“Ouch.” Jackson clutched a hand to his chest. “I hope you’re not including me in that. I’ve not been on a single reality TV show.”
“You presented them.”
“That I did. You can’t argue with the nation though, Fletcher. If they pay good money to see a show because of the star, then why begrudge them that? It brings in a crowd to a theatre that would otherwise have had empty seats. A trained cast would then have no one to perform to. And a performance with no audience is basically am-dram.”
“You didn’t even try.”
“True.”
“You took that part from someone who wanted it, who would have done it justice, who needed that job to put bread on their table.”
Jackson sat up, frozen, as though he was contemplating what Fletcher had been trying to say. “I didn’t know it meant so much to you.”
“It means a lot to a lot of people. Theatre isn’t mass-produced entertainment. It’s an age-old art form. And we’re losing it to a bunch of talentless gets who think treading the boards is a tick box for their resume.”
“All right. I see your point. In my defense though, I have had acting training. And singing lessons.”
“They were a waste of your money.”
Jackson’s jaw twitched and there was a redness forming on his cheeks. He looked away when he said, “Or maybe, that night, I was just drunk.”
Fletcher narrowed his eyes. “Were you?”
“Probably. I have trouble remembering.” Jackson hung his head, and if Fletcher hadn’t just put up a song and dance about how terrible the man’s acting really was, he would have put that down to a regaling performance. But it was too real. Too raw.
Too believable.
So he kept his voice as neutral as possible when he asked, “When did the drinking start?”
“By lunch most days.”
Fletcher snorted. “I meant what age? What point in your career did you turn to the bottle?”
Jackson shifted, scrubbing a hand over his face, as though he was uncomfortable with having to admit to something he’d kept to himself for years. His drinking had been mentioned in the media, but only that he liked a wee tipple every now and then. He’d always been snapped at the celebrity-fuelled haunts with a glass in his hand and an arm thrown over the shoulders of a beautiful woman, which he then had to claim was ‘just a friend’. He was known as the party-boy.
Was something darker lurking beneath the surface?
“I always drank,” Jackson finally admitted after a heady inhalation. “I can’t remember a time alcohol wasn’t in my life. It kept me going, even when I was sick of the constant cameras in my face. Without it, I’d be a grouch. So I kept drinking to be the Jax people expected me to be. Soon I couldn’t even go on set without it.” Glancing up, Jackson’s evident shame oozed from the depths of those blue eyes.
Fletcher’s chest rose. He hadn’t expected such blatant honesty, such heartfelt recounts. He’d thought he’d have to earn that. He wished he could have recorded it. He’d just have to do the moment justice in his writing. So he etched the sadness and remorse plastered on Jackson’s striking face to memory. He doubted he’d ever see anything quite so forlorn again.
“Did anyone try to get you help?” he asked, genuine concern in his voice.
He may well have been a farm boy from a small Irish village, but he knew the consequences of fast living in the city. Someone had to have noticed Jackson’s drink intake and how that must have affected his work. Cam had said as much. But had he told anyone? Tried to help? Fletcher clenched his jaw at the thought that Cam, the man he’d put on a pedestal for years, was just as bad as everyone else who believed in a don’t-rock-the-boat mentality.
That may well have cost a life. Fletcher’s scalp prickled at the thought.
“Are you kidding?” Jackson chuckled, but there was no sparkle in the delivery. “Drinking is what made me Jax. And Jax brought in a hefty amount for a lot of people.”
“What about your family?”
“Including my family.”
“Right.” Fletcher tried to remain impartial. He couldn’t show what he really felt. Were Jackson’s family as ignorant as the rest of the media hounds? Did they ignore the signs of addiction, depression, desperation all for a quick buck?
The more he learned in a short space of time, the more Jackson’s story became a tragic account of life in the public eye. And that was the sort of biography he could get on board with.
“So, yeah, I’m sorry.” Jackson’s voice crackled through apology.
“For what?”
“I was drunk when I tried to hit you.” That was the elephant in the room stomping over the tumbleweed.
Fletcher raised his eyebrows. It had been obvious, of course. That night at the awards ceremony after-party when Fletcher had been tipped off he could get a picture of a new ‘couple’ and add it to the Look Who’s Dating column in London Lights. But instead of a snap, he’d been threatened with a smack. By an intoxicated Jackson Young.
“I know.” Holding Jackson’s gaze, Fletcher had to find the courage to keep Jackson talking because after that awards ceremony, the nation had woken to a different headline. Not such a flippant red-carpet look-who’s-wearing-what headline.
The headline of Tallulah Payne’s murder.
“Was it just my article that had you angry?” he asked, cautiously, like that time he’d had to ask Cam where he stood. Fearful of an answer that could crush his very essence.
“No. I was mad at the world. And at everyone who was free. You just happened to be there. I’ve had worse written about me. Especially now. I regret I went that far. I don’t know, it was something about you that got me going.”
“Me?”
“People like you. People who are free to be who they want, say what they want, write what they want with no concern for others. Those who look upon us in the public eye like cattle fodder. Like we have no real feelings.”
“That’s not quite…” Fletcher didn’t finish the lie and persevered to keep Jackson talking. This was his story after all. What did he care what Jackson thought of him? However true it might be. “You think you weren’t free?”
Fletcher added no inflections that could be judged as anything other than a passing interest. It seemed this was the way to get Jackson to open up, to trust, to spill what he needed to say. The best interviews were always conducted with questions that felt as though they’d been plucked from air, more thoughts to nudge the interviewee in the right direction. As soon as the questions felt like gratuitous probes, that was when the shutters clamped down.
Jackson made a strangled noise, throwing his head back, and searched the ceiling. “Everyone thinks that fame gives you life,” he said. “That because we have the world watching what we do and say, that because barriers and obstacles are removed for us at every turn, that we have ultimate autonomy. The key to the city. Total, utter freedom. When in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. We’re trapped. I was trapped.”
“Then why did you do it? The TV shows, I mean.”
Jackson shrugged. “It was the only thing I knew how to do. And once you’ve hit the dizzy heights of the top, it’s a hell of a way down to the bottom and that doesn’t happen overnight. Do you think that if I’d just shied away from the camera, if I’d said no to all the opportunities that were thrown my way, that if I said I wanted to live in the forest and off the grid that I would go back to being an average-Joe? Get a job in Starbucks and live a normal life?” He shook his head, laughing through the absurdity.