Chapter 21 #3
“I’ll have one!” Ash calls out. “I don’t mind being common. Been called worse things in my life.”
I watch as Daniel’s eyes dart between all of us and he shakes his head.
“You lot are…”
“Fucked up?” Ash suggests.
“We’re each other’s therapists,” Jim adds. “We’re all a bit special, very codependent, and couldn’t survive without each other.”
Daniel nods. “Yeah, I’m kinda getting that vibe. It’s a weird dynamic. Like, there’s obviously a lot of love, but the way you insult each other is…”
I’m not sure what the look on his face is. Horrified? Scared? I’ve no clue, but for some reason, it makes me chuckle.
“You’ve got to understand how well we know each other.
I’ve known Jim since I was about three. Not only is she married to my brother, but because of the band, I’ve travelled the world with her.
The same with Ash: tour buses, hotel rooms, after parties.
They’ve held my arms while I’ve weed in bushes and held my hair back while I threw up in a few, too.
They carried my children for me. We’ve all experienced so much life with each other—more than your average best mates, and more than your average family,” I attempt to explain.
“Hmm,” is the noise Daniel makes, and I’m not convinced he gets me. “Where were we?” he asks, and I know he hasn’t understood, the same as I’m sure most of the general public won’t.
What we have, the bond the lot of us share, is something special, and something I’ll forever be grateful for and truly hope my kids have going forward.
“Georgia was questioning whether her and Sean could move forward,” one of his crew calls out.
I’m so lost inside my own head, I jump.
Daniel raises his brows and waits for me to answer.
“We had a few little wobbles at the beginning. He belonged to the world now, and I had to learn to accept that women were going to throw themselves at him.”
“She didn’t. She tried, but it never worked. There were many times we had to restrain her,” Len says.
“Shut up,” I warn him as I loosen my messy bun and roll my eyes.
“Yes, it was something I needed to do better at,” I admit.
“And for Sean, he had to get his head around the fact that I wasn’t his sweet, innocent little Gia anymore.
He’d been running around being a rock star for four years while I spent those years trying to numb my broken heart.
If we couldn’t move on from that, we weren’t going to stand a chance. ”
“You obviously made it work,” Daniel says.
“We did. Being with Sean was easy. Once we got past all the bullshit of our breakup, being with him was easy, loving him was easy. If you knew him, it didn’t take much for you to love him.
Our personalities were polar opposites, but we worked.
We didn’t even have to work at making it work.
Once we settled into being back together, life was good. Life was fucking amazing, actually.”
“In what ways were you different?” he asks.
“Sean was a love and peace type of bloke. As long as he could play his guitar, write his songs, smoke a doobie, and love me, he would’ve been happy living in a tent on Hampstead Heath rather than in a multi-million-pound house.”
“And you?”
“Me? I’m the product of being raised like a typical Essex girl. I like nice things. I like my shoes and my bags, but if I can make something from Primark look good by adding a Gucci belt, as long as my nails, brows, and lashes are on point, I’m all for it.”
“Can I just add,” Len interjects, “and I’m including all three of these girls when I say this. They’re passionate and fiery. They wear their hearts on their sleeves, and those hearts are made of pure gold, and each of them would give you their last Rolo…”
“But not their Chanel Maxi Hobo,” Jim calls out, making us laugh.
“They can be loud and brash, but they’re also funny as fuck. Like George said, Georgia and Maca had very different personalities, but their love was a borderline obsession.”
“Thanks, big brother Len,” I say, looking over my shoulder at my brother.
“Little sister Georgia, you’re very welcome.” He winks at me.
I turn back to face Daniel, who currently reminds me of a dog with the way his head is tilted to the side and his eyes are darting between us all as he tries to work us out.
“But you still held off on getting married, having kids…” Daniel eventually says. “Why was that?”
“The press,” I tell him honestly. “There was constant speculation that we’d only got back together as a front to cover Sean and Marley’s relationship.
There were blokes making up stories about being fucked by one or both of them, women claiming they’d been there when they’d fucked each other.
I wasn’t going to get married in an attempt at shutting them up.
Plus, when we did get married, I wanted to do it in secret.
Not secret—that’s the wrong word. I wanted it to be private.
Like Marley said about his wedding, and even my dad mentioned yesterday how much our family has given to the press and the public over the years, so I wanted my, our wedding to be just for us.
