Sebastian: I was too late. She’d sent him away. I stood in the kitchen with my back to her, my knuckles digging into the worktop. I asked her if she knew he was living on the street. I heard footsteps and turned to see Pea had walked into the room.
Pea: That was how I found out he was homeless, yeah. Once I knew that, Mum turning him away seemed pretty unforgiveable. How do you go from loving someone to that, so fast?
Cathy: The thing was, it had been a gradual demise, our relationship. I hadn’t loved him for a long time. And if he’d got sober, maybe it would have been different. Maybe I could have helped him get back on his feet. But the way he was drinking, I didn’t want him around any of us. I knew no good would come from that.
Pea: I kept waiting for a letter from Zak. For weeks, months even, I believed he would write. And then one day, I came home from school – I was repeating my GCSE year – and for the first time, checking the post wasn’t the first thing I did. I got an apple and a cup of tea instead, and that’s when I knew I’d stopped hoping for it. There was this boy in the sixth form at school who’d moved from a different school and didn’t know anything about my involvement with AJ Silver. His name was Thomas. He made it clear that he liked me, and we went on a few dates and sort of fell into a relationship that lasted three years. It was nice, it really was, but it was nothing like it had been with Zak.
John: I was on the street for two years, on and off. Sometimes I slept on friends’ sofas, but it’s amazing how fast friends disappear when you really need them. I didn’t keep in touch with Sebastian or Pea. It was clear that Cathy wanted me out of their lives and I was low enough to believe she was right. And then one day, this young guy crouched down in front of me whereI was sitting in a doorway, a blanket around me for warmth, and he asked me if I wanted some real help to get out of this situation. I thought he was going to start talking about God, but he just handed me a leaflet and it was for a treatment centre for addicts. I threw it away, but it planted a seed. Two months later, I woke up one morning in a pool of my own piss and I decided enough was enough. And I remembered the name of the treatment centre. I waited for someone to come along who looked kind. It took more than half an hour, but then there was a woman, about my age, and I asked her if she would do me a favour. She looked a bit shellshocked, a bit frightened, but I assured her it wasn’t anything improper. I asked her to look this place up on her phone and tell me where it was. Turned out, it was three streets away from the doorway I’d been sleeping in. I went there right then and marched in, said I wanted some help. They had these sponsored places, and they gave one to me. In there, no one knew who I was or how far I’d fallen. No one really cared. It was all about battling your own demons, and I did a good job of that, I think. It wasn’t a straight line to sobriety but I’ve been sober now for over twenty years. Every day, I wake up and think,I won’t drink today, and that’s as much pressure as I put on myself.
Danny: Wow.
Cathy: A year or so after it all happened, Sebastian came to me and said he didn’t want me running myself into the ground. I was doing two jobs, like I said, and he was doing graphic design. He was bringing in a bit of money, and he contributed what he could, but that day he said he could give me money to cover the rent for the next two years, but I wasn’t allowed to ask any questions about where it had come from. Well, as a mother, you can’t just accept something like that, can you? I thought hemust have got himself mixed up with drugs or something. But he assured me it was nothing like that. I said I didn’t want the money if I didn’t know where it had come from, in case it was dirty, and he just laughed and walked out of the room. In the early hours of the next morning, I woke up, my heart pounding. I thought,He’s sold a story to the press. I went to his room and woke him up, there and then. Asked him if he’d been talking to journalists about Wildworld and AJ Silver. But he said no, it wasn’t that. He kept offering me that money week in and week out, and eventually I took it. I gave up the bar job but stayed at the care home. I’d become attached to some of the residents there. I felt like I was doing some good, making people’s lives a little bit better. Whereas at the bar I was just helping them to get into a state like the one John was in.
Pea: Mum never told me about Sebastian’s money. Sebastian didn’t either. But I knew about it somehow. How he’d got it was a total mystery to me. I didn’t think he could possibly be earning enough to have that sort of money. But sometimes you just accept something even though you know there must be something a bit fishy about it, don’t you? Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.
