CHAPTER 9
I don’t pass out cold completely, everything just becomes hazy and I have no control or strength in my limbs. I’m aware of lots of shouting, Sean lifts me onto my bed, my Mum is crying, Jimmie is shouting and my Dad is arguing with Sean right over my head, as I look through it all, the noise, the faces, all I can see is Marley, standing in my bedroom door, sobbing. It’s a sight that will stay with me till the day I die.
My Dad tells Sean to leave, which eventually he does but only because Len drags him out of my room. I don’t know if he’s gone home or just down stairs, I don’t care, I just can’t be near him now. My Mum makes me drink hot sweet tea and it does actually make me feel a little better.
Everyone except Jimmie and my Mum finally leave my room, I lay on my side, curled into the foetal position, not making eye contact with either of them. My Mum is fussing around me and talking too much, finally she kneels down in front of me and strokes my hair. “Can I get you anything Georgia, a drink, something to eat; do you want your music on?” I shake my head.
“No Mum, I’m fine, could you just leave me on my own, thank you for looking after me but honestly, I’m fine, you need to go and get some sleep.”
She shakes her head back at me. “Oh George, there’ll be no sleeping here, the sun’s nearly up and your Dad has sent Tony and Nick out for the first editions of the papers so he can see what the damage is.” Jimmie fidgets next to me on the bed, she knows I don’t want to talk, hear or see anything to do with papers, the story, the charges or events of the past few days.
“Mum, you can do one thing for me.”
“What’s that George?”
“I don’t want to see those newspapers, I don’t want to know what’s in them, I don’t want to see, or hear about them ever and I do not want to see Sean.”
“Georgia, babe, don’t you think you should wait and find out first? It could be nothing; you know how the papers like to make things up.”
“Mum, please, I know Sean, I know him inside out and something went on in that room, I’m not saying the boys raped her, I don’t believe that for a second, but he couldn’t look me in the eye last night, he didn’t tell me something did go on but he couldn’t tell me that it didn’t and I can’t live with that Mum. If he’s having threesomes with girls in hotel rooms now, what’s it gonna be like when they’re really famous? It’s done, we’re over, he can go and live the life he’s been dreaming of and working so hard for all these years, he’s let me down and I don’t trust him, I don’t want to see him again, please Mum, I can’t see him.”
I amaze myself by not crying, my Mum kisses my cheek. “Oh Georgia, I’m so sorry, I wish I could make it all better for ya babe.”
“You can make it better by hiding it all away from me Mum, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to talk about the band or their music or what they’re doing, and as far as I’m concerned they don’t exist.”
She lets out a big sigh. “I’ll do my best George but with your brothers being so involved, it won’t be easy but I’ll try.”
She stands up and heads out the door. Jimmie has said nothing from where she’s sitting on my bed behind me, I know she thinks I’m being harsh and over reacting but I’ve got to, it’s the only way I know how to protect myself.
“George?” she whispers, as if she’s been listening to my thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“I love you George, I’ll do my best to not talk about this or the band or the boys but it’s going to be so hard and I don’t want to lose you as a friend if I slip up and say something by mistake.”
I shake my head. “You won’t lose as me as a friend Jim, you’re my best friend and you always will be and I understand if this makes things difficult but please just do what you can to save me from this. I can’t see him Jim, it hurts too much, I can’t see those pictures, I don’t want to know what happened that night, ever, so please, as my friend Jim, as my best friend, would you please try and help me with that.”
“Of course I will, forever G, I’ll keep it from you forever, unless you ask me otherwise.”
“Thank you.”
We lay on my bed, spooning, until eventually we must drift off to sleep as the birds start singing.
The next few weeks of my life were a complete nightmare; by Sunday afternoon we had the press hanging about outside our house, trying to get pictures of Marley at first, then trying to get pictures of me, because somehow they had been tipped off that I was Sean’s girlfriend. I finished the last of my exams with Tony driving me to and from school, other than that, I never left the house. Sean sat outside for the few days that they were home, he hid in his car so the press wouldn’t see him, I have no idea what he thought it would achieve. He rang my house almost hourly, even when they flew to Sweden for the last few shows of the tour before coming back to England. In the end my Dad told him not to call anymore otherwise he would get the number changed.
