by Lesley Jones
Our front door unlocked at about two-thirty that morning. My mum was sleeping in my dad’s armchair, and Jimmie and I were on each end of the sofa when I felt soft lips brush against mine. My eyes fluttered open, and it took me a few seconds to realise he was really there and that I wasn’t dreaming. I didn’t know why I did it, but for some reason, I pushed myself by my heels away from him, backing myself into the corner of the sofa. His beautiful brown eyes with their flecks of gold closed, and he held his breath for a few seconds. His face was still close enough for me to marvel at his long, dark lashes that fanned across his cheeks.
“Georgia, I’m so sorry.”
I folded my arms across my chest and nodded at him. My mum stood from the chair and gave a cuddle to my dad and Lennon. Marley had gone into the kitchen area and was sitting at the breakfast bar. I watched as my parents exchanged a look and then both looked at my brother. I stood and gave Len a cuddle, but I ignored Marley.
“Well, now you’re all home safe, I’m going to bed, night, night.”
“Georgia, wait! We need to talk.” Sean looked tired and delicious, and I loved him so much, but I was hurt and angry.
“Do we?”
He turned and looked at my dad. “Frank, d’ya mind if we go up to Georgia’s room so we can talk?”
My dad’s eyes shifted to mine. “George?” he asked with eyebrows raised.
“Fine,” I huffed. I knew I was behaving like a complete brat, but basically, that’s what I was—a sixteen-year-old brat. A really pissed off brat. I’d been playing a grown-up game in a very grown-up world, but now that it was all coming crashing down around me. I dealt with it like the sixteen-year-old child that I was.
I threw myself on my bed, scooted up, and sat with my back against the headboard. Sean leant on my closed bedroom door.
“I didn’t do it, G.”
“I didn’t think that you did.”
“So, why are you so pissed off at me then?”
“Why was she in your room, Sean?” He looked down at the floor and shook his head.
“I was so drunk, G. I’d done a couple of pills and a few lines of coke. Marley wanted to get hold of her, but she wouldn’t come back to the room unless I went too.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did she want you to go back with them?”
He took a few steps towards my bed. “G.”
“Why, Sean? Tell me why.” He sat on the edge of my bed and looked at me.
“She wanted a threesome.”
I wanted to be sick. I wanted to punch him, and I wanted to kill her.
“And you went?”
He nodded. “I’m so sorry, G. I was off my face.”
“You were drunk and off your face and you went back to your room with Marley and Haley the whore for a threesome?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing, G. I went back so that Marley could get hold of her, and then I was just gonna leave them to it…” he trailed off.
It suddenly struck me. I wasn’t crying, and I hadn’t cried since he’d called me Thursday night. I was hurt, angry, and emotional, but I hadn’t cried. Instead, what I did was let that little man keep building his wall, higher and higher, one course at a time.
“So, what happened?”
He dragged his hands through his hair, and I wanted to reach out and do the same, but I couldn’t. I needed him to look me in the eye while he explained what happened. I needed him to tell me that he didn’t touch her and that he never laid a finger on her. I sat and stared at him for a few long moments and noticed that his hair was almost perfectly straight and he was wearing it longer again.
When did it grow? When did he change how he wore it?
It was a simple observation, but one that made me realise he was changing. Since he wasn’t with me and I wasn’t part of his everyday world anymore, I hadn’t noticed. This boy, whose skin I had known as well as my own these past few years, had grown and changed, and he’d done it all without me.
“I was so drunk.”
No! Please, no.
“As soon as the door slammed shut behind us, she was on me.”
Oh, Sean!
“She was on you?”
He nodded as he covered his face with his hands. His elbows were resting on his knees, and he was sitting on the edge of my bed angled towards me. His skin looked tanned, obviously from all the time he’d spent in the sun these past few weeks.
Another change.
In the sun, around a pool, without me.
Every single beat of my heart hurt. It echoed through my body, and wherever it reached, it caused pain. I didn’t want it to hurt. I didn’t want it to feel. I’d rather it simply stopped.
But I just kept going.
I didn’t want the answers, but I still asked the questions.
“How? How was she on you?”
This time he shook his head. “Rocco had these pills. I only had one or two, but Marley had a couple more. They were… They made me feel fantastic. We danced for ages down by the pool, everything felt good, and I just felt so horny.”
“No, no, no! Get out, get out, Sean. I don’t want to hear this.”
