“He cannot stay here.” His father’s voice boomed from the living room.
Jackson peeped through the open gap of the sleek white door where Gerald sat leafing through the paper. Not a broadsheet. He hadn’t resorted to that façade. Plus he was inside, where no one could witness that he wasn’t a real intellect like the neighbours he tried to keep up with.
“Gerald, where would he go?” At least mother was trying. Not particularly hard, but trying nonetheless.
It was futile. Jackson had known it before he’d even attempted the journey here. He’d known it the moment the handcuffs had been clasped around his wrists. He’d known it the moment he’d woken up that dreadful morning. To be honest, he’d known it most of his life and had thought he’d escaped caring.
He’d crawled to the bottom of a bottle each and every night to forget.
“I’ll be fifteen minutes. Tops.” Jackson resigned himself to this not being the safe haven he’d hoped for and gave his mother a fleeting glance before heading straight for the stairs, clomping on clean cream carpet to the first floor landing.
His old bedroom was the third door along, wedged between his parents’ and the main bathroom. He hadn’t expected it to be kept as he’d left it all those years ago when he’d departed the family home for the bright lights of the big city. But nor did he expect, on pushing the door open, that everything would be in boxes. He’d heard about the warrant. About how the Met had tried to find anything that would point the finger at him. He hadn’t thought his parents would pack up his life as though it had never existed. Rather naively.
Even the bed had been stripped bare.
He set to ransacking each box and found a charity bag stuffed with old clothes, then trawled through it to locate anything that might still fit him. The last remnants of muscle mass he’d produced during his time with a personal trainer at his beck and call had been shed from the six months inside. He’d never have squeezed into the clothes he’d worn as a starry-eyed teen and the cash cow for his pushy pound-sign-in-their-eyes parents otherwise.
The faded jeans were tight, skin tight, and the T-shirt, once white was now a little off-grey with whatever printed emblem faded and scratched. He found a cap and shoved it on to keep the hair from his face, then squeezed his feet into a pair of lace-up trainers that were in just as much a dishevelled state as his own existence. There. That was it. His life. The only things he had left.
His eyes welled. Huh, he did still have tears left.
As he threw the borrowed clothes on top of a box, the sweatshirt slipped to the floor and the contents buried within were revealed. He squinted. Then flinched.
That was unexpected.
Filled to the brim with magazines, newspapers, cut-outs, many with his face on the front, either in full or in a featured corner, the box contained a shrine to his career now piled and primed for the bonfire. The Jax and Kris hysteria nothing more than a fading memory.
He tugged free one cheaply produced magazine on which red pen was circled around several points with illegible notes scrawled in the margin. They couldn’t have been made by his parents. They both had neat and tidy handwriting, presenting to the world their prim and proper smokescreen. Perching on the edge of the bare, scratchy mattress, Jackson read.
Surely we’ve all had enough of Jackson Young?
Having had to witness his first stint on the West End stage, it became apparent that the star-appeal that once was the bright-eyed, effervescence of one of England’s true rags-to-riches personalities fizzled to an all-time low tonight.
He might believe himself to be the everyman. His once cheeky-chappie boyish outlandishness was perfectly suited to charm a Saturday prime-time audience of staying-in-is-the-new-going-out Generation Xer viewers as they lazed on their DFS sofas waiting for the pizza to arrive. But his musical performance debut as Carlos in The Only Time is Now certainly made it apparent that Jackson Young isn’t the better half of the Jax & Kris whole. Without the ability to bounce off his co-star, best friend, and all-round polar opposite, Kris Sharpe, Jax fumbled through his lines, often laughing at his own unprofessionalism, breaking character and appearing every bit the slave to alcohol he’s just as famed for.
Embarrassing to watch, and sometimes downright torturous—especially during his solo rendition of ‘My Girl’—Jackson ruined what was once the most coveted musical on London’s West End. I’m pretty sure that the choice to cast an off-the-rails child star who managed to forge a career in front of the camera, even beyond the sell-by-date on his cuteness, with the hope to bring back the dwindling audience to the West End, will now be seen as a huge mistake. If not a farcical blunder.
Much like a piece of chewing gum that starts off with the right burst of flavour, Jackson Young should have been discarded when the taste for the talentless deteriorated. Stop trying to flog a dead horse and let’s give the real talent a chance!
“It’s not that we don’t want you here.”
Jackson startled at his mother’s voice barely making a squeak through the tumbleweed as she approached his door. Clutching her arms, she closed herself off to any huggable reunion.
Jackson didn’t look at her. Instead, he re-read the article.
“It’s just, your father, he’s…we’ve had enough of the journalists. Of the press. Of the paparazzi.” She sighed. “Of the police. I mean, the neighbours aren’t even talking to us now.”
Jackson shook his head. There was so much he could say. So much. Starting with the truth.
She’d never believe it. Which was why he didn’t even try with her.
“It’s all just so very distressing for us.”
“For you?” Jackson threw a glare across the room. “For you?”
“You’re used to all this.”
“Am I?”
“The attention. You’ve always craved the attention.”
Jackson leapt up from the bed, scrunching the magazine. “Not this kind, Mother. Not this kind. And who exactly was it that pushed me forward for everything they ever fucking asked?”
She backed away. Chastised, maybe? Increasing the distance between them, probably. It didn’t need her physical proximity to achieve that. She’d kept their relationship at barge-pole length all by herself. Jackson hadn’t even minded before. It was only now, as his life crashed and burned, that he no longer craved the public’s adoration and instead yearned for a maternal bond to drown his sorrows with.
He wouldn’t get it.
Everyone believed he was capable. Because of the life he’d led in the limelight, everyone believed he could have done it. His only chance was to prove them wrong. The only chance to stop all this was to show them all the real Jackson Young.
Who the real victim was. Were.
“Jackson,” his mother started, eyes on the floor. “I’ve given you some money. Not a lot. But enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“For you to leave. Start new. Fresh.” She peered up, her pupils dilating to produce at least a smidgen of remorse within them. “You could change your name?” She handed over an envelope.
Jackson wished he didn’t have to take it. He wished he could throw it back in her face. He wished he didn’t crave to count the notes that could give him an escape, give him a chance.