The Story of Me (Carnage #2)(8)
“Please, don’t get yourself in a state over this, G. It’s complete bullshit. Len’s got the solicitors onto them.” I pulled my neck back so I could look from her to Lennon.
“Them?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “The girl and the newspaper?” Lennon shook his head and sighed.
“No, both the girls. There’s another one crawled out of the woodwork after this morning’s headlines got out.”
I didn’t want to cry, but I did.
“Why don’t they just get in touch with me? If it’s true, why don’t they contact me? Why don’t they come to me privately? If these children are Sean’s like they claim, then why the need to go to the papers, why would you put your own child up for scrutiny like that?”
I looked between all of them, but no one seemed to have an answer.
“I would make sure they were properly looked after. If they are Sean’s children, I wouldn’t keep his money from them.” I looked around the room again; my parents were now standing in the doorway and my mum was crying along with me. I breathed in through my nose and blew out through my mouth as I tried to calm myself down. “Why do they hate me; why do they despise me so much that they would do this? Don’t they get how hard it is? Don’t they get how f*cking hard I’m trying to hang on here, to keep going?” Jimmie let out a loud sob from beside me.
“They’ve gone to the papers, babe, because it’s not true. They won’t come to you, because they know they will have to come up with evidence and they don’t have any. There’s no truth in any of this. They’re just a pair of scheming, conniving bitches who don’t take anyone’s thoughts or feelings into consideration, not even their own kids.” She held my face between her hands and made me look at her. “These stories are a load of crap, George. Let Len and the solicitors take care of it. Don’t let any of this set you back. You are the bravest person I know, strong and brave, and we won’t let these f*ckers bring you down.”
“But why do they want to hurt me like this, Jim? What the f*ck did I ever do to them?” Lennon came and knelt in front of me and held both of my hands; from where I was sitting on the side of the bed, he looked me square in the eye.
“It’s not personal, George. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about Sean. They’re just selfish people out to try and make a quick quid.” He wiped my tears from my face, something my big brother hadn’t done since I was a little girl. “The lawyers are all over this, all over these women and all over the piece-of-crap newspaper that’s run the story. We’ve got this, Porge; it’ll be old news by tomorrow.” He stood and kissed the top of my head.
“Get the bacon on, Ma. I’m starving,” Marley said from beside me on the bed. He cuffed his nose on his sleeve. “We’ve got this, Porge. We’ll sue the shit out of these f*ckers, I swear. For you, for Beau and for my best mate, we’ll get this shut down.” He kissed me hard on the forehead. “I love you, little sister, Georgia. Clean your teeth. You’ve got morning breath.”
*
Unfortunately, it wasn’t old news the next day. More vile individuals crawled out of their holes and made ridiculous claims about my husband and some made claims about me. It would seem that around nine months is the acceptable grieving time to give women who have lost their husbands and unborn children; then apparently, they were seen as fair game by the press and the public. That was the point at which Jackson contacted me and asked me to come over to Australia for a while and get away from it all. So I accepted, and here I am.
*
The bar my Aunt and Uncle owns also serves food and is open from six in the morning to serve breakfast, or brekkie, as the Aussies call it, until late, which basically means when the last person either leaves of their own accord or is thrown out.
I have been eased in gently since I arrived; my Uncle John had warned me, though, that I would receive no special privileges. “I don’t give a rat’s arse how rich and famous you are in London or LA, George; you come and stay with us, then you’ll pull your weight. Brooke and Kathy will teach ya what ya need to know for the bar, and Jax will show ya the ropes for his gig, but I just want ya to know, we don’t pander to princesses around here.”
I nodded, feeling like I was a child being told off. Over the next few weeks, I swept floors, wiped tables, chopped veg and salad, and peeled God only knows how many potatoes. Between all of that, I had taken surf lessons from Jackson and had ridden horses with my cousin, Brooke, who I also worked with at the bar. She is twenty-eight and absolutely wild; she reminds me a lot of Jimmie, Ash and myself when we were younger. Watching her in action makes me realise what a wild bunch we were; Brooke’s twenty-eight and we were up to these kind of things when we were fifteen—fifteen and so indestructible, our lives all planned out. The only difference between us and Brooke was that we never slept around; well, apart from my mad six months before Cam, my ‘BC days’ as I refer to them in my head.
Brooke has a man’s attitude towards sex: straight sex, no strings. If they were good, she kept them around for a while; if not, she kicked them out of bed in the morning and didn’t invite them back for the return ride. She begged and pleaded with me the past few weekends to go with her into Sydney, but I just wasn’t ready and I was terrified of being recognised. So far, not one person has commented on who I am since my arrival; all they know is I am Kathy’s niece from England. They laugh at my accent, want to talk about cricket and tell me how much I look like Kath and are generally genuinely nice people.