Page 76 of The Interview
“Nice, hey? A so-called celebrity wedding, with Hello magazine allowed in for a one-hour block of time to take photos, and this lot have to kick off,” Jim grumbles.
“The bloke had just grabbed my sister and my bird. What the fuck did you want me to do?” Marls asks, leaning around George and me.
“Not beat his face to a pulp?” Jim offers.
“Wouldn’t that be mincemeat?” Harry asks. “You know, cos he’s Cow Pie Man?”
“Your jokes are as bad as Dad’s,” Kiki tells him.
“Worse,” Lu adds.
“I’m not having that. Nothing’s as bad as Dad’s,” George declares.
“Fuck the lot of you,” Cam says.
The room falls silent, and we all look at each other. Me, Marley, Len, Jim, Georgia, Cam, Harry, George, Lu, and Kiks, and at the exact same time, we all burst out laughing.
Daniel and the crew remain silent, simply watching on, which makes us laugh even louder. We have no idea what’s funny. We just know that after the drama, the revelations, and the emotion of the past couple of days, this laughter feels cathartic.
When we finally compose ourselves, we each face forward again.
“We good?” Daniel asks.
I daren’t look at Marls or the girls, so I just nod.
“Yeah,” Marley starts, then stops to clear his throat—a clear indicator he’s fighting for his life not to laugh. “Imayhave lashed out, Ashmayhave got upset with me and left, and Imayhave proceeded to drink excessively before deciding it might be a good idea to go to her place and press on the intercom until she answered.”
“Did you?” Daniel asks me. “Answer, I mean?”
“I opened the door and discovered he’d spewed everywhere. He apologised for that and for running away. He tried to sing me a number of different songs, but wasn’t capable of stringing even the simplest of sentences together. I let him in, and he proceeded to pass out, fully clothed, on my bed,” I explain.
“I woke up the next morning and asked her to be my wife. We flew to Vegas, and without telling a soul, we got married,” Marley brags.
“I love that!” Lu calls out.
“Yeah and failed to tell any of us for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years! Who does that?” Georgia asks.
“We did,” Marley replies, raising my hand to his lips to kiss the back of it.
“Why?” Daniel asks. “Why’d you keep that from everyone?”
Marley looks down to where our hands are joined, then looks at me. It’s the look I call his ‘at-home look’. A look just for me and the kids. It’s the real Marley’s look, not the cheeky, bad-boy rock star look he wears for the cameras and the public. It’s the look of an amazing dad, and an annoyingly funny, loving, attentive husband.
My husband.
“I was twenty-three. Since the age of eighteen, I’d been public property. I knew that once the world knew about me and Ash, her life would change, and she’d become public property, too. I didn’t want that for her. Once I’d sobered up enough to have a conversation with her the day after Len and Jim’s wedding, I explained to her how I felt, but I was also honest about how getting into something withmewould changeherlife,” Marley tells the room.
“I had a pretty good idea. The press had been camped outside the shop once they got wind of Mac and G being back together, and Len wasn’t even in the band, but there was a massive amount of press outside the church when they got married. None of that mattered to me, though. As long as I had him, I didn’t care about any of that,” I admit.
“And that’s when I asked her to be my wife,” Marley adds.
“And that’s when I suggested we run away, do it in secret, and not tell a soul,” I say.
“I just fucking loved that idea, to have something that was just ours. The press, the public, not even my family needed to know. It was ours—a piece of me, of us, that didn’t belong to anyone else, that I didn’t realise I needed, or that we’d want to protect so fiercely for so long.” Marley gives my hand another squeeze, and I decide he’ll definitely be getting some tonight.
“How’d you all find out?” Daniel asks the room.
“Sean and Marley had invested in this huge resort hotel in Turks and Caicos. Jim and Len decided to renew their vows there, with all of us present. The day after, all sorts of other friends and family started to arrive, saying that Marley had invited them to a party the next night. We all thought they were finally going to get married. Then when we walked into the venue, it was all decorated in silver… with a little bit of purple.” Georgia tilts her head towards me as she speaks, knowing the purple, being my favourite colour, was on me.
