Текст книги "The Story Of Us"

Автор книги: Lesley Jones

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CARNAGE

BOOK #1

THE STORY OF US

by Lesley Jones

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the Author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organisations or places is entirely coincidental.

Carnage

Copyright © 2013 Lesley Jones

All rights reserved.

All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the Author.

WARNING

This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. This e-book is intended for adults ONLY. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

AUGUST 1999

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

EPILOGUE

For my family,

for your love, support

and words of encouragement,

I love you.

CHAPTER 1

I was swinging upside down by my knees on the monkey bars in our back garden the first time I met him; my best friend Jimmie and I hanging, facing each other, eating pop rocks and singing what we thought was a stellar rendition of ‘Liza Radley’ by The Jam at the tops of our voices. We had heard my big brother Bailey listening to the B side of the 12 inch version of the single ‘Start’ the week before and saying that he liked it better than the A, he had been playing it nonstop for the last few days. So we had listened to it and learned the words, because Jimmie was in love with each and every one of my three big brothers and was convinced that if she knew the words to their favourite songs, they would notice her and I can’t say I blame her, they’re all very good looking, Jimmie just hadn’t decided yet which of the three she was going to marry. Lennon probably wasn’t really an option as he was already sixteen and we were after all, only eleven. Bailey, my eldest brother was eighteen, so that pretty much ruled him out too, so as far as I was concerned, it had to be Marley, the brother closest in age to me that she had to marry, and it was his legs I was pretty sure I could see approaching us from the back of our house.

“George, I can see your knickers, get the fuck up will ya!”

Yep, that was Marls, I had no idea why he was moaning though, he usually loved seeing Jimmies knickers, in fact, I had heard him beg to see her knickers in the past, and then I saw them, the other pair of legs following Marley up the garden towards us. Monkey Boots? Whoever was approaching us was wearing Monkey Boots. I love Monkey Boots, they were already on my Christmas list, despite the fact it was still only August. My thoughts were interrupted by a very loud wolf whistle. I had heard boys do this before, my Dad and my brothers did to me when they knew I’d put a lot of effort into an outfit and my Dad did it to my Mum every time she came down the stairs, dressed and ready for the day and it always made me so happy that he did that. But this, this whistle did something to me that I didn’t quite understand, it sent feelings through me that landed in places I was only just realising had feelings. That sound woke something up in my body that I never even knew had been sleeping there.

Jimmie and I swung up at the same time, grabbed the bars by our hands and dropped to the floor, I was pretty sure we were in complete synchronisation and looking like a pair of Olympic gymnasts. We turn towards Marley and take a bow, then collapse into each other giggling like the pair of eleven year old girls that we are. I looked back towards Marls who wasn’t laughing; he was in fact glaring at the pair of us. I tipped my head back and emptied what was left of my packet of pop rocks into my mouth, letting the tiny little orange shards explode over my tongue.

I look back toward my brother, waiting for the popping to stop in my mouth so I could give him some attitude about the shitty look on his face when my world suddenly stopped turning, it stuttered for a few seconds, then restarted, erratically matching the rhythm of the candy exploding inside me but when I swallowed, the explosions didn’t stop, they went down into my chest and on into my stomach, settling uncomfortably down low in my belly, for some reason the sensation was causing my brain to cease its connection to my mouth, leaving me devoid of speech. I was eleven years old, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was staring into the eyes of the boy I was going to love forever, they were big brown eyes and locked onto mine from over Marley’s shoulder, he stared at me for a little too long, his eyes then moved down my body and locked onto my chest. Yeah I was eleven, but two years ago I’d started to develop boobs and was now already wearing a B cup, most of my friends were jealous but I hated it, everything started to change when my boobs grew, the boys treated me differently, they knocked on my bedroom door now instead of just barging in, they never came into the bathroom if I was in there anymore for our long chats we used to have while I soaked in an overly full bubble bath, they never pinned me down and tickle tortured me like they used to.

