There’s nothing like first love, is there? #WhatHappenedThatSummer
EmmieGem
I love Pea and Zak! I hope they’ve stayed together! #WhatHappenedThatSummer
BruceyBeans
I feel like Zak is going to break Pea’s heart. Anyone else? #WhatHappenedThatSummer
MimiShepherd
It’s so hard waiting a week for the next episode! I need to know about this accident! #WhatHappenedThatSummer
JDK443
My eyes are firmly fixed on Alex Robb. I don’t know what I think he’s done yet but there’s something fishy going on. #WhatHappenedThatSummer
3
EPISODE 3 – ACCIDENT ON THE 360
Danny: Hello and welcome to the third episode ofWhat Happened That Summer?I’m Danny Drake, and if you’ve listened to the first two episodes, you’ll know that we’re doing a deep-dive investigation into events surrounding the death of pop megastar AJ Silver at Wildworld theme park back in 1996. I’ve been talking to lots of people who were around at the time, with a forensic focus on the Hunter family, who owned and ran the park and were later found guilty of negligence.
As the podcast finds new listeners, AJ Silver’s incredible revival is hitting new heights. Three of his singles have gone platinum – ‘Island’, ‘Want You Back’ and ‘Last Love’.
Today’s episode is an exciting one. Not many people know that, a few months prior to the accident that killed AJ Silver, there was another incident at Wildworld involving the same rollercoaster. So we’re having a good look into that, and into who exactly was privy to the information about the rollercoaster’s fault and how to fix it. Now, far be it from me to say that if you know how a fault was fixed, you might be in a position to unfix it, but, well, I guess I’ve said it, haven’t I?
We left the Hunters at the end of Maggie McGee and Zak Campbell’s visit to Wildworld. Pea Hunter and Zak had started a romance and Cathy, in particular, wasn’t happy about it. So what happened in the months between that visit and AJ Silver’s doomed stay at Wildworld?
Pea: Those months really dragged. Every day felt like a week. Zak and I kept writing to each other, and once Christmas was behind us we started to talk more and more in our letters about the summer. Making plans. In one letter, I asked him to send me some photos of him. I was starting to find it hard to picture him, but I didn’t say that. He sent three. In one, he was standing with AJ, their arms around each other’s shoulders. It sounds weird but it was a jolt to see them together like that. I’d thought and talked endlessly about the fact that he was AJ Silver’s brother, but seeing them was a different thing. In the other two, it was just him. Jeans, band T-shirts, messy hair, Converse. I kept them in the top drawer of my desk and brought them out every time I read one of his letters, so I could imagine him saying the words.
Alex: Pea was obsessed with Zak. Obsessed. We hardly talked about anything else. I wanted to say that I thought she was going to get hurt. They might have a summer romance while AJ and co were over in England, staying at Wildworld, but where could it possibly go after that?
Pea: We never talked about afterwards. The trip itself felt like it was a long way away, so the time after just didn’t come up.
Cathy: The airmail letters kept arriving. I was surprised, to be honest. I thought there might be one or two and then it would fizzle out, but no. It didn’t make me any less worried.
John: I was working hard. We had to make sure everything was in tip top shape before they came. They paid us the first instalment of the cash, a sort of holding fee, and I used some of it to buy some new parts for various rides that had seen better days. It was all going pretty well. We were on track. Business was even picking up, for those cold early months of the year. I felt like 1996 was going to be our year.
Cathy: Maggie called in January. I hadn’t spoken to her for a while but I knew it was her before she said her name. My heart started beating fast. Was she calling it off? Could she do that? We’d signed a contract but I knew they’d have better legal representation than us if anything went wrong. She must have picked up on the tension in my voice because she said it was nothing to worry about, and then she did a sort of nervous laugh, which didn’t do much to put me at ease.
