by Lesley Jones
“Yes, I still wear it. It was the only piece of you I’ve allowed into my life these past four years. I wanted you near. I wanted to feel you, but I didn’t want to look at you and be reminded of what I’d lost.”
He closed his eyes as if what I’d said was painful and then he nodded his head slightly. “This is so fucked up, G. You won’t believe this.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head. He was so much bigger than I remembered him, but he was only just eighteen then, and now he was a grown man of twenty-two. Now, he was ripped and toned as fuck. He lifted my chin with his finger. “Eyes up here, G. This is what I wanted to show ya, not my abs, although I’m happy to show them to you later too.” He winked at me as he spoke, “But look, look at this.” He pointed to the tattoo on his chest. It was the exact replica of my necklace, the letter G being held up by angel’s wings. “I wanted a piece of you… a piece of you to always be with me, but I couldn’t have it where I could see it all the time. It hurt, every time I looked at it. Every time I caught a glimpse, it served as a reminder of how badly I’d fucked up and how much I had lost.”
I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to hold in a sob. It was pointless, though. I’d held them in for far too long, four years in fact.
He pulled me into his arms. “Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay. We’re here, G. We found our way back to each other. We’re meant to be, G. They won’t break us, not now. I’m never losing you again.”
I kissed his bare chest and licked my tears off him.
He looked down at me. “This one’s for you, too.” He tilted his head, so that I could see the tattoo he had around his neck. It curled from his throat, around the top of his shoulder.
I read it aloud, “There’s no one else. There never was. It’s still only ever you.” I touched it ever so gently with the fingers of my right hand and looked up at him.
“It’s from ‘With Me’.”
I drew my eyebrows in together. “What’s that?”
He frowned at me before smiling and shaking his head. “Our biggest seller, the one that went platinum.”
I swallowed hard and looked down at the floor. “I don’t know any of your songs, Sean. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t listen to any music until a couple of months ago, but I’ve never been able to listen to yours. I couldn’t bear to hear your thoughts or your feelings. I stopped reading magazines, and I stopped listening to the radio. I used to hide in the toilet if your songs came on in the pub.” I felt like such an idiot admitting to all of this. “It just hurt too much to hear or see anything related to you.” I swiped at my running nose.
He grabbed me and pulled me in so tight, I could barely breathe.
“Fuck, baby girl. I fucked up so badly, and I’m sorry, so very sorry.”
I stood and let him hold me. My head felt like it was floating, detached from my body, which felt weighted down with everything that had happened so far tonight. I had no idea what to think right then.
Is that it?
Without a word, without any kind of discussion, was I just going back to him? Was I just going to allow him back into my life? Before I got any further with that thought, the front doorbell rang.
He looked down at me. “Sean and Georgia, they’ll never break us again.” He kissed me on the mouth, then pulled his T-shirt back over his head, and then took my hand to lead me back to the sofa.
Chapter Seventeen
We all looked at each other as Len went to answer the door. I squeezed against Sean’s side as tight as possible, feeling both angry and afraid of what was about to happen. He had one arm along the back of the sofa behind my head, and the other stretched across his lap so he could hold my hand. We both had sweaty palms.
I heard all of them talking in the hallway, and I heard my dad asking what was going on and if everyone was okay. Then I heard Bailey’s voice as he walked into the room first, he frowned and looked around at everyone and then swung his eyes back to rest on my hand in Sean’s. He tilted his head slightly towards me.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
I nodded.
“Maca,” he said quietly to Sean and sat down next to me.
My heart stopped, leapt up to my throat, dropped down to my stomach, and then settled back up to my chest as my parents walked into the room. There was absolute silence. My parents look around at all of us, checking us all over for any sign of injury.
My dad narrowed his eyes at Sean and me, tilted his chin up slightly, and asked, “What’s going on, Princess? What happened? You’ve scared your mother half to death.”
“Can I get either of you a drink?” Len asked.