My stupid, stupid, naive, sixteen-year-old heart had now ceased to exist and something hard, harsh, and cold was slowly taking its place, but before it could, I needed him to shut up, and I needed him to leave.
He needed to stop talking and leave.
“I love ya, G. You! No one else. No one else, ever. Please listen to me. It was the drugs. I just couldn’t stop… I couldn’t…”
I covered my face with my hands. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to die. I slid off the bed, took my engagement ring from its hiding place, and held it out to him.
“What are you doing? I don’t want that, it’s yours. I bought it for you, G. I spoke to your dad on the flight. He’s fine with it. He knew, and he was expecting it. Put it on… Put it on, and we can go down and tell everyone. G, put your ring on, please.” He was talking so fast, but all I could hear was the phone ringing, my dad shouting, then Marley’s shouting, and the front door slamming. My dad and Marls were still shouting at each other, and I just stood there with the stupid, ugly ring between my thumb and index finger. I’d barely eaten a thing all week, and I felt so light-headed, like I was floating. The room was swaying, and I wanted to be sick. Then my bedroom door flew open and Jimmie was there. She looked from me to Sean.
“What did you do? What. Did. You. Do? You stupid fucker!” She launched herself at him, punching and kicking and screaming, and I just continued to stand there holding the ring, the stupid, stupid ring, out to him.
Lennon came in and pulled Jimmie off Sean. “Leave it, Jim. Let them sort it out. It’s between them.”
“There are pictures… There are pictures!” Jimmie screamed while she tried to fight her way out of Lennon’s arms. Sean stood up from where Jimmie knocked him back onto my bed and looked at Len.
“What? What are you talking about? What pictures?”
“She’s got pictures of what you were doing. Pictures of you and Marley snorting Charlie off her tits, and she’s sold them to the papers. You’re all over the Sunday papers, you fucker!”
My world stopped spinning, the little man laid his last brick, and my heart stopped beating the way that it used to. It was now enclosed safely behind a wall, so it didn’t feel, it didn’t love, and it didn’t care anymore. Its only use was to keep me alive, and I really wasn’t concerned if it even bothered to do that. Sean’s big, brown eyes with their flecks of gold turned and met mine, but I couldn’t focus. I felt my legs give way and the floor started to come towards me.
Chapter Nine
I didn’t pass out completely, everything just became hazy and I had no control or strength in my limbs. I was aware of lots of shouting. Sean lifted me onto my bed. My mum was crying. Jimmie was shouting, and my dad was arguing with Sean right over my head. As I looked through it all, the noise, the faces, all I could see was Mar
ley standing at my bedroom door, sobbing.
That sight would stay with me forever.
My dad asked Sean to leave, which eventually he did, but only because Len dragged him out of my room. I didn’t know if he had gone home or just downstairs. I didn’t care. I just couldn’t be near him. My mum had made me drink hot sweet tea and it did actually make me feel a little better.
Everyone except Jimmie and my mum finally left my room. I lay down on my side and curled into the foetal position, not making eye contact with either of them. My mum was fussing around me and talking too much. Finally, she knelt down in front of me and stroked my hair.
“Can I get you anything, Georgia? A drink or something to eat? Would you like your music on?”
I shook 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 shook her head 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 edition of the papers so he can see what the damage is.”
Jimmie was fidgeting next to me on the bed. She knew I didn’t want to talk, hear, or see anything to do with what the papers were saying about the story, the charges, or the events of the past few days.
That was when I said the words that would forever change the course of my life.
I was just sixteen-years-old. I was hurt and my heart was broken, but I had no idea then that what I said next would have such a huge impact on my future.
“Mum, you can do one thing for me?”
“What’s that, George?”
“I don’t want to see those newspapers, and I don’t want to know what’s in them. I don’t want to see or hear about them, ever, and I don’t 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 because 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 went on, but he couldn’t tell me that it didn’t either, 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? You’ve raised me to expect better than that from the man that I marry. It’s done! We’re over, and he can go 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 amazed myself. As tight as my throat and chest felt, I didn’t shed a single tear as I spoke. And right then, right at that moment, I was one hundred percent convinced that cutting Sean out of my life was the only way I was going to get through losing him.
My mum kissed my cheek. “Oh, Georgia, I’m so sorry. I wish I could make it all better for you, sweetheart.”
“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, their music, or what they’re doing. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist.”