Then just under a year ago, I got my first period and things got worse, we lived in a nice house, on a nice street in a nice area. I had always been allowed to play out late because my brothers were always around to look out for me; we were a large group of about twenty kids, boys and girls, varying in age from ten to about fifteen. It was harmless, sexless fun, innocent, we hung out at the bench on the corner, at the park across the road or down at the little row of shops a street away, up until I got my period, nobody asked who in particular I was going out with, who else would be there, as long as one of my brothers were around, I was fine to go where I liked, with whom I liked. But getting my periods changed everything. I felt interrogated, where are you going, who’s going to be there, will there be boys? That’s all they seemed to want to know now, whether there’d be boys involved in anything that I was doing outside of our house and at the time I didn’t get it, it never occurred to me that at just aged eleven, I could, potentially, get pregnant! My Dad wasn’t at home much so it was my brothers that dished out the discipline, my Mum was around but she left it to the boys, to tell me off if I got home late or couldn’t be found in my usual hang outs if one of them came looking for me, usually Bailey or Lennon as I gave Marley too much shit. I didn’t see why he should be telling me what to do, he was only thirteen himself, and not an adult, yet funnily enough, Marley was the strictest out of all my brothers.

I stood staring at the boy with my brother, the new love of my life. Forget Adam Ant, he had nothing on the boy standing in front of me now, this boy who was so very obviously looking at my boobs.

“Sean, this is my sister George and her mate Jimmie,” Marley introduces us.

Sean laughed before speaking, “I thought I was gonna meet some more brothers when you said let’s go and see George and Jimmie not a pair of girls with red and pink knickers on.”

“My names Jamie and hers is Georgia, but everyone calls us Jimmie and George.”

Jimmie states confidently to the new kid, my future husband.

I fold my arms across my chest, which was entirely the wrong move as it just made my boobs look bigger and drew Sean’s eyes straight back to them.

“Show us your tits.” He gestured with his chin toward me. It’s a wonder I didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke, I was so embarrassed, even my hair felt like it was blushing.

“Fuck off Maca, she’s my little sister, she’s only eleven.”

I wanted to punch Marley at that moment. I might only be eleven in years but as far as my brain was concerned I knew it all, I was already a woman, I had boobs and periods, I was a grown up. Oh how little did I know.

“Well you’re the best looking Jimmie and George I’ve ever met.” He smiled a lazy lop-sided grin as he spoke, not taking his eyes off my chest the whole time.

It rained that afternoon so we all ended up in the summer house my Dad had his blokes build us at the end of our garden. I was never exactly sure what my Dad did for a living when I was younger, I’m even less sure now. He has a construction firm, it’s bigger than your average small building firm, he employs about a hundred people at any one time, on top of this he has three car show rooms, selling high end, second hand cars, Mercs, Beamers, Audis and the like, he also owns some properties in East London and Essex that he rents out. Whenever I used to ask him as a kid he used to tell me he was an entrepreneur, but I had no idea what that meant. What I did know is that we had a nice house, I had nice clothes, my Mum and Dad drove nice cars and so did Bailey now that he’d passed his test. We went on nice holidays, either to our own villas in Marbella in Spain or Albufeira in Portugal or to our caravan in Clacton On Sea on the Essex coast. I didn’t think too much about any of this when I was younger but as I got older it began to dawn on me that we had more than most.

My Dad had the summer house built so the boys had somewhere to practice their music. The place was built from bricks and sound proofed, then clad with timber so it looked like a timber summer house. Bailey didn’t play so much anymore, Lennon played bass guitar and had a pretty good voice but Marley was the star, he too played bass as well as drums and had a great voice. I could play acoustic guitar but I wasn’t great, my voice was okay but very average compared to my brothers. Marley had his own band and told me that afternoon that Sean was to be the new lead guitarist and singer; Ritchie, their old front man had moved to Wales with his family at the beginning of the summer holidays. My Dad was a massive music fan and had paid for Marley and his band to advertise for a new singer, they had held auditions a few weeks back at the local church hall and Sean had been their first choice, the fact that he could play lead guitar and the piano was a bonus.

Later I sat curled into the corner of the big old chesterfield sofa we have in the summer house, I had spent half hour trying to crack the Rubik’s cube but I’ve never really been known for my patience so I soon grew frustrated and tossed that on the floor and instead was flicking through the latest copy of My Guy magazine but even that wasn’t holding my interest today; Sean came over and sat on the arm of the sofa and asked about my name.

