The Accidental Life of Jessie Jefferson (12 page)

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I reiterate.

I pick up my glass and he does the same, both of us taking a drink and returning our glasses to the table at the same time.

‘How was your flight?’ he asks after a moment of awkward silence.

‘It was good. I’ve only ever flown easyJet before, so it was pretty different.’

‘Did your stepdad come to see you off at the airport?’

‘Stu? Yeah, he did.’

He smiles a small smile at me and I suddenly remember who I’m sitting opposite. This is so weird!

‘Daddy!’ Barney’s breathless voice breaks the silence, as he pitter-patters into the kitchen. Meg appears behind him, Phoenix on her hip. Barney starts to ask Johnny to come and see the car track he’s built, but I notice Meg falter in her steps. Maybe it’s the sight of us sitting opposite each other at the table, but she seems a bit freaked out as she stays glued to the spot.

‘I’ll be there in a sec, buddy,’ Johnny says to his son, distracted. I glance at him to see him raise one inquisitive eyebrow at his wife.

She ignores him, addressing me. ‘Do you want to come and see your room, Jessie?’

‘Sure, yeah.’ I get to my feet.

She and Johnny follow me out after a slight pause, and I feel distinctly uneasy about whatever unspoken exchange has just gone between them. I don’t think Meg wants me here at all, and right now, even I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake. I’m so far from home. I know it’s ridiculous, because I’ve only just got here, but I feel a sudden longing to see Stuart.

‘This way.’ Meg directs me towards a wide concrete staircase.

‘Look, Daddy,’ I hear Barney say as Johnny tails off behind us to go and see his sons.

‘How was Davey?’ Meg asks, bringing my attention back to her.

‘Fine. He’s nice.’

‘He’s been Johnny’s driver for years. On and off,’ she adds. ‘I used to think he talked in exclamation marks, but he’s chilled out in his older age.’ She smiles fondly as we turn right at the top of the stairs. ‘I still remember him collecting me the first time I flew into LA to work for Johnny. That’s how Johnny and I met.’

A waist-high wall on our right safeguards us from falling into the open-plan living room below, and there are doors to our left. I glance inside one open door to see what looks like a child’s bedroom.

‘That’s Phoenix’s room,’ Meg tells me, pausing for a moment so I can look inside. It’s decorated with an underwater theme, a sea of calming blues and greens. The cot is shaped like a fish.

The next room is Barney’s and it’s even more colourful. His bed is fashioned to look like a fire engine, with a bright red duvet. There are blue bookshelves crammed with books and a small table and chairs in the centre of the room. It looks more like a playroom than a bedroom. I bet he has no idea how lucky he is.

We reach the last door on the landing and Meg opens it up, standing back to let me pass.

Now I see what they mean by the White Room. Apart from my battered purple suitcase at the foot of the bed and the huge, black flatscreen TV, mounted on the wall to my right as we come in the door, everything in the room is white: plush white carpet, the biggest bed I’ve ever seen, covered with a soft white duvet, four plump pillows and multiple white cushions. Shiny, highly-polished built-in white wardrobes line the walls on the right hand side, and ahead of me are large windows stretching from one side of the room all the way to the wardrobes, revealing the leafy green trees at the front of the house. To my left are two doors.

‘Kitchenette and en suite,’ Meg reveals with a smile, noting my awed expression.

I suddenly realise I still have my boots on.

‘Sorry,’ I mutter, quickly bending down to take them off before I ruin the carpet.

‘Don’t worry about it!’ Meg exclaims. ‘You don’t need to take them off.’

I still feel like I should.

‘Honestly, the carpets get cleaned every few weeks anyway,’ she tells me, but by then I’m in my socks. I place the boots on the landing outside the door and go in a daze to look inside the first door on my left. Dazzling white stone lines all of the surfaces. There are two basins to my left, a large open shower to my right, and at the back of the bathroom is a huge stone spa bath. Fluffy white towels hang on chrome towel rails.

I open my mouth to speak, but find I’m lost for words. Meg steps past me and opens up the cupboards underneath the sink, revealing rows and rows of jewel-coloured bottles of lotions and potions. I recognise some really expensive brands.

‘These are all for you. I wasn’t sure what you’d like,’ she says with a smile.

I shake my head, speechless. I can’t wait to try out all of these products. Meg giggles. I meet her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ she says, trying to keep a straight face. ‘It’s just that this was my room when I first came to LA, and I know exactly how you feel.’

