John: I was sure he was lying, but I couldn’t work out what the truth was. I marched them over there, in the end. I took them into the hut and started it up. Then I sent an empty carriage round, and when it got to the furthest point, the light came on and I sent a second one. I looked at them both, as if to say ‘See?’
Tim: I didn’t know what he wanted us to say. We’d fucked up. But neither of us had done anything deliberately to cause that accident.
Eddie: I told him one last time. I didn’t understand how, but I hadn’t pressed the button until the light came on. He was muttering, face like thunder. Then he said we were both fired. Tim took it on the chin – it was all right for him, it was just a student job, he could probably get another one in a day or two – but this had been my livelihood for more than two years. I had two children at home, and my wife was pregnant. I wasn’t too proud to plead for another chance.
Tim: When Eddie started laying on all the stuff about his family and their financial struggles, I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. I was thinking about the festival my friendswere going to, the one I’d turned down because of work. I was hoping there were still tickets available. I felt bad for Eddie, of course I did. It was me who’d asked him to cover. But he could have said no.
John: I told Eddie my decision was final, and I walked them out.
Cathy: I knew John would fire someone over it, but I was surprised he let Eddie go. He’d been a good worker. John told me what had happened afterwards, and I said it sounded like he’d made a stupid mistake and I wasn’t sure the punishment fit the crime, and John looked at me like I was a stranger and said could I leave the hiring and firing to him. He stormed off then, saying something about how he needed to redo the rota now he’d lost two members of staff.
It was strange and quiet that day. When Pea got home from school, she walked into the office where I was faffing about pretending to catch up on admin and she put the local paper down on the desk in front of me. I gasped. Call me naïve, but I just hadn’t thought about it being covered by the press. The headline read ‘Boy, 8, injured at Wildworld’. There was a photo of him in his hospital bed, his legs all bloody and bruised. His mum had been quoted as saying she would never go back and she hoped other parents would learn from her experience. It was a disaster.
Pea: School was hideous that day. Everyone was talking about it. As usual, the rumours only contained a shred of truth. There were people saying the boy had broken a leg, lost a leg, lost both legs. Nicole Waddington sauntered over in Science, after lunch, and said she guessed AJ Silver wouldn’t be coming to Wildworld any more, now that people were getting seriously injured there. As she walked away, she said, ‘If he was ever coming in the firstplace, that is.’ I was so over it by then. Alex was sitting next to me and he put a hand on my arm as if to calm me down. I don’t know what made me do it, but I picked up my safety goggles and threw them at the back of her head. They were only light, just plastic. When they hit her, she stopped walking and spun around and asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing. Mrs Lane chose exactly that moment to walk in. It took her precisely two seconds to determine what was going on and she gave us both detention, said she didn’t want to hear any more about it, and started the lesson.
Alex: Pea was so wound up over that accident. I mean, I can understand why. If that park went down, her family was sunk. And if news of this accident got back to AJ Silver’s crew, I was pretty sure that whole thing would be off.
John: I told Cathy that we needed to focus on damage limitation. We couldn’t let it ruin the AJ Silver visit. I was sure it wouldn’t make the national news, some kid getting his knee scraped at a small theme park, and I was right, it didn’t. It seemed very unlikely that Maggie and co would find out, unless someone told them.
Cathy: None of us were going to tell them, were we?
Pea: In the detention, Nicole didn’t say a word to me. We had to copy out pages from our Science textbook for an hour. Usually, I walked home with Alex, but of course he was long gone by the time detention was over. It was just Nicole and me, no one else in sight. She lived in the same direction, too. I hung back and let her set off first, then made sure I stayed well behind her. We were almost at the turning for her road when she turned around and looked at me with pure hatred. ‘You’re going to regret doingthat, Pea,’ she said. I didn’t really take it seriously. I mean, what was she going to do?
Danny: What was she going to do indeed? We’ll find out pretty soon. But first, here’s what happened to the rollercoaster after the accident. Pay close attention.
John: I called out an engineer who came to look at the ride the day after the accident. I wanted it open again as soon as possible. His name was Nigel Woods. He was familiar with Wildworld and all the rides, although this was his first time seeing the 360. He scratched his head and muttered a lot, and I told him everything I knew about what had happened. I had to leave him to it in the end. There was an issue with the food ordering, and a vast quantity of chicken nuggets had turned up that there was no freezer space for. I asked him to come and find me in the food hall when he was done. An hour or so later, he appeared. ‘Loose connection,’ he said. I raised my eyebrows, inviting him to go on. ‘I’d better show you.’ We strode over to the rollercoaster. Pea and Alex were sitting on a bench close by. Pea asked whether we knew what had happened yet, and I said Nigel was just about to show me. They both stood up and followed us to the hut. I don’t really know why, though Pea did always take an interest in anything that was happening at the park. Sebastian appeared then, out of nowhere, said Cathy was looking for me. I held up a hand to tell him to wait.
Pea: I was just curious. I’d heard Dad talking about how he didn’t understand what could have happened, and I didn’t either. We crowded around Nigel, and he got out a screwdriver and started to dismantle the big green button you had to hit to send a carriage around the track.