John: Once I’d got sober, in 2005, I went to the flat again. I had no idea if they even still lived there, but Cathy opened the door. She looked different, older. I suppose I did too. It was as if her edges had been sanded, her colour dulled. She always wore these crazy outfits in bright colours and she didn’t care what anyone thought, but that day she was wearing a pair of jeans and a pale green jumper. She’d grown her hair longer, and she’d got new glasses. It’s a strange thing, to try to find familiarity in a face that you once knew as well as your own. She put a hand to her mouth and said my name, like I was a ghost come back to haunt her orsomething. I asked if I could come in, and she stepped aside to let me. We had a coffee together, talked things through. I said I was sorry about the way things had ended, about the person I’d been. Part of my recovery was about making up for the things I’d done wrong. I told her I had ninety days of sobriety, and there were tears in her eyes when she said she was proud of me.
When I got up to go, there was a sound in the hallway, and Pea appeared. My little girl, now a woman. She gave me a hug and said I was looking well, and I couldn’t believe that we’d got to this point when we’d once been a family. When I was drinking, I pushed all thoughts of them out because I couldn’t bear it, but since I’d been sober, they’d been crowding in. I asked after Sebastian, and Cathy said he was doing well, working as a graphic designer. That he was engaged, getting married the following year. They asked me to come back the next night, for dinner. I said maybe Sebastian could make me that spaghetti Bolognese he’d promised me years before. No one laughed. It wasn’t funny, I suppose.
Sebastian: I have to admit, it was good to see Dad again, to see him well. It took a bit of getting used to, the four of us in the same room and interacting again. It was like we’d forgotten what our roles were, and we kept getting our lines wrong, but he came once a week and we settled into it. I even thought I saw a spark there between him and Mum on occasion, and allowed myself to entertain a fantasy in which they found their way back to one another. I introduced him to Gemma, my fiancée, who I’d met through work. We invited him to the wedding. It felt like things were coming good. We never mentioned the name AJ Silver. I wondered whether, without Wildworld to fall out over, we could have a more normal father-son relationship.
Danny: So that’s the Hunters, and I don’t know about you but I found John’s story quite moving. We don’t always see the ripple effects of big events, just the people at the very centre. Are you ready to hear about Alex? You’ll know some of his story, of course.
Alex: AJ’s death threw me off course in a major way. Think about it. I was sixteen, thought I was in love with this major celebrity, no one knew we were sleeping with each other, and then he died. At my best friend’s theme park. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And Pea was caught up in everything that was going on with her family. We didn’t have a big argument or anything. We just drifted. Within six months, we rarely spoke and I was using any drug I could get my hands on. I remember how bewildered my mum was about it all. She had no idea what was going on. And I couldn’t tell her.
It’s interesting to hear that John ended up in rehab. We could have been there together, except it sounds like it took me a lot longer than him to get there. My twenties are a blur. Everything I can remember is bad. I did a lot of mistaking sex for love. I know, such a bloody cliché. But I did eventually get it together and I’ve been clean for over six years and I’m so fucking proud of that.
The TV work came as a surprise. I met this guy in rehab and for two months I didn’t know what he did for a living. I’d done a bit of everything up to that point – always just trying to earn enough to feed my various habits. On the day he was leaving, he told me he ran a big TV company and he thought I’d make a great presenter if I could stay on the straight and narrow. He told me to look him up when I got out. He even posted me his business card once he was home. It wasn’t a career I’d ever considered, but it gives me something I’m pretty ashamed of needing. It makes me feel adored, in a way. And it’s healthier than throwing back pills and sleeping around.
Danny: I don’t know about you but I can’t imagine my Saturday evenings without Alex Robb. But let’s go now to the other side of the Atlantic and find out what happened next for AJ’s nearest and dearest.
Zak: What do you do when your brother is the centre of the family, the centre of many people’s worlds, and he’s suddenly not around any more? Well, if you’re me, you set your life on fire. I had a college place waiting for me and I didn’t show up. Didn’t let them know or anything. I left home because I couldn’t bear to be around Mum’s sadness. It felt like we would both drown in it if I stayed. I went to my dad’s for a while, wasted a few weeks doing nothing. One day, he came into my room at eight in the morning and told me I was going to work with him. I pulled the duvet over my head, but he just turned the light on and opened the blinds. Dad was a labourer on a building site, and he said they were a man down and he’d volunteered me. He had to practically drag me out of bed, but I went.