I don’t think she does, but I don’t say it. I have never seen such luxury in all my life.

‘Shall I leave you to settle in?’ she asks. ‘Do you want to unpack or leave it until later? One of the maids could do it for you in the morning . . .’

They have maids? ‘No, no,’ I brush her off. ‘I’m happy to do it myself.’

‘That’s what I thought you’d say,’ she says and I glance at her. ‘I was exactly the same,’ she adds.

I give her a small smile. Maybe we have more in common than I thought. I hope so. I really don’t want her to hate me being here.

‘I still remember texting a picture of this room to my best friend,’ she says with a far-off look.

My face falls as I think of Libby and Natalie. I feel very isolated from them at the moment.

‘We thought we’d eat early because you’ll be tired after your flight,’ Meg says. ‘Do you want to have a shower and settle in for a bit? Or would you like a tour of the rest of the house?’

What I really want is to go back downstairs and see Johnny, but I don’t feel comfortable saying so. ‘A tour would be great,’ I reply.

After the boys’ bedrooms, there are two more spare rooms, one of which has predominantly gold furnishings, the other green. The penultimate door we come to on our right, as we walk back along the landing, is Johnny’s music studio, and it’s just like the ones you see in films, with desks full of controls, knobs and dials. Behind a glass screen is another room with a full drum kit in the corner and several guitars mounted on the wall. A round, flattish microphone hangs suspended from the ceiling in the centre.

‘And last but not least is our room,’ Megs says, leading me out of the studio and to the final door on the landing. She opens it up to reveal a space that is probably as big as my home, spanning from the front to the back of the house with floor to ceiling windows looking down on the swimming pool and the city beyond. It’s decorated in colours of green, grey and yellow, with a plush smokey-coloured carpet and a bedspread with a yellow and green symmetrical graphic. The white stone bathroom, to my right, looks out on to the trees at the front of the house. I notice there are no blinds in the bathroom, but Meg answers my unspoken question and flicks a switch. The clear window glass immediately turns opaque.

‘Cool!’ This place is amazing!

‘Want to see downstairs?’ Meg asks.

‘You mean there’s more downstairs that I haven’t seen?’ I ask with confusion.

‘Oh yeah,’ she replies flippantly, leading me out of the room. I jog down the stairs after her. Johnny is sitting cross-legged on the carpet, carefully studying a small car.

‘Can you fix it?’ Barney asks him.

‘Hold on a sec, buddy,’ Johnny replies in a quiet voice, concentrating on the task. He glances up when we reach the bottom of the stairs, and when he smiles at me my heart flutters in a strange way. But then he looks away again, back at Barney and the car in his hands, and I feel strangely bereft. I wonder what it would have been like if he’d been there for
me
at that age, fixing
my
broken toys.

Meg presses on with the tour before I have time to dwell on that thought. She takes me back underneath the stairs and I see another row of doors, which are directly below the bedrooms. I didn’t notice them on my way to the kitchen.

‘Study,’ she says, revealing a large room with two big desks. ‘Johnny’s PA comes in most days.’

‘Is that what you used to do?’ I hope she doesn’t mind me asking.

‘Yeah,’ she replies with a jokey roll of her eyes. ‘But unlike Annie, I lived here and pretty much worked twenty-four seven.’ She laughs. ‘In fact I still live here, and pretty much work twenty-four seven.’

She goes out of the room and opens the next door. Five rows of six comfy-looking red velvet seats steep slightly upwards away from a large screen at the front. ‘Cinema,’ she says.

‘Whoa.’

‘Just let me know if there’s anything you want to watch and I’ll show you how to work it. We even have a popcorn machine,’ she adds with a conspiratorial wink.

The next room is the gym, a large space packed full of shiny equipment with a view out to the front of the garden. Flatscreen TVs line the right-hand wall and Meg tells me that a sauna and a shower room are in rooms off to the left.

‘It’s such an incredible house,’ I reply, utterly bowled over as we walk back to the living room. ‘I’ve never been anywhere like this before in my life.’

She smiles. ‘What would you like to do now?’ She glances at Johnny and then back at me. ‘I’ll put dinner on in a bit. I hope you like pizza?’

‘Yeah, of course.’

‘Great.’ She shifts on her feet. ‘Well, would you like to go and freshen up?’

