The Accidental Life of Jessie Jefferson

by Paige Toon

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I brush him off. ‘I told you I’m not getting naked or going into the pool in my underwear.’

  ‘In that case . . .’

  I scream as he sweeps me up in his arms and carries me a few steps to the pool. In a panic I hook my hands around his neck. ‘Don’t you dare!’ I squeal. ‘This is a Roberto Cavalli dress!’ Not words I ever thought I’d say.

  He grins. ‘You can buy another one.’

  ‘My dad got it for me!’ And I’ve just realised I haven’t even said thank you. What’s Johnny going to think if I have to get back into the limo dripping wet? What will Meg think? That’s what a rock-star wannabe would do. ‘Don’t you dare,’ I warn again, more seriously.

  ‘You owe me a forfeit,’ he repeats, more slowly this time. I’m instantly aware just how very close his lips are to mine. Heat floods my body as I stare back into his eyes.

  ‘JESSIE!’ I start with surprise as I look past him to see Johnny standing on the other side of the pool. Jack sees him, too, and suddenly I’m back on my feet. ‘We’re going,’ Johnny shouts, beckoning me over. He doesn’t look too happy. My heart sinks for more reasons than one. I don’t want to go, yet. And I don’t want to piss off my new dad.

  ‘You know Johnny Jefferson?’ Jack asks with confusion, and I’m aware we have Charlotte, Lissa and Bryony’s attention.

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply warily. ‘He’s . . .’ I don’t want to lie. ‘I’m . . . I help out with their kids.’ Well, it’s sort of true.

  ‘You’re the nanny?’ OK, he came to that conclusion himself. Not my fault. ‘Lucky kids,’ he adds, glancing over at Johnny.

  I laugh weakly.

  ‘If my nanny looked like you, I wouldn’t be thinking about moving out.’

  ‘You don’t have a nanny,’ I scoff, before I can register the fact that he was flirting with me.

  ‘She’s fifty-one, the size of a small car and she’s looked after me since I was a baby. Are you calling me a liar?’

  ‘You have a nanny?’ I ask in disbelief.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well, OK, then!’ I say breezily, looking back over at Johnny. He coolly points to the terrace by the house and I nod my acknowledgement. Meg is there, too.

  All of a sudden I feel very flat. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you,’ I manage to say.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

  My sinking heart does an about-turn.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘Probably not much.’

  ‘Do you want to do something?’

  I can’t keep the smile from my face. ‘Sure.’

  He grins. ‘Give me your number.’

  I’m about to reel off my mobile when I remember it doesn’t work here. I’ve been using Johnny and Meg’s landline all week. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Are you trying to blow me off?’ he asks warily.

  ‘No! No, I swear I’m not. Give me your number and I’ll call you.’

  He looks bemused as he digs his hand into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He extracts a card from inside.

  ‘You have business cards?’ I take it from him.

  ‘You could do with some,’ he replies with a wink, stuffing his wallet back into his pocket.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ I tell him with a smirk, walking away, distinctly aware of the nearby girls watching me.

  ‘You better,’ he calls after me. ‘Otherwise I’ll track you down.’

  By the time I reach Johnny and Meg, Johnny is tapping his foot impatiently.

  ‘Ready to go?’ Meg asks with a smile.

  ‘Yep,’ I reply.

  I look back at Jack as I climb on to a waiting kart. Lissa, Bryony and Charlotte have swarmed him, but I know he’s still looking at me, even as I turn away.

  Chapter 16

  ‘Good time?’ Johnny asks when we’re safely back inside Davey’s limo. There’s a sharpness to his tone and I’m not sure why.

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply.

  ‘So you met Jack Mitchell.’

  ‘Is that his surname? We didn’t get that far.’

  ‘You looked like you were getting pretty far to me.’ He gives me a pointed look.

  ‘Johnny,’ Meg interrupts with a frown. ‘Leave her be.’

  ‘You don’t need to fight my battles for me.’ The words are out before I know it. Meg looks surprised.

  ‘Hey, chill out, chick, no one’s battling anyone,’ Johnny quickly says, his green eyes narrowing with apprehension.

