“Friends are my family”
It’s hard to imagine but this time last year, the seemingly unsinkable Deborah Hutton was holed up on her living room couch, too afraid to venture out. “I was in a really bad way, I was just a mess,” the media personality admits, her blue eyes clouding over.
Deborah’s estranged partner had just been arrested for staging a break-in at the Sydney beach house they shared, in a bizarre bid to intimidate her into staying with him. Earlier that morning, a devastated Deb had chatted to her close friend Jenny Haretuku, who lives two-and-a-half hours out of Sydney.
Suddenly, there was a knock at her front door. “And Jenny was standing there with all the ingredients for chicken soup – literally. She had an overnight bag and said, ‘I am staying,’” Deborah, 57, recalls. “I just burst into tears and thought, ‘That’s one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given.’”
Through life’s ups and downs, the one constant in Deborah’s life – by default, not design – has been her tight-knit group of friends. She meets them regularly for dinner, drinks, golf, gym sessions, walks, Sydney Swans games – or hosts them at her home in the exclusive Fab-style riff with Deborah as the pair prepare for photoshoot, I don’t doubt that for a second.