Maggie: Look, Zak had talked us all into using Wildworld so he could spend more time with his new girlfriend, and it worked for me because it meant I didn’t have to do more research and make any more trips to England to check places out. Zak had told AJ the place had everything he wanted. But then one day, soon after Christmas, AJ came to see me, all serious, and asked whether Wildworld had a rollercoaster that did a full loop. They all seem to have them now, but back then, it wasn’t a given. I stalled for time, trying to remember the two rollercoasters Zak and I had been on. One was really tame, a sort of runaway train thing for kids, and the other was faster and higher, but I didn’t think it did a loop. I told him that. He reached out with his fist and punched the wall of my office. I didn’t react. It was best not to react when he was in a mood like that. He just started to walk away, but he called back over his shoulder, ‘I want a rollercoaster with a loop,Maggie!’ Great, I thought. Just when it was all signed and sealed. So I called Cathy to double-check.
Cathy: John’s philosophy, always, was to say yes, even when the answer was no, and then worry about it later. So when Maggie asked to confirm whether we had a rollercoaster with a loop, I almost said we did. But I can’t lie convincingly. I said no, and there was this long pause, and I waited for her to say that it was a dealbreaker. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she asked if I thought we could possibly get hold of one before they came. I told her to leave it with me.
John: When Cathy came to me with that particular request, I realised that we were dealing with a spoilt kid. They’d visited, checked the place out, it had all been agreed and signed, and now this. It’s not like you can just conjure up rides out of nowhere.
Cathy: John asked me to call her back and ask whether it was a dealbreaker. We looked at the fine print of the contract. They’d paid us a deposit but they could walk away without paying the rest, if they wanted to. And the deposit was only 10 per cent. So I called her, and she said yes, it was. I hung up the phone and looked at John and said, ‘We need to find a new rollercoaster.’
John: Rides do move between parks sometimes. It’s like animals and zoos. Sometimes places close up and sell off all their rides, but I knew there wasn’t anyone doing that at that time. I thought we were fucked, to be honest. But I had to try. So I got in touch with all the big parks and asked if we could rent or buy something from them. Most people I spoke to talked to me like I was insane, but I got lucky with Silvermead at the other side of Birmingham. They were bringing in a newer, better, faster rollercoaster and hadn’t decided yet what to do with the existingone, which had a loop. Two loops, in fact. It was called 360. I asked how much they’d take for it, and they said they’d get someone to come back to me.
Cathy: It was a tense wait. I couldn’t believe John had tracked one down. But rides like that didn’t come cheap and I had a few sleepless nights imagining figures almost as outlandish as the one Maggie McGee had proposed to me.
John: They came back about a week later. Said they’d take a million.
Cathy: I didn’t want to do it. It was half of the money we’d be getting from AJ Silver, most of which hadn’t come in yet. I didn’t see how we could do it. But John was adamant, said we had to do whatever it took to make this work, and that the ride would improve the park’s revenue too, in the long term. Talked about speculating to accumulate. And in the end, I just let him deal with it. The park was his concern, for the most part. I did the admin and the payroll and answered the phone but he was the one with the head for business. Or so I believed at the time.
Pea: I remember there being a lot of stress and worry about a rollercoaster. AJ Silver had decided he wanted something we didn’t have, which sent my parents into a spin. One night, I woke up at about one in the morning and went downstairs to get a glass of water. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. There was an almost empty whisky bottle beside him, and a completely empty glass. He was muttering something, and when I got close, it sounded like a string of numbers. I reached out, touched his shoulder, and he jumped as if terrified. When he saw that it was me, he put a shaky hand on his chest, where his heart was. I asked if he was okay, and he said he was just trying to work things out. I got a glass and ran the water fromthe kitchen tap until it was cold. I said something that I hadn’t been thinking about, something that went against everything I wanted. I said that maybe we should just forget about the whole AJ Silver thing. He looked at me, horrified. He said we wouldn’t be doing that. That he’d find a way to make it work. I said, ‘What, are you going to just get a hammer and bash a loop in the runaway train track?’ He wasn’t in the mood for joking.
