* * *
Dinner was great. Jimmie was an excellent cook and after the roast beef with all the trimmings, we had homemade apple crumble and custard for dessert.
I’d gotten over my issues with Jim and Len being together years ago. I viewed her as nothing more than a sister and I couldn’t have been happier for her and my brother. They were so good together. The way they looked at each other even had me wondering if maybe, one day, I might want what they had.
We sat around the dinner table, enjoying a few wines and then more than a few bourbons as we told stories of our recent trip away.
* * *
This holiday had been a little subdued compared to our usual trips. We’d partied and clubbed the first week, but Maca hadn’t done more than chat to a few girls and had no interest when a girl called Elanora from Italy or France, or wherever, had asked if she could come back to our hotel and fuck us both. Luckily, we had separate rooms and I’d gone back with her, along with a Swedish, Dutch, or wherever it was they made tall blonde girls that talk like the chef from the Muppets and are called Anna, Arrna or Hannah. They stayed for two days. By the third, I could barely walk and needed them to go.
The following couple of weeks, we’d spent fishing, snorkelling, and sunbathing while sailing on Max and Nicole’s boat. They had just had their third baby so there was no partying on board. Most of the places we docked at night were quiet little fishing villages. Nic was happy to cook most evenings, as it was hard work taking three kids, including a newborn, out to dinner. A few times she sent Max out with us, telling us to go get drunk, which being the good boys that we were, we obviously obeyed. One night, we ended up staging an impromptu concert at a little bar in Palma on the island of Majorca. It was a place where the locals drank, but we had been instantly recognised and the singer from the band that was playing invited us up on stage to sing a few songs. We didn’t get down for over two hours and it was the happiest I had seen Maca in what felt like forever.
* * *
We helped Jimmie load the dishwasher and clear up the kitchen before taking our drinks and sitting on the big comfy sofa’s they’d just purchased. I was only half listening to Len go on about how they were custom made when the ring of the front doorbell came. Keen to get away from the riveting sofa conversation, Maca jumped up with an, “I’ll get it,” before I could get a breath out. He winked at me as he headed for the door, probably the first person ever to hope that he was gonna find a large religious cult on the doorstep, looking to spend hours trying to convert him.
“So yeah, if you’re ever looking, I can put you onto this bloke in San Antonio, Texas.” Len was telling me. I nodded and smiled, feigning interest before knocking back my drink. Imported cowhide? Shoot me now, cowboy.
I added ice from the bucket on the coffee table and started to top up both mine and Len’s drinks when I thought I heard a woman cry.
“What was that?” Len asked.
“Dunno. Sounded like someone crying.”
We were quiet for a minute, both of us trying to listen over the top of The Jam’s ‘Butterfly Collector.’ He looked around for the remote to the state of the art—for 1989—sound system that he’d had installed.
“Is that crying?” That was what I’d just said.
“I don’t know, Len. Go and have a look,” I suggested. He could do anything, as long as it wasn’t talking to me about furniture.
“Where’s Jim anyway?” I asked him, hoping that he would at least want to go in search of his wife to be.
Curiosity eventually got the better of him and he stood, walking out into the hallway.
“Fuck… Jimmie!” I heard him call out a few seconds later. I stood up and retrieved the remote from the dining table where we had left it earlier. Transvision Vamp’s Wendy James started belting out ‘Baby I Don’t Care’ and my dick gave a little twitch of approval as I remembered the video I’d seen of her singing it, wearing a basque, long gloves, and not a lot else.
“Shit.”
That was my sister’s voice I heard as I stepped out into the hallway. Len was standing just ahead of me. I looked around him to see Maca sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped around my sister who was sitting in his lap and looking up at him. Jimmie was on her knees beside them.
“Who would want to hurt us like that? Who?”
George looked up at Maca and asked through her tears.
What the fuck had happened?
“What the fuck, George? What’s wrong?” I started to move towards them, a million and one thoughts rushing through my brain. No one spoke. The only sounds were my sister’s sniffs and sobs.
“Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
Jimmie was crying too and goose bumps prickled my skin. Something bad happened … my mum, my dad, Bailey? I couldn’t move. I opened my mouth to again ask for answers, but nothing came out.
All my mind was acknowledging was the fact that Maca was holding my sister in his lap. After all these years, all this time apart, they were finally here, together.
It was all gonna be okay. Life was gonna go back to the way it should have always been.
“The letters, Jim?” Maca questioned. “All the letters. You told me that she got them.”
Jimmie looked past me to Lennon, then back to Maca. I’m totally lost as to what is going on.
“She did,” she said to him, then turned her gaze to George. “You did.” The tone of her voice made it sound like she was almost pleading with her to confirm what she was saying. “Your mum said that they upset you so much, that we weren’t to talk about them.”
Georgia’s mouth opened and closed at least three times. It was almost comical to watch, except there was nothing at all funny about what was unfolding.
“No, no, Jim.” My sister shook her head. “I never knew. I never saw a single letter.”
“What?” Maca, Jimmie, and Len, all seemed to say at once.
