Pea: They’d already told me the rules, the night before.
Cathy: We were entitled to come up with new rules at any point, weren’t we? The kiss in the kitchen, with him practically naked, had shocked me. I didn’t want Pea to end up pregnant. I said we needed to talk about contraception and Pea put her head in her hands and started rocking backwards and forwards.
Pea: I mean, who wants to talk to their parents about contraception? No one.
John: I hadn’t known Cathy was going to bring that up. I asked later whether she thought they were actually sleeping together, and she said she thought if they weren’t, they soon would be. That shook me up a bit, because even though I knew that Pea was sixteen, I still thought of her as a child, the way all parents do.
Cathy: I said I’d make an appointment at the doctors for her and we’d talk about her going on the pill.
Pea: I mean, it was hugely embarrassing, but I came out of the conversation thinking one thought over and over:Even my parents think I’m having sex. So maybe I should be?
Zak: After Pea left with her brother, I didn’t feel like going on any more rides. I left AJ and Alex to it and went back to the bus for a sleep. When I woke up, it was a little after six and I knew I had to turn this thing around, with her parents. So I brushed my teeth and washed my face and went over there, to the house.
Cathy: We were eating. I invited him to come in and join us, because it seemed like the polite thing to do.
Zak: I was hungry, so I said sure. She led me into the dining room and brought me a bowl of some kind of chicken casserole. I looked at Pea and she looked down at the table. I couldn’t work out whether she was mad at me or embarrassed. Sebastian was telling this long, involved story about something that had happened at college, involving his physics teacher and a battery tester. No one really seemed to be listening. But I waited until I was sure he was done to speak. I said I was wondering whether it would be all right to take Pea out on a date the following evening. I wanted to do this thing properly.
Pea: It was like something out of a film, like he was asking my father for my hand or something. Part of me wanted the ground to open up and swallow me, and part of me loved it. Mum and Dad looked at each other and I could see they were having a silent conversation but couldn’t work out what was being said.
Cathy: Look, I remembered what it was like to be a teenager. And I knew that if we said no, they would sneak around and find a way to see each other anyway. I thought our best bet was to say yes, but I was conscious that John and I should probably discuss it first.
John: I said yes. I mean, she was sixteen, wasn’t she? We couldn’t lock her up.
Zak: I was a bit taken aback. It was like they’d had a change of heart with regards to me. I wasn’t going to complain. After dinner, I said I was going to get an early night, thanked them for the food and gave them all a wave. Pea caught up with me outside. She was barefoot and kept squealing as she stepped over the gravel.
Pea: I wanted to thank him, for coming over like that and trying to make my parents like him. It meant a lot to me. But every way I thought of saying it sounded stupid. So I just stood there in front of him, looking at him.
Zak: She was so beautiful. And she had no idea of it. I kissed her, asked if she wanted to come to the bus, either now or later. I just wanted to be around her. I was high off it.
Pea: I wanted to go to the bus with him more than anything but I knew we had to play this carefully. Gain my parents’ trust. I kissed him on the lips, just a peck, but he pulled me in and kissed me properly, his hands in my hair. When we came apart, I said I had revision to do, but I actually spent the entire evening lying on my bed reliving that kiss.
Zak: I was restless. I wanted to go see a movie, or get a coffee, or something other than sit in that bus. But I couldn’t do any of those things with my brother, and Pea wasn’t free, and who else was there? I ended up lying on my bed listening to music. AJ kept throwing things at me, a pair of socks and then a book, which hit me in the head. I pulled my headphones off, really mad. Asked what he wanted. He said, ‘I’m bored, Zac-Man. I can’t believe we got to stay in a theme park and I’m bored as shit.’ I knew from experience that bored AJ wasn’t a good thing. If nothing was happening, he had a tendency to make something happen. And it was never something good.
Pea: I don’t know whether AJ snuck out or what. All I know is that when I woke up the next morning, I could hear this buzz. It was coming from outside. I opened my bedroom window and it got louder. It was girls, I realised. Teenage girls. I pulled some clothes on and went outside. Mum and Dad were a step ahead of me, and I caught them up, asked them what was happening. Mum shrugged and Dad didn’t bother responding at all. The noise got louder and louder as we approached the locked gates. I’d never seen a crowd like it. Some of them were shouting AJ’s name and others were just talking in groups and all of them were standing there as if they were going to be given access. Where had they come from? And how long had they been here? When we reached the gates, the sound died down. Did they think we were going to let them in? Dad made a sort of megaphone with his hands and asked what they were doing here. They started up a chant. AJ Silver, AJ Silver, AJ Silver, AJ Silver. Dad waved his arms around until they stopped. Then he did the megaphone again and said, ‘The park is closed for the next six weeks. Please go home.’
