Jackson Crane took a tyre iron to the face and fell back with a cry. Georgia did not flinch. Now it was just Crane’s fingertips on the open window frame keeping him from falling, from tumbling under the wheels of the juggernaut. There was blood in the corner of his mouth. There was a rip in the shoulder of his costume.
Adam had wondered at points if Georgia had had any idea what she was getting herself into when she married Jackson Crane. He didn’t just mean the fame thing, either, although it was easy enough to read the relationship cynically, to itemize the ways that being seen out on the bigger star’s arm had boosted her visibility, how being his fiancée had brought her attention. Their marriage had helped a smart and ambitious young actress launch her career, and the lifestyle, the platform, the opportunities she had gained in return were undeniable. It was also easy to imagine how often he was away filming, or she was; how little time they ever actually spent together.
What he really meant was how well she had actually known Jackson Crane when she had agreed to spend the rest of her life with him. The truth being that he was very good at presenting himself as exactly who the person with him wanted him to be. Adam could all too easily imagine him asking Georgia for book recommendations, frowning in heavy-rimmed spectacles at one of Beckett’s novels, sitting with her （in a coat with the collar turned up） through some avant-garde poetry reading.
And Georgia had been young, much younger than him, only twenty-two when they met, only twenty-four when they married. How could you possibly imagine what it would be like, being married to someone like Jackson Crane, at that age? The relentless media glare, everywhere you went. The intensity with which people all around the world knew you, or thought they did, and held an opinion on your relationship; your clothes; your actions. All the things in life you’d be able to do – the doors your new-found fame would open – and yet, simultaneously, all the things you’d never be able to do again, or at least, not without someone lying in wait to photograph you; hoping to catch you in an unflattering outfit or from an unfortunate angle. The number of people with a financial stake in every aspect of your lives, every aspect of your marriage. What all that might do to your psyche. To both of your psyches.
He could remember Ned convincing Jackson to hold the wedding – this must have been the summer of 2000 – at the not-yet-open Highland Home, a brilliant PR coup given the guest list. He could still taste the panic of trying and not quite managing to get the place （over budget and delayed as usual） ready in time for their wedding, having to order five hundred box hedges to hide cement mixers and piles of bricks, laying acres of heather at eye-watering expense because it had fried in the extremely unexpected heatwave. Making sure that everything looked perfect. How happy they’d looked that day. How rapturously happy. How hard it was to imagine that Georgia had had any idea what the man she was marrying was capable of.
Adam had not either, then.
He would never forget it, that terrible night, only a year and a half later, that phone call.
Ned discreetly answering his mobile, frowning, covering his free ear with his hand, looking around for a quiet corner of the rooftop bar at Covent Garden Home, where he and Adam had been having dinner, not finding one, stepping into the cold December night to take the call outside. Ned pacing up and down the length of the pool, free hand waving as he barked into the handset, then gesturing through the window for Adam to join him. You did what? Why the hell did you do that? Where are you now? Give me a second and I’ll call you back.
Both of them rushing down the fire escape to Ned’s suite as his brother explained the situation: Jackson, pissed as a fart, on the wrong side of the road, driving that stupid fucking tank of a four-by-four at twice the speed limit, colliding head on with some little tin-can car, and then driving off.
It was on speakerphone, from Ned’s suite, that they’d called Jackson Crane back. On Ned’s laptop, via the cameras in Jackson’s cottage at Country Home, they’d watched as he flinched at the phone’s sudden ring, stumbled over to it, picked it up, stood there listening and occasionally taking an impatient gulp from the tumbler of something in his hand as Ned had him talk them carefully through events once more to make sure he completely understood the situation – clarifying exactly what had happened, exactly where, Ned soothing, cajoling, remaining reassuringly calm.