George looked wide-eyed at all of us in turn. I’m not sure if she thought that we all thought she was lying, but she continued to confirm her story. “She told me that Sean phoned for a couple of weeks and that my dad threatened him; that he’d then stopped calling and that was it.” Her eyes moved between each of us again. She looked small and fragile sitting in Maca’s arms. He was bigger built than the last time they were together, and she was skinnier—a lot skinnier—and I was only just realising it then.
“Georgia, I swear to God, I called your house four or five times a day. I begged them to let me talk to you. I wrote letter after letter, begging you to see me.” I was witness to his side of the story and knew for sure that everything he was telling her was the truth.
So what the fuck happened? Why did G not get any of his letters? There had to be a simple explanation to this because my mum and Dad would never lie about that shit. They knew what they were both going through, what they’d continued to go through.
I started to feel a little dizzy and light headed as fear unfurled in my belly. Something wasn’t making sense.
Everyone was quiet for a while, all of them probably trying to work out how the fuck this had happened. None of us wanted to think the worst; that it could’ve been done deliberately.
“G?” Maca said quietly. “I love you, babe, but your arse is fuckin’ bony and mine is going numb.”
“Fuck, I need a drink. Shit’s gonna go down if Mother’s done this on purpose,” Lennon said from beside me.
“No shit,” I replied, following him back to where we had left our bourbons.
We sat down on the much talked about sofa’s and each drained our glasses. Len topped them up this time. “I can’t believe this,” he stated.
“It’s gotta be something simple. Mum’s not a spiteful person. She was pissed off with Maca, but she’d never go out of her way to keep them apart,” I said, unsure of who I was trying to convince more. My eyes met Len’s and he looked as concerned as I felt. “Would she?” I questioned him.
“I have no fuckin clue
, mate.” He took a sip of his drink. “I feel like I don’t know anything right now.”
My mind started to race with thoughts of something strange that happened last year. My mum had asked me to keep the address of where we were living from Georgia, which was odd because she still wouldn’t talk to me at the time anyway. Then she’d flipped out when Georgia had apparently found it out. She’d said at the time that my sister had been behaving a little erratically, and that she had been asking for our address. She was worried that Georgia was gonna turn up and cause a scene and it could all end up in the papers. I’d shrugged it off at the time. I assumed my mum was overreacting to something G may or may not have said, but what if it had just been another way of keeping Maca and G apart?
I had an uneasy feeling in my belly and my chest as I watched Maca carry my sister into the room and sit her in his lap when he sat down of the sofa. The sensation wasn’t caused by watching those two together—that was great to see—it was the thought that my mum could’ve done something really horrible.
I moved to the armchair to give them some room as Len passed them both a drink.
I wanted to smile every time I looked at them together, but I was feeling sick with nerves that life might be about to come crashing down all around us again.
Georgia was rambling on about the fact that this must all be some kind of mistake, that our mum knew the mess they were both in and that there was no way that she’d deliberately keep them apart.
“You okay, big brother Marley?” George asked.
No, I’m not, really. I’ve finally got my family all back together and it was suddenly looking like it could fall apart again. I didn’t want to tell George what else I knew, but I wasn’t lying to her. I wasn’t losing her again, especially if she and Maca were gonna work things out.
“Gotta say, little sister Georgia, that I’m with you. Mum just wouldn’t do that … surely mum wouldn’t do that?”
Please don’t let my mum have done that.
I shook my head and continued. “I don’t know if I’m overthinking things, but now that I’m thinking about it, she has gone out of her way over the years to stop you two from having any kind of contact.”
There’d been a few occasions when she’d called me to make sure that I knew Maca wasn’t invited to whatever family gathering or function we were attending if George was also gonna be there. I always assumed it was because she was worried about how George would react to seeing Maca, but now I was worried that there was something else going on.
“I just thought it was to protect you, George, and then after that Sunday the other month…” I trailed off as I watched Maca pull her tighter into him. I think on the memory of that shitty day, yet another one where I fucked up, big time.
I cleared my throat and carried on, “After the way you reacted that Sunday, I thought that she’d done the right thing.”
My heart rate accelerated and my hands felt clammy. I’d stood on a stage in front of thousands of people. I’d performed live on television shows with audiences of millions, but I’d never felt as nervous as I did right then. However, my next sentence could’ve had the possibility of blowing my family apart. I felt sick and absolutely gutted at what I was about to do, but I didn’t see that I had any other choice.
“I thought she was being a bit irrational when she told me not to give you our address, and then how pissed off she got when you found it out anyway. It makes me think now that she may have had her own agenda—that maybe there was more to it than protecting you? What if it was more about hiding what she’d done? I don’t know, I’m just surmising…” I trailed off again when I took in the look on Georgia’s face. She frowned, her mouth opening and closing again as she shook her head no.
“I don’t understand, Marls?” I didn’t hear much else for a few seconds after that, realisation crawling up my spine. Could I have unknowingly played an even bigger part in my sister and best friend’s misery over the past four years than I thought?
