EPISODE 4 – A CATALOGUE OF ERRORS
Danny: Welcome to episode four ofWhat Happened That Summer?My name is Danny Drake. Thanks for coming on this wild ride with us. This week we hit 50,000 downloads and you may be aware that the new remix of AJ Silver’s ‘Ice Cream’ is currently at number one in the download chart.
So, this is it, folks. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. AJ Silver is off the plane and on his way to Wildworld. I know you want to hear every detail of what happened when he got there.
As you’ll hear shortly, a lot of things went wrong on this trip. Some of it was the fault of the Hunters, some of it was down to AJ Silver and his crew. He arrived with eight people in tow. His mum Grace, his brother Zak, his manager Maggie, his bodyguard Lucian, his stylist Trish, his hair and makeup artist Bree, his assistant India and his vocal coach Sammy.
So without further ado, here’s what happened next.
Pea: The morning I woke up and knew they were coming that day, I felt like I’d explode.
John: I was exhausted. I’d been working every hour God sent, trying to make sure everything was as shipshape as it could possibly be. I’d been painting fences, cutting back trees, you name it. And of course the park had still been open to the public. We wanted to close it for the shortest possible amount of time. So I’d been doing everything I usually did with all this tarting up on top. I’d hoped Sebastian would step up and help me out, but he didn’t lift a finger.
Cathy: John was drinking a lot. I think it was the nerves. Every time I tried to bring it up, he snapped at me. But he’d gone from drinking wine with dinner to sneaking beers and God knows what else at any time of the day.
John: I never drank when I was working. At the end of the day, yes. Who doesn’t like to unwind with a glass of wine, especially at times of high stress?
Cathy: I didn’t really think about the impact his drinking might have on his work. It wasn’t like he was driving, I suppose. Maybe I was naïve. I knew it was something we needed to address, but the plan was to get these six weeks over and done with, collect the money, and then see if it continued. Part of me thought that once this was over, it would all go away.
Pea: I just assumed Mum and Dad would let us have the day off school, so I went down in my pyjamas that morning and grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl. Mum asked why I wasn’t ready for school, and I said I wasn’t going. That I wanted to be there when they arrived. Mum’s mouth went all tight and she said she hoped I didn’t think this was going to be one long holiday with my boyfriend. Then she went into her whole spiel about how important my GCSEs were. I couldn’t listen to it. I walked offwhile she was still speaking, tears pricking at my eyes. I felt like she didn’t understand anything.
Sebastian: I got ready for college as usual. I heard Pea stomping up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door and assumed she’d asked for the day off and been refused. They weren’t even arriving until after lunch, so why she thought she needed to be at home all day is anyone’s guess. People in town knew it was happening soon, but we’d kept the date pretty quiet because we knew they wanted to get in and settled before people found out they were here and started hanging around in the car park. At college, I’d get asked about it twenty times a day, and I always said I didn’t know. What I did know was that if Pea didn’t go into school, people would put two and two together. So I’m glad Mum didn’t let her stay at home.
Pea: It was the longest day. Most of the teachers had given up on teaching us anything new by that point and we were just having revision sessions and working through past papers. I could totally have missed it. I still can’t believe Mum didn’t let me.
Alex: I think I was the only one at school who knew it was ‘the day’. I kept giving Pea these little nudges and secret looks, and at lunch we went to the furthest point of the site, behind the pine trees where you only really went on cross-country runs, and talked about whether or not they might have arrived yet. I said, ‘I can’t believe that the actual AJ Silver might be in our town right now.’ And Pea said, ‘I can’t believe that he might be in my actual house.’ It never got any less surreal.
Pea: After lunch, I had double Maths. Normally I could get myself lost in the work, just solving one problem after another, lining up the answers, all neat and straight and right. That was what I liked about Maths, how it was straightforward. Not easy,but there was no debate about what was right and what was wrong. But that day, I made stupid mistakes. Careless errors. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I looked out of the window at one point, conjured up an image of Zak, imagined kissing him. Would I get to kiss him that day? How different would it all be, with AJ and the whole of their entourage there?
John: They arrived at around two o’clock. I’d had about six coffees and I was practically juddering. Cathy and I were in the office, neither of us doing anything productive, just waiting. It was eerie for the park to be closed, for there to be no sounds of kids or rides filtering through. I looked at Cathy and said, ‘This is it,’ and we went outside to greet them. I saw Maggie first. She put her hand up in a wave and Cathy and I both mirrored the gesture. Zak and another boy a bit younger than him were walking ahead of her. So this is him, I thought. The famous AJ Silver. He just looked like your average teenage boy to me. But then, what did I know about pop music and teenage girls? Like Zak, he had floppy, longish hair and was wearing baggy clothes. He was laughing at something his brother had said, and when they all came to a halt in front of us, he was still laughing.
Danny: I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty keen to hear how it was when Cathy saw Zak again, after that hotel incident.
