Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
GEORGIA
“You happy to continue, Georgia? I’d just like to get your thoughts while it’s still raw. Tell me, how are you feeling after hearing all of that?”
“Mostly, I’m angry at myself. Like I said before, my biggest regret is that I didn’t listen, didn’t hear him out,” I admit.
“Are you happy to talk us through Paris from your point of view? I know we’ve covered a lot, but I’d really like to get it out of the way today so we can move on tomorrow.”
I let out a heavy exhale because I don’t want to, but my brother has just bared his soul. Both of them actually—brothers, not souls, just to clarify. “Why not?”
“What or when did you first know anything had happened?” Daniel’s voice is quieter than when he asked his previous questions. Gentler, maybe.
Though it could just be my imagination.
“It wasn’t then—not when it happened—and it wasn’t a what or when,” I tell him, watching as his head tilts to the side and he frowns in confusion.
“It was a feeling.” I almost whisper the words.
“When I flew out to see him on tour, I was thrown into this whole new world. The band was blowing up at home and across Europe, and from the moment Jim and I arrived at the airport, I knew things had changed. The screaming was the first clue. That’s something I never ever got used to.
The boys arrived to pick us up, and we heard the screaming before we even saw where it was coming from, then we were whisked away in a limo to a hotel, and it was a lot.
They’d gone from practising in our summerhouse, playing in pubs, and now suddenly this.
I was overwhelmed, felt out of my depth in this whole new alien world that Sean appeared to have settled right into.
Then, when I watched him, all of them—the band, I mean—on stage, saw and heard the reaction of the crowd, I just had this overwhelming sense of loss.
” I pause for a moment as I admit my feelings from back then out loud for the very first time.
“They weren’t mine, ours, anymore. Up until then, I’d always felt like they belonged to me, Jimmie, and Len.
Stupid and naive, I know, but we’d all been there from the beginning, since I was eleven and they were thirteen, and now everything had changed and they suddenly belonged to the rest of the world.
I no longer had any say, any input. It was all out of my control, and as you’ve probably realised, I don’t do well…
Anyway, yeah. It was just a gut feeling. ”
“Were you jealous?” Dan asks.
“Not jealous; that’s not the right word.
Resentful, maybe? But not of the band and their success.
It was more aimed at the fans. I didn’t like sharing him.
I didn’t like when they interrupted us for autographs and photos, and I know that’s insane because all those years of watching them rehearse, what did I think it was for?
What the fuck did I think was going to happen when they made it?
Because it was always a when, never an if.
We all knew they were talented and that one day they’d make it.
We just…. None of us anticipated how fast and how big everything would explode.
And I was only there at the beginning; I never really got to witness the majority of it.
By the time I was back on the scene, they were the biggest band in the world. ”
The room remains silent. Daniel doesn’t ask another question, just lets me lead with where I want to take things.
“So, yeah. Even though he got down on one knee, proposed, gave me a ring, I still knew, I still had this sense of dread inside me. Going backstage before and after the show, that’s when it really hit me.
I was terrified. It was loud and aggressive.
I’m no prude, but the people were just vulgar.
It was everything I imagined going backstage at a rock band’s concert would be, yet I was still shocked.
I didn’t feel comfortable in that world and wasn’t sure if it was the way I wanted to live my life. ”
“Did you relay all of this to Sean?” Dan asks.
“I didn’t really get chance. Not then, anyway. Years later, when we were back together, I did. He knew, anyway—”
“They were the same,” Marley interrupts. “George and Maca. They were on the same page with the whole fame thing. George hated the intrusion but accepted it because she loved Mac and it came with the territory. Maca only cared about the music but hated everything that came with it.”
Daniel nods before asking, “So, Sean proposed? I didn’t know this.”
“No one did. He wanted to do things right—ask my dad’s permission and all that.
I said yes and went home with his ring. In my head, I started planning our wedding and waited by the phone for him to call like he’d promised he would.
But in my heart, my gut, I just had this feeling, and when he didn’t call, not for days, I knew.
I didn’t know what, but I knew something was wrong.
