CHAPTER 2
The rest of the summer of 1980 is spent watching Marley and Sean practice with Billy and Tommy who make up the rest of Marley’s band Carnage.
In September Jimmie and I start high school. School was easy for me, I was in top sets for everything, without really having to put in much effort, I wasn’t stunningly beautiful but I was at an age now where I knew my ranking in the ‘prettiness’ order and I was up there. My parents were both of Irish descent, but looked totally different to each other, my Dad was tall, over six feet, he was broad and he was dark, dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. My Mum on the other hand was short, about five feet four and very petit, even after having us four kids she was still only a size eight and was pale, skin like porcelain, she had the most beautiful dark auburn hair and the bluest of eyes. My Dad was handsome, all of my mates told me so and my Mum was stunningly beautiful and I wished so much that I looked like her, but I didn’t. Where my brothers all looked exactly like my Dad, I was a weird combination of both my parents. I had always been tall for my age, I was way too skinny for my liking, my hair was a dark chestnut colour, when the sun shone through it you could see the reds I’d inherited from my Mum but mainly it looked brown, my skin was darker than my Mum’s but nowhere near as dark as my Dad’s and my brothers and my eyes were blue, not pale china blue like my Mum’s but a very dark blue. Whenever I got a tan in the summer they’d pop right out of my face, they didn’t match my dark skin and dark lashes and always drew comments, so by the age of eleven, I knew I wasn’t stunningly beautiful like my Mum but I knew I was pretty. Prettier than most of the other girl’s in my class, prettier than most other girl’s in my year and quite possibly the school. I don’t mean to sound flash or like a show off, it’s just how it was, girls just know these things.
Love us or hate us, Jimmie and I were the popular girls but that wasn’t always a good thing, especially at secondary school; within days of starting as first years, we were attracting the attention of the older boys as well as a few bitchy comments from the older girls. We’d been Queen Bees at primary school; secondary school though, was a whole new thing and introduced us to a whole new level of bitch. On just the third day there I was stopped in the corridor and asked if I wanted to go to a party that weekend by a boy called Dale who was a fifth year. I said “No”, as I knew there was no way that my brothers would allow it. Regardless of this, I had some tall skinny blonde girl screaming at me in the lunch hall later that she was going to be waiting at the school gates that night and was going to kick the shit out of me for flirting with her boyfriend, I’d never been so happy to see Marley appear over her shoulder as he came barrelling toward us.
“Debra – f*ck off and leave her alone! She’s a first year you f*cking bully. I’ve just spoken to Dale, she blew him out, he asked her to the party, she said no and didn’t flirt with him at all, and you can tell him from me, if he comes near her again, me or Len will knock him the f*ck out! Tell the rest of the fifth years the same f*cking thing, she’s eleven, they are all a bunch of f*cking pervs.”
She folds her arms across her chest and looks him up and down and then turns and looks me up and down. “She’s your sister Marl?”
“Yeah, my baby sister.”
Sean is with him and comes around and stands next to me. Taking me completely by surprise when he pulls me into his side by my waist and kisses my temple, asking into my hair if I’m okay? I nod, this time it’s not so much to do with the affect he has on me, it’s more to do with the fact that I’m shitting myself that I’m going to get beat up after school by a grown woman. For doing absolutely nothing wrong.
“What’s your name?” The girl, woman, Debra asks me.
“Georgia,” I reply.
“You’re a pretty girl Georgia, you and your mate there are both very pretty, your ruffling feathers round here, you need to keep your head down and stay away from the older boys and make sure everyone around here knows you’re a Layton and that Marley and Lennon are your brothers.”
She looks Sean up and down, he’s tall and looks older than a third year, which he has joined Marley in. Sean is new too; he’s just moved into the area and transferred from a different school.
“And who are you? Not another gorgeous Layton that I didn’t know about?”
Sean returns the look up and down, but instead of looking at her lustfully as she had done him, he looks at her with complete contempt and I beam. Shit I almost ignite, inwardly of course, because the last I want to do is piss this bitch off again.
“No love, I’m not a Layton, I’m Sean, Sean McCarthy. I’m Marley’s mate and Georgia’s boyfriend. So make sure all your pervi fifth year mates know to stay the f*ck away from her.”
What?
He’s my boyfriend?
Well shit!
My mouth hits the floor; well that’s how it felt anyway. Sean squeezed my hand as he spoke and as I looked around the dining hall I couldn’t help but notice that we had attracted quite a crowd. Events from that lunch time soon spread, everyone assumed I was Sean’s girlfriend and in turn thought that Jimmie was with Marley, the fact that they walked with us to and from school most days helped to solidify the story and I was over the moon. All of this quickly instilled us as the most popular girls in the first year and made our journey into secondary school life so much easier.