Sebastian: I woke up and there was no one in the house. I remember thinking that everything was weird, and I just wanted it to go back to normal. I was eating cereal when they all came back in, dressed in pyjamas and flip flops. Dad was muttering about how they’d found out, and Mum was saying that people weren’t stupid and could put two and two together after seeing that the park was closed. Pea was quiet. I asked what was up.
Cathy: Sebastian’s always been in his own little world. He didn’t seem bothered by the crowd the way the rest of us were. I was unsettled. Maggie had told us this would happen, but I’d sort of imagined a dozen or so pre-teen girls, and this was something quite different. There were hundreds of them. They must havecome from all over the place. And they didn’t look like they were going anywhere. We’d walked away after John’s announcement but it was clear no one was getting ready to leave.
Sebastian: It was a bit later that I realised we couldn’t use the car without opening the gates, and we clearly couldn’t open the gates.
Cathy: We all felt trapped, and it struck me for the first time that we lived in a kind of cage. That we’d voluntarily set up our family inside these gates. It hadn’t felt restrictive until we couldn’t open them.
Pea: Once I was dressed, I went over to Zak and AJ’s bus, asked them if they knew. They’d heard the buzz, of course. They didn’t seem surprised, just weary. I remember Zak saying, ‘I thought we might get a couple of days.’ AJ said he was going to go to the gates and sign a few autographs, try to get them onside. Zak thought that was a terrible idea and that he should stay hidden. But AJ wasn’t the kind to take advice. He went over there, to the gates. His bodyguard, Lucian, went with him. Zak and I followed. The way the noise rose when he came into view was inexplicable. The screaming, my God. He held up his hands, as if to sayI am but a man, and I saw the showman in him for the first time. Suddenly he wasn’t a teenager I’d been hanging out with but this thing, this star. I could see that the crowd was surging forward and it was so clear someone was going to get hurt. I turned to Zak, asked him what we should do. AJ was turning to go, as if he could just appear and rile everyone up and then disappear. Which I suppose he could. But the girls were in a frenzy, pushing and shoving. I saw this one girl with her face pressed up against the gates, and then I saw her fall.
Cathy: Pea came running into the house, saying we had to call 999. That people were getting hurt at the gates. I didn’t find out until later that AJ had appeared there and caused a stampede of sorts where the people at the front couldn’t move and ended up being trampled. Three girls were treated by paramedics in the end. None of them had serious injuries but it was a bit of a wakeup call.
Zak: AJ couldn’t help himself. He was like two people, in a way. The one who hated all the attention, who wanted to play Pac-Man and listen to music and all of that, and then the other one, the famous one, who couldn’t stop himself going to see the furore his very presence caused. Did he care that three girls got hurt? I mean, he said he did. But what’s three girls in a crowd of several hundred? You start to think of them as numbers rather than people.
Pea: I didn’t know AJ well, of course, but it was like he was on this path to self-destruction. It was too much, I suppose. All of it. The fame, the money, the isolation. He loved and hated it. Any dream come true is a nightmare when looked at from a different angle, right?
Maggie: It was Zak who came to tell me what had happened. I went straight to AJ and told him to stay away from the gates, from the crowd. Injured young girls were not a good look. I had flowers sent to the hospital for them, signed the cards from AJ. The showers still hadn’t arrived so we had another morning of all going in and out of the Hunters’ place. What with that and the issue with staff and the girls being hurt, it felt like everything was going wrong. But I was convinced it would get better when the tour started. The lead-up was always weird.
Pea: It was that same day, in the afternoon. We were all just hanging out again, and Zak and Alex wanted to go on Canyon for a third time. AJ and I stood back and watched them. It was strange to see the almost empty carriage going round, just the front two seats occupied. I was looking at Zak, thinking about being alone with him, when AJ spoke. He said, ‘You know you’re just his British girl, right?’ I went cold. Couldn’t look at him. I asked what he was talking about. ‘When we get back home, you’ll be this anecdote he brings out. “Yeah, I had a thing with this British girl.” He won’t even use your name.’ I was shocked. It was so wilfully cruel. And I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? The others were bounding over to us at that point and Zak put his arms around me and kissed my forehead and I wanted to turn to AJ and say, ‘See? See?’ But what did it prove, really? I spent the rest of that afternoon feeling sad, but in the evening, as I turned it over and over, the sadness turned to anger. How dare he?
Zak: I didn’t know anything about what AJ had said to Pea until much later. Until after he was gone. So I never got to ask him. I have no idea why he did it. Just for something to do, would be my guess. It was all one big game to him, and he’d test out what might happen if he pushed this button, or that one. It was just like going to the gates to see the screaming fans. He wanted to see what would happen. When Pea eventually told me about that exchange, I was furious with him. And being furious with your dead brother is the worst.
Danny: Just before we leave them for today, let’s have one last word from Sebastian. You’re curious about that visit from AJ, right? I certainly was.