Whoever came up with the phrase ‘No publicity is bad publicity’ wasn’t wrong; the boys album launch was a worldwide success, on the back of all the newspaper headlines, they shot straight to number one. We had more press than ever camped outside the house, as well as the silly little fan girls; the label had to hire minders for the boys and as they were now back in England before the UK leg of the tour kicked off, there was absolute pandemonium down our street every time Marley tried to leave the house. I received untold amounts of hate mail through the post and even had an envelope full of dog shit shoved through the letter box addressed to me. All the crazy little fan girls hated me, they either thought I was still Sean’s girlfriend or they hated me because I had apparently broken his heart, I was paying the price for the bands fame and reaped none of the rewards. I had continuous offers from tabloids and magazines to sell my story to them; they wanted to know all about my life as the sister and girlfriend of the biggest bands in Britain right now. I even had offers to pose topless, my Dad hit the roof and I became an absolute recluse. I knew the very little I did about the bands success because they received so much airtime on the television; I had stopped listening to the radio so as to avoid their songs. In fact I had stopped listening to music all together but I couldn’t make the whole family stop watching the telly, my parents were good and would quickly turn it over or the radio off if I came in the room if something was playing or being mentioned, other than that, I pretty much managed to avoid all contact with anything band related. I didn’t look at the papers, I stopped reading my magazines, I rarely left my room and that’s how it stayed the entire summer. I didn’t see much of Jimmie as she travelled around Britain with the band so that she could be with Lennon. I was jealous, incredibly so, but that was my issue and I knew it was wrong of me, I tried to be upbeat and chatty whenever she called but I was dying inside and so, so lonely; I hadn’t spoken to Marley since we left Spain, on the rare occasions he did come home. I would wake up sometimes and find him standing in the doorway of my bedroom, I would then get up silently and close it in his face, I had nothing to say to him, as far as I was concerned, he had ruined my life, my beautiful, perfect life, that Sean and I had planned out together was over, all because of Marley, Haley The Whore and drugs and I wasn’t yet ready to talk to my brother about any of it.
My parents desperately wanted me to go back to school in September and start my A levels, I got outstanding results in my O levels and knew that my A’s would be no problem. The problem was, I was terrified of going back, I didn’t know how I’d be received and I would be all alone for the first time in my entire secondary school life, I would just be Georgia Layton and not Sean McCarthy’s girlfriend and I knew there would be plenty of nasty little bitches that would be over the moon about that.
I finally agreed with my parents that I would go and give it a try and as it turned out, the years of not being a bitch to the other girls at school paid off, there were a few spiteful comments but mostly people were still okay with me just because I still had links with the band. I spent the next two years studying for my Maths and English A levels, as well as a business studies course. I threw myself into my studies and completely shut out the rest of the world; the only person I really had anything to do with at school was Ashley. She had stayed on to re-sit her maths and English O levels as she had failed them miserably last year, we weren’t in any classes together but it was nice to have at least one person to talk to around the school, she asked me to go out with her practically every weekend but I always said no.
All of my time was taken up with studying, going to the gym that my Dad had just bought in Brentwood or helping my Mum out in the shop my Dad had bought for in the local high street. My Mum had always had fantastic fashion sense and absolutely loved clothes so when my Dad came home and told her he’d helped out a mate by taking his struggling business off his hands, she barely listened. My Dad seemed to have so many businesses on the go it was hard to keep track, but then my Dad happened to mention that it was a frock shop as he called it, my Mum was all ears.
The following day was a Saturday so my Mum and I went down and had a look, it was a good sized shop in a fantastic location but it had a terrible range of stock. We lived in an affluent area, the shop had a high end hairdressers and beauty salon on one side and a bespoke furniture designers on the other, the shop itself sold absolute crap, cheap, nasty ‘fashion’ items; just the name ‘Hollywood Fashions’ would be enough to put off most of the women who would frequent the shops either side.
By that afternoon, my Mum had one of my Dad’s draughtsmen who worked for his building company around, giving her advice on the changes she wanted to make. It took her around two months to have the place re-fitted, re-named and stocked with an up to the minute range of designer labels, by the time I’d finished with college, between us we were running a very successful business and had extended into the furniture shop next door. My Dad having somehow convinced the owners to relocate to another shop he owned, further down the high street. I’d been on numerous buying trips with my Mum, spending time in Europe and Asia and in the summer of 1987 we opened our second shop in Chingford; while my Mum took over the opening of the new store, I took up the reins of the Brentwood store. Not only were we selling clothing but we now offered a full range of accessories, including, shoes, handbags, scarves and sunglasses and had seven girls working for us. Despite the fact that I had zero social life, I was always busy and had little time to think about how dead I was inside; it had been over two years since I’d seen or heard from Sean but it still hurt like it was five minutes ago. I’d come to terms with the fact that it would probably always hurt but I still wasn’t ready to face the world. I’d barely spoken a few words to Marley in that time and that was only because I was being polite at the Christmas dinner table last year, a few days before then, Lennon had asked me if it would be okay to invite Sean to have lunch with us as he had nowhere to go. I apologised to Len but explained that I just couldn’t, just the thought of seeing him made me want to vomit, not because I disliked him but because I still loved him so very, very much, Len said that he understood, but I doubt that he actually had any idea.