I spent a lot of time with Sean that year, just hanging out as friends, there was lots of flirting, or what I considered flirting but nothing else. I was still too young for anything else and Sean seemed to respect that, he wasn’t a saint, I would often catch him looking at my ever growing boobs and I heard Marls tell him on more than one occasion to stop looking at my arse. We never discussed what he’d told Debra Smith in the dining hall that day, he never asked me to be his girlfriend and I was for the most part completely confused as to what I was to him, he kissed my cheek a couple of times, he held my hand when he thought no one was looking and when we looked at each other we knew Sean and I, that there was something going on between us. He was at our house all the time; after school, weekends, and school holidays, he even started coming with us on our overseas holidays. And because of the amount of time the boys spent practicing with the band or doing homework at our house, they very rarely went elsewhere, meaning, there was little chance of him meeting any other girls. Apart from at school, but of course there, everyone already thought he was my boyfriend and I couldn’t be happier about that fact.
In the summer of 1982 everything changed, Jimmie and Sean came with us to Portugal; my body had changed so much lately, although my boobs had now grown to a generous D cup, I’d recently acquired a pair of hips that balanced them out and stopped me from looking so top heavy and combined with the extra two inches in height I had grown, I was feeling a little more confident in myself. The first day around the pool, all Jimmie and I wanted to do was get our bodies out in the sun, the boys didn’t make an appearance until after lunch. They had stayed up drinking beer with my Dad and Lennon until late and were probably suffering for it a little, my Dad and Len had been up and out very early that morning to play golf, my Mum had gone shopping with a girlfriend who lived over here permanently and was meeting Dad later for dinner.
Jim and I had drunk a bottle of wine before the boys got up and I was feeling very brave as I lay on the lilo in the pool and watched Sean walking across the patio toward a sun lounger. I had already decided this holiday was going to be it, I was sick of playing games. I was hearing rumours that Sean had kissed girls at parties and him and Marley were always talking about girls that they fancied, even in front of Jimmie and me and it left me hurt, angry and confused; boys could be such arseholes sometimes. All of this had led me to the decision to take matters into my own hands this summer. I was going to be fourteen in September, and about to go in to the third year of secondary school, the boys were going into their fifth. The band was doing well and was being booked to play at the birthday parties of a lot of the kids from school, bringing them a lot of female attention. Some of the parties Jim and I went along to, some, like the eighteenths and twenty-firsts, we weren’t allowed to and it was killing me. I was over it and wanted him to either be my boyfriend or for me to be allowed to tell everyone at school that we were over so that I could have a chance at finding a different boyfriend. I actually didn’t want that at all, I wanted him and nobody else would do. I decided to climb out of the pool and attempt a Bond girl moment. I push myself up from the side and stand and tilt my head to the sky as I shake my hair, then squeeze the excess water out of it; as I look down, Sean is sitting on the end of a sun lounger watching me. Marley has jumped straight in the water and is now terrorising Jimmie, I put my hands on my hips and stand and stare into Sean’s beautiful chocolate eyes.
“Come here.” He beckons me with his finger, I walk toward him wearing my favourite teeny tiny red bikini, as sexily as you can when you’re not yet fourteen and don’t really know what walking sexily entails. I stop and stand between his legs while he looks up at me with the cheekiest of smiles on his lips.
“You do know we’re in Europe Gia, everyone here goes topless, and I’m a bit disappointed to see you’re not up with the times.”
“Well that’s what happens when you lay in bed for half the day. You miss the best parts, we were topless all morning, and I didn’t want my nipples to burn so I just put my top back on.”
I didn’t.
I wasn’t topless at any time but he doesn’t know that.
He smiled up at me.
“Well I will be sure to set my alarm and be up early tomorrow morning so that I don’t miss anything.”
“Well then you will be shit out of luck, my Dad will be here tomorrow and there is no way that I’ll be going topless in front of him.”
He lets out a long breath and looks beyond me, out across the pool, I can hear Jimmie and my brother giggling and splashing.
“You Gia are a flirt, but one day, one day it will be our turn. Our time.”
My heart drops like a stone into my stomach. What?
“Why… why do we have to wait for it to be our time? I’m fourteen in September; everyone thinks you’re my boyfriend anyway?”
I sound needy and whiney like a child and I don’t want to be a child, I want to be a woman.
“Gia… you have no idea do you? Your Dad and your brothers would kill me, they’d f*cking kill me and I respect them all too much to start something with you before you’re ready but don’t think for a minute that I don’t want you. I know it sounds wrong but right from that very first day when I saw your pink knickers, there’s been something.”
I want to cry, I’m sick of waiting, all my friends have boyfriends and all I have is a lie, just to keep every other boy away from me. It’s so f*cking unfair! Sean reaches out and touches my hand. I want to pull away, but I don’t, his touch does something to me and it pisses me off no end.
“You told everyone that day in the dining hall that you were my boyfriend and everyone still thinks it’s true. Either tell everyone that we’ve broken up or be my boyfriend Sean. I’m fed up with waiting.”
I can’t believe I’ve actually said it, I should drink wine more often, the only thing now is, he looks really pissed off. What if he says no, what if he doesn’t want me, I will die, I will simply lie down and die.
“Do you want someone else to be your boyfriend G?”
“No.”
“Then why can’t you just wait for me?”
“Why, I don’t get what I have to wait for, I’m almost fourteen, my Mum and Dad have been together since she was thirteen, why do I have to wait?”
