.”

It wasn’t until Herba’s pre-trial hearing last August that she discovered the truth: there was no Black Death; Herba had bought the ski masks; there were photographs of her drugged on his phone; and his brother appeared to be his collaborator. Ayling was cross-examined at the hearing, standing behind a curtain screening her from Herba, on the understanding that she would not have to attend trial. Three weeks after her release, she was allowed home.

Lukasz Herba in court. Photograph: Zuma Press/Eyevine

Why does she think people didn’t believe her when she got back? She admits her own inconsistencies didn’t help, but there were other reasons. For example, her smiley demeanour during that first television appearance. “I don’t think people believed me because I wasn’t in tears. But I was happy, as you would be, seeing your family after a month when you thought you weren’t going to again. Also, because cameras are an everyday part of my life, I probably reacted differently from how most people would if they had been through the same thing.” She also believes there was a strong element of snobbery. “I think if you’re a glamour model, you’re bound to be portrayed in that way. It’s just the stereotype, I guess.” What is that stereotype? “That we just want fame and publicity.”

***

So many stories emerged about Ayling after her return, few of them positive. Her former boyfriend and the father of her son, Conor Keyes, told the press that he had been caring for their son largely singlehandedly, while she focused on her modelling. Her former agent Green said he was disappointed in her for dropping him. Her estranged father tried to get back in touch. It emerged that she had been Facebook friends with Herba a couple of years earlier; Ayling explained that she was naive – if people wanted to be Facebook friends, fine: the more she had, the higher her profile.

There was endless tabloid speculation about the ways in which Ayling might capitalise on the kidnap. Actually, she says, she never planned on a life in the public eye. After doing well in her GCSEs, she started A-levels in law, business and psychology. She hoped to become a lawyer. But at the age of 17, she got pregnant. Ayling had the baby, failed her A-levels, did a course in sports science and went on to join Green’s agency. “I was interested in Page 3,” she says. Why? “I honestly don’t know. I love travel and it allows me to travel.” She did some work for the Daily Star, but says glamour modelling is a far cry from the way it used to be, back when Samantha Fox and Linda Lusardi were household names.

Ayling, who was brought up by her Polish mother in south London and attended a state school, speaks in a surprisingly Sloaney way. I ask where the voice came from. When she went into modelling, she explains, she started to socialise with different types of people. “I hang around with people older than me, more intelligent, really. I chose to surround myself with people who have a bigger vision in life.”

In her mother’s garden in August 2017, soon after arriving home. Photograph: David Parker/Daily Mail/Solo Syndication

It was one of these people, Rory McCarthy, who offered to pay the £20,000 to secure her release. The tabloids have referred to the 57-year-old investment banker as a former boyfriend, but Ayling says this is untrue; they are just friends. “We’ve known each other for three years now, and we weren’t speaking at the time I was taken. We’d had an argument. So I was surprised he offered money. That was really sweet.”

There have also been reports that she is dating Britain’s Got Talent judge David Walliams, who contacted her because he was interested in her story. Is that true? “No!” She looks at Sington.

“There is no truth in it,” he says decisively.

“I prefer not to talk about my personal life, but no, I’m not with him.” So he is a friend? She giggles and looks at Sington again.

“I think it’s best to avoid it,” he tells her.

What is she going to do next? She says she doesn’t really have plans, but “I wouldn’t do Page 3 again.” Why not? “I just don’t really do this stuff any more. It’s all a bit more…” She looks at Sington again. “What’s the word?”

“Claaaassy,” he says in his plummy voice.

Sington seems less uncertain about her future. “I’m just going to prompt her,” he says. “TV, books and feature film. We’ve got a major meeting with a television production company. It’s not just Netflix.”

Is it true that she’s going to be in this year’s Celebrity Big Brother? “No.” Would she be interested if she were offered it? “No, I just wouldn’t do it...” She pauses. “At the moment.”

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Ayling does turn up on Big Brother next month, or another reality show. When I ask if there is any truth in the stereotype of the fame-hungry glamour model, she is candid. “Well, you do want publications – that is the goal of a model. It’s just natural.” That’s how you measure success? “Exactly. And different jobs measure success differently.”

Unfortunately, many people have equated a desire for fame with a willingness to do anything to achieve it – even taking part in a fake kidnap. Having met Chloe Ayling, I think there is nothing she wants more than a bigger public profile. But I’m equally sure that she is neither cynical nor reckless enough to participate in her own abduction.

After she got home, Ayling says she struggled. She couldn’t – or wouldn’t – sleep. “For the first few months, I stayed up while my mum slept, and would then sleep during the day. Every little noise I heard at night, I would run into her room. At one point I even pushed the chest of drawers against the door because I was so scared.”

Rather than revisiting the six days she was held, she has been obsessing about what she could have done to avoid it. “I keep thinking about what would have happened if I’d messed up their plan – if I’d turned up at the studio with a male friend. I kick myself for not bringing someone with me. I wish I’d been more streetwise.”

Has anything positive come of the experience? “It’s made me a lot stronger. And I’m a lot wiser. I’m more paranoid and cautious.” Is that a good thing? “It means I will never get into that situation again.”