I couldn’t take my eyes from my mum. I knew that the instant she looked at Sean and me holding hands she had an idea of what this was all about and my heart froze. The wall hadn’t gone back up yet. My heart hadn’t gone back to hiding from any feelings or emotions. This was something entirely different from the devastating heartache I’d experienced previously, when Sean and I split. This time I was ready to do battle. I had an anger burning hot in my belly, and what had been a little glow earlier was now a raging inferno I was struggling to contain. I really wanted to lash out at someone, and I could feel my breathing becoming erratic.
“Hey.” I heard Sean say, next to me. I looked up at him. “Calm, the fuck, down. We’ve got this, okay? We’re Sean and Georgia, remember? They won’t break us again.” He nodded while he spoke to me.
My eyes wandered back to my parents. They were sitting on the two-seater sofa, and Len was passing them both what looked like whiskey. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to speak before I exploded.
“Did you do it?” I asked my mum. I didn’t shout. I kept my voice at a reasonable level, and I thought I sounded pretty calm. My dad looked at my mum and then back at me. My mum stared at her lap.
“What’s going on, George?” He looked back at my mum. “Bern?”
“Did. You. Do. It?” I asked louder this time, emphasising every word.
My dad was still looking at my mum. “Bern, what the fuck is goin’ on?”
“Shall I tell him?” I asked, not even attempting to hide the venom in my voice.
Finally, her eyes swung up to look into mine. She knocked back all of her drink and took a deep breath. “I did what I thought was right.” I flew out of my seat, but Sean and Bailey pulled me back.
“How could you? How fuckin’ could you?” I screamed at her.
“That’s enough, Georgia. Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here!” my dad roared.
I brought my gaze to meet his. “Did you know? Were you a part of it?”
“No!” my mum shouted.
“Part of what, George? I ain’t got a Scooby what you’re on about, love.”
“Did you keep Sean’s calls and letters hidden from me? Did you pack them all in a box and send them back to him with a note, supposedly from me, saying do not contact me again? Did you tell everyone that I had been to Marley’s and tried to smash my way in? Did you? Or was it just your lying, deceitful, spiteful wife?”
The look on my dad’s face told me he didn’t know. He had no idea what I was talking about. He looked over to my mum with an expression of horror on his face. “Bern?”
My mum held her head in her hands and shook it. She looked up at Sean and me. “It wasn’t like that. At first, I wanted you to get back with him. I wanted you back together, but you were so broken, George, and you needed time. I couldn’t let you talk to him. You weren’t strong enough, and you refused in the beginning anyway.”
Lennon went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon to top up everyone’s glasses. Bailey had his hand on my knee, and Sean had a hold of my hand. We were all on the edge of our seats. I took Sean’s glass from him and took a swig of his drink. Len sat back down and my mum continued.
“I’m your mum, George. It’s my job to keep you safe.” She looked at me wide-eyed and then turned to Sean. “You’d only sent a few letters at that stage.” She swall
owed hard and closed her eyes for a long moment. “After a few days, I was going to let him talk to you. I thought once the band was back on tour and you could only talk on the phone that it would be safe. The distance would keep you safe.” She gestured to Sean as she spoke. “Then one day when George was at school doing one of her last exams, this girl knocks on the door. I had no idea who she was…” She shrugs and shakes her head before continuing, “anyway, she wanted to talk to you, George. She said that she needed you to know that Sean had been two-timing you with her for years and that he’d only stayed with you because he was scared of being kicked out of the band. She said that as soon as they made the big time, he was going to break up with you and start a new life with her.” She swallowed and licked her lips. I could see in my peripheral vision that Sean was shaking his head next to me.
“Na, na, na, what girl? Who was she?”