  ‘Sorry, force of habit,’ I reply, my face heating up. Meg looks a bit put out as she turns and stares through the window. I notice Johnny put a protective hand on her knee.

  Suddenly I feel annoyed. And over the course of the short journey home, my bitterness grows and eats away at me. How dare he act like he cares about what I get up to? Why am I even here? He’s not a father to me. He’s no one.

  No, sorry, my mistake, I think sarcastically. He’s Johnny Jefferson. The big celebrity. Somebody.

  But it feels like he’s nobody to me.

  I’m fuming by the time we get back to his house. Slam-doors fuming. Annoyingly, Davey is waiting to close the car door behind me, but the front door is mine.

  BANG!

  ‘What the hell?’ Johnny spins around.

  As soon as I do it, I realise that I might have woken Barney and Phoenix, but I pretend not to care. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake your precious children,’ I say sarcastically.

  Meg’s eyes widen with shock. She gives Johnny a significant look and sets off up the stairs. I know she’s checking on the boys and relieving the babysitter, but I’m glad she left us to it. Now Johnny will have to face me himself.

  ‘You’ve had too much to drink,’ Johnny says calmly and it winds me up even more.

  ‘Screw you!’

  ‘You’ve only just got here and you’re sounding like an American.’

  I storm towards him. ‘Would you rather I said fuck you? Fine. Fuck you!’

  ‘Hey!’ he raises his voice and I can see that I’m getting to him.

  ‘Take it outside!’ Meg hisses from the landing as a door upstairs opens and I see the concerned-looking babysitter venture out. I glare up at Meg and then Johnny stalks to the door leading out on to the terrace and slides it open. He points outside, his jaw twitching with irritation as he stares at me. I stomp across the living room and step over the threshold. He slides the door shut.

  ‘What’s up with you? I thought you had fun tonight. Why are you acting like a brat?’

  ‘Why should you care?’ I bite back.

  ‘You’re going to have to help me here,’ he says with forced calm. ‘I haven’t had to deal with many teenage girls in my time.’

  ‘My mum was just a teenager when you shagged her and got her pregnant. Do you ever think about that?’

  He reels backwards and even in the low-level light I can see that I’ve stunned him. My heart is beating wildly. Where did that comment even come from? But it’s about time we had a conversation about my mum.

  He takes a deep breath, and I’m taken aback when he finally says: ‘I do think about her.’

  ‘What?’ But my voice instantly sounds smaller.

  ‘Just . . .’ He looks worn out as he walks over to a chair and sits down, hunched-over with his elbows resting on his knees. He nods at the one opposite. ‘Sit.’

  I do as he says. ‘So you really remember her?’ I struggle to get the words out past the lump that has so swiftly lodged itself in my throat.

  ‘Yeah, I remember Candy.’

  It shocks me to hear him say her name. Stu made it sound like Mum was just another girl to him, but maybe there’s more to the story. ‘What . . . What happened between you?’ I ask.

  He sighs. ‘She followed the band, you know?’ His eyes are piercing in the light spilling through on us from the living room. ‘She came to every concert before we made it big, and I’d see her right up at the front. Candy was hard to miss.’

  ‘Why?’ My voice comes out s
ounding like a whisper.

  He meets my eyes. ‘She was beautiful. Anyone could see that. But there was something else about her. She had a free spirit. I guess . . .’ He pauses, looking past me to the living room. ‘I guess I was drawn to her.’ He meets my eyes again.

  I look over my shoulder through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but there’s no one there. I wonder if Meg’s gone to bed. I doubt Johnny would be being quite so open with me if she were around.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask, but he looks hesitant. ‘I need to know.’ I don’t want to beg him. I shake my head and hot tears fill my eyes. ‘She’s not around any more to tell me.’ The lump is colossal now, but I don’t want to break down and detract from this conversation now that we’re actually talking. It’s too important and my time here is running out.

  ‘Christ,’ he mutters, getting to his feet. I watch him as he goes to the small outside bar area. He digs around in a cupboard under the counter for a bit and comes back with a packet of cigarettes. He pulls one out as he walks, popping it between his lips. He looks unhappy as he stands beside me and lights it, the glow from the flame adding to the light cast from inside. He sits back down.

