That Christmas I spent a blissful few days with Jamie and my family at the Old Vicarage. I always loved seeing how settled Jamie was in the country with Mum (who at the time was only 43), Dad and my sister, who was only 10 years older than him. I remember watching him chasing the chickens around and giggling like a little loony. So, although it was always painful to leave him, I knew my baby couldn’t have been happier. Then it was straight back to London and into the arms of my man. Now that we could be together officially, Ronnie and I were in giddy honeymoon mode – so we saw in the new year, 1978, by boarding a plane to the Bahamas with a Colombian drugs baron named Victor.
We had met the sharp-suited Victor back in Paris, where he’d been one of the small army of pharmaceutical Stones hangers-on, and he had invited us for a holiday at his rented place in Nassau: all expenses paid, luxury accommodation, the finest champagne and coke on tap. Ringo Starr was coming, too. But, as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch (or a free line) and in return for his largesse, Victor wanted Ronnie and Ringo to work on an album with him. Not that any of this was on my radar at the time: I was just thrilled at the prospect of a romantic holiday with my lover.
Things didn’t start off too well. On the flight Victor was acting like a mad man as he was smoking ‘dirty cigarettes’ or DCs – little roll-ups containing smack – which he was intending to take in to the Bahamas. I didn’t touch them, as they had the most revolting smell – if I think about it even now I gag – but Ronnie went into the bathroom for a sneaky puff. Shortly after he stumbled back to his seat, a flight attendant came over and crouched next to me.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to Ronnie, ‘but I think your friend has left this in the toilet.’
She was holding out the bag of DCs. Ronnie must have got so stoned he’d left it in there.
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Thank you ever so much. I’ll get rid of them.’
She smiled warmly. ‘Not to worry. Would you like another drink?’
Can you imagine that happening on a flight today?
As he was a drugs trafficker, I assumed that Victor would already have a plan in place to smuggle his stash through Customs, but as we started our descent he suddenly dumped the bag in my lap. It turned out that I was the plan.
‘You are taking this in your bag,’ he said.
‘What? No way!’
But Ronnie thought it would be wiser to humour our host, so in the end we got a carton of duty-free cigarettes, removed all the cigarettes from the middle packet, stuffed Victor’s stash in there, then carefully packed it up again to look like new.
Of course, when we got to Customs they immediately zeroed in on me; I must have been giving off guilty vibes. As they went through my bag, I offered up a silent prayer of thanks that we hadn’t hidden the stash in there. Then the inspector held up the duty-free bag containing the carton of cigarettes. ‘Is this yours?’ he asked me.
‘No,’ I said, pointing at Victor. ‘They’re his!’ I was damned if I was going to risk life in prison for him.
As Victor scowled at me, the inspector took out one packet and carefully checked inside, but to everyone’s immense relief it wasn’t the doctored one and we were finally waved through.
The house in Nassau, which Victor had rented from a music-industry friend, was like something out of a Bond movie, with huge picture windows looking out over a white-sand beach and a dazzling turquoise strip of sea. It was surrounded by a handful of guest villas, a huge pool, and boasted its own recording-studio complex. As Victor gave us the guided tour, I finally began to relax after the stresses of the journey and felt ready for some fun – and it looked like the party had already started in the living room, where a group of people were scattered around, drinking and chatting. In my jet-lagged haze, I thought one of the guys looked vaguely familiar. I looked a bit closer. It couldn’t be . . . Oh, shit – it was. My old friend, Flavio, whom I hadn’t seen since I’d stolen thousands of pounds’ worth of his cocaine, then ruined the rest with self-raising Homepride. Great, so that was two pissed-off drug dealers I was now sharing a holiday home with . . .
Thankfully, however, Flavio was happy to forgive and forget the flour incident and, despite the bumpy start, it turned out to be a wild couple of weeks. We’d get out of bed as the sun went down and the boys would play music. I don’t recall Victor’s album ever getting made – I think he just wanted the kudos of getting a Rolling Stone and a Beatle into the studio together – and soon after our holiday he was packed off to jail for many, many years, busted by his own dad who had never approved of his son’s career path.
On one of our last days in Nassau, Ronnie and I were sunbathing on the beach (it must have been one of the very rare occasions we were awake before sunset) when I glanced at him and saw the sun shining through his nose. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a huge hole in his septum. He could have put a finger up each nostril and touched them together.
Ronnie, bless him, got all worried about it. The drugs had eaten through the cartilage, he explained. ‘Do you still love me now you know?’
I showered him with kisses. ‘Of course I do, silly!’
Truth be told, I loved him more and more each day. I had fallen hard – we both had. So, when our holiday came to an end and Ronnie had to head back to Paris to finish work on Some Girls, there was no question that I would go with him – and I arranged for Mum and Jamie to come to stay with us days after we got there.
We moved into an apartment in a handsome grey-stone building near the river that we nicknamed Complaining Mansions: the people downstairs were always grumbling about our noise. (I guess we were keeping pretty antisocial hours.) Now that we were staying in a proper apartment, rather than a hotel, I could throw myself into creating a home. Ronnie loved games, so we went out and got an elaborate model racing circuit, on which he, Keith and assorted other visitors would spend hours when they weren’t making music. And although food still featured low on the list of everyone’s priorities, I loved cooking huge, homely meals for whoever dropped by. Soon after we moved into Complaining Mansions, I whipped up a big Old Vicarage-style roast for 16, including Keith, Jane Rose, Mick and Jerry, Charlie and Chuch. Another night George Benson turned up; I remember being proud that he had seconds of my spaghetti Bolognese.
