CHAPTER THREE
2014
I read over the words that I’ve typed a few more times, pouring myself another drink in between. I think what I’ve written is the truth, but in all honesty, so much of that night and what happened afterwards are a blur, so I really can’t be sure.
The only part of it I know for sure as the absolute truth is that it was all my fault.
I continue reading...
1985
After playing our Paris concerts Friday and Saturday night, we finally got home to my parents’ house in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The flight home was made in almost complete silence. Maca chatted with my dad on the plane, but he’d barely spoken a word to me since we’d been released by the police. Despite our lack of communication, our performances during the last two nights of our shows had been pretty spectacular.
Lennon, Billy, and Tom, weren’t speaking to me or Maca. Maca wasn’t speaking to me, and I wasn’t speaking to anyone, but the anger, emotion, and frustrations of those last few days’ events had everyone performing at their unbelievable best. The crowds were insane and the label and promoters were over the moon.
When we walked into my mum and Dad’s house, my mum was curled into my dad’s armchair, while George and Jimmie were sleeping at each end of the sofa.
I pulled out a stool at the kitchen work top and sat, looking at everyone in the living room.
Maca knelt down next to a sleeping Georgia and kissed her gently. I held my breath as her eyes fluttered open, my heart feeling like it had actually stopped as she backed away from him, getting as far into the corner of the sofa as her skinny frame would allow.
For a few seconds, her face crumbled and I thought she was going to cry from the hurt I’d caused, so obvious in her expression. Maca closed his eyes and I heard him whisper, “Georgia, I’m so sorry.”
I closed my eyes as the room swayed. I needed to put everything right, but I had no idea where to start. When I opened my eyes, both my parents were looking at me, but I couldn’t meet their concerned stares.
Georgia stood and gave a cuddle to my dad and Len. Totally ignoring me, she said, “Well, now you’re all home safe, I’m going to bed. Night.”
“Georgia, wait.” I could hear the absolute panic in Maca’s voice as he told her that they needed to talk, and I almost choked on the guilt that was rising higher in my chest. Why didn’t I feel it that night? Why did I think that what they had was so unimportant?
I slipped out through the laundry and into the back garden to smoke a cigarette, shutting out the sound of Maca asking my dad’s permission to go up to G’s room.
As I headed back in through the laundry door, my mum’s house phone started ringing. “Leave it!” Len shouted as I went to pick it up. I held my hands up in surrender to show him I wasn’t gonna touch it and watched my dad pick up the extension in the living room.
“Frank Layton,” he answered with the kind of authority that only my dad could at three in the morning, especially after the few days we’d just experienced.
He stayed silent for a few seconds, then his brown eyes slid to meet mine as I walked from the kitchen towards the sofa, where Jim and Len were sitting.
“Excuse me?” my dad said into the phone. I watched as he pressed his left hand, palm down, to his forehead and dragged it down his face. My heart was beating so hard, it jolted everything inside of my belly and I felt like I was about to throw up.
The phone was suddenly ripped from its cord, flying across the room, bouncing off of the work top I was sitting at earlier. “You fucker! You stupid, stupid fucker!” my dad roars. “You let someone take photos?” He took a step towards me, my mum and Len jumping up between us. Jimmie turned and looked up at me with her mouth hanging open and shook her head.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, boy? Did I teach you nothing? There’s photos ... evidence, Marley, of you and that other skinny prick upstairs, snorting charlie off that little cunts tits and she’s sold them to the fucking papers.”
Jimmie stood and smacked me across the face. I flinched, but I didn’t actually feel any pain. Aside from the guilt, I’m numb.
“Th―this is too much, Marls. This is gonna kill your sister,” Jimmie said quietly. “I hope you two are fucking proud of yourselves.” She sobbed through gritted teeth, then turned and started heading towards the stairs.
“Don’t tell her, Jim,” I pleaded, reaching out and grabbing her arm. “Please, don’t tell her.”
I’d managed not to cry so far, but the thought of my sister seeing pictures of what we were doing and with who ... fuck! I couldn’t control my lip from trembling, just thinking about what it would do to her.
“Get your fucking hands off her,” Lennon yelled, knocking my hand from Jimmie’s arm.
“Are you gonna tell her Marls? Are you gonna go up there and tell George that there are pictures?” Len asked me.
“Well, someone needs to. The papers will be out in the next few hours, so she’s gonna find out, one way or another,” my dad informed us.
Jimmie drew in a breath and headed up the stairs, Len following.
There was shouting. My dad, then my mum, rushed up the stairs next while I stood there alone for a few moments, too much of a coward to go and face my little sister.
When I got to her room, my dad was shouting at Maca to get out of our house, while my mum was trying to calm him down. Jimmie was screaming at Maca, and all the while, George just sat on her bed, tears rolling down her cheeks.
She was too young for all this. She was sixteen, but in that moment, she looked like a little girl of about ten; frightened, bewildered, and overwhelmed with what was going on around her, and it was all my doing.
What could I do to make it better?
I was an eighteen-year-old kid, living in a grown-up world and I’d made a fuck up of adult proportions.
I could barely breathe. I’d never felt as alone as I did in that moment. I simply stood in G’s bedroom doorway and sobbed.
Len dragged Maca out, kicking and screaming past me and finally, my eyes landed on hers. She’d been broken, and I swore to myself that I would never fuck up like that again.
Oh, how little did I know!