“So how come after having three boys and giving them really weird names, your Mum and Dad finally get a girl and give her a boy’s name?”

I looked up at his brown eyes and noticed the tiny flecks of amber he had floating in them, all framed by the longest of dark brown lashes. Answer George. Stop blushing, stop looking into his eyes and answer the question. I swallow and try to wet my lips before speaking.

“My Dad is a massive fan of music, all music, any music… Bailey is named after some bloke who made guitars back in the sixties, my Dad met him or heard about him and liked his name, which I think was actually his surname, not his first name but anyway, my Dad liked it, remembered it and decided to give it to Bailey as his first name, Lennon, is obviously named after John Lennon, Marley after Bob… And me? Well I’m named after my Dad’s favourite song – Georgia on my mind by Ray Charles. So I got the name, Georgia Rae but living in a house full of boys, it got shortened to George.”

I’ve told this story so many times to so many different people that I could repeat it in my sleep. Sean listens to my answer and nods his head slowly.

“Well Georgia Rae. I think you’re far too pretty to be called an old blokes name. So I’ll call you… ” He tilts his head to the side as he thinks about what he’s going to call me, beautiful, his girlfriend? I don’t mind either. “Gia?” he states.

Gia, he wants to call me Gia? No one has called me Gia, its Georgia by my teachers, G or George by my friends and family but never, no one has ever called me Gia. I love it, and it’ll be special, just our thing, special, just between us.

“So… is that all right then, if I call you Gia?”

I nod; it’s all I can manage. The pop rock is exploding in my stomach again, and once more it’s blocking the signal between my brain and my mouth.

CHAPTER 2

The rest of the summer of 1980 is spent watching Marley and Sean practice with Billy and Tommy who make up the rest of Marley’s band Carnage.

In September Jimmie and I start high school. School was easy for me, I was in top sets for everything, without really having to put in much effort, I wasn’t stunningly beautiful but I was at an age now where I knew my ranking in the ‘prettiness’ order and I was up there. My parents were both of Irish descent, but looked totally different to each other, my Dad was tall, over six feet, he was broad and he was dark, dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. My Mum on the other hand was short, about five feet four and very petit, even after having us four kids she was still only a size eight and was pale, skin like porcelain, she had the most beautiful dark auburn hair and the bluest of eyes. My Dad was handsome, all of my mates told me so and my Mum was stunningly beautiful and I wished so much that I looked like her, but I didn’t. Where my brothers all looked exactly like my Dad, I was a weird combination of both my parents. I had always been tall for my age, I was way too skinny for my liking, my hair was a dark chestnut colour, when the sun shone through it you could see the reds I’d inherited from my Mum but mainly it looked brown, my skin was darker than my Mum’s but nowhere near as dark as my Dad’s and my brothers and my eyes were blue, not pale china blue like my Mum’s but a very dark blue. Whenever I got a tan in the summer they’d pop right out of my face, they didn’t match my dark skin and dark lashes and always drew comments, so by the age of eleven, I knew I wasn’t stunningly beautiful like my Mum but I knew I was pretty. Prettier than most of the other girl’s in my class, prettier than most other girl’s in my year and quite possibly the school. I don’t mean to sound flash or like a show off, it’s just how it was, girls just know these things.

Love us or hate us, Jimmie and I were the popular girls but that wasn’t always a good thing, especially at secondary school; within days of starting as first years, we were attracting the attention of the older boys as well as a few bitchy comments from the older girls. We’d been Queen Bees at primary school; secondary school though, was a whole new thing and introduced us to a whole new level of bitch. On just the third day there I was stopped in the corridor and asked if I wanted to go to a party that weekend by a boy called Dale who was a fifth year. I said “No”, as I knew there was no way that my brothers would allow it. Regardless of this, I had some tall skinny blonde girl screaming at me in the lunch hall later that she was going to be waiting at the school gates that night and was going to kick the shit out of me for flirting with her boyfriend, I’d never been so happy to see Marley appear over her shoulder as he came barrelling toward us.

“Debra – fuck off and leave her alone! She’s a first year you fucking bully. I’ve just spoken to Dale, she blew him out, he asked her to the party, she said no and didn’t flirt with him at all, and you can tell him from me, if he comes near her again, me or Len will knock him the fuck out! Tell the rest of the fifth years the same fucking thing, she’s eleven, they are all a bunch of fucking pervs.”

