Page 62 of The Interview
“‘What the fuck do you want?’ That’s how she greeted me.”
“Mother!” Tallulah admonishes from behind me. “Don’t you ever pull me up on my language again.”
I ignore her. “Didn’t put you off, though, did it? If I remember rightly, you still spent about five hundred quid.”
“And you agreed to come over to the wine bar and have a drink with me.”
“Yeah, and that went well, didn’t it?” I dip my head and press my fingertips against my forehead.
“It absolutely did not,” Cam states.
“Can I just start by reminding everyone that I was still an emotional mess, mentally scared and traumatised by the negative publicity surrounding the breakup I’d had with my, by then, world-famous, rock star boyfriend. Outside of my immediate family and closest of friends, I trusted no one.”
“We got our wires crossed,” Cam says, eyes still on me. “I knew Frank Layton had bought the shop, and his missus was running it, so when we finally went for a drink, and Georgia told me she owned the shop, I thought she was married to Frank. Then when she said she was his daughter, I just thought, fuck me, nothing good is gonna come of this. Knowing Frank like I do, he will not be happy if he finds out I’m pursuing something with his daughter.”
“So, you knew Georgia’s dad? Before you were together, I mean?” Dan asks.
“Yeah. We were business partners on a couple of ventures, and I knew full well just how protective Frank was of his family, so my first thought was to back off.”
“I got the wrong end of the stick and thought he knew my name because of the whole Sean debacle and what had been printed about me in the tabloids,” I add.
“I didn’t,” Cam clarifies. “I had absolutely no idea Frank had a daughter, let alone one who’d been involved with a rock star. I knew his boy was in a band that was doing well. I think I’dactually heard there’d been a bit of trouble on their tour, but that was it. And, let me just add, things hadn’t always been amicable between Frank and me. Well, Bailey, really. Frank and I had never had a problem, so to keep things that way, I knew I needed to shut things down. I’ll hold my hands up and admit, I was a bit rude.”
“A bit? You stalked me, pursued me, sent over bottles of champagne, and literally begged me to go for a drink with you. Then, when you found out who my dad was, you told me to drink up because you had work to do.”
“Harsh, Dad. Very harsh,” Harry calls out.
“Thanks, H,” I reply.
“Yeah, thanks, H,” Cam says with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Your response?” Dan asks.
“I got up and left.”
“And the rest,” Cam adds.
“That rejection was literally what pushed me fully into what I call my rage stage. I was angry at Cam for not wanting me because of what I thought at the time, what he’d read in the papers about me. I was angry that I’d finally put myself out there, only to be shot down swiftly. I was angry at Sean because it was all his fault. I’d done nothing wrong, yet the tabloids wrote awful things about me, and the fan girls sent everything from a pig’s trotters to dog shit in the post while he was hero-worshipped by millions. It all made me spiral.”
There’s no laughing, and no whistling or clapping this time, just the silence of my family as they listen to my confession.
“I worked, I partied, and I bounced from one toxic relationship to the next. I was doing a lot of cocaine at the time because it made me feel powerful and in control. The men I was seeing… I did everything I could to make them fall in love with me, and as soon as they said the L word, I ended things. ThoughI made sure that while I was seeing them, I’d take them to Cam’s bar at least once a week so he could see what he was missing. I was an awful, awful person.”
“Hurt people, hurt people,” Dan offers.
“I was in agony,” I whisper.
“How’d you come back from that?” Dan asks.
“Him.” I tilt my head towards Cam. Speaking that single word has made my lips tremble, and I tense my jaw to control it.
Cam still has one arm on the back of the sofa. The other has reached across, and his hand has found mine. Our fingers are now loosely laced together.
“A bit like Georgia, I’d gone through some trauma prior to meeting her. I’d lost my wife and son a few years before, had kept women at arm’s length since, and then this skinny, blue-eyed girl started turning up at my wine bar and kick-started my heart. Like Georgia, it terrified me, and when I found out she was Frank’s daughter, I completely overreacted. I regretted telling her to drink up before she’d even walked out the door. Then she started waltzing in every week with a new little poodle lapping at her feet. I knew what she was doing, knew she was playing games, knew that eventually she’d realise she wasn’t gonna get the reaction she was hoping for.
“So, I kept it civil. No more bottles of Moët, though I always said hello and asked her how she was. Waited for her to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business. Then, one night, she replied by telling me she was good. It shocked the shit out of me. Unfortunately, the bloke she was with took exception to that.”
“You saying hello?” Dan asks.