It was a knee-jerk reaction, but it was the only way my sixteen-year-old brain could think of to protect my sixteen-year-old heart right now. I would cut him out of my life. I would avoid any reminders until I was able to deal with the pain.
She let out a big sigh. “I’ll do my best, George. With your brothers being so involved, it won’t be easy, but I’ll try.”
She stood up and headed out the door. Jimmie said nothing. I knew she thought I was harsh and overreacting, but I had to. It was the only way I could survive this.
“George?” she whispered as if she were 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 shook my head. “You won’t lose me, Jim. You’re my best friend and you always will be. I need you now more than ever.” This was the moment that my voice finally wavered. The band had been such a big part of my life for so long, that almost every single aspect of it was interwoven with Carnage. By cutting out Sean and the band, I was also cutting out Marley, Lennon and Jimmie to some degree. But still, I was adamant that that’s what needed to be done.
“I understand if this makes things difficult Jim, but please, just do what you can to save me from this. I can’t see him, It hurts too much, and I can’t see those pictures. I don’t want to know what happened that night, so please, as my friend… As my best friend, would you please try to help me out with that?”
“Of course I will. Forever, G. If that’s what you want, I’ll keep it from you, unless you ask me otherwise.”
“Thank you.”
We lay on my bed, spooning until the birds started to sing and the sun began to rise, and then we must have drifted off to sleep. For the rest of the world, it just the dawning of a new day, but for me, it was the ending of life as I knew it. The life that I thought I would have was gone, and somehow, I would have to find a way to carve out a new one. I had no idea that it was going to take everything in me, simply to draw a breath. I thought what happened that night was painful. I thought the pain I was in was insurmountable, unmatchable, but I’d take that pain any day over the pain my future would bring.
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, and then trying to get pictures of me. Because somehow they’d been tipped off that I had been Sean’s girlfriend. I finished the last of my exams with Tony driving me to and from school, but other than that, I never left the house. Sean sat outside for the few days they were home. He hid in his car so the press wouldn’t see him. I had no idea what he thought it would achieve. He rang my house almost hourly, and continued to do so 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, and if Sean continued, the number would be changed.
Whoever came up with the phrase, “No publicity is bad publicity,” wasn’t wrong, because the boy’s 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 fangirls. The label had to hire minders for the boys. They were now back in England, waiting for the UK leg of the tour to kick off, and 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 letterbox. All the crazy little fangirls hated me. They thought either I was still Sean’s girlfriend or that I had apparently broken his heart. I was paying the price for the band’s fame and reaping none of the rewards.
I had continuous offers from the tabloids and magazines to sell my story. They wanted to know all about the life of the sister and girlfriend of one of the biggest bands in Britain. I even had offers to pose topless and boys from my school claiming to the papers that they’d slept with me. Of course, my dad hit the roof, and I became an absolute recluse. I knew the very little I did about the band’s success only because they received so much airtime on the telly. I’d stopped listening to the radio, so I could avoid their songs. In fact, I’d stopped listening to music altogether, but I couldn’t make the whole family stop watching the telly. My parents were good. If something were playing or being mentioned, they would quickly turn over the paper or turn off the radio when I came into the room. 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 Ji
mmie since she travelled around Britain with the band so 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 lonely. I hadn’t spoken to Marley since we left Spain, not even on the rare occasions he did come home. Sometimes, I woke up and found him standing in the doorway of my bedroom. I would get up silently and close the door in his face. I had nothing to say to him, because as far as I was concerned, he had ruined my life. My beautiful, perfect life Sean and I had planned together was now over, and it was all because of Marley, Haley the whore, and drugs. And, I wasn’t ready to talk to my brother about any of it yet.
Maybe never.
My parents desperately wanted me to go back to school in September and start my A-levels. I managed outstanding results in my O levels, and I knew my A’s would be no problem. The issue was I was terrified of going back because I didn’t know how I’d be received. Also, I would be alone for the first time in my entire secondary school life. I would just be Georgia Layton instead of Sean McCarthy’s girlfriend, and I knew there’d be plenty of nasty little bitches that would be over the moon about that.
I finally agreed with my parents that I would give it a try, and as it turned out, the years of not being a bitch to the other girls at school had paid off. There were a few spiteful comments, but mostly people were okay with me since I still had links to the band.
And that was all that everyone was really interested in, The Band.