Page 28 of The Interview
Len pauses, chews on the corner of his thumbnail, then continues.
“I was twenty. I had no clue what I was fucking doing. I got the hotel management to call in a security team at our cost. They shut down the bar and the music, told everyone to go back to their rooms, or take the party to the city. Surprisingly, everyone was pretty compliant. Unsurprisingly, a smaller scale party started up in Rocco’s room. I went down there thinking I was about to go head-to-head with Marley and Maca—Tom and Billy did not take part in any of this, I want to add—but when I went to Rocco’s room, they weren’t there. I had a key to their room,and as I walked back to my room to get it, I heard screaming from behind me. When I turned, Haley White was standing in the hallway, naked, asking for help, saying she’d been attacked.”
“What did you do?”
“I started to go to her. Doors were opening all along the corridor. Someone—a woman, I think—wrapped a bathrobe around her, then she just crumbled to the floor. Everyone was asking what had happened, and as I approached, she pointed her finger at me and said, ‘Theyattacked me’. I was confused for a minute because I thought she meant me. I think everyone did, then she clarified, ‘Marley and Maca. They raped me.’”
“She used the R word? She actually said rape?” Dan asks.
Georgia shifts beside me, but I’m immobile.
“Yeah. She said it to everyone, even told the police later that’s what had happened. The woman who had given her the robe took her into her room. Security arrived almost at the same time, so I went back to my room, got the key to the boys’ room, and ran back, hoping to find out what the fuck had happened while security was dealing with Haley.”
“What did you find when you got there?” Dan asks, his voice quiet.
“They were there, both of them, but so was Rocco. He came walking out of the bathroom as I came through the door and looked as shocked as shit to see me. He said something like, ‘What’s all the noise?’ which instantly struck me as weird, because right then, there was no noise. I asked if Haley had been in there, and he said she had been, but then he’d crashed and he didn’t know where she’d gone. The boys were both lying on their backs.” He scratches at his brow again as he looks from me to George. “There are things about that day that’ve remained… they’ve never been made public. We’ll talk about them later,” he tells us before looking back at Daniel. “I tried waking them up, but they were out?—”
“No,” I interrupt. “Maca crashed before me, and he was on his front. I don’t remember much, but I remember that.”
Len nods. “We’ll talk about that later.”
I want to talk about it now, but I don’t want to do it in front of a camera, so I shut my mouth.
My heart’s pounding so hard, it feels impossible for the mic not to pick it up. I feel dizzy. My brotherlookslike he’s about to vomit, while Ifeellike I’m about to vomit. My gut, all of my senses, are telling me, warning me, screaming at me that there’s something coming. Something about that day or the proceeding days I missed. Something Len knows. Something he’s kept from me for all these years.
“Rocco started to move towards the bed. I told him not to touch anything, but he reached for a video camera I hadn’t noticed at first.”
Len’s voice brings me back to the conversation going on, but I feel like I’m underwater, attempting to make out his words. I chug on my bottle of water and listen, hoping it makes sense.
“I told him again not to touch anything, and that’s when the police came through the door. Everything from there just seemed to happen at a hundred miles an hour. Police, ambulances. I was making calls to the label, to my dad. I was completely out of my depth and had no idea what to do. The paramedics managed to get the boys to wake up, and despite my protests, said they were well enough to be taken to the police station. I had to jump in a taxi and follow them there. When I walked through the reception area of the hotel, it was swarming with cops, journalists, and paparazzi.”
Len reaches for his own water and takes a swig before continuing.
“I sat at the police station for what felt like hours, and I’ll tell you something now, I’ve never felt so alone in my life. So completely and utterly overwhelmed and out of my depth.” Lenshakes his head. “They finally let me in to see them with their version of a duty solicitor. He spoke very little English; I spoke very little French. Maca was still out cold. At that stage, we thought he was just sleeping off his high. Marley was staggering about, vomit everywhere. I saw him, and not my proudest moment, I just lost it. I was scared, I was angry, and I fucking let him have it.”
“Yeah, there’s me, fighting for my life, banged up for a crime I didn’t commit, and he walks in, and you know what he does?” I say.
“Slaps you, I hope,” Georgia, who’s been uncharacteristically quiet, pipes up.
“He punched me. Clocked me right on the jaw.”
“You were still numb; you didn’t feel it,” Len states like it’s a fact.
“Did you kick him while he was down?” G asks. “Please tell me you did.”
“Fuck off,” I tell them both.
“Once I realised the state he was in, I demanded he get checked out medically, but they kicked me back out to the waiting area. When my dad walked through the doors of the police station, with Marcus by his side, however long later that was, I literally fell into his arms and cried like a baby,” Len admits. “Everything changed then. Nobody would listen to me, but my dad had an entire French legal team there within an hour of his arrival. Marley had to be taken to the hospital, and I was interviewed. Maca was still sleeping it off, but even before he was awake, Haley White’s case was falling apart. Early reports from the rape exam that had been carried out were inconclusive. The story she was telling didn’t add up to the story Rocco, who, contrary to what he’d told me about being passed out, was now supposedly a witness to it all, was telling. Then the private hospital where Marley had been taken called to say that, alongwith a lot of other things”—he looks at me with his brows raised, and I shrug, welcoming the levity the exchange brings to my racing heart and thoughts—“they’d found ketamine in his blood. That’s when Maca was transferred to the same hospital. They were both held there under police guard all the next day, or two days. Even now, all these years later, I’m still not entirely sure of the sequence of events or how long it was, exactly, until we got the call that the boys would be released without charge. The old man had taken care of everything: getting a legal team together, the private hospital. He even had a team at the hotel taking statements, checking for any security footage, which there was, but it was the eighties, and it looked like it’d been filmed with a potato. Dad got a hold of it, anyway. He’d stayed calm all the way through.”
“Calm?” I question.
Len raises his hand to shut me up. “Calm until you were released—until he knew you were safe. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen my ol’ man scared, and that was the very first. I’ll never forget the way he looked when they wheeled you out on a stretcher from the cell. He made the ambulance wait while he ripped right into the rep who’d been sent from the label. He told them they’d better pull their fingers out of their arseholes and look after all of us better. The band wouldn’t be their cash cows or the tabloids’ front-page news. He told them if they didn’t fix the whole shitshow, he'd be getting the entire circus shut down and suing them for everything they were worth. Then he got in the back of the ambulance, and I watched as he reached for your hand.”
I stand and race as quickly as I can to the toilet and vomit. I don’t even have time to close the door behind me, and Ash is there in an instant. She waits silently while I heave up my guts, then hands me a bottle of water when I turn to sit on my arse with my back to the wall.
“Back to how it all started, except in reverse,” I say, giving a sardonic smile.
“Still looking after each other,” she says, returning my smile. Hers is gentle. The best smile in the world. “Love you, Rock Star,” she tells me.
