It is only now, with a few years’ hindsight, that I realize there was nothing to be afraid of outside the golden prison. Nowadays I am completely in control of my life and free to do exactly what I want to do when I want to do it. I get respect for my own achievements. I’m not going to lie – I do miss being absolutely spoilt and receiving the sort of service where people bend over backwards for you. That is wonderful! But if you’re constantly treated like a cosseted child, you can sometimes start to behave like one, too. In that respect, stepping outside the Rolling Stones was a huge growing-up process for me – and I think I have now grown into the person I was meant to be all along. And while I might not fly first class every time, these days, I’ll take freedom and independence over a bit of extra leg-room any day.
As for my future – well, I’m just taking each day as it comes and enjoying my friends, children and grandchildren. I’d love to get my Organics business up and running again and am currently in talks about a new licensing deal, so watch this space. And hopefully Mrs Paisley’s Lashings will be popping up again sometime soon. And I still want to save the planet and turn everyone organic! As for my love life, if the right man came along then of course I’d consider getting married again. Third time lucky, perhaps? But if he doesn’t, I can honestly say I’m happy just the way I am.
I was looking back through my diaries while I was writing this book and found a note from my mum, slipped into the pages of 2002. ‘Confucius say, “If you are not happy you must make yourself happy,”’ it read. ‘“It is easier to wear a pair of slippers than try and carpet the whole world.”’
Looking back now, I can’t imagine where my head was at when I first read that note. At the time I was struggling with Ronnie’s alcoholism after he’d had yet another failed stint in rehab, and our dear friend Chuch had died from a heart attack. I was quite lost, but while I didn’t realize it at the time, it had been clear to those closest to me. Things are very different, these days. Nowadays I am proudly wearing my slippers, day in and day out.
Ronnie and I rebuilt our friendship slowly. He rang to tell me he was having the most terrible arguments with Katia, and I spoke to him after he was arrested for fighting in the street with her, just to check he was okay. About a year after the split, I went to visit Jamie at his home in Cobham and was taking my grandson Charlie to the movies in nearby Esher when I saw Ronnie sitting in a restaurant window with a young girl. I knew he was renting a house in Surrey (well, it was more of a castle, really) but it was still a shock to see him sitting there. It was the first time I’d seen him in the flesh since he had left and I thought about walking past, but then I said to Charlie, ‘Look, there’s Granddad!’ and we went in to see him. It was all very friendly: the girl was sweet, and Ronnie asked us to join them for a drink, but I told him we had to be getting home. I left the restaurant feeling a little shaken, but glad to have seen Ronnie – and certainly with no sense of regret that we were apart, or longing that we were still together.
These days Ronnie and I are friends and I’ll happily pick up the phone to him. At the time of writing, he is happy with his latest girlfriend, Sally Humphreys, and has been sober for a year. (We actually met Sally years ago, when Ronnie had an exhibition of his artwork at Drury Lane and she was working at the theatre dressed as Moll Flanders.) Ronnie might have done some shitty things in the past, but when I think back on all those years we spent together, it’s the many good times that I now focus on. It still feels a bit weird when I see him, though; I suppose it always will. He’s just so instantly familiar to me that I look at him and think, Gosh, I loved that man so much for so long, I know every hair on his head, every little thing about his face and hands . . . But it’s like it was another lifetime. I will always love Ronnie, but now it’s with a feeling of warmth and familiarity. Anything more than that has faded.
Ronnie’s never apologized for what happened either to me or the kids – I don’t think he feels he has anything to apologize for – although he came close at the beginning of 2012. I was round at his house, dropping off some of his belongings, and he was talking about a new girl who was flying in to see him at the weekend.
‘I still haven’t found the one, Jo,’ he said, wearily.
‘You won’t, Ronnie,’ I said. ‘You had her and you lost her a few years ago. It was me.’
He paused, took a drag on his cigarette. ‘You live and learn,’ he said, eventually.
I stood on the street looking up at the elegant Georgian house–my house, I thought with a smile. It was set back from the street behind an overgrown front garden, and now I climbed the stone steps that wove among the creeper-covered trees to the front door. With a shiver of excitement, I put my key in the lock for the first time as the house’s new owner.
It was July 2011 and after years of living in the suburbs, I had found the home of my dreams among the fab restaurants and boutiques of London’s leafy Primrose Hill. It had been love from the moment I’d first laid eyes on the place, although clearly it hadn’t been redecorated since the seventies and was in need of a makeover. It looked sad and unloved, and the rooms were crammed with furniture and old books; the current owner had four lodgers so there were three kitchens, one on each floor. But it was a beautiful building with so much potential – and I do love a project. I’d put in an offer after that first viewing.
And now the house was mine and I was looking around it as its proud owner. I had builders starting work tomorrow – rewiring, replacing the roof, ripping out the kitchens – but I wanted to enjoy this moment, just me and my gorgeous new home. As I wandered from room to room, amazed at how much space there was now it was empty, I could see in my mind how I would transform the place: a big new kitchen in the basement, an organic vegetable patch in the back garden, vintage carpet on the stairs, antique lace at the front windows . . . It would be a huge amount of work, but I knew that I would have enormous fun doing it.
Eventually I reached the top floor and looked out of the window at the back of the house. The view across the rooftops took my breath away. There was the BT Tower, a central London landmark, so close I could almost touch it. Gosh, I’m right back in the middle of London, I thought happily. Back where it all started for me.
The sun was setting, spreading rosy-pink streaks across the sky, and as I gazed out, I thought back to the dreamy girl who had climbed up a conker tree one evening to stare at the sun setting over Canvey Island. And just as I had back then, I marvelled at the world spread out below me, in all its beauty and promise, and I thought, I wonder what extraordinary adventure life has in store for me?