She folds her arms across her chest and looks him up and down and then turns and looks me up and down. “She’s your sister Marl?”

“Yeah, my baby sister.”

Sean is with him and comes around and stands next to me. Taking me completely by surprise when he pulls me into his side by my waist and kisses my temple, asking into my hair if I’m okay? I nod, this time it’s not so much to do with the affect he has on me, it’s more to do with the fact that I’m shitting myself that I’m going to get beat up after school by a grown woman. For doing absolutely nothing wrong.

“What’s your name?” The girl, woman, Debra asks me.

“Georgia,” I reply.

“You’re a pretty girl Georgia, you and your mate there are both very pretty, your ruffling feathers round here, you need to keep your head down and stay away from the older boys and make sure everyone around here knows you’re a Layton and that Marley and Lennon are your brothers.”

She looks Sean up and down, he’s tall and looks older than a third year, which he has joined Marley in. Sean is new too; he’s just moved into the area and transferred from a different school.

“And who are you? Not another gorgeous Layton that I didn’t know about?”

Sean returns the look up and down, but instead of looking at her lustfully as she had done him, he looks at her with complete contempt and I beam. Shit I almost ignite, inwardly of course, because the last I want to do is piss this bitch off again.

“No love, I’m not a Layton, I’m Sean, Sean McCarthy. I’m Marley’s mate and Georgia’s boyfriend. So make sure all your pervi fifth year mates know to stay the fuck away from her.”

What?

He’s my boyfriend?

Well shit!

My mouth hits the floor; well that’s how it felt anyway. Sean squeezed my hand as he spoke and as I looked around the dining hall I couldn’t help but notice that we had attracted quite a crowd. Events from that lunch time soon spread, everyone assumed I was Sean’s girlfriend and in turn thought that Jimmie was with Marley, the fact that they walked with us to and from school most days helped to solidify the story and I was over the moon. All of this quickly instilled us as the most popular girls in the first year and made our journey into secondary school life so much easier.

I spent a lot of time with Sean that year, just hanging out as friends, there was lots of flirting, or what I considered flirting but nothing else. I was still too young for anything else and Sean seemed to respect that, he wasn’t a saint, I would often catch him looking at my ever growing boobs and I heard Marls tell him on more than one occasion to stop looking at my arse. We never discussed what he’d told Debra Smith in the dining hall that day, he never asked me to be his girlfriend and I was for the most part completely confused as to what I was to him, he kissed my cheek a couple of times, he held my hand when he thought no one was looking and when we looked at each other we knew Sean and I, that there was something going on between us. He was at our house all the time; after school, weekends, and school holidays, he even started coming with us on our overseas holidays. And because of the amount of time the boys spent practicing with the band or doing homework at our house, they very rarely went elsewhere, meaning, there was little chance of him meeting any other girls. Apart from at school, but of course there, everyone already thought he was my boyfriend and I couldn’t be happier about that fact.

In the summer of 1982 everything changed, Jimmie and Sean came with us to Portugal; my body had changed so much lately, although my boobs had now grown to a generous D cup, I’d recently acquired a pair of hips that balanced them out and stopped me from looking so top heavy and combined with the extra two inches in height I had grown, I was feeling a little more confident in myself. The first day around the pool, all Jimmie and I wanted to do was get our bodies out in the sun, the boys didn’t make an appearance until after lunch. They had stayed up drinking beer with my Dad and Lennon until late and were probably suffering for it a little, my Dad and Len had been up and out very early that morning to play golf, my Mum had gone shopping with a girlfriend who lived over here permanently and was meeting Dad later for dinner.

