‘Something like that, I think. Yes. And now I’m so much calmer. I feel I’ve regained myself, started to see more clearly. That LA life was warping my brain.’
‘Yeah, all that money and luxury. Must be tough.’ Jason laughed sardonically.
‘Don’t, Jason, I’m serious. I mean, I was starting to think like them. The people I’d vowed never to be like. I’d always told myself I’d keep my down-to-earth Bledburn attitude but after eight years in LA I was full-on LaLa. I had a nutritionist and a reflexologist.’
Jason laughed again, more kindly this time.
‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what that even means.’
She put a hand on his knee. ‘Neither do I, love. Not really. And the worst thing was, I was starting to do that thing they do. Of despising everyone who isn’t in “the business”. Turning my nose up at people who weren’t perfectly buff and toned and tanned and rich and . . . ugh. So false. I hated what I was becoming. And I can never thank you enough for saving me from it.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jason thoughtfully. ‘I saw a few episodes of that show of yours, back in the day. It wasn’t my kind of thing really, but the bit everyone loved was where they take the piss out of people who are never going to make it. I always thought that was lame. I never liked that.’
Tears prickled in Jenna’s eyes as she felt the justice of Jason’s words.
‘I wouldn’t have done . . . the real me wouldn’t have liked that either. But I lost her . . . somewhere along the way . . .’
Jason shuffled up closer to her, putting an arm around her, letting her rest her head on his shoulder.
‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Pass us a tissue, eh?’
He dabbed her eyes and the tip of her nose, then put her glass of wine back in her hand.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Anyway, whatever you thought was lost is back now, in full effect, yeah? The real Jenna Myatt.’
She took a slug of the wine. ‘God,’ she said. ‘We were talking about you, not me. Sorry to derail. That’s Hollywood again. Turns you into a self-obsessed idiot.’
‘Stop being so hard on yourself.’ He nudged her and winked. ‘That’s my job.’
‘You were talking about how you felt about your life. About how you’d been scared to do anything with it,’ Jenna prompted, laying her head back on his shoulder.
‘Yeah. At first, when I was at primary school, I had big ambitions, like all kids do. I was going to be a superhero, then I was going to be a ninja, then I was going to be a famous graffiti artist. So far so good. Then the usual Bledburn thing happened.’
‘You lost your faith in yourself?’
‘Exactly. That school teaches us we won’t make it unless we toe the line and wear our ties straight and do what we’re told. I’m not that good at doing what I’m told, so the message I got, day in, day out, was that I was heading straight for the scrap heap. You can only fight that for so long before you believe it.’
‘You were a rebel.’ Jenna laughed ruefully. ‘I think we all were, at that school. Nobody saw the point, especially after the pit closed.’
‘Exactly. It’s all “do this, do that, if you want to get a job” but what jobs? There weren’t any.’ Jason gazed into the bowl of his wineglass. ‘We all gave up, around year eight. Just pissed about in class or stopped going. I still thought I could make it as an artist, though. But I suppose, as the years went by, it dawned on me how I was from the wrong place at the wrong time and didn’t know anyone who could help me. I suppose you could say I got depressed.’
‘Did you see a doctor?’
‘Well, no, because I didn’t know I was depressed. I thought you had to be like my mum, sitting indoors day in day out drinking White Lightning and staring at the telly. That was depressed. I mean, I went out, I had friends, I had girlfriends, I had what I would have called good times. But behind it all there was this hopelessness. This feeling that there was nothing else to live for but partying till you threw up in someone’s trashed living room. We pretended it was how we wanted to live, and by the time we worked out that we were pretending, it was too late.’
‘Too late? You’re a young man, Jason.’
‘I don’t feel young.’
‘Well, you are. And you’re luckier than most. You’ve got an amazing talent. Now you have a chance to get away from everything that was holding you back.’
‘Yeah, and I’m going to take it, Jen, so don’t go on at me. But in the meantime, I want to pay my way.’ He stood up and gestured around him at the suite. ‘I mean, look at this. This is way beyond anything I ever thought I’d have in my life. But I don’t feel like I should be here, because I haven’t paid a penny towards it. I should be out there sleeping in the park by rights.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘It’s not daft.’ His eyes shone with righteous anger. ‘It’s time I grew up, Jen. It’s time for me to be a man.’
‘I know you are . . .’