Cathy: John and I were just standing there and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. The boys were in front, and there was a small crowd following them. I picked out the woman who I thought must be their mother, and I smiled at her, but she wasn’t looking. She was saying something to Maggie, who looked up then and met my gaze. She put a hand on the other woman’s arm and said something, and then she sped up so she was level with Zak and AJ. When they reached us, she broke into a warm smile and started doing the introductions.
John: AJ barely acknowledged us. I thought he was pretty rude.
Cathy: It was strange to see Zak again after the way it had all ended on his last visit. John and I had talked at length about him and Pea, what we would and wouldn’t allow during this visit. I was planning to get them both on their own as soon as possible and explain our ground rules.
Maggie: It seems strange to say it, as only a few months had passed since Zak and I had visited, but John looked noticeably older. His eyes were a bit sunken and his skin was an unhealthy colour, bordering on grey. Cathy looked the same as ever. She was wearing a hideous orange dress and a pink cardigan. Did the woman own anything black?
Zak: I knew I needed to get Pea’s parents on side if I was going to get to spend any time with her over the next few weeks. I smiled at them both, trying to convey my trustworthiness, but I’m not sure they were looking.
Cathy: Maggie did the introductions. I knew I wouldn’t remember any of the names. There was the mum, plus a host of people who looked after everything from AJ’s hair and clothing to his dietary requirements. I noticed AJ looking around, and I wondered what he made of it. What was it like, this life he lived that was so unlike anything I’d ever known?
Zak: AJ told me later that he thought the park looked like a shithole. He wasn’t mad when he said it, just matter-of-fact. He said, ‘Are we really only here because you want to bone the mad couple’s daughter?’ I wanted to hit him. I’d come all this way to scope the place out and he’d been here less than an hour and decided it wasn’t up to scratch. I told him to give it a chance. Let the other stuff slide.
Maggie: After we’d introduced everyone and turned down the offer of coffee, John and I sorted out the gates so we could drive the tour buses in. He asked me when the shower and toilet units were arriving, and I realised I hadn’t heard anything about that for a while. I said I would double check, but that it would definitely be that day.
John: She looked a bit panicked when I asked about the showers and toilets. But I still trusted she had it all in hand.
Danny: She did not have it in hand. Which is strange, because I had Maggie pegged as the super organised type. I guess everyone drops the ball every now and again.
Zak: Once the buses were in situ, I asked AJ if he wanted me to show him around a bit. I was on edge, wondering where Pea was. She must have gone to school. No one had mentioned it and I hadn’t wanted to ask her parents outright. AJ shrugged and said he might have a nap, so I went to find Maggie. She was on a different bus, on her own, and she was shouting, ‘Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck!’ I laughed and she looked up. I asked her what was wrong. She said, ‘The fucking showers and toilets aren’t arriving for another two days.’ This was a big problem. The buses had these tiny toilets that were barely useable, and obviously there were no showering facilities on them. AJ’s first gig was in just over a week’s time.
Maggie: It was totally my fault. I’d let the thing slip, and when I called the company, they said they’d been trying to get in touch to say there’d been a delay. They had a digit wrong in my number or something. I said that we needed those showers and toilets, and the man I was talking to said there was nothing he could do. I was freaking out about it when Zak arrived. He was always so level-headed. He was just a kid but he was great at calming medown. He said maybe we could ask John and Cathy if we could use their facilities for a couple of days. I said no way. We couldn’t all be traipsing in and out of their house like that. That’s when Zak looked like he’d had the best idea in the world and said, ‘The park! There are toilets in the park!’ I made a face. The thought of using portable toilets and showers for six weeks was bad enough without shitting where half the kids in England had left puddles of piss. Perhaps I could ask Cathy about cleaning one of the toilet blocks myself. I could bleach it to fuck and then maybe it would be just about acceptable. But what about showers? I felt grimy from the plane and my hair would be in need of a wash by the next day. I told him to keep thinking.
Zak: I didn’t tell AJ. He could be volatile. By which I mean, he could be a dick. I didn’t want him going off at Maggie over a mistake anyone could have made. We went for a walk around the park. There were five zones and we went through them, one by one. He didn’t say much. He was soaking it all up. I couldn’t tell whether he’d changed his opinion of the place, and mostly I didn’t care. I kept looking at my watch. Pea would be back from school in an hour. Then in fifty minutes. Then in a half hour. AJ noticed what I was doing, of course. He said, ‘You know you can’t warp time to make your girl get here faster.’ I didn’t reply. Sometimes, I wanted to ask if he saw what all this madness was doing to him. He’d been a pretty regular kid before it all kicked off. And now, a few years in, he was cocky as hell, like he’d bought in to his own hype. I remember reading once that it’s not good for anyone to be surrounded by people who never say no to them, and I thought about that a lot with AJ. I mean, who gets to demand a theme park and then walk around it deciding whether or not it’s good enough? I wanted to change the subject. I asked how rehearsals had been going. He shrugged, said he was ready. Where did that attitude come from? I remember him being alittle kid at football try-outs, nervous and hopeful. Sometimes it felt like this big, bad AJ had swallowed up my little brother.
