Charlotte Aitken: daughter of Rushdie's literary agent 'died after drugs cocktail'
Gillon Aitken’s only child Charlotte, was “extraordinarily stricken” by the death of her Swedish-born mother Cari Margareta Bengtsson, west London coroners court was told.
The 27 year-old had taken a cocktail of drugs to relieve the stress of her mother’s death.
She died in the arms of her half brother, John Svanberg, the morning after they had buried their mother in Tangiers, in the country’s north.
The aspiring literary agent, who had a history of cocaine and cannabis abuse, had recently moved from London to live with her mother and “renew herself”.
While the exact cause of the death could not be established after her body was flown home, a pathologist concluded the most likely explanation was the "highly dangerous" combination of alcohol and drugs she had consumed.
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On Thursday at the inquest into her death, Mr Aitken, one of Britain’s most influential literary agents, said he had thought his daughter had overcome recent difficulties with alcohol and drugs.
Mr Aitken, whose list of authors includes Sir Rushdie, Sebastian Faulks and the Queen's biographer Sarah Bradford, was told of his wife’s death on August 9 last year and boarded the first flight to Morocco to be with his daughter.
Asked by Alison Thompson, the coroner, if his wife of 18 years had not died, she would not have died, he replied: "I have not the slightest doubt that she would have come through”.
Mr Aitken, who separated from his wife in 2000 before she moved to the North Africa in 2010, added: "I say this without bitterness, but I do not think that her mother had prepared her for her death.”
The court heard that Miss Aitken, who also had a history of self-harming, had attempted to harm herself following her mother's death, but Mr Aitken said she had been looking forward to the future and had no intention of taking her own life.
"She was extraordinarily stricken by the news, but also it was a complicated position as her relationship with her mother was not entirely straight forward,” he said.
"There was a sense of anger with her and also love. These contradictory forces caused her great confusion."
"Charlotte was alternating between stoicism and great grief, it was very stressful."
Despite many "appalling difficulties" in arranging the funeral it had gone smoothly on August 15.
That night they had a drink and Miss Aitken, who had trouble sleeping, then took a combination of drugs to calm herself and "find peace" after the funeral, the court heard.
Mr Aitken, 73, said the next morning her half brother called him to say she was not breathing and by the time he rushed to the house she was dead.
"They (the drugs) were taken for relief from the stress of the situation, I have no doubt about that,” he said.
"In a way the stress was indomitable. The tragedy in a way is that Charlotte went to Tangier to renew herself and in that process she had felt freer than she had in London."
Mr Svanberg, who lives in London, told the court that when he went around to her mother’s rented house the dog was crying at the door and he immediately knew “something was wrong”.
He climbed the wall and onto her balcony where he saw her “lying on the bed sweating and her lips were blue”.
"She was barely breathing. I tried to wake her, but I couldn't,” he said. "I tried to revive her, but I didn't know how. So I phoned an ambulance and waited and I held her in my arms as she took her last breath."
Dr Olaf Biedrzycki, a Home Office pathologist, could not establish the exact cause of death but the drugs "would act to slow the breathing down”.
The cause of her mother's death was not disclosed in court. But reports at the time suggested she had fallen down the stairs in a horrible accident and died a few days later.
Mrs Thompson recorded a verdict of death by misadventure. "She has died from probable complications of alcohol or drug use,” she said.
The family declined to comment outside court.
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