Finally in the August of ‘88, I ended my self-imposed social isolation and went for a drink after work with Ashley; she was working for us now, we had three shops and were due to be opening a fourth before Christmas in Epping, we had managers in all of them and my Mum and I spent most of our time with buyers and now some small independent designers, who made stuff exclusively for us. Our range now including a few lines for men and underwear for both men and women, I had an office above the Brentwood shop and would soon be moving into my very own flat there as well. The tenants that were already in place had given notice and I’d convinced my Dad to fix it up and let me move in, Ash wanted to move in with me but I wanted to live alone, that way I could control the TV and the radio and anything else that might bring me into contact with Sean and the band, something that had become a complete obsession with me. The band were now world famous, my parents had sold our family home and bought a farm house in the countryside just outside of Brentwood, Lennon and Jimmie had bought their own place and were getting married next year and Marley had bought a place in the city to crash, whenever the band were in the country and I very rarely saw him. Jim and Lennon were only living around the corner so finally I got to see her on a regular basis again; she was working alongside Len as part of the management team for the band and so got to travel with him whenever she wanted to. I had dinner and caught up with them at least three or four times a month and they were always good in avoiding any mention of Sean and the band if possible, I had called Jim that afternoon and invited her for drinks tonight and she was going to meet us there.
My palms were sweating and I felt absolutely sick as we walked into the wine bar that night. I was glad we’d come somewhere up market and swanky as this, it was as far removed from the sweaty pubs I used to go to with the band as you could get. Full of big hair, shoulder pads and yuppies and yet, here I was, still thinking about him. I was almost twenty and still f*cked up over a boy I met when I was eleven. I heard a loud squeal as we headed for the bar and saw that Jimmie was already here. She jumped up from her stool at the tall round table as she spotted us; she knew what a big deal this was for me. I’d driven my parents insane with worry these past few years and I knew they’d asked her to do what she could to get me out of the house but Jimmie knew nothing would work, she knew I’d do it in my own time and she was right, the time was now and here I was.
She threw her arms around me and whispered into my ear, “I am so f*cking proud of you Georgia Layton, so f*cking proud.” I almost teared up, something I hadn’t allowed myself to do since that f*ck awful week my world fell apart.
Because Thursday was our late night, we hadn’t closed the shop up until seven, by the time we had touched up our makeup and titivated as my Dad liked to call it, then walked up the high street to the wine bar, it was around seven thirty. The place was now packed full of the after work crowd from the city, double breasted suits and mullets, so not my type! We joined Jimmie at the table, as she poured us a glass of wine each from the bottle she had in a cooler, we sat and chatted and caught up, knocking back the first bottle in ten minutes.
Ash got up and went to the bar to buy another and as soon as she left, Jimmie grabbed my hand. “George, I really need to talk to you and it’s about the banned subject.” My stomach lurched.
“Is it about him or the band or something different?”
“It’s about ‘that’ night. I found a few things out today at work, things I really think you should know.”
“Will it change anything, will it fix this horrible f*cking pain I have in my chest Jim, will it make it possible to hear his name, say his name even, without me wanting to pass out.”
“Oh George, is it still that bad?” I nod my head.
“Yep, every second of every day.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand.
“Then you need to hear what I have to say, because he’s in exactly the same state you are.”
F*ck!
“What?”
“He’s a mess G, a complete f*cking mess, he gets up on that stage or in front of a camera and he’s big bad Maca but as soon as the show is over, all he wants is you. He does the interviews, smiles for the cameras, stays for five minutes at the after show parties and then he goes home, he still loves you George and he misses you so much.”
My hand instinctively reaches up to the delicate silver necklace I still wear, it’s the only part of him that I’ve allowed to stay in my life and that’s only because I can’t actually see it, well I can if I look in a mirror but it’s been there so long now, that I don’t really notice it, it’s part of me, of who I am, exactly like he is.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
My head is spinning and it’s not because of the wine.
“Because it’s what you wanted, because, until today, I thought you were right, I thought you had every right to stay away from him, I thought it was the right thing for you but now I’m not so sure.”
