‘There are so many unhealthy ways to grieve’
Lola and Serena Bute know more than most about dealing with loss, they tell Eleanor Steafel
In the March of 2020, just before the country was plunged into lockdown, Lola Bute was already in turmoil; grieving her boyfriend, Kai Schachter, who had taken his own life a year before, and her friend, Ila Scheckter (daughter of former F1 champion Jody Scheckter), who had died of an accidental overdose just six months earlier, in October 2019.
She was channelling her pain into supporting mental health and addiction charities, planning a ball that would raise hundreds of thousands of pounds in the names of loved ones she’d lost. At just 19, Lola had already experienced more tragedy in her young life than most; she couldn’t have known then that another devastating loss was just around the corner.
Lola’s father, the aristocrat and Formula 1 racing driver Johnny, Marquess of Bute, was diagnosed with leukaemia. Cruelly, the family thought for a while that he had beaten it, but shortly after Christmas he fell ill again and after a short, fierce battle, died in hospital in London in March 2021 at just 62.
When we first met at her parents’ home in north London in 2020 to discuss the ball which, naturally, was later cancelled when lockdown was called, Lola (or Lady Lola Crichtonstuart, to give her her full title) struck me as a far cry from the Gen Z socialite stereotype. While she is strikingly beautiful, is in Tatler’s Little Black Book, and has an Instagram feed filled with pictures of holidays and parties – in person she was thoughtful and serious.
She was nearly eight months sober, having recently sought help for what she referred to as the “unhealthy coping mechanisms” she reached for in the wake of her boyfriend’s shocking death. She had to decide, she told me firmly, “whether I’m going to let this ruin my life or make me stronger […] I’ve put all my energy into putting this event on and trying to raise awareness and help people so they don’t suffer in silence like [Kai] did, because the thought of anyone else feeling this pain, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
Two years later, we meet again at her parents’ house in Camden. Now 22 she is finally throwing her ball, and with a renewed sense of purpose – she now feels she is doing this for her beloved dad, too. “He was very proud of it,” she says, crediting Eternity (the charity she founded after Kai’s death) as having helped her to “heal and cope with my grief in a healthy way, because there are so many unhealthy ways to grieve”.
We are talking over coffee with her mother, the fashion designer Serena Bute. The house is filled with pictures of Johnny. In the kitchen, a little card with the words “never give up” sits on a sideboard between vases of flowers. “His motto in life,” says Serena. It is those words the two women have tried to live by during this past dreadful year.
“You put on your armour, you get up and you keep going,” says Serena. “That’s what Johnny would have wanted and that’s what he instilled in the kids.” Johnny had two other daughters, Caroline and Cathleen, a son, Jack, and a stepdaughter and stepson, Jazzy and Joshua.
For a long time, they tell me, the idea that he might actually die had seemed impossible. “I literally didn’t think it was going to happen until it happened,” says Lola. “He was so strong. He was like our rock. He’d never even had a cold.”
They spent the Christmas of 2020 as a family at their ancestral home on the Isle of Bute, not knowing it would be their last together. “He was chopping trees on the beach,” recalls Serena. “And it really felt like he was cured, it was like, well, we’ve done this. And then six weeks later he was dead.”
Lola remembers having a niggling feeling of worry when she said goodbye to him after the Christmas break. “At the ferry, I kept running back to give him another hug. There was something weird in me that was like ‘Imagine if this was the last time I ever hugged him’. And I then didn’t see him until the day [before] he died, because it was lockdown.”
It didn’t help that she made headlines for breaking lockdown to go to Scotland.
“The whole thing was just sad because it was our last Christmas together,” she says.
When Johnny’s cancer returned, he was determined his children weren’t to be worried unnecessarily. “I think he had hoped that even though he’d relapsed he’d just beat it,” says Serena. “So we had this month here on our own, cuddled up together, which was in retrospect a really amazing time.”
Today, on what would have been his birthday, they will hold a memorial service for him on his beloved Bute. A “very beautiful” granite gravestone has just been put up on the island, which Serena feels he would have loved. Losing Johnny, her partner of 25 years, she says, left her feeling like “half a person”. “It’s so easy to take somebody for granted because they’re just there every day and you expect them to be making tea or brushing their teeth.
“He created all this, he made everything possible for us all and he’s gone and life goes on. And that is brutal. When you lose someone that’s like half of you, you feel like half of you is gone.”
Since his death, she has lost some confidence socially, she says. “I don’t really go out that much, I’m sure in time I’ll feel better, but it’s like sometimes going out with all my friends, who I love dearly, emphasises what I’ve lost, because their lives are all the same and mine has changed hugely. So sometimes it’s easier not to.”
Johnny “wanted the world” for Lola, Serena says, her voice thick with emotion. “He wanted the world for all his kids. He had great faith in Lola. Sometimes when I’d worry he’d say ‘Lola will be fine’.”
For her part, Lola is grateful her dad got to see her reach a better, healthier place. “I think he really saw how much I’d changed… I know he found it very difficult to see me struggle, but I think he knew I would get through this.”
She is planning to move to New York in September to study jewellery design. “I feel like that’s something Dad would really want me to do, to keep learning and be young, be 22 and go back to school and live my life.”
It will be hard, she says, to be without him on the night of the ball, at a venue in Kings Cross, which she hopes will raise a generous sum for four charities: Place2be, Action on Addiction, James’ Place and Grow. The 350 guests will enjoy dinner by Locanda Locatelli, Spring and the River Cafe. There will be hundreds of flowers from Freddie’s Flowers, a live auction, and Groove Armada are among the acts playing at the after-party. “I feel he’d be very proud… I’m nervous about speaking. I probably would have got him to come up and hold my hand or something.”
One of Lola’s favourite pieces in the auction is a Harland Miller painting with the words “Tonight we make history p.s. I can’t be there” emblazoned across it. It makes her think of Kai and Ila and, of course, her dad. “They were all such forces, and they’re continuing to live through all the people that they loved.”