Jim and I had drunk a bottle of wine before the boys got up and I was feeling very brave as I lay on the lilo in the pool and watched Sean walking across the patio toward a sun lounger. I had already decided this holiday was going to be it, I was sick of playing games. I was hearing rumours that Sean had kissed girls at parties and him and Marley were always talking about girls that they fancied, even in front of Jimmie and me and it left me hurt, angry and confused; boys could be such arseholes sometimes. All of this had led me to the decision to take matters into my own hands this summer. I was going to be fourteen in September, and about to go in to the third year of secondary school, the boys were going into their fifth. The band was doing well and was being booked to play at the birthday parties of a lot of the kids from school, bringing them a lot of female attention. Some of the parties Jim and I went along to, some, like the eighteenths and twenty-firsts, we weren’t allowed to and it was killing me. I was over it and wanted him to either be my boyfriend or for me to be allowed to tell everyone at school that we were over so that I could have a chance at finding a different boyfriend. I actually didn’t want that at all, I wanted him and nobody else would do. I decided to climb out of the pool and attempt a Bond girl moment. I push myself up from the side and stand and tilt my head to the sky as I shake my hair, then squeeze the excess water out of it; as I look down, Sean is sitting on the end of a sun lounger watching me. Marley has jumped straight in the water and is now terrorising Jimmie, I put my hands on my hips and stand and stare into Sean’s beautiful chocolate eyes.

“Come here.” He beckons me with his finger, I walk toward him wearing my favourite teeny tiny red bikini, as sexily as you can when you’re not yet fourteen and don’t really know what walking sexily entails. I stop and stand between his legs while he looks up at me with the cheekiest of smiles on his lips.

“You do know we’re in Europe Gia, everyone here goes topless, and I’m a bit disappointed to see you’re not up with the times.”

“Well that’s what happens when you lay in bed for half the day. You miss the best parts, we were topless all morning, and I didn’t want my nipples to burn so I just put my top back on.”

I didn’t.

I wasn’t topless at any time but he doesn’t know that.

He smiled up at me.

“Well I will be sure to set my alarm and be up early tomorrow morning so that I don’t miss anything.”

“Well then you will be shit out of luck, my Dad will be here tomorrow and there is no way that I’ll be going topless in front of him.”

He lets out a long breath and looks beyond me, out across the pool, I can hear Jimmie and my brother giggling and splashing.

“You Gia are a flirt, but one day, one day it will be our turn. Our time.”

My heart drops like a stone into my stomach. What?

“Why… why do we have to wait for it to be our time? I’m fourteen in September; everyone thinks you’re my boyfriend anyway?”

I sound needy and whiney like a child and I don’t want to be a child, I want to be a woman.

“Gia… you have no idea do you? Your Dad and your brothers would kill me, they’d fucking kill me and I respect them all too much to start something with you before you’re ready but don’t think for a minute that I don’t want you. I know it sounds wrong but right from that very first day when I saw your pink knickers, there’s been something.”

I want to cry, I’m sick of waiting, all my friends have boyfriends and all I have is a lie, just to keep every other boy away from me. It’s so fucking unfair! Sean reaches out and touches my hand. I want to pull away, but I don’t, his touch does something to me and it pisses me off no end.

“You told everyone that day in the dining hall that you were my boyfriend and everyone still thinks it’s true. Either tell everyone that we’ve broken up or be my boyfriend Sean. I’m fed up with waiting.”

I can’t believe I’ve actually said it, I should drink wine more often, the only thing now is, he looks really pissed off. What if he says no, what if he doesn’t want me, I will die, I will simply lie down and die.

“Do you want someone else to be your boyfriend G?”

“No.”

“Then why can’t you just wait for me?”

“Why, I don’t get what I have to wait for, I’m almost fourteen, my Mum and Dad have been together since she was thirteen, why do I have to wait?”

He takes a deep breath in through his teeth, and then puffs his cheeks while he lets it out through his lips, his perfect, perfect lips.

“I was just trying to do the right thing G, by you and your brothers and your Mum and Dad; everyone’s been so good to me. I don’t want to fuck things up.”

He drags his hand through his brown curls with his free hand. “Let me talk to Marley, see how the land lies, perhaps if I talk to your Dad nicely, he might let me be your boyfriend. If you want?”

I sit down on the sun lounger next to him; he still has hold of my hand. I nod my head.

“I do want.”

“Jesus you two, get on with it. I’ve watched the pair of you dance around for the past few years and it’s getting boring.” Marley calls out from where he has Jimmie wrapped around him in the pool.

“See, he’s fine.”

Sean’s shaking his head again. “All this fucking time I’ve waited and he don’t even care.”