Ashley came back at that moment, with another bottle of wine and a bottle of champagne, which she waved in front of her. “This ladies, is compliments of the gentleman at the bar.”
A barman appeared at our table with three champagne flutes and proceeded to pop the cork and fill the glasses. We thanked him and turned around to thank the blokes at the bar; there were four of them. One looked like he’d just come from the golf course, one looked like he’d just come from the gym and the other two from the office, one in a suit, one in a pair of dark fitted trousers and a white shirt, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he had his back to me and I couldn’t see his face but I could see he had a lovely arse and shiny black hair It was quite long but not cut in the mullet that everyone seemed to be favouring at the moment, just long and pushed back, he was tall, very tall, with a broad back and shoulders. I smiled politely at all the others, mouthed cheers and tilted my glass toward them, just as I was about to look away, he turned and his eyes met mine.
F*ck!
My heart gave a little judder, it was like after three years, it was letting me know it was there and capable of doing more than just keeping me alive but I didn’t want it to, I wanted it to focus on just one job, doing nothing but keeping me alive. I didn’t want it to feel and I certainly didn’t want it to react. His brown eyes remained locked on mine as I took a swig of my drink and as I did, he smiled, very slightly at me with his soft, full lips and once again, my heart stopped for a split second and then picked up its rhythm in my chest.
F*ck!
F*ck!
And f*ck!
“F*ck G, he’s nice.” Jimmie nudged me and I almost spat my drink out as she said out loud, exactly what I had been thinking.
I noticed that he laughed as he watched me wipe champagne from my chin and his eyebrows rose slightly as I sucked it off the side of my finger, he shook his head and looked away and for the very first time in three long years. I felt the stirrings of desire, deep down in my belly and I knew that I had to stay the f*ck away from this man; because there was no way that I would ever get involved with anyone who stirred that kind of reaction in me again. Ever.
After drinking the bubbly and the bottle of wine, Ashley stayed at the wine bar with some friends, while Jimmie and I jumped in a taxi and went back to her house. Lennon was in front of the telly watching a video of the band and as I stepped through the living room door, there, filling the screen, in all his glorious beauty was the love of my life. The room swayed as I quickly closed my eyes for a few moments but something inside me forced them to open and take just one more look, as soon as Len looked over his shoulder and saw me, he ejected the video, then stood as I finally dragged my eyes away from the now blue screen, I noticed that he was smiling at me sadly.
“Sorry George, I didn’t realise you were coming back here.”
I shrugged my shoulders and let out a deep sigh. “It’s okay Len; it’s not your fault.”
He held out his arms and I walked straight into them; my brothers were all tall, like my Dad and I loved how safe I felt when they wrapped their arms around me, sadly Sean was the one monster my Dad and my brothers weren’t able to save me from, I was just going to have to carry on fighting this one on my own. “How are ya George, you really need to put on some weight.”
“Yeah thanks Len, good to see you too.” He kissed the top of my head.
“Shut up, it’s always good to see ya you know that, I just wish that I got to see more of ya, more often. How many times a week are you hitting the gym now?”
I shrugged. “Well we’ve been busy with work, the new shop opens in Epping at the end of September, so we’ve been buying in stock and recruiting new staff, so in the last couple of weeks I’ve only managed a couple of hours three times a week.”
“Three times a week, is that all? You need to eat more and gym and work a bit less.”
I go to speak but Jimmie comes out of the toilet where she’s been since we got back. “Leave her alone Len, she looks fine, you look fine G, skinny as f*ck but fine.”
I sigh wearily again and shake my head as I sit down in the armchair. “So put the kettle on then Len and get the biscuits out, I’m starving.”
I kick off my shoes and tuck my legs under me; Jim sits in the armchair opposite me and does the same. Their house is an old 1930’s detached place that my Dad’s firm extended and fixed up for them, it has big bay windows to the front and French doors to the back looking out over the huge garden. Their wedding was all booked for June next year and they were going straight in for a baby. I hate to admit that I was jealous but that’s the only thing I could think was causing the ache that I felt inside when I thought about the domestic bliss they shared.
“So… ” I tried to sound more upbeat than I felt. “What do you need to tell me?”
Len looked over from the open plan kitchen at Jimmie. “You told her?”
“Not yet but I’m about to.” She looks warily at me and takes a deep breath.
