Pea: We ended up saying we’d put it to one side and come back to it another time, when things had calmed a bit. And on that walk home, it almost felt normal between us. It felt as close to normal as it had since AJ had arrived. We got back to the park and Alex said he thought he’d stay for an hour or two, like he always did, and we went off in search of Zak and AJ. I did ask if he’d prefer for it to be just the two of us that afternoon. I said I could catch up with Zak later and we could just stick together for the afternoon, but he said no, it was fine.
Danny: It feels a bit like Pea and Alex’s friendship is falling apart in front of our eyes, doesn’t it? They’re not in touch now, by the way. Haven’t been for years.
Alex: AJ and Zak weren’t on their bus and they weren’t in Adventure City, which were our first two ports of call. We had to go through Animal City to get to Water City, but we weren’t expecting to find them there. Just as we went past the hut where all the exotic animals were kept, they came out of the door.
Zak: AJ had seemed like he needed a change of scene, and it was the one thing he couldn’t really have, so I had taken him to Animal City, because we rarely spent time there. We’d looked at the rabbits and guinea pigs, the goats and the sheep, and then we went to look at the snakes and tarantulas and lizards. AJ liked animals. At home, we had a couple of dogs, and they always calmed him. This guy who worked there came into the building and asked if we wanted to handle any of the animals. AJ looked at me and shrugged, so next thing we knew we both had snakes around our necks. It was unexpected, and it seemed to do the trick, for AJ. When we walked out of there, he was ina much better mood. And then we saw Pea and Alex, and I gave Pea a hug and kissed her, and I sensed there was something a bit uncomfortable between AJ and Alex, but I didn’t think much of it.
Alex: I looked at AJ and he looked at me. Pea and Zak were hugging and it didn’t go on for that long, but it just served as a reminder of the healthy, functional relationship they had and the secretive shitshow that we had in comparison. At least Nicole wasn’t there. That was something to be thankful for. Anyway, we set out with no real destination in mind, wandering. I guess all of us thought that eventually someone would find a ride they wanted to go on. At one point, Zak and Pea offered to get us all a cup of tea, and AJ and I sat down at a picnic table to wait for them to come back. Something hung in the air between us. I just looked at him, refusing to make things easier by looking down at the ground or at the table. There was a piece of splintered wood and he picked at it with his fingernail. And when he did start speaking, it was as if everything inside his brain was tumbling out. Like he’d removed a cork and then he couldn’t get it back in again.
‘Look, I know this isn’t what you want. All this secretive shit.’ I didn’t answer. He didn’t know what I wanted, because he’d never asked. He’d just taken what suited him, at his convenience, and left me to watch him being with someone else in public. ‘But I can’t offer you any more than that right now. Do you know what the press would do to me if they found out I was with a guy?’ I shrugged. I mean, I knew there had been speculation in the past, and I knew there was an intense interest in who he was seeing, no matter who it was. There was so much I wanted to ask him, like whether he was gay and the thing with Nicole was just a front, or whether he was bi. Whether I meantanything to him. Whether we’d be together for real, if things were different.
‘Fine, I get it. You don’t want to talk. You’re pissed. But this is my life, Alex.’ Inside, I screamed,And this is mine. ‘It’s not going to happen again. I’m not gay. It was nothing. Okay?’ As if he needed my agreement to call it off. I gave a curt nod, and I was biting back tears when Pea and Zak returned, each of them holding two steaming cups of tea. And they had Sebastian in tow, which was unusual, but I was too busy processing what had just happened to think anything of it.
AJ changed again, then. Started talking about getting the whole crew out, doing the biggest rides. Sebastian told them that there’d always been this thing, this challenge. None of us remembered how it had started. You were supposed to eat a giant hotdog and a cheeseburger from the food hall and then go straight on the Gravity Spin, the Twister and the Canyon, in that order. If you could do it without throwing up, you were some kind of hero. AJ grinned. ‘What about the 360?’ he asked. Pea said that that was new so it hadn’t been part of the challenge. AJ said he would do all of it and then the 360, and asked if any of us felt like joining him. I certainly didn’t. I felt fragile, like I was made of glass and I was waiting for someone to drop me. And I knew Pea wouldn’t do it, because she never had in the past. Zak said he’d give it a try and AJ high-fived him, getting up from the bench. He said he was going to go back to the buses and see who else was around and up for the challenge.
Pea: We watched AJ jog off in the direction of the buses. I said to Zak that he didn’t have to do it. I’d never got it, this challenge. I’d seen countless teenage boys being sick in bins while doing it. But some people just have to push at things, don’t they? And AJ was one of them. I knew Zak was just doing it for his brother’ssake. That’s the kind of person he was. He shrugged and said he was game. ‘AJ will totally hurl, though.’ I laughed.
