by Lesley Jones
I pushed his hair back off his face and smiled down at him. I nodded first and then followed it up with, “Yes, yes of course I’ll marry you.”
We made love again in the shower before collapsing into bed and sleeping for a few hours. He woke me later by sliding inside me from behind. We made love silently, and afterwards when he held me in the dark and my head rested on his chest, I told him about my day. I told him about Cam, and I told him about how guilty I felt. That I didn’t know Cam loved me. I told him that I thought I might love Cam a little bit too, and he told me it was fine, and that he understood. He was jealous and hated it, but he understood. Cam was there, right when I needed him, and it was perfectly natural for me to have strong feelings for him. He told me to go back and help him get better and support him in any way that I could, which just made me love Sean even more. I cried and told him how my heart felt like it was going to burst with how much I loved him.
In the end, just as the sun was coming up and the birds were beginning to sing, we decided together, that perhaps it would be better if I didn’t see Cam again. It might just get his hopes up, and then it might all be too much for him when he found out Sean and I were getting married. Sean was happy with whatever I wanted to do, and I decided a clean break would be the best and fairest way forward. I fell asleep happy, contented, and without guilt.
Chapter Twenty-Two
August 1999
Sean and I were sitting at a little café in Chapel Street, Melbourne, Australia. We had just enjoyed an enormous fry up and were sipping on our coffees and watching the fascinating sights and sounds of this part of Australia. It was an absolutely freezing cold but bright and sunny day. We had no idea when we arrived eight months ago on a stinking hot thirty-eight-degree day that Australia could get so cold. We’d been travelling all around the country since our arrival, and had seen waterfalls in Kakadu and watched the sun set and rise again over Ayers Rock. We’d dove with sharks inside a shark cage in Western Australia. We’d surfed at Bondi and spent New Year’s Eve on a yacht in Sydney Harbour. We’d driven along the Great Ocean Road. Surfed again at Bells Beach and sat freezing on a beach on Phillip Island watching a colony of Fairy Penguins coming back to dry land after a day out at sea, fishing. We’d spent the last three weeks discovering the city of Melbourne and its surrounding areas.
We’d fallen in love with Australia when Carnage toured there almost two years ago, and we vowed then to come back and have a look at the whole country, not just Sydney and Melbourne where the band had played. The people were so friendly, the country and the scenery were stunningly beautiful and vaster than we could ever imagine. Victoria was the smallest state, and yet the whole of Great Britain could fit inside it.
Sean and I had been away from England and our families for almost a year. We’d decided to take a year out, leaving the madness of Carnage and the fame that came with it behind us while we travelled before going back to England and trying for a baby.
After Sean had proposed to me, we kept our news secret until after Jimmie and Lennon’s wedding as we didn’t want to take any of the attention away from them or attract any more attention to ourselves. The press intrusion had been relentless. Sometimes the stories they printed about us were half-truths, but mostly they were a complete fabrication and often very hurtful. We mostly ignored it or had a good laugh over them. According to the press, we’d been split up on an almost weekly basis. Sean had had numerous affairs. He was quoted as being in places with different women when he was, in fact, at home or on a different continent with me. The best story was the one saying that the reason we hadn’t had children yet was because our marriage was a sham and Sean was gay. That was the one that we laughed the most about and the one that had caused Sean to have the most piss taken out of him amongst the band, my brothers, and our friends.
The real reason we had in fact held off having children was that we were simply enjoying life too much. We loved travelling. Being on tour with the band was hard enough without adding children into the equation. We’d seen this first-hand with my brother’s kids.
Jimmie and Lennon had produced a son within a year of being married, and in keeping with Layton tradition, his name had a musical link. When little Jimmy was born, everyone assumed he was named after his mum. But then his little sister was born eighteen months later, and they called her Paige and everyone got the relevance. Then along came Ziggy, named after Ziggy Stardust, or Marley, both worked. Then last year, Harley was born, named after one of my dad’s favourite singers, Steve Harley.