  ‘Meg is going to kick my ass,’ he says in a low voice, his accent taking on an American twang that I’ve noticed comes through occasionally.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I gave up.’ He takes a long, slow drag and in a weird way he feels more familiar to me. This is the image I had of him in my head before we met. More rock star, less doting husband and father.

  ‘Can I have one, while you’re at it?’

  He glances at me. ‘It’s a filthy fucking habit,’ he says through a puff of smoke as he exhales.

  ‘I know.’ I hold my hand out, palm upwards, and he stares at it for a moment. Then he stubs out his cigarette.

  ‘No, none for you, and none for me. Like I said, it’s a filthy habit.’

  He’s trying to be responsible for me all of a sudden? Normally I’d be annoyed, but actually I’m strangely touched. ‘Tell me about my mum,’ I press.

  ‘I noticed her at the first concert she came to.’ I realise I’m holding my breath as he continues. He looks far away as he remembers. ‘She was standing right at the front. It was dark, but I could see her. She was so into the music. I liked the way she danced, the way she lost herself . . .’ He smiles wryly. ‘When we slowed things down she just stood there and stared at me.’ He shrugs. ‘I couldn’t take my eyes off her, either.’ Pause. ‘I thought about her after that night.’ I’m transfixed, watching his face as he speaks. ‘And then she turned up at the next concert.’

  I picture the scene: the good-looking rock star singing a slow song to the beautiful young girl . . . It gives me shivers. No wonder she fell hard for him.

  ‘Jesus, I could do with a drink,’ he says.

  ‘No, don’t,’ I warn.

  He raises one eyebrow. ‘Don’t worry, girl, I’m not going to crack.’

  ‘I didn’t know you didn’t drink. I mean, I know . . .’ Hmm, this is embarrassing. ‘I read about your drug addiction on the internet,’ I admit.

  ‘Yeah. I’m damned if I’m going to go there again.’ He eyes his cigarette on the floor. ‘Those bastards make me want to drink. Drink makes me want to take drugs. I’m better off if I say no to the lot of it.’

  ‘Come on.’ He points over to the other side of the deck. He gets up slowly and starts to walk off, so I have no choice but to follow him. We walk around the swimming pool to the grey, polished concrete outdoor table and he slides across the bench seat, patting the space beside him. The city is sprawled out before us. It’s a cloudless, starry sky and the moon is almost full. The glow from the moon and the far-off city lights illuminate Johnny’s face in a muted glow.

  ‘What happened at the next concert?’ I ask.

  He stares down at the view. ‘It was concert number three.’ I wait patiently for him to continue. ‘She was there again, standing right at the front. It was in a bar, a smaller venue. Usually we’d head off after the gigs, go to a club or something, but this time I persuaded the guys to hang around. I saw her ordering a drink at the bar and went over.’

  I’m holding my breath again. ‘I want to know every detail,’ I say firmly.

  He indulges me. ‘I didn’t look at her as I ordered a whisky on the rocks, but I could sense her tensing up beside me. I turned to face her and said hi.’ He grins and gives me a sidelong glance before looking back at the view. ‘She broke eye contact first.’ He chuckles again as the memory comes back to him. ‘She always broke eye contact first.’

  Funny that he should remember something like that.

  ‘When did you have your first kiss?’ I meant it when I asked for the details. It’s weird because it’s about my mum, but for some reason I need to know exactly what happened. Maybe I just need to know that she meant something to him.

  ‘Aah . . .’ He shifts awkwardly and pushes his hand through his hair. ‘I tried that night.’

  ‘She turned you down?’ I ask with disbelief.

  He starts to laugh. ‘She put her hand, right here.’ He gently punches his own chest. ‘And told me, “I don’t think so . . .”’

  ‘You’re shitting me? She didn’t even let you kiss her?’

  ‘She told me why later.’ He shrugs. ‘She said she knew I’d lose interest in her once she put out.’ He smirks. ‘Her words, not mine.’

  ‘Was she right?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says slowly. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you obviously kissed eventually.’

