Page 98 of The Interview
“Let me try and explain it another way, then.”
“You tell him, Mumma,” Lu calls out.
“On it, baby girl,” I reassure her.
And then I’m on it…
“I met Sean when I was eleven. We spent a lot of time together over the next, very formative, four years. By the time I was sixteen, I knew that boy inside out, and he knew me the same way. Even at sixteen and eighteen, we probably knew each other better than some married couples in their thirties do. Then we split up for four years. When we got back together, we were still only twenty and twenty-two. Most people haven’t even met the person they’re going to marry at twenty, yet I was reconnecting with my person, and he was doing the same. We were doing it slowly, at our pace. Our young love had been almost manic, obsessive, like an addiction. So, this time, we chose to take our time.
“You’ve just seen the photos. We lived a life. An exceptionally busy, exciting life spent mostly on the road, and we loved it. We actually started to plan our wedding in 1995, but couldn’t make it work. Then, in ’98, the band finished a tour of the US, we rented a half dozen houses in a gated community, and all of the band had a holiday together in Florida. I flew my parents and brother Bailey out, which meant all of the people we’d want at our wedding were finally in the same place at the same time. We booked a celebrant, went down to City Hall or the council office, or whatever it’s called over there, got our licence, went to a hotel, and we asked if they could organise a wedding at short notice.
“They could. So, only a couple of days later, on a beach on the Gulf of Mexico—or is it America now? Well, anyway, it was Mexico then. With our family, the band, and our people like Milo and Dave and their families, some of the road crew who’d stayed on to holiday with us, I walked down the sandy wedding aisle to the sound of Paul Weller singing “You’re The Best Thing”—Sean’s choice—and we said our I dos and got married in the most laid back, chilled ceremony of wedding ceremonies.”
“It was beautiful,” Jim says. “The kids were actually digging at Georgia’s feet and covering Sean’s with sand as they said I do. After everything they’d been through to get to that point, it was perfect.”
“And what made it even better? The only photos that got out there were what we gave the press, and a couple from someone who was passing by on the beach and recognised us. I hope they made thousands from them because the paps sure as fuck didn’t.”
“We’ve got some of those images to show you, as well as a few others some of your guests on that day have shared. You want to see them?” Daniel asks.
“Go for it,” I say, not really caring at this stage whether the public is going to believe our reasons or not.
Within seconds, there we both are, barefoot. I’m wearing a cream-coloured, off-the-shoulder, lace and sheer fabric maxi dress. Sean’s wearing long, tan cargo shorts and a white linen shirt. My bouquet is made up of local white and cream flowers, with huge, tropical green leaves, and feathery plumes of pampas grass. Our hands are joined and raised in the air as our guests, lined up on either side of us, stand to clap. I remember the day so vividly, how happy we were, how full of hope.
Icouldsit here and cry, mourn what I lost. Instead, I let the warmth of those images wash over me and bathe in the knowledge that we had a love like no fucking other.
Except what I’ve got now with Cam, which is equally as special, equally as fierce, yet entirely different.
The images flash by, including us with my parents—Sean didn’t want his mum and stepdad there, only his dad, Ritchie—photos with the band, my family, many of which I’ve never seen before.
All of us who were there that day, along with my husband and kids, watch on silently as image after image of what was, back then, the happiest day of my life flash by.
Then comes the video.
We’d booked the entire restaurant at the Tradewinds Resort where we’d married, and they’d supplied a DJ for the evening. Our first dance was “Georgia”, a specially recorded version sung by my brand-new husband. Our second, “English Rose”. This wasn’t sung by my husband but the original Jam version, with Paul Weller on vocals.
As I watch us dance, I wonder if there will be footage of what came next.
Before our last-minute decision to get married, we’d decided that while Sean and the band stayed in the States to do press, a couple of photo shoots, and meet and greets, I’d go home with the rest of my family. I had kitchen renovations booked in, aswell as a refurb of the ensuite at the house in Hampstead we’d bought when we first got back together.
The band had most of the next year off, and we’d decided to travel, then come home and try for a baby.
I didn’t want to leave him in America so soon after our wedding, but we still had five more days together before a week apart. By the time he was home, it’d be nearly Christmas, and then we could head off and have our real honeymoon.
Because he knew we’d be spending a week apart, Sean had requested a third slow dance, and the DJ and our guests had obviously been in on it. I thought by the end of our second dance, everyone would get up to join us. Instead, the lights went down, everyone stayed in their seats, and as “Babe”, the old school version by Styx started to play, a spotlight came up and shone down on Sean and me.
I watch the video with a small laugh and a shake of my head. It’d become a bit of a theme song for us—something he’d sing to me every time he travelled without me. I watch the screen as he leans in and sings about how it’s me who keeps him going when he’s tired, weary, and had enough.
Tears burn at my eyes. My chest feels tight, and my throat is filled with a huge ball of emotion.
“Fucking hell, he was such a romantic fucker,” Marley chokes out.
Then Jimmie draws in a shaky breath, and we all break. My tears fall silently, but I can’t control the way my lips and jaw tremble. Marley’s sob is the loudest, but when I turn to my brother, I see Ash has already got him. Lennon has already pulled Jimmie into his side, too, and is about to do the same to me, when Cam appears in front of me. Taking my hand, he kneels, then pulls me down into his lap, and just like he’s done so many times, over so many years, he holds me while I cry over the love I had for another man.
A different man I loved in a different life.
We stay that way for a minute or so until I can catch my breath and the tears stop falling.
“That even got me choked up,” Cam says into my ear, making me smile despite the sadness still lingering.