“Sean,” my mum sighed out his name. “You’d just broken my daughter’s heart into a million pieces. I didn’t… I just believed what she told me… I didn’t check her story. I just believed it. You weren’t my favourite person at the time.” She sipped on her drink. “I didn’t tell anyone else about her because I didn’t want to cause any problems with the band. So, I just decided to keep quiet. Georgia seemed to be getting better, so I had all post addressed to her, diverted to a Post Office box. I thought after a while it would stop coming, or at least slow down, but it didn’t. In the end, I packed it all in a box and sent it back to Sean with a note saying, ‘Please don’t contact me again. I’m moving on with my life, you should too.’” she shrugged as she said this.
She shrugged.
Just shrugged as if it were nothing. Like it didn’t matter.
I wanted to punch her. I wanted to cause my own mother physical pain and harm.
Sean knew and gave my hand a squeeze.
“I didn’t hear from her, the girl, for a long time. Then a couple of years ago when you boys bought the warehouse, she phoned up and said that she heard through some friends that Georgia was trying to find out where it was, and that she’d been asking a lot of questions about Sean. I was so worried because she was doing so well. You… You were doing so well.” She looked directly at me. I stared at her, doing nothing but shake my head. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Everything was going well with work. You were gaining confidence, but when she called, I got worried that you might have been heading for some kind of breakdown. So, I panicked and just told all of you lot not to mention that the boys had a place together or where it was.” She shook her head. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
My dad reached across and held her hand. “You should have told one of us, you should have said something, Bern.”
“To who? If I had told you or Bailey, I was worried what you’d do to Sean, and if I’d told Marley, Lennon, or Jimmie, I was worried about this other woman having an effect on the band.”
“What about me? Did you not consider talking to me about it?”
“No, no, I didn’t, George. You’d been so fragile for so long that I just couldn’t take a chance on setting you back. You’re my daughter. You were so badly broken when you thought he’d been with that girl in the hotel room. I thought that if you found out he’d been two-timing you for years that it would kill you. That you might do something stupid, harm yourself in some way. I needed to protect you at all costs. I’m your mother. It’s my job to protect you.”
“Well, you fucked right up there then, didn’t you? All you’ve managed to do these past four years is cause me untold misery,” I spat back at her. I took Bailey’s glass and drained the contents.
“What I don’t understand, though, is all this about George going to the boy's place and trying to get in?” Jimmie asked. “Where on earth did that story come from, why make something like that up, Bern.”
“Well, that’s when alarm bells should have started ringing for me, and I don’t know why they didn’t. Do you remember when there was that big article in one of the magazines about your wedding last year? How they asked you about George being a bridesmaid and if it was going to be awkward with Sean being there?” I watched Jimmie as she nodded. I had no idea Jimmie’s future wedding had made the news.
Bloody hell, was the band that famous?
“Well, a few days after that, this Mandy, the girl that had said she was Sean’s secret girlfriend, she called the house and said that Georgia had found out where the boys lived and had caused all sorts of trouble trying to get up to the loft. She said that she’d convinced security not to call the police. She said that George was obviously in need of psychiatric care and that she needed to be kept away from Sean at all costs. Otherwise, she would have no choice but to tell him, and that she would make sure that he would press charges.”
“I swear to God, this has nothing to do with me,” Sean protested from beside me.
My mum scratched at her head. It was a most unlikely action from her. She was always so composed and perfect. She didn’t fidget, didn’t scratch, and didn’t yawn—a perfect lady.
“George, you were out clubbing all the time. You’d lost so much weight, and your behaviour was a little bit erratic. I just thought that you were slipping again, and I wondered if the thought of the wedding and seeing Sean had caused it. So—” She let out a long, long breath. “Again, I told everyone to keep quiet about it. I discussed it with Jimmie and Marley, and we all decided to wait and see if you mentioned it to us. George, we were just worried about you,” she stated, pleadingly. Like I should understand. Like I should accept that what she did was for the best.