“I was chatting on the phone today with a girl from Kombat Rocks management team, Carnage are going to tour the States next year and the record label wants KR on the bill for some of the shows. Anyway, Rocco being the wanker that he is, is refusing to be classed as the supporting act, although technically, that’s exactly what they’d be doing but he wants it worded something like a double headline concert. Anyway this Carla I’m talking to on the phone is telling me how Rocco is such a knob and how nobody likes him and they can’t believe the label would put the two bands together after the way Rocco set Maca and Marley up before, so I’m like, what dya mean, set them up?”
Then she proceeds to tell me that Rocco deliberately got them on ecstasy that day because he knew it would get them horny and off their nuts, then he convinced Whorely to get them back to their room so she could cry rape, he would be there, waiting and taking photos of it all and… it was all, to get back, at you.”
I close my eyes and swallow down the bile that keeps making its way up my throat. “The rape cry was just to get the Police involved so that Carnage would hopefully get kicked off the tour. Whorely never had any intention of going through with it so when your Dad turned up and offered her ten grand to drop the charges; she was over the f*cking moon, that was just…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up, my Dad paid her ten grand?”
Lennon puts three cups of tea down on the coffee table, I lean forward and pick mine up, I know it’s going to be too hot but I need something to do while I try and absorb all of this info; Len stands in front of me with his hands on his hips and says, “Yeah, didn’t you know that?”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t, anyway, carry on Jim.” I nod toward her to keep talking.
“Well you know the rest, Rocco sent copies of the pictures to the press and assumed that the images, along with the rape allegations would get Carnage off the tour and would split you and Sean up.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “He had half his wishes come true, the other half had the complete opposite effect, meaning Carnage are now bigger than KR and Rocco is thoroughly pissed off.”
She looks at me and shrugs, I don’t know what she expects me to say, yeah I’m well and truly pissed off that Rocco and Whorely plotted and schemed and got their wish in breaking up Sean and me, but at the end of the day, he did what he did and for me, the issue was never about the rape allegation, I knew that was a lie. I just knew, but Sean going back to the room for a threesome that was the truth, her getting naked and letting them snort blow off of her body, that was the truth and that was what I couldn’t forgive him for.
“Well, thanks for letting me know Jim, I hope if you ever come across either one of that scheming pair of cunts you will smack them right between the eyes for me but at the end of the day, he was there, he was in that room, snorting blow off her tits, just four days after declaring undying love and proposing marriage to me and there are pictures to prove it so it doesn’t change anything. Nothing will change the fact that he was in that room, with that slut, all that’s changed are the circumstances that led to it and yes I am angry that they set him up, but that just goes to show how easy it was for him to go astray, how easily he was tempted.”
I lean forward and dig into the biscuit barrel; I find a Mcvities chocolate digestive and dunk it in my tea. I actually want to curl up in a corner and rock, but I do what I have been doing for the last three years, I shut down my emotions and carry on with my numb little life.
“Do you know how much he still loves you George? He’s such a mess on the inside, he hides it well but I know, I’ve held him so many times now, when he’s had a few drinks, the conversation always ends up about you and always ends in tears.” I raise my eyebrows and look at Lennon.
“And there’s been no other women, since we broke up, there’s been no one else?”
Len pulls his head back and looks at me as if I’m mad. “I never said that G, there’s been sex, of course there’s been sex but it doesn’t mean anything, they mean nothing.”
“Well that’s where me and him differ coz those birds he f*cks, mean a lot to me, they mean he’s moved on, while I can still barely leave the house. Tonight was my first girls night out in over three years, I don’t even look at other blokes, I can’t, it’s pointless, because all I ever see is him and that’s okay, it’s my issue, not his and it’s just something I’m finally learning to live with.”
Lennon lets out a long sigh. “Would you talk to him, if I could get the two of you together, would you talk to him?” I shake my head.
“Len, apart from business trips and meetings, tonight is the first time I’ve socialised in over three years, I don’t watch telly, I don’t listen to the radio, I don’t read magazines, all because, just the thought of someone mentioning his name, catching a glimpse of his face or hearing his voice is much too painful. But I’m getting better, it doesn’t hurt any less, I’m just finally getting to grips with how I handle my feelings. Tonight was really hard for me but I did it, and I want to keep going forward and if I see or hear from him, it’ll probably just set me back, so no, not yet, I’m not ready.”
I look at both of them. “I know he’ll be at the wedding next year and I’m gearing myself up for that to be the day that I am ready to see him again. I’m not promising I’ll look at him, I doubt very much I’ll talk to him but I will do my very best to be in the same room as him, because I love the two of you and I know it will make you happy.”