Marley and Ash had stayed together but their relationship was nowhere near as happy and settled as Jim and Len’s. They’d split up and reconciled so many times over the last ten years I’d lost count, although they seemed much happier lately since the band was touring less and the press wasn’t as intrusive. They’d had three beautiful children of their own: A boy named Joe, after Joe Strummer from The Clash and two girls, Connie, named after my mum’s favourite singer Connie Francis and Annie, named after Annie Lennox. Added to this were Tom and Billy’s kids. There were times that there’d been a total of ten children in tow while the band toured, and most of them behaved better than the band members. Witnessing first-hand the stress of travelling with the kids and the limitations it placed on what everyone could and couldn’t do and the places you could and couldn’t visit, we just decided to wait.
We ended up doing the same with our wedding. We were happy and content in our relationship and felt no rush to make it official. We’d made plans a few times, but the press had found out. The last thing I wanted was those arseholes intruding on our day. I accepted reporters and the paparazzi were a part of Sean’s life, but what I had never come to terms with was the way they hounded, scrutinised, and felt it was okay to tear me apart. Our wedding eventually happened in October of 1998. The band had just ended their American tour and the whole lot of us, all of my family, including my parents, Bailey and his new girlfriend, Sam, Billy, Tom and their families, headed down to Florida for a much-needed holiday, and we decided on the spur of the moment to get married.
Everyone we wanted to be there was in the same place at the same time for a change, so we got in touch with a Justice of the Peace, got ourselves a licence, and were married just as the sun set on St. Pete’s beach on the twenty-seventh of October. It was a simple service. We wrote our own vows, each of us struggling to get our words out with the emotion of the day bearing down on us. Sean being the lyrical genius out of the two of us had everyone in tears in an instant.
“Georgia Rae, I love ya. I’ve loved ya since the day I saw you hanging upside down on the monkey bars, flashing me your pink knickers. You were eleven years old, and you stole my heart from my chest and the breath from my lungs. I only ever feel complete when you're near. You own me, Gia, heart, mind, body, and soul, completely. I love you more than all the stars above, and I will continue to love you even after I die. But these words, all that I am telling you here and now, and all that I declare before our friends and family today, they’re still not enough. Like I’ve told you before, the words haven’t been invented yet to describe what you mean to me. What I feel for you. There’s no one else. There never was. It’s still only ever you, and I will spend every minute of every day, loving you, worshipping you, and doing my best to make you happy… doing my best to be the husband you deserve. I love ya, Georgia Rae. Please be my wife?”
He had to stop twice to regain his composure. Watching Sean cry as he declared his love for me in front of our friends and our family almost floored me. I pointlessly fought so hard not to cry. For me, the most amazing thing was that we hadn’t read or even discussed our vows, and yet, we had thought along the same lines. Mine sounded like a shortened version of Sean’s. I spoke between sobs.
“Sean, from that very first day I set eyes on you, I’ve known you were my one true love. You own my heart, my mind, my body, and soul, and I will love you till I die. I’ll spend each and every day trying to be the wife you deserve. You
make me a better person. Without you, I’m lost and incomplete. Please, will you be my husband because there’s no one else, there never was, it’s still only ever you. I love you, Sean McCarthy. Please marry me.”
“What’s up, G? What ya thinking?” Sean looked across the table at me. He had the hood of his leather jacket pulled up. He’d shaved his beautiful hair off when we got here, and thankfully, he’d hardly been recognised the whole trip. In fact, on one occasion, it was me that was recognised and not him. I ended up signing autographs and having my photo taken with Sean’s fans while he hid in a tourist shop on Sydney’s Circular Quay. But he’d let it grow since May, and we had started to garner the odd second glance from people passing by, so Sean had taken to either wearing a hat or keeping the hood of his jacket up.