Alex: I felt like I was breaking and I couldn’t tell my best friend about it.
Zak: When AJ came back, he had the whole gang with him. He said he’d found them all sitting around watching repeat episodes ofEastEndersand they were glad of the interruption. We all went to the food hall to get the hotdogs and burgers, leaving Pea and Alex at the picnic table. They said they’d see us back at the starting point. All the rides were in Adventure City, so we could go right from one to the next. I do remember thinking that usually people would have the time spent in the queue between one ride and the next. But what the heck? I wasn’t about to back out. Spirits were high and it was like the AJ of earlier in the day was a distant memory. Maybe I’d taken him too seriously, I thought. He had it easy, and he had it tough, in different ways. I would keep an eye on him and check he was okay.
AJ insisted on us all having mustard and ketchup on our hotdogs, and Sebastian took the order and went to get them. I can’t stand mustard. I thought there was an outside chance that I’d spew before I even got on the first ride. But I went along with it because he seemed so lifted by the idea of this challenge and I didn’t want to be the one to bring him crashing down again. I watched him, surrounded by his team, laughing and joking, and there was no sign of the vulnerable young man I’d seen earlier. No sign at all.
Bree, AJ’s hair and makeup artist, was flirting with him. She had at least five years on him, but I knew they had this on-off thing going on. The thing is, if you hook up with a celebrity, then if nothing else, it makes for a good story. It must have been hard, for AJ, to know who was genuine. I wondered idlywhere it would lead. Whether he’d bring Bree back to the bus later and I’d be asked to make myself disappear for an hour or two. And then we were done with the burgers and hotdogs and it was time to start the challenge. We all headed over to the Gravity Spin. I loved that one. You entered a circular metal cage and stood against the wall, and then it started spinning around, and the force pinned you back against the wall. I asked Pea if she wanted to go on it with us, and she shrugged and said she would. She and I stood next to each other, holding hands. AJ was directly opposite me, Bree next to him. The others were scattered around. The guy who was operating the ride looked pleased to have something to do. He checked our safety straps carefully, and then it started. Pea’s hand squeezed mine as the spinning took hold, and I turned my face to her with some difficulty and smiled. But when I turned back, and looked across at AJ, I felt unmoored. He didn’t look right. I can’t put my finger on it, on what exactly was wrong, but something tugged at me. I felt like calling the whole thing off. And I tried to, when we got off that ride. I went to him and said, ‘Let’s just forget this whole thing.’ He looked at me like I was crazy. He had an arm slung around Bree’s neck and he was leading the way to the Twister. He dismissed me, right off the bat.
Bree: I’m Bree. I was AJ’s hair and makeup artist on that tour. We had a little thing going. It was on and off. Both of us saw other people, but when we weren’t seeing anyone else, sometimes we saw each other. It wasn’t a big deal. But that day, when we were doing the challenge, he put an arm around me as we walked from one ride to another, and it felt different. It felt like he was leaning on me.
Pea: I went on the Gravity Spin but I wasn’t intending to go on anything else. I don’t think Alex was either. But we were allalong for the ride, keen to see who would make it. Sebastian had disappeared again, as quietly as he’d arrived.
Alex: I hung around watching because I was infatuated with AJ. Simple as that. The fact that Pea was infatuated with Zak played into my hands at the time, because we both just wanted to be around them as much as possible.
Zak: Next up was the Twister. You sat in a row and then the whole thing was tilted left and right and up and down before being dropped from a height. I’d been on it a handful of times in the past couple of weeks, and it wasn’t my favourite. It made me feel kind of sick. Pea and Alex said they would wait for us on the nearby picnic benches, and AJ shrugged. He pulled on Bree’s hand. I was next to AJ on that one, with Bree on his other side, and she screamed the whole way through. AJ looked across at me and grinned, just before the final drop, and I had this impulse to reach across and take his hand. I felt like I was losing him. I couldn’t have known what would happen, so I put it down to the fame thing. I’d been gradually losing him for a while, by then. But that day, the feeling was particularly strong. I wanted to go back to the bus and chill out. But I knew AJ would finish what he’d started. When we got off the Twister, Bree threw up in a bin and declared herself out. AJ called her a pussy, and she looked a bit hurt. Lucian, Trish, India and Sammy were still in, plus me and AJ.
