Page 97 of The Interview

Then I hear the words of the song.

“Take a look at my girlfriend…” I pause on the stairs. Marley joins Sean on guitar, Billy goes to the piano, while Tom quietly comes in on drums. It’s Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America”, and when Sean sings about his girlfriend not being much to look at, I grin and flip him off with both middle fingers. When I reach the stage, he reaches down and lifts me up. I wrap my legs around his waist as he shouts, “We’ll be back in a bit!” before he carries me off stage.

Thankfully, the camera cuts, and my husband and kids don’t have to see what we did in that green room.

The next clip has the boys in a recording studio. Marley, Tom, and Billy are sitting in the production room. Sean’s in the booth with his headset on and mouth up to the mic. I don’t know who’s recording, but there’s a man and a woman at the mixing desk, and a girl standing at the back of the room watching Sean. She’s a little petite thing, probably a foot shorter than me, and she has short, spiky, candy floss-coloured hair. She has the kind of face that could get away with having no hair, thanks to those cute little pixie-like features, and I know thatshe, the girl I’m watching on screen watching Sean, is Carla.

Ash shifts beside me, Len’s hand twitches as it covers mine, and then Sean starts to sing.

“Don’t want your love anymore…”

I instantly recognise it as one of my dad’s favourites by The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”. Except when Sean gets to the chorus, he changes Cathy to Georgia.

“What the fuck?” I kinda whisper, but kinda don’t.

“He told me once,” Marley starts, and the video is paused. “When you were split up, he told me he switched from not knowing how he was going to go on living his life without you, because he loved and missed you so much, to actually hating you for cutting him out of your life without giving him a chanceto explain what had happened. That was obviously one of his hating you days.”

“Harsh,” George says.

“Excuse me, but wasn’t he the one who snorted lines off a groupie’s tit while Georgia waited at home, planning a wedding?” Tallulah asks in my defence.

“You can call me Mum,” I joke, attempting to lighten the mood, because I know right now that Cam will be fighting with himself not to come over here and check that I’m okay.

“Talk about going off someone really fast,” Kiki says. “Double standard wanker. What the fuck did he expect you to do?”

“Kiki!” Cam admonishes quietly in his usual low rumble. “Language.”

“Well, does it not make you want to swear?” she asks him.

“It makes me want to break things if you wanna know the truth,” Cam says, and I just know that was said through gritted teeth.

“Spicy,” Ash says beside me.

I snort out a laugh

“Is that Carla?” I finally ask.

“Yeah,” Len replies.

“Carla?” Daniel questions, not missing a beat.

“She worked for us. Her hair was longer and a different colour by the time George was back on the scene,” Len lies, totally having my back.

I watch as she folds her arms across her chest, looking thoroughly pissed off at Sean’s choice of lyrics.Yeah, take that, pixie biatch!

A series of photos then pops up of different paparazzi images taken of us all around the world. Some are at events, some we’ve posed for, and some are from photo shoots we did, while others are candid when we had no idea there was a camera around.

We talk, almost amongst ourselves, about where we were and what we were doing in each image. Some I remember, some I have zero recollection of. Seeing them fills me with a familiar melancholy at losing him so young and all that hedidn’tget to do. But it’s mixed with a warmth at how much wediddo and all the things wedidexperience. All the thingshe didachieve.

“You look so in love,” Daniel says as he pauses the screen again.

“We were,” I state. “Very much so.”

“But still, you waited for a wedding, babies.”

Again, I let out a long sigh. “I’ve explained this. Do you think there was more to it? Is that why you keep bringing it up?” I sound slightly pissed off because I am.

“I don’t think there was more, but like you said, there was so much speculation, I think even after your very honest and simple explanation, the public won’t be convinced.”