Alex: When he’d got the casing off, he showed us two wires that had to be touching for the override to work. He said that they’d come loose, so that they were touching most of the time but could also come apart. He said that if those wires weren’t touching each other, the light would come on and it would be possible to send a second carriage around the track. It seemed pretty simple. He’d put some kind of plastic tubing over them so they couldn’t come apart again. He said he was confident it would fix it, but obviously John might want to send a few empty carriages around before opening it to the public again.
John: I was relieved it was such an easy fix, to be honest.
Sebastian: It made sense, what Nigel was saying. If anything about the park appealed to me, it was that side of things. The mechanics. It was clear that Dad was going to be tied up for a while, so I went back and told Mum he was busy.
Nigel: I’m Nigel, the engineer. I told John I’d fixed it temporarily, with that bit of plastic, but that the wires and really the whole mechanism could do with being replaced altogether in the next few months.
John: He didn’t say anything about further work, no. I remember saying that I would see him in November because that’s when he generally serviced all the rides.
Nigel: I mean, it was fixed, and I didn’t see the fix breaking down any time soon, but if it was me, I would definitely have done the replacement. I told him it might be pricey.
Pea: There was something about Nigel coming back to do something more permanent, yes. I don’t know whether that ever happened. It went straight out of my head.
John: After Nigel had left, I got the dummies we used to test rides when they were new or had been serviced, and I sent carriage after carriage around that track. One after another for a full hour. At one point I realised that Sebastian was beside me again. He told me to come home, that Cathy had sent him to get me, but I couldn’t. I had to keep doing it, to prove something to myself. Every single time I sent those carriages around the track, the light came on exactly when it was supposed to and the carriages came nowhere near each other. So I was satisfied that it was resolved. We reopened the 360 the next day.
Cathy: John explained to me, later, about the loose connection. I asked whether Nigel had been able to fix it then and there. He said yes, he had. I asked whether he needed to come back for anything. He said no, he didn’t. I left it at that. I handled the office stuff, the paperwork, and he handled the rides.
Danny: So the ride is fixed, but possibly not properly. But at least they’ve kept the news of the accident contained, right? Right?
Cathy: By the time Maggie called, it had all died down. The boy who’d been injured was fine, back at school. We’d sent flowers to his family. People were using the 360 again. It had been a slow start, with parents being overly cautious – understandably. But after they’d seen it in operation a few times, people seemed to relax a bit. So I was totally thrown when the phone rang and I heard Maggie’s voice.
Maggie: Some kid called Nicole Waddington had sent me a letter telling me there’d been an accident at Wildworld. I had to admire the girl. I don’t know how she found out my name and address and I don’t know what her beef was with the Hunters. She said that a boy had been seriously injured and insinuatedthat he’d almost lost his leg. I didn’t know what to make of it. But I called Cathy to ask her whether there was any truth in it. I half expected her to laugh it off, say she didn’t know what I was talking about. I probably would have left it there, if she had. I wouldn’t have gone digging for information. But that wasn’t how Cathy reacted. She kept starting to speak and then pausing, starting from the beginning again. In the end, I said, ‘Cathy, just level with me. Tell me what happened.’ And she did. I was shocked. In the US, the kid’s family would have sued, but she said it was all dealt with and the park was open as usual. ‘Is that ride open?’ I asked. She said it was. I sighed. I didn’t really know how to play this. I couldn’t risk AJ coming to any harm, but I knew he was still set on this theme park idea and it was a bit late to start scouting other options. I said, ‘Cathy, do you swear to me that this issue is resolved?’ She said it was. No hesitation. So I said I would talk to AJ and the rest of the team and we’d get back to her.
Zak: The first I heard of it was when Maggie called us all together, AJ and Mum and me, plus all of his crew – bodyguard, stylist, makeup artist, personal assistant. Everyone who’d be travelling to Europe, basically. She said there’d been an accident at Wildworld. I thought of Pea, imagined her hurt. I’d had a letter from her a few days ago. But something could have happened since then, couldn’t it? I asked Maggie if Pea was okay. Couldn’t help it.
Maggie: Zak was worried about Pea. I said she was fine. That everyone was fine. But a boy had been hurt on a rollercoaster. AJ looked bored. He said, ‘Are you about to say we can’t stay there?’ I said no, I just wanted them to have all the information before we made the trip. He said, ‘Cool, well, I don’t care.’ He was sixteen and invincible, of course. But his mum. Well, she was amum. She asked me for more details, and I told her everything I knew, including the fact that Cathy had assured me the ride had been fixed since the incident and was open to the public again and there had been no further issues. She said she wasn’t sure.
Grace: I didn’t like the sound of it at all. I was ready to call the whole thing off. Who stayed in a frickin’ theme park anyway? I wanted to go to a hotel and spend the money on some good security. Then we’d be able to sleep in comfort and have proper showers. AJ didn’t care about any of that, though, and he was in charge. I held off for a couple of days but I knew he’d get what he wanted in the end. What I didn’t expect was for it to be Zak who talked me round. He came to me late one night, when I was reading in bed and I thought he was playing video games, and he told me about Pea. Now, I knew when him and Maggie came back that there’d been something with a girl over there. Maggie had given me the lowdown. Zak had said nothing. Typical teenage boy. But that night, he lay on the empty side of my king-size bed and didn’t look at me while he told me about this girl who he’d been exchanging letters with, and how he thought he might be in love with her.