‘Erm, OK. Sure.’

She smiles, and it seems almost like it’s with relief. As I climb the stairs it occurs to me that maybe they don’t know what to do with me.

At the top of the landing, I glance down in time to see Johnny take Meg’s face in his hands and kiss her forehead. She looks up at me and, as we lock eyes, she looks momentarily guilty. She steps away from Johnny and I hear her tell him she’ll go and turn the oven on. By then I’ve reached my room.

I go inside and shut the door behind me, then exhale loudly. I didn’t realise I’d been holding my breath.

My head is spinning. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe any of it. I’m in Johnny Jefferson’s house – and Johnny Jefferson is my dad. This is so strange, so surreal.

The feeling stays with me as I go to turn on the shower and open up the cupboard under the basin, pulling out some luxury shower cream. I hope I’ll get a chance to talk to Johnny properly, tonight. I want to know what he’s like, what he’s really like. I want to know my dad, not his rock star persona. I just hope that he also wants to get to know
me
.

All too soon I’ll be back at home, back in my tiny bedroom, back in my little house with its shabby front garden, back to the reality of living and breathing every hour of life without my mum. But not yet. Not yet. And right now I need to make the most of every single minute.

Chapter 11

Meg is in the kitchen with Phoenix when I re-emerge twenty-five minutes later, freshly showered and dressed in my caramel-coloured shorts and a floaty black top. My feet are bare, my toenails painted gold from yesterday’s pedicure. I spent most of my last day in the UK preening myself for this trip.

‘Can I do anything?’ I ask.

‘No, just take a seat,’ she replies, securing Phoenix into his highchair.

‘Shall I set the table?’ I suggest.

She looks like she’s about to say no again, but then she seems to decide otherwise. ‘Sure.’ She points to a drawer. ‘Cutlery is in there. Thanks,’ she adds, casting a small smile in my direction.

Phoenix babbles away loudly in his highchair as I get on with the task.

‘Are you hungry?’ I say to him, passing him a spoon to play with. He can’t speak, so he doesn’t answer, but he immediately starts to use the instrument to noisily bash the table. A drummer in the making. ‘Are you going to be a musician, like your dad?’ I ask aloud.

‘Not if I can help it,’ Johnny interrupts drily, and I start as he appears in the kitchen.

I give him a quizzical look.

‘Drink, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,’ he says and grins at Meg, but she doesn’t look too impressed so he spanks her on her bottom. I stand there awkwardly.

‘Take a seat, Jessie.’ Meg pulls out a chair for me at the end of the table, so I sit down while Johnny organises some drinks and shouts for Barney to come and join us. I watch them all buzzing around: Meg opening the oven and flinching at the rush of hot air as she takes out the pizzas; Barney running in with Buzz Lightyear, yelling; Johnny firmly extricating the toy and batting away his son’s complaints as he makes him sit at the table opposite Phoenix; Phoenix rapping his spoon and babbling . . . I get the feeling I’m witnessing a very ordinary dinner time. Except this is no ordinary dinner time. There’s a great big elephant in the room and she’s sitting at the top of the table. I feel like an outsider, and that’s exactly what I am.

‘How are you feeling?’ Johnny asks me, as he sits down between Barney and me.

‘A bit weird,’ I admit, and like I’m massively imposing, but I keep this bit to myself. ‘It’s like my body has been filled up with sand.’ I don’t know if I’m tired or hungry or something else.

‘You’re probably jet-lagged,’ Meg chips in, as she places the pizzas in the centre of the table and takes the seat opposite Johnny. ‘It’s, what, the middle of the night, your time?’

‘Is it?’ I ask with surprise.

‘Your body clock will be all messed up,’ she points out as she starts to serve up.

‘Oh.’

‘You haven’t travelled to a different time zone before?’ Johnny asks.

‘No,’ I reply, shaking my head. ‘Well, aside from going to Europe, but that doesn’t really count as it’s only an hour. We couldn’t afford to go further afield.’ Johnny and Meg glance at each other and I wish I’d kept my mouth shut about our financial situation.

‘Do you guys travel a lot?’ I try to fill the silence.

‘Not much at the moment, but I’m going on tour next year,’ Johnny reveals, tucking into his pizza.

‘That’ll be cool,’ I say. Surreal moment alert! My dad is a global megastar!

‘It’s too hot!’ Barney interrupts, squealing.