Sean ran his hand through his hair and then looked at Marley. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“Because I thought you’d go straight to her, and I didn’t think that was what she needed. I thought she was fragile, the same as my mum. I was just protecting her. My mum never mentioned a girl though.” Marley looked at my mum. “You said the security guard called you.”
“Well, I couldn’t tell you about Mandy. She swore me to secrecy, she told me that she and Sean were still together, but they were keeping it quiet until after Jimmie’s wedding because they didn’t want to tip Georgia over the edge. I just thought she was being considerate.” My mum gave a bitter little laugh as she finished speaking. She looked at Sean. “When you turned up at my house that Sunday with the girls on the bikes, it struck me that the girl you was with looked a lot like this Mandy. But what I couldn’t get my head around was, if you were so in love with this Mandy, why were you at my house with her lookalike? Then I realised it was her, the girl, that Georgia had the problem with.” She moved her eyes across to me. “All you kept repeating, George, was that she looked just like her. That got me thinking that perhaps you already knew about this Mandy, so I went through all the scrapbooks that I’d made.”
“Scrapbooks?” I asked.
“I made them for you, George. Every piece of news about the boys I kept and put into a scrapbook. In the hope that one day you would be able to look at it.”
She wiped tears from under her eyes, and my bottom lips trembled as I watched her do it. I hated myself. I hated myself for caring that she was upset, and I hated myself for being the one that made her cry. I was beginning to feel sick because I was starting to think that I knew how this puzzle was going to look when all of the pieces were put together, and it was ugly. Ugly and cruel. I covered my mouth with my hand as I could feel it start to water the way it sometimes did before I vomited.
“I kept the good stuff and what you might call the bad stuff, the pictures, articles, song lyrics, you name it. I’ve kept it all, and I sat and went through it until I found her picture and that’s when I realised what an almighty fuck up I’d made.”
I shook my head continuously. “Oh, no, no, no. She did it. She got what she’d always wanted.”
I looked across at Jimmie, who was looking wide-eyed at me.
“Whorely?” she questioned.
I nodded, then turned to look at Se
an. He hadn’t joined the dots.
“It was the girl from the rape charge,” my mum continued.
Sean was instantly on his feet. “No, no, no fuckin’ way! I have not clapped eyes on that girl since that day at the hotel. There was never anything between me and her, never, G. I swear on my life.”
I shook my head at him. “I know, I know, I believe you.”
I looked around at everyone in the room. “Fuck! Wow.” My head felt like it was on a spin cycle as the realisation of what Haley White had done to us sank in.
“She really does hate me. Like, seriously hate me, because she’s gone all out to ruin my life and keep us apart all this time. I need another drink, or something.”
I was so angry. Angry to the point where I couldn’t think or see straight. I needed a drink, I needed a cigarette, I needed a joint, and I needed my mum out of my sight while I tried to make sense of all of this. Right at that moment, my head felt like it was about to explode.
Chapter Eighteen
The problem with open plan houses is that you couldn’t make a grand exit. I could only storm off in indignation because there weren’t any doors to slam. Which, let’s face it, was what I really needed to do to get my point across and let everyone know just how pissed off I was. The other problem was that there were no rooms I could lock myself away in and have a good cry when the need took.
That’s exactly what I needed to do right then, too. I needed to storm off, slam a door or two and have a good cry.
I went into the kitchen and retrieved the wine glass I left there earlier, poured myself a drink, and leant back against the worktop to look across to my family all gathered in the lounge area. I watched Len, Jim, and Marley, all deep in conversation. I watched Bailey pat Sean on the back, say something to him, and shake his hand. Then begrudgingly my eyes went over to my parents, who were still sitting side by side. My mum seemed to be trying to explain something to my dad. He had her hand in his, and I watched as he brought it up to his lips and kissed the back of it. He nodded in agreement at whatever it was that she was saying, and they both looked up at the same time towards me. She stood and the room fell quiet as she headed in my direction. I took a long chug of my wine and watched as she approached.