Sean’s skin was so dark from all of the sun we’d been exposed to, he almost looked Arabic the way his hood draped over his hair, framing his dark skin and eyes. My belly did a few forward rolls as I digested the fact that this stunningly good-looking man, who was adored, loved, and lusted after by millions of both men and women around the world, was in fact, my husband. And I was under absolutely no illusion as to how much he loved me. We’d spent almost a year in near isolation from anyone else, just Sean and Georgia, Georgia and Sean, as it should have been, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“I was thinking about our wedding.”
His face lit up. “The day or the night?”
I shook my head at him. He’d just turned thirty-two and was still such a boy.
“Our vows.”
He moved his chair closer to mine and placed his arm around me. “I meant every one of them,” he said, and I gave him a broad smile.
“I know you did, and you’ve lived up to each and every one of them.”
“And so have you. I couldn’t be happier, could you?” I thought about it for a few seconds, apparently a few seconds too long. My husband can read me like a book, and now his smile had vanished, and his eyebrows pulled together with a look of concern. I had a confession to make, and I wasn’t sure how he was going to take the news. It was something we’d discussed, but as yet had made no firm decision on.
“What, G? What is it?”
“I ran out of pills.”
“Pills, what pills? You got a headache?”
I laughed. “No, contraceptive pills.”
His eyes widened. “Ahh, shit, right, well, we can just get you in to see a doctor here and get you a prescription. I can’t see that it’ll be any hassle, and if it is, I’ll make some calls and get some FedExed over.”
“In June,” I added and waited for his reaction.
He looked baffled. “What, you don’t need them till June?”
I smiled at him. I was as nervous as shit at what I was about to tell him. “I ran out of pills in June, we’ve been having unprotected sex since June.”
He looked at me blankly for a split second, but then his face lit up, and his eyes sparkled with everything that I hoped to see in them. “You wanna make a baby?”
Oh God that sounded so sexy that all I could do was nod and smile stupidly. He stood up, threw twenty dollars down on the table, grabbed my hand, and pulled me out to the side of the road as he hailed a taxi.
“What are you doing?” I laughed as I spoke.
“We’re going back to the hotel to pack, it’s time to go home, G. I’m not having you flying long haul with my baby in your belly. It won’t be good for either of you, so the quicker we get home, the quicker we can get on with the job of making a mixed up version of you and me.” He opened the door of the taxi and guided me in.
As soon as we were settled in the back of the cab and heading to our hotel, Sean was on his mobile to the private jet company, booking us a plane for six that evening. Just to make sure that I wasn’t flying pregnant, he made the cabbie stop at a chemist on the way to the hotel and bought two pregnancy tests. Luckily, I needed to wee pretty much as soon as we were in our room and we sat on the edge of the bath and stared at the little stick I held in my hands.
“What if it’s positive? You gonna make me stay here for the next nine months?”
He grinned his lopsided grin at me. “Well, first, I would kiss you till your lips were numb because I would be the happiest man in the world and second, I… I don’t know. I’d just carry on being the happiest man in the world.”
We stared while one line appeared on the stick. Not pregnant.
I felt a little surge of disappointment, so I looked at him and shrugged. “The pill will take at least six months to clear my system. January, that’s when we’ll get pregnant, but let’s get home and get trying anyway.”
He tilted his head to one side. “Naaa, let’s get trying now.”
He dragged me back to the bedroom and jumped on me, but the look of disappointment on his face at the single blue line didn’t go unnoticed. I wasn’t worried, I’d been on the pill for sixteen years, and I wasn’t expecting to get knocked up yet. Besides, I wanted to see in the New Year with a bang. It was the first time in years that neither Jimmie or Ash were pregnant over Christmas, and we could actually all have a proper celebration in New York, where the band was playing at a special New Year’s Eve concert to see in the year 2000.