He takes a deep breath in through his teeth, and then puffs his cheeks while he lets it out through his lips, his perfect, perfect lips.
“I was just trying to do the right thing G, by you and your brothers and your Mum and Dad; everyone’s been so good to me. I don’t want to f*ck things up.”
He drags his hand through his brown curls with his free hand. “Let me talk to Marley, see how the land lies, perhaps if I talk to your Dad nicely, he might let me be your boyfriend. If you want?”
I sit down on the sun lounger next to him; he still has hold of my hand. I nod my head.
“I do want.”
“Jesus you two, get on with it. I’ve watched the pair of you dance around for the past few years and it’s getting boring.” Marley calls out from where he has Jimmie wrapped around him in the pool.
“See, he’s fine.”
Sean’s shaking his head again. “All this f*cking time I’ve waited and he don’t even care.”
“Just remember Maca, she’s not fourteen yet and she’s my little sister, you do anything more than kiss her and I will kill you, then my brothers and my Dad will kill you again.”
Sean shoulder bumps me with an even bigger grin on his face. “Just kissing. Dya think you can manage that Gia?”
I shoulder bump him back. “If you really want me to I will, but I was just about to show you my tits.”
“F*ck… really?”
I shrug, I’m embarrassed now. I’ve never even been kissed and I’m threatening to show him my tits?
“I told ya Gia, you’re a flirt.”
He looks over my face as he talks to me, “Can I kiss ya G, please?”
I nod, maintaining eye contact with him all the while. We turn and face each other, my knees go between his open legs so we can get closer, his hand comes up and cups the side of my face, his thumb rubs over my lips, like his testing them, trying them out with his thumb before he goes in with his lips, my heart feels like it’s about to pound out of my chest and go crashing into his; he leans in until his lips meet mine, they are so much softer than I ever could have imagined, soft and minty, he must of just cleaned his teeth, he smells delicious, minty, clean and fresh, I can feel stubble around the edges of his mouth but his lips are so, so soft. He deepens the kiss and without even thinking about it, my hand goes to his dark brown curls and I grab a handful, he lets a little growling noise escape from the back of his throat, which in turn makes me let out my own little sigh.
“F*ck Gia,” he says into my mouth.
Sparks go off behind my now closed eyes, it’s like a cartoon, when fireworks go off in an enclosed space and they bounce off every surface. That’s exactly what it feels like is going on inside me.
“So long… I’ve waited so long to do that G, you have no f*cking idea.”
That year, that holiday, it’s still one of my best ever. My lips and the skin around them felt permanently bruised and sore from all the kissing we did; Sean never did speak to my Dad, he didn’t have to, the fact that we held each other’s hand every second we were together made it perfectly clear what was going on between us. It did though prompt my Mum and Dad to sit the pair of us down and give us the ‘We trust you and hope that you will be respectful of each other and your bodies… and aside from all that, it’s actually illegal for you to be having sex and you could go to jail’ talk. We sat there mortified, Sean squeezing my hand so tight I thought it was going to break. Then he did the most amazingly beautiful thing, he let my Mum finish her speech about me being a good girl, bought up the right way and knowing right from wrong and waiting until I was older before taking things too far. I seriously wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Why did we have to have this conversation now, in front of Sean? Sean took my hand that he was holding and kissed the back of it. He cleared his throat before saying.
“Frank, Bernie… I know we’re young but I need you to know, that from the first moment I laid eyes on your daughter, I’ve been a little bit in love with her, I’ve wanted to tell her for a while now but I wanted to be respectful of you and the boys. You’ve all been so good to me, you treat me better than my own parents so I wanted to do this right, I wanted to wait until Gia was old enough and until you were comfortable with us having a relationship but I can’t wait anymore, I love her and I want to be able to hold her hand and kiss her.”
Shit. Don’t say anymore in front of them.
“We are too young to be thinking about anything more than that, but, I… we, we just want to be together and for you all to be happy about it.”
F*cking hell, I’ve never died so many times during one afternoon. Where are my brothers and Jimmie when you need rescuing, I bet my parents told them to stay out the way, does that mean everyone is going to know about this little chat? F*cking hell.
“Well… Sean… as long as you respect my daughter, I don’t think that we’ll have a problem. Would you like a beer son, you must need one after that little speech?”
My parents treated me differently for the rest of that holiday, almost like a grown up. They allowed Jimmie and I to drink wine at dinner, my Mum asked my opinion on her outfits and told me to try my hair in different styles, she spoke to me like I was her friend, not just her daughter. My Dad took on a more fatherly demeanour around Sean and spoke to him about his plans after he finished his fifth year, legally he could leave school if he wanted but our school went right up to sixth form and Sean and Marley were both staying on. I don’t think either of them really wanted to study anymore but if they left the education system they would be expected to get full time jobs and this would leave them no time for their music. They had been lucky so far, the money they made with the band meant that they hadn’t even had to get a part time job and as their popularity grew they were getting bookings for Friday and Saturday nights and now had a regular Sunday lunch time spot at a pub not too far from where we lived. So as wages for a group of students went, they were doing okay.