Pea led the way to the Canyon, telling us it had been Wildworld’s biggest and twistiest rollercoaster until they’d acquired the 360 especially for our visit. The Canyon was kind of tame but it did lurch you about a lot, and I wasn’t feeling great by that point. I’m sure none of us were. There were a few green faces around. I got into the carriage next to Sammy, gritting my teeth. When we got off, I needed to go to the bathroom reallybad. I said I was out and ran off to find one. I found out later that most of the others ducked out at that point, too. It was just AJ’s bodyguard Lucian, and AJ himself who were left.
Simon: I was still stewing about the scan thing, thinking about my girlfriend on her own and scared, and how I might spend the entire day not doing anything anyway, because we were all subject to the whims of this jumped-up pop star, and I wasthisclose to walking out. And then Sebastian appeared like some kind of knight in shining armour. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know he knew what he was doing, but he assured me that his dad had had a change of heart and sent him to cover me. I didn’t wait around to ask questions. I had less than an hour to get to the hospital at that point. So I just went. Obviously I felt bad when I found out what happened, but it wasn’t my fault. How could it be, when I wasn’t even there? And I got to hear my daughter’s heartbeat for the first time that day. No regrets.
Pea: When we got to the 360 and couldn’t see a member of staff, I said the challenge was off, and Lucian looked sort of relieved but AJ just blew up. He was incandescent with rage. He started waving his arms around and saying that there’d been nothing but problems this whole trip and he was going to go and find my dad and tell him they were leaving, that they’d find somewhere else to stay. Zak tried to calm him down. And then Alex piped up. ‘You know how to operate it, don’t you, Pea?’ Now, I knew how to operate all of the rides; it was the way Dad and I had bonded in the past few years. But I wasn’t as experienced with the 360 as I was with all the others, of course, because we’d only had it for a matter of months. You had to go inside to get on the 360, because half of it was undercover, but the ride operator always waited outside. I went inside the little building and over to the place where the ride operator sits, planning tolook at the buttons and levers. And that’s when I saw Sebastian, sitting there like it was totally normal. He’d disappeared after the first ride of the challenge and I hadn’t known or cared where he’d gone. It was the weirdest thing, seeing him there. He never helped out. I asked what he was doing, and he shrugged and told me he was covering a staff absence. I glanced at the controls. It was straightforward, like I remembered. A button for go, a button for stop. And that override button the engineer had shown us after the accident. I told Sebastian that AJ and Lucian wanted to go on it, and he gave this bored little nod.
Alex: I’d followed Pea inside and to the little booth. It was so simple. I remember thinking a child could do it. But that didn’t matter, because Sebastian was there to operate it.
John: I realised I hadn’t even thanked Sebastian for stepping in, because I’d been so blindsided by him offering. So when I was passing the 360 after doing a bit of maintenance on the Ghost Train, I went to say something to him. AJ and his gang were hanging around near the ride, and when I went inside to the operator’s hut, there were Sebastian, Pea and Alex. I asked what was going on.
Pea: Would I have done it if we hadn’t found anyone who was trained? I’ve asked myself that a lot over the years. I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but I don’t know. I had that teenage invincibility. I was kind of buoyed up. It was that stupid challenge and those wild moods of AJ’s. I told Dad it was nothing.
John: Pea kind of felt like a stranger in those weeks. It felt like she was slipping away from us, what with having a boyfriend and spending all her time with him and the rest of AJ’s gang. The PeaI knew wouldn’t have operated that ride without permission, but I wasn’t sure about this new Pea.
Alex: It was crowded in the booth with the three of us in there and John just outside. But then John called to AJ and Lucian to get on the ride and Sebastian left the booth to strap them in.
John: AJ walked past me and said something so low that only I could hear it. I can hear him saying it now, clear as day. He said, ‘You’re a lame little guy with a lame little theme park. As soon as my brother is done with her, I’m going to fuck your daughter and break her heart. And you’re not going to see another dollar of the money Maggie promised you.’ I just froze. I knew what he was like by then, but that was another level.
Sebastian: They got into different carriages. I guess just because they could. Lucian in the front seat of the first one and AJ in the front seat of the second.
Zak: I was talking to Bree. She was planning to stay on in England after the tour was over and I was asking her about that. I could see what AJ liked about her. She was a cool girl. But yeah, we were chatting. So I didn’t see any of it.
John: Sebastian did the checks, told them to keep their arms and legs inside the carriage. I was thinking that this is what it could be like, me and him, if he wasn’t so stubborn. I was thinking about what AJ had said, too. I was hot with anger.
Pea: No, I didn’t know he said that to Dad. I mean, he was a dick, so I can believe it. But why would he say that about me, when I was seeing his brother? It doesn’t make any sense.