Around thirty long hours later, we arrived at our home in Hampstead, North West London. I called my mum, Jimmie, and Ash and let them know we were back and that we’d catch up soon. We spent the next week hardly leaving our bed, not because we were continuously having sex—although a lot of that did go on, but because we were so jet lagged from the flight and the time difference. Sean ran his business dealings from his phone, while still in bed, and I mostly slept.
The following weekend was when we’d initially been due home, and I’d completely forgotten the boys were off to France to play at some sporting event. I really didn’t feel like getting on another plane so soon after the trip back from Australia, so instead, I arranged a girls night out with Ashley and Jimmie. As luck would have it, the boys’ record label had invitations to a new club opening in Shoreditch.
We all met up at the Docklands penthouse. The boys still owned it, and we all used it at various times after nights out in the city when we needed somewhere to crash. It felt like years since we’d all gotten ready together like this, probably because it was. We took forever while we talked, drank, and had a general catch up. We’d spoken on the phone almost daily since I’d been back in the country, but I hadn’t seen the girls in almost a year, and there were a few tears as soon as we set eyes on each other. By the time we finally made it down to the car where Dave was waiting to drive us, it was already eleven thirty p.m., and we were all well on our way to being legless.
The club was a warehouse conversion, pretty much like every other building in and around East London, but it looked great. The sound system was pumping, and the girls were desperate to dance. I did a pregnancy test this morning—just to make sure—and because it was negative, I’d joined my girls in a couple of lines of coke before we left. I was now feeling the effect and couldn’t wait to hit the dance floor. The place was full of celebrities, actors, models, footballers, pop stars, and the usual bunch of glamour models that always seemed to get invites to this type of thing. The waiters and waitresses came around with an endless supply of champagne, and there was a free bar for anything else. While the girls were still on the dance floor, I headed to the toilets and on the way back decided to grab us a round of shots.
I was standing at the bar, waiting to be served, when a shiver went through me. Before I got the chance to wonder what could have caused it, a deep voice spoke in my ear, “Good evening, Kitten, hope you’re well?”
My stomach hit the floor for a few seconds, but then my cocaine enhanced confidence found its voice. Without even looking at him, I said, “Tiger, how the fuck are you?”
“Really, Kitten? That’s so unladylike.”
“Tiger, I think we established many years ago that I am no fucking lady.”
He was
quiet for a few seconds, during which time, I finally turned my gaze to him. He looked a-fuckin-mazing. He was wearing a black suit with satin lapels, a black shirt, and a black satin tie. He was standing so close that I could smell him, and he smelt delicious, still wearing the same Givenchy aftershave that he always had. It instantly reminded me of my bed at my flat above the shop and all the things he did to me there.
“You look beautiful, Georgia, absolutely stunning.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself, Tiger. How ya doing? You look a whole lot better than the last time I saw you, that’s for sure.” I wanted to reach out, touch his face, and run my hands over the beard that he had growing there. It really suited him. “I love the beard.”
He ignored my beard comment. “I owe you an apology and a thank you regarding the last time you saw me.”
I shrugged and knocked back the first of the three shots that had been placed in front of me. “No apology necessary and absolutely no thanks required. You would’ve done the same for me.”
He nodded his head slightly. I remembered the familiar movement. “I would, and more, I would’ve done so much more, given the chance.”
“Don’t, Cam. I’m so sorry about the way things turned out and the way you found out. Please don’t make me feel worse than I already have all these years.”
He puffed his cheeks and blew out a long breath. I felt it over the side of my neck and knew, in an instant, my nipples were painfully erect. I needed to get away from him, but before I could, he pulled me into his side. I looked up at him, about to ask what he was doing when a camera flashed in my face.
“Cam, what the fuck are you playing at?” I didn’t wait for his answer, I just turned and headed back over to where I left the girls dancing, grabbing a glass of champagne from a passing waitress as I went. I’d drunk it all down by the time I reached the dance floor, and I spent the next hour knocking back more champagne and dancing.
