Page 22 of The Story of Us
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 fucked 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 fucking proud of you Georgia Layton, so fucking proud.” I almost teared up, something I hadn’t allowed myself to do since that fuck 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 fucking 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.”
Fuck!
“What?”
“He’s a mess G, a complete fucking 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.”