“Ours, mine and Maca’s. She told me not to give you our address. She said that she was worried that you’d start stalking him.”
I feel like such a dick. I should’ve thought about it more at the time. I should’ve spoken to Jimmie. George may have been a little fucked up over their break up, but stalking? Yeah, that just wasn’t her thing. Maca, yeah. Knowing how he felt about her, I could’ve seen him going there, but not George.
Georgia’s expression had gone from shocked to angry as she looked around the room at each of us. “Marley, I have no fucking idea where your place is, and I had no idea that you and Sean lived together.” She took a deep breath in through her nose, as if she was trying to calm herself down.
“Fucking hell,” Len silently mouthed to me from beside where Maca was still sitting with my sister in his lap. His arms were wrapped around her like he had no plans of letting her go, ever.
The room was silent as we all tried to get our heads around what was going on.
“George, did you never go to the boys’ place and try and get past the reception area?” Jimmie asked in a calm, even voice. “Did you not go there and scream abuse at the doorman and try and kick the doors in when they threw you outside?”
I’d actually forgotten my mum telling us about that. Obviously, the drugs and alcohol I’d consumed over the years had taken more of a toll on my memory than I thought. Perhaps my mum did have valid reasons for protecting George, and then I looked at my sister’s face and I knew in an instant that she was telling the truth, and whatever Jimmie had been told was a lie.
“Are you all deaf or just fucking mad? I have no idea where Marley lives, and I had no idea that Sean lived with him. No fucking idea.”
Georgia’s face crumbled for a minute and I thought she was about to cry. “Where is this coming from? Who told all of you that I had been there causing trouble?”
Her mouth was turned down and her bottom lip trembled a few times, but she held back the tears.
Jimmie looked around at each of us before shrugging her shoulders and saying, “Your mum, George. Your mum told us.”
“Oh babe,” Maca said as he kissed G’s temple. She drew in a few deep breaths before letting out a loud sob.
“Why Sean?” She looked from him, to around the room at each of us. “Why would she do that to me? Why would she do that to us?”
I wish I knew. I wish I’d had an answer to give my little sister. She’d been hurt so much already. I was just thankful that Maca was there that night that they were together, and he was the one holding her and telling her that no matter what, they’d always have each other.
* * *
Over the next few hours, an elaborate story of lies and deceit unfolded in Jimmie and Len’s house. My parents and eldest brother turned up and George had to be held back as she unleashed what she knew on my mum. I was torn, totally torn in half as I watched my mum shake while Georgia confronted her.
And when she held her head in her hands, I wanted to tell George to stop shouting at her. She was my mum. She may have made an almighty fuck up, but she was my mum and she shouldn’t be spoken to like that.
I’d been in her shoes. I had a fucking good idea of how shitty she must’ve been feeling right then.
“Did you do it?” my sister screamed.
“What’s going on, George?” My dad finally asked. I’m surprised he’d stayed so quiet for so long. “Bern?” He turned to my mum who still had her head in her hands.
My mum looked up and right at my sister. She knocked back the drink Len had just passed to her and said very quietly and with complete conviction, “I did what I thought was right.”
Georgia flew from where she was sitting in Maca’s lap, but he and Bailey caught her before she reached her.
“How could you? How fucking could you?” she screamed, still fighting to get away from Maca and my brother.
“That’s enough, Georgia,” my dad shouted, but it didn’t slow her down.
Georgia must’ve been all of seve
n stone soaking wet, but the anger that propelled her forward scared the crap out of me. Bailey and Maca struggled to hold onto her.
My dad looked at my sister like she’d finally lost the plot and in that moment, I knew she wasn’t far from it. The last time I’d seen her that angry was when she’d ripped a handful of Haley White’s hair out at a concert we did at the back of a pub about five or six years ago.
“Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?” my dad asked again.
“Did you know? Were you part of it?” G turned her anger towards my dad, but I knew that he was clueless as to what had happened.
“No,” my mum shouted in his defence.
“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 away from me? Did you pack them all in a box and send them back to him with a note, supposedly from me, saying to not contact me again?” Georgia took in a few shaky breaths. She wiped her tears and her nose on the back of her hand and it was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that she better not let mum catch her doing that.
“Did you tell everyone that I’d been to Marley’s, and that I tried to smash my way in? Did you? Or was it just your lying, deceitful, spiteful wife?” George spat out.
“Bern?” My dad stared wide-eyed at my mum, as shocked as the rest of us at what he was hearing.
“It wasn’t like that.” My mum finally looked up at my sister. “At first I wanted you to get back with him … I wanted the two of you back together. But you were so broken, George, and you needed time. I couldn’t let you talk to him. Whatever you may think now, you just weren’t strong enough. And in the beginning, you refused point blank to have anything to do with him anyway.”
Len topped up the glasses of everyone that was drinking bourbon. George took Maca’s glass from him and downed the contents.
“I’m your mum, George, it’s my job to keep you safe.” She had a pleading edge to her voice. She wanted my sister to try and see things from her point of view. I knew my sister well enough to know that she wouldn’t. I couldn’t, so why would she?
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