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| Inseparable: Bobbi Kristina and Nick have recently become engaged |
Slumped at the kitchen table with a glass of wine in front of her, a bleary-eyed Bobbi Kristina Brown slurs her words as she admits: ‘I’m not OK. I just need time to learn how to live without my mum.’
Unfortunately, Whitney Houston’s daughter is not learning that lesson in the private and protective bosom of her family, but in the full glare of cameras recording her every move for a new reality television series, which has just started in America and is likely to screen here soon.
Other scenes in the teaser for the first episode of the ten-part series The Houstons: On Our Own, show Bobbi Kristina being sick, frequently in tears, and announcing her engagement at the age of 19 to her foster brother, Nick Gordon.
It would be heartening to think that, despite the chronic dysfunction of her family life, Krissi, as she’s known to friends and family, will grow into a well-balanced young woman able to put tragedy behind her.
But the fact she has signed up to a warts-and-all reality show, while still grieving the sudden death of her 48-year-old singing legend mother in February, does not score highly in any assessment of her judgment.
Nor, many would argue, does her recent engagement to the 22-year-old man who grew up with her as her brother, and from whom she has been inseparable since her mother’s death.
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| Like mother, like daughter? Friends worry that Krissi may follow in her mother's footsteps and become involved with drugs |
Whitney took Nick into her care when he was 12 and unofficially adopted him when his father went to prison and his mother could reportedly no longer care for him.
A tweet from Nick in March confirming that he and Krissi were in a relationship met with much uproar, given that until then they had known each other as siblings.
The family, already fractured by the tensions of an ongoing inheritance battle, is said to disapprove of the romance.
Whether Krissi cares what they think is another matter, given that she has already faced more controversy in 19 years than most people see in a lifetime.
Her mother and father, the singer Bobby Brown, were both drug addicts, and Krissi herself was reported to have been caught using cocaine after her mother’s funeral. Last year, she was photographed snorting what was thought to be cocaine and, in another incident, smoking marijuana from a bong.
Her uncle Gary admits during the trailer for the reality TV show that he is deeply worried about his niece: ‘I sympathise with what has happened with Krissi’s mother but I hope we don’t lose her.’
However, it would seem Krissi has few reliable people to turn to in her hour of need. Virtually orphaned since her mother’s death — her father has been in and out of rehab and the two of them no longer speak — she is surrounded by relatives who appear to have rather mixed motives.
Friends admit to being concerned for her: ‘Krissi was her mum’s best friend,’ schoolfriend Duane Allen told the Mail. ‘She talks about her mother all the time and says she still finds herself doing things and wanting to tell her mum. Krissi, her mother and Nick were a very tight-knit family.’
Krissi’s grandmother, Cissy — Whitney’s 79-year-old mother — has condemned the relationship with Nick as ‘practically incest’, but some are unsurprised by Krissi reaching out to him.
‘He was always there for her to make sure she was all right. I know he loves her,’ says Duane.
A family friend, who asked not to be named, described how the unlikely romance began: ‘Krissi needed someone to cuddle up to at night and invited Nick to sleep in her bed with her.
‘The first night they kissed, there was a fair amount of alcohol involved. They both felt weird about developing feelings for each other because they are sort of siblings, but a few drinks changed things and it’s been on ever since.’
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