I spent many happy hours wandering around the local food markets, although the language barrier occasionally proved problematic. I had assumed my French would pick up during this time in Paris, but whenever I was out with Ronnie and Keith everyone just spoke English to them. It was my first taste of the crazy attention the Stones attracted wherever we went in the world. Everyone just loved those boys. It was only when I was out on my own that the locals suddenly didn’t know a single word of English. Anyway, on one of my early solo outings, I found a stall selling a stunning selection of wild mushrooms. With a smile, I pointed to the ones I wanted.
‘Combien, mademoiselle?’ asked the stallholder.
I had no idea about weights, but the prices seemed to be in kilos, so I just said, ‘Un kilo.’ The guy started shovelling them into a huge bag, more and more, while I stood there desperately trying to work out how to tell him to stop. Have you any idea how many wild mushrooms it takes to make a kilo? A hell of a lot, as it turned out. When he eventually handed over the bulging sack, I was too embarrassed to do anything but pay up. For the next week we ate mushroom soup, stuffed mushrooms, mushroom omelette and mushroom fricassee.
Settled in Paris with my man I was deliriously happy, but one thing would have made my life complete: Jamie. Keith had been joined in Paris by Marlon, his eight-year-old son with Anita Pallenberg. Marlon was a great kid, full of fun and cheekiness, and I love him. While the Stones were in the studio I’d take him roller-skating in the park, then bring him back to Complaining Mansions for bangers and mash. But hanging out with Marlon made me miss my own boy even more. I was in the midst of legal wrangles with Peter over custody, and until those were resolved, I couldn’t take Jamie out of the UK full-time. An entry in my diary from this time reads: ‘30 January 1978. Slept all day, woke at 8 p.m. Called Mum and talked to my little fella. Jamie said he “wished I’d come out of the telephone”! Missing him LOTS.’
In early February I went back to the Old Vicarage and returned to Paris with Jamie, Mum and my now teenage sister, Lize. Jamie had never been on a plane before, and as we climbed he turned to me, eyes wide, and said, ‘Mummy, why have the clouds fallen down?’
By now I had taken Ronnie to the Old Vicarage, and while he had been his usual charming self, I knew my parents were very concerned that their daughter was shacked up with one of the very same ‘disgusting lads’ that Dad had banned from our TV all those years earlier. But Ronnie was on his best behaviour and we had a wonderful week. It felt as if my life was coming together. It also made me think that once the album was finished – and the custody issues with my ex had been resolved – I could start planning for a future in which I could make a real home with the two people who mattered to me most: Jamie, my little baby; and Ronnie, whom I had dubbed, only half jokingly, in my diary, ‘my big baby’.
We had been back in Paris just a month when I first started to feel ill. Until recently I’d had no problem keeping up with the boys and happily indulging in whatever was on offer. Now, even getting out of bed was a struggle. At first I thought that all the partying must have caught up with me, but when I started experiencing the familiar waves of queasiness I realized it wasn’t a hangover: it was morning sickness.
I don’t know why it came as such a surprise to me, really. Ronnie and I hadn’t been at all careful – quite the opposite. It just hadn’t occurred to me that I might fall pregnant: I was too drunk, too high, having too much fun even to think about it. But now here I was – and my feelings about it were strongly mixed. On the one hand the thought of having a child with Ronnie, whom I was so madly in love with, seemed wonderfully romantic, but how on earth would a baby fit into our lives? We were about as far from a conventional domestic set-up as you could get.
I was scheduled to go back to the UK for the weekend to see Jamie, so I decided I would break the news to Ronnie just before I left. I was terrified. We’d only been together for a few months and, besides, he was a rock ’n’ roller! I’d probably be abandoned with a squealing kid and leaky boobs while he went off with a younger model. The thought sent my already volatile emotions into overdrive.
We were sitting on the sofa having a final cuddle before my cab to the airport arrived when I finally plucked up the courage to tell him.
Just as I feared, he didn’t look too happy. ‘You’re what?’
‘I’m pregnant,’ I said. ‘I don’t want this to upset our relationship.’
But Ronnie just sat staring into space, looking like – well, like he’d just been told his relatively new girlfriend was up the duff.
‘It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything now,’ I went on, helplessly. ‘Take the weekend to think about it. We’ll talk when I get back.’
After a few moments, Ronnie looked at me. ‘I don’t have to think about it, Jo.’
I tried desperately to read his expression. ‘You don’t?’
He pulled me into his arms, a huge smile across his face. ‘We’re having our baby.’
On our final night in Paris, we had a huge party at Complaining Mansions to celebrate my 23rd birthday. It was a punk-themed party and I wore shiny plastic trousers and an artfully ripped T-shirt. I had designed the invitations: ‘You are invited to bang your head on the wall, pass out and throw up!’ Luckily no one seemed to notice that any throwing up I did was not related to over-indulgence . . .
The next day we were booked on a flight to London, then straight on to Los Angeles, where Ronnie was setting up a base in preparation for the boys’ tour of the States later in the year. As usual with Ronnie, there hadn’t been much discussion about our plans, no heartfelt declaration along the lines of ‘Come and live with me in America, my darling!’ It was just sort of assumed that I would be going with him.
As we boarded the plane I felt a shiver of delight at turning left into the first-class cabin – something I would never take for granted over subsequent years. I had come from quite a modest background so I never lost my appreciation of all the lovely things money brought with it. We had flown first class to Nassau a few months before, when I had loved the luxury and the feeling of being someone quite important, but this time it was different. This wasn’t just the start of a holiday: I was on the way to America to build a home and a family with Ronnie. As I settled into the plush leather seat and sensed the first flutterings of our baby inside me, it felt like the beginning of the rest of our lives.