“There may also have been a little bit of us wanting to be able to say a big, huge fuck you to all the paparazzi after the event. And as for kids…” I shook my head. It hurt. The decision we made to wait hurt my heart now, but I’d come to terms with the fact, I couldn’t go back and change it.
“We were in Japan,” I start, recalling the exact moment we made the decision to wait. “Jimmy was a baby, and I think Jim was just pregnant with Paige.” I look over my shoulder as Jim nods.
“Come down here.” Dan gestures with his head.
Chastity appears and quickly works her magic on the three of them, so they don’t look like corpses beneath the harsh lighting.
“We arrived early at the stadium for the boys to do a meet and greet. Where the cars dropped us off meant there were fans behind barriers we had to walk past. Marley and Ash were in a different car from us and had already arrived. Jim and Len went next. Len had Jimmy in his arms, so Milo was covering them, and then there was me, Sean, and Dave—one of the bands other security. I sort of held back while Sean signed autographs. The screaming was insane, and I remember wondering how Jimmy was coping with the noise, when the barrier suddenly collapsed. It was chaos, I was knocked to the ground, literally trampled on by fans wanting to get to Sean and Marley. I kept trying to get up but was constantly knocked back down again. The venue had its own security, and they were trying to push the fans back, but it was like they’d got that close that nothing was going to stop them.
Then Milo appeared. He was literally bowling people over to get to me. Marley appeared next…”
“He’d run Jim and me inside, then gone back,” Ash adds.
My mouth is dry, and not because of my hangover.
“I honestly thought, when I was on the ground and I couldn’t breathe, that I might die,” I admit.
“We have footage. You okay to watch it?” Daniel asks.
I give a quick nod. I knew there was footage. It had made the news, and I do vaguely remember seeing it after it happened, but I didn’t really pay attention.
Lennon, who’s sitting on one side of me, takes my hand the moment the screen lights up.
Two large SUVs pull up at what then was a relatively new venue.
“We were the first really big band to play there,” Len says. “It was built as a baseball stadium, and I just don’t think the security staff had any idea what they were in for with our fans.”
They’re at least ten deep, lining the walk we had to take up to the entrance, which was about two hundred metres from the cars.
I don’t recognise the first two security blokes who climb out of the first car, but they flank Marley and Ash as soon as they step out. Ash keeps her head down, Marley waves to the crowd, and the screams grow louder. Tom and Billy climb out next, and again, the screaming intensifies.
“Even now, that sound gives me anxiety,” I say quietly.
“Far out. Me, too,” Ash admits.
“Me three,” Jim states.
Marley jogs over to the crowd and starts shaking hands and signing whatever’s shoved in his face.
“Look at the barrier,” Lennon points out. “It’s already under pressure, and Maca hasn’t even got out of the car yet.”
Marley moves swiftly along the crowd. Grabbing Ashley’s hand, he moves her along with him. We all watch as he throws his arm over her shoulder, pulls her in, and says something in her ear.
“Aww, look at you two,” I say.
“I think Marley was saying that they kept trying to grab him, and he didn’t trust the barriers to keep them back,” Ash recalls.
“He wasn’t wrong,” Len says. “What were they thinking, letting that many get so close?”
Tom and Billy didn’t have their wives with them, and they move along the crowd swiftly, doing much the same as Marley.
The door to our car opens. First, Milo steps out. He has an earpiece in and a mic attached to his jacket. He looks around at the crowd, says something into his mic, then puts his head back into the car.
“Mi’s not happy,” Jimmie says.
“I think he said something like ‘I’m gonna get Jimmie, Len, and the baby through fast. This crowd don’t look friendly,’ then told Dave to stay with me and Sean,” I explain.
“He did,” Jim agrees. “I had to tell him to slow down. He moved us so quickly I thought my legs were gonna give out from under me.”
“Good job he did,” Len says.
“Oh, my God. Just look at Jimmy,” Ash says when we see Len climbing out, holding on to him.
When Jim gets out, she puts a piece of muslin over his face to cover him.
Milo puts himself between them and moves them towards the entrance.
They’re about halfway through when Sean climbs out, and the crowd go insane.
The noise is like a roar. It’s not a sound you’d expect humans to be capable of making.