“Just remember Maca, she’s not fourteen yet and she’s my little sister, you do anything more than kiss her and I will kill you, then my brothers and my Dad will kill you again.”

Sean shoulder bumps me with an even bigger grin on his face. “Just kissing. Dya think you can manage that Gia?”

I shoulder bump him back. “If you really want me to I will, but I was just about to show you my tits.”

“Fuck… really?”

I shrug, I’m embarrassed now. I’ve never even been kissed and I’m threatening to show him my tits?

“I told ya Gia, you’re a flirt.”

He looks over my face as he talks to me, “Can I kiss ya G, please?”

I nod, maintaining eye contact with him all the while. We turn and face each other, my knees go between his open legs so we can get closer, his hand comes up and cups the side of my face, his thumb rubs over my lips, like his testing them, trying them out with his thumb before he goes in with his lips, my heart feels like it’s about to pound out of my chest and go crashing into his; he leans in until his lips meet mine, they are so much softer than I ever could have imagined, soft and minty, he must of just cleaned his teeth, he smells delicious, minty, clean and fresh, I can feel stubble around the edges of his mouth but his lips are so, so soft. He deepens the kiss and without even thinking about it, my hand goes to his dark brown curls and I grab a handful, he lets a little growling noise escape from the back of his throat, which in turn makes me let out my own little sigh.

“Fuck Gia,” he says into my mouth.

Sparks go off behind my now closed eyes, it’s like a cartoon, when fireworks go off in an enclosed space and they bounce off every surface. That’s exactly what it feels like is going on inside me.

“So long… I’ve waited so long to do that G, you have no fucking idea.”

That year, that holiday, it’s still one of my best ever. My lips and the skin around them felt permanently bruised and sore from all the kissing we did; Sean never did speak to my Dad, he didn’t have to, the fact that we held each other’s hand every second we were together made it perfectly clear what was going on between us. It did though prompt my Mum and Dad to sit the pair of us down and give us the ‘We trust you and hope that you will be respectful of each other and your bodies… and aside from all that, it’s actually illegal for you to be having sex and you could go to jail’ talk. We sat there mortified, Sean squeezing my hand so tight I thought it was going to break. Then he did the most amazingly beautiful thing, he let my Mum finish her speech about me being a good girl, bought up the right way and knowing right from wrong and waiting until I was older before taking things too far. I seriously wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Why did we have to have this conversation now, in front of Sean? Sean took my hand that he was holding and kissed the back of it. He cleared his throat before saying.

“Frank, Bernie… I know we’re young but I need you to know, that from the first moment I laid eyes on your daughter, I’ve been a little bit in love with her, I’ve wanted to tell her for a while now but I wanted to be respectful of you and the boys. You’ve all been so good to me, you treat me better than my own parents so I wanted to do this right, I wanted to wait until Gia was old enough and until you were comfortable with us having a relationship but I can’t wait anymore, I love her and I want to be able to hold her hand and kiss her.”

Shit. Don’t say anymore in front of them.

“We are too young to be thinking about anything more than that, but, I… we, we just want to be together and for you all to be happy about it.”

Fucking hell, I’ve never died so many times during one afternoon. Where are my brothers and Jimmie when you need rescuing, I bet my parents told them to stay out the way, does that mean everyone is going to know about this little chat? Fucking hell.

“Well… Sean… as long as you respect my daughter, I don’t think that we’ll have a problem. Would you like a beer son, you must need one after that little speech?”

My parents treated me differently for the rest of that holiday, almost like a grown up. They allowed Jimmie and I to drink wine at dinner, my Mum asked my opinion on her outfits and told me to try my hair in different styles, she spoke to me like I was her friend, not just her daughter. My Dad took on a more fatherly demeanour around Sean and spoke to him about his plans after he finished his fifth year, legally he could leave school if he wanted but our school went right up to sixth form and Sean and Marley were both staying on. I don’t think either of them really wanted to study anymore but if they left the education system they would be expected to get full time jobs and this would leave them no time for their music. They had been lucky so far, the money they made with the band meant that they hadn’t even had to get a part time job and as their popularity grew they were getting bookings for Friday and Saturday nights and now had a regular Sunday lunch time spot at a pub not too far from where we lived. So as wages for a group of students went, they were doing okay.