Then when he did finally call, the first thing he said was I love you. ”
I feel sick so many years later, but all those emotions, they all hit me, and my head spins.
“He said, ‘I love you. I’m so sorry. I love you. Just know that. Just hold onto the fact that I’ll always love you. Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, it will only ever be you.’”
“Aren’t those words…?” Daniel starts to ask.
“Wait, that’s where those lyrics come from?” Marley asks.
I nod. “With You” was one of the band’s early number one’s. Sean had the lyrics inked on his skin.
There’s no one else. There never was. It was only ever you.
“He said that then hung up. Everything from there’s a bit of a blur.
I got told a rape allegation had been made, but didn’t believe it for a minute, not even a second.
When I got told who’d made the allegation, I believed it even less, but then I found out there were pictures.
She was in their room, they were snorting lines off her tits, and even now, all these years later, I still can’t put into words the sense of betrayal I felt, made all the worse by the fact it was her.
It could’ve been anyone, and I still would’ve lost my shit, but the fact it was her, I was floored and just couldn’t see a way to forgive him. ”
“I’ll say it again: you were sixteen. You dealt with it like an average sixteen-year-old,” Lennon states.
“I know, and I accept that my age played a part.”
“And we didn’t know then how fucking important four extra years with him would come to mean. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, George.”
“I’m well fucking aware, Len, and if you’d let me get a word in…” I say, leaning around Marley.
Marls theatrically leans back in his chair and holds his palms up in surrender.
“And you can shut your mouth…” I trail off, not wanting to finish with ‘It was all your fault it happened in the first place,’ and starting World War Three between us.
“I was young. He was my first kiss, first slow dance, first love, first everything. We’d picked baby names; he’d given me a ring.
I’d built a world and planned a life around him.
I thought we were invincible, what we had was untouchable, but at the very first hurdle, we fell.
He let me down in a way that cut me so deeply, the only way forward I could fathom was to remove him, the band, their music, my brother, all of it, from my existence.
So, I gave him back his ring and set him free to go live his rock star life.
Then I spent the next few years fighting mental illness and an eating disorder. ”
No one knew that fact except my mum… and my dad, eventually.
“What?” That comes from Jimmie.
“Mum, what the fuck?” Lu.
“Okay,” Cam says, followed by a loud hand clap. “Babe, you need me to fuck everyone off out of here?”
Fuck. I love the fuck out of this man.
“No, I’m fine,” I assure him without even turning around, because I know that he’ll know, just from the tone of my voice, that it’s the truth.
“Well, I’m glad you are,” Lu again.
“Ohh shit!” Marley kind of whisper hisses beside me.
I purse my lips and blow out a long exhale.
“At first, apart from going to school, I didn’t leave the house.
One, the press was planted up and down the street, and fuck that.
Two, there were the angry, crazy little fan girls.
” An instant headache throbs as I recall the rage I felt towards them and the way they treated me.
“There were photos of my boyfriend—fiancé, if you will—all over the tabloids, snorting cocaine off Haley White’s body. He’s had a rape allegation made against him, yet it was me they came after. Me, who was made out to be the villain for breaking poor Maca’s heart. And three, I had nowhere to go.”
That’s the moment tears start to threaten.
Why is saying that out loud so bloody hard?
I let the memory of the abject sorrow, loneliness, and sense of betrayal I felt at that time wash over me.
I wallow in the rejection I’ve probably never really recovered from.
He chose her. Over me, our love, the life we planned.
He chose going back to his room with her.
“When I lost Sean, I lost the life I’d spent the previous four years building—the band, and the world we’d created around it. I lost Jimmie and Marley, my two best friends, and I lost Len, my always-there-for-me big brother.”
I compose myself as best I can, then continue.
“I was destroyed,” I admit. My throat feels so tight, I have to swallow continuously to get my words out.
“It wasn’t their fault. The band had taken off, Marley was a part of it, Len was their manager, and Jimmie wanted to be wherever Len was.
Unfortunately for me, I had no life outside of all of that.
So, I finished my exams and applied to sixth-form college.
I stopped listening to music. Outside of studying, I stopped existing. ”