She remembers one thing her lawyer said to her: nothing will feel insurmountable now that you’ve got through this. And, she says, he was right – even in terms of dealing with the online trolling she has received, and still does. “It didn’t get to me as much as it should have, because what I went through in the first place was so bad. And I knew that everybody important, people close to me and the authorities, believed in me, so I didn’t really care about what the haters online would say.”

When Ayling heard, on 11 June, that Herba had been convicted, she felt relieved and validated. Her lawyer Francesco Pesce is now seeking €500,000 (£442,000) in compensation. She knows there will still be those who continue to believe she was complicit in her own kidnapping, but she’s not going to let that bother her. “It’s just ridiculous,” she says. “People think they know more than the court.”

The court was told Herba had asked his mother to delete his emails. His password was twattwat1

In Ayling’s book, Pesce says he started out thinking that Herba had to be a genius – that there must be a masterplan behind the idea of going into the consulate with her. But in court it emerged that Ayling had the misfortune, or good luck, to have been abducted by the most clueless kidnapper in the world. There were more than 50 witnesses for the prosecution – police investigators, forensic investigators, scientific experts, technical experts. The court heard that, before the kidnapping, Herba had been trying to create the poisons ricin and cyanide at home, while repeatedly searching online for “Chloe Ayling”, “Black Death” and “sex-trafficking”.

A text message from Herba to his accomplice was read out in court: “Buy a big trip bag. Very big. You know for what [purpose] it serves so you know how big it should be.” The prosecution told the court there was no evidence of collusion: no emails, no incriminating Facebook messages, nothing to support the claim that Ayling was an accomplice. It was revealed that Herba has phoned his mother and asked her to destroy the evidence – to dump his car and delete his emails. He gave her his password: “twattwat1”.

The last time Ayling saw Herba, he was being led away by police. At the time, she felt sorry for him – after all, he had rescued her from the horrors of Black Death. But any sympathy is now long gone. “I hope he serves his full 16 years,” she says. “Don’t forget they said I could have been killed by the ketamine, or by being locked in the car boot for five hours.”

What would she say if she saw him now? “Why? I just don’t understand why the hell you would go through all the effort of doing that. And for what? I don’t understand. I genuinely don’t.”

‘Was I going to be killed, or tortured? Would anyone know where I was?’: an extract from Kidnapped, by Chloe Ayling

The taxi pulled up outside a building in Milan. Many modelling assignments are in disused warehouses, but as soon as you go inside there is noise and equipment everywhere. I suppose the silence, looking back now, was a clue that all wasn’t quite right.

I put my hand on the handle to the door marked “studio” and a man suddenly came at me from behind. I felt a gloved hand on my mouth and nose, and panicked. My head was being held back, another arm pinning me across my neck. Then I saw another masked man rush in front of me with a needle. I tried to fight, but I couldn’t. He grabbed my right arm and pushed up my sleeve. I was wrestled to the floor. The masked man was over me now, the syringe piercing my skin. A wave of darkness descended.

A jolt stirred me and I tried to open my eyes. What was happening? It was pitch black. I could hear noises, but I was too drowsy to work out what was going on. I tried to open my mouth, but I couldn’t – there was tape across it. Eventually, I managed to peel it off and I could breathe. Then I felt metal around my wrists and ankles. Handcuffs.

There was black, rubbery material all around me; I realised I was in a bag. My mind focused on a small hole in front of me. I became all-consumed with trying to get my hands through that gap so I could breathe. When I eventually dislodged the zip, it got lighter and I realised I was in the boot of a moving car. I decided I needed to get the driver’s attention and stop the car. I tried to make some noise, banging and shouting out, “Driver! Driver!”

Suddenly, the car stopped. I waited. The boot opened and I saw two masked men.

It was such an effort to talk, but I said, “Where are we? What’s happening?” They didn’t reply. One of them leaned in and put the tape back over my mouth. They tightened the handcuffs around my wrists. Then they zipped up the bag again and moved the parcel shelf back over me. The boot slammed shut and I felt the car moving again.

I was so hot. I was grateful I was not in my thick jacket, but then I realised I wasn’t the one who had removed it. I was still in my pink velvet bodysuit and socks, but my cap, jacket, jeans and trainers had gone. Why had they taken my clothes off? My last memory was the man and the syringe. Had I been raped? I think I would have known, wouldn’t I? But if it hadn’t happened yet, would it happen? Was I going to be killed, or tortured? Would anyone know where I was?

The car stopped again, the boot opened and one of the men jumped in and lay behind me, like he was spooning me. There was no time to process why he was suddenly next to me. As soon as the boot shut, I took my chance to talk.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “Where am I?”



“You not get hurt, don’t worry,” he said in broken English with an accent. I asked where we were going, but he was acting clueless.



He kept saying, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” I started to cry. The enormity of the situation hit me and I couldn’t help it. The tears were for me, my mum, my baby boy. I didn’t know if I would ever see them again.

• This is an edited extract from Kidnapped: The Untold Story Of My Abduction, by Chloe Ayling, published on 12 July by John Blake Publishing at £8.99. To order a copy for £6.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.

If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).