  ‘Well, I was pretty pissed off that she turned me down.’ He glances at me. ‘But she kept coming to the concerts, kept standing right at the front with those big, doleful eyes of hers, and . . . I couldn’t resist. We had a few . . .’ His voice trails off, then he finds the word he’s looking for: ‘ . . .followers at the time.’

  ‘You mean groupies,’ I say, disliking the term and what it stands for, but equally, not wanting him to lie to me.

  He looks abashed, but doesn’t correct me. ‘There were a lot of girls. It was just as we were starting to make waves. Record companies were starting to show interest, talking about record deals. We weren’t short of . . . attention.’

  ‘Groupies,’ I chip in again.

  ‘Anyway,’ he moves on. ‘I know Candy could see it. I knew she was jealous, but still she kept coming, and, well, I started to think it was just the music she liked. Until one night I got a roadie to give her a backstage pass. I didn’t know if she’d come back, but I was talking to a couple of blondes when she did and I remember the look on her face. I thought she was going to turn and bolt, but I caught her before she could.’

  ‘What did she look like?’ I ask. ‘If you can remember . . .’

  ‘Oh, I can remember. She looked freaking hot, that night.’ He shoots me an apologetic look. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK, I want to know.’

  ‘Well, she did,’ he continues. ‘She was wearing a sheer black top and jeans. She had her dark hair down and her eyes seemed bigger than usual. I wanted her bad.’ He glances at me again, unsure if he’s said too much, been too open. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’

  ‘Definitely,’ I reiterate.

  ‘I told her she was killing me.’ Suddenly he looks agitated, rubbing his hand over his mouth and pushing his hair back again. ‘I shouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have . . .’

  ‘Shouldn’t, wouldn’t, what?’ I interrupt impatiently. What’s going through his mind?

  ‘I screwed up, OK?’ he snaps suddenly. ‘I shouldn’t have taken her back with me.’

  ‘You regret sleeping with her?’ I don’t know why the thought hurts me so much.

  ‘No. No.’ He shakes his head, looking down. ‘I don’t regret that. She was beautiful. I liked her. A lot,’ he says again, and I know he means it in more ways than one. ‘It was what came afterwards that was so messed up.’

  He scratches his head again
and looks behind us to the bar. ‘Christ, I want a drink.’

  ‘No. Don’t.’ Am I pushing him too far?

  He turns around. ‘I won’t.’ He shakes his head again. ‘I won’t,’ he says again, more firmly this time. I sense he’s talking to himself, more than he’s talking to me.

  ‘What happened afterwards?’ I press gently.

  He doesn’t say anything for a long time. I try to be patient, but it damn near kills me. I see him swallow and I think he’s hurting, but I can’t be sure and it makes me realise that I still don’t know him at all. Finally he speaks. ‘Meg . . .’ He jerks his head back towards the house. ‘Before Meg, I was different. I didn’t do commitment. If I liked someone, I pushed them away. I did that to . . . your mother.’ He sighs. ‘We hooked up a few times after that night, but then she started asking questions, started wanting some sort of commitment from me. So I told her it was just a casual thing, that she shouldn’t go getting any ideas. She was angry. I knew she would be. I guess I proved her right. The whole reason she knocked me back in the first place.’ He sighs. ‘She left and I didn’t think I’d see her again. It hurt, you know? More than I thought it would. But that same day we were offered a record deal, and by lunchtime we were offered another deal by an even bigger label. By the end of that week, our manager had been approached by four different record labels – all of them major – and they had a full-on bidding war over us. I didn’t have time to think about Candy. I had to focus on Fence, on the guys, and making the right decision.’

  I notice his leg is jigging up and down underneath the table. He bites his fingernail and stares up at the moon. ‘We still had two more gigs to play on that tour before we had to start recording our debut album. The label we signed with wanted us to tour Europe, so there was a lot going on.’

  ‘Did you see Mum again?’ I ask.

  ‘She came to the next gig. She turned up unexpectedly, didn’t call me to say she was coming. I was shocked because I thought she’d given up on me for good.’

  ‘What happened? What did you say to her?’

  His leg jigs more violently. He shakes his head quickly. A bad feeling settles over me. I remember Stuart telling me about this.