And it’s going to sound trite, but I think he saved me, that day. I’d been festering in that room, rarely showering, eating crap, and my thoughts had been taking darker and darker turns. If I’d been left to my own devices, I truly believe I might not be here now. An honest day’s work was exactly what I needed, it turned out. The autumn sun on my face, an ache in my muscles from lifting heavy things and climbing up and down ladders. At the end of the day, Dad took me to meet the foreman and he said the job was mine if I wanted it. There would be a two-week trial and then I’d be on the team, as long as I didn’t do anything stupid. I said thank you, that I’d see him the next day. That evening, Dad said he was grilling steaks, and for the first time since I’d arrived, I sat with him at the table. We talked about AJ. I’d avoided talking about him for so long, and it wasn’t helping. I thought it was time to try a different way.
Dad asked me to tell him all about the trip. Not the accident, not the way it ended, but his last weeks. I kept stopping and starting. Because there was so much that I didn’t think he’d want to hear, about AJ playing different girls off against each other and acting like an entitled little shit. I laughed, thinking about him that way. He’d become a sort of martyr. Everyone who dies young does, don’t they? But he’d been far from perfect, and I knew that better than anyone. He’d behaved quite badly on that trip, and I wasn’t sure what I could take from it to give to our dad.
In the end, I told him about Pea. About falling in love. He asked whether I was going to get in touch, and I said I didn’t know. I’d thought about calling or writing to Pea every day since I’d seen her in that hotel corridor. What had happened hadn’t changed the way I felt about her, not in the least. But now we were pitted against one another, in a way, our families at war. One of ours lost and one of hers potentially responsible. I didn’t see how we could get through that, get past it. I told Dad I was going to have an early night ready for work the next day. And he smiled and said, ‘That’s my boy.’
Ken: I have to say, right back when AJ started getting into singing and dancing and Grace was encouraging him and driving him all over the place for competitions, I had this feeling it would end badly. We weren’t the sort of family who knows how to handle fame. I was a labourer and Grace was a receptionist at a dental surgery. And then suddenly people were telling us that AJ could go all the way to the top, that he was a star. And they were right, weren’t they? But it didn’t sit right with me. When the money started flooding in, I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I kept saying to Grace that nothing comes for free and she would say it wasn’t coming for free, that he was working hard for it. He was putting in the hours, I’ll give him that, butwe’re talking about crazy sums of money. More money than any seventeen-year-old should have at his disposal.
If you look at stars who’ve made it big, especially young ones, their personal lives are almost always a mess. Failed relationships, drugs, arrests, alcohol abuse, you name it. I didn’t want that for AJ. I wanted him to have a normal life. But Grace had stars in her eyes.
Anyway, you know what happened, how it all came crashing down. When I saw Grace at the funeral, for the first time in more than a year, there was a part of me that wanted to say I told you so. But it would have been cruel. We’d both wanted the best for him, we just hadn’t been able to see eye to eye on what that was. So when Zak turned up shortly after, I was pleased to see him, though I did wonder how Grace was getting on without either of her sons. I let Zak wallow for a while, because we were all grieving, weren’t we? And he was just a kid, really. Just trying to work out what life’s all about. I gave him ten weeks. And then I got him up and out of bed and on the building site, where I could keep an eye on him.
Zak: I worked with Dad for a year. It went by so fast. I’d intended to take stock after a couple of months, but before I knew it, fall was there again. I sat Dad down over dinner. This time I grilled the steaks. We were learning how to live without him. I guess Dad had already learned it, when we’d moved away from him. But now it was different, now it was permanent. I said I was going to go to college. They’d chased me for a while the year before, and when I’d explained the situation, and they’d made the connection with AJ, they’d offered to defer my place. I’d been weighing it up for months, while I was learning to lay bricks and mixing cement and carrying window frames.
Ken: Grace and I had saved up over the years in case they wanted to go to college. I told him there was money for him, and I saw his eyes fill with tears.
Zak: Money had kind of lost its meaning in those final years with AJ. When you can buy anything you want, you sort of lose interest after a while. Working with Dad had brought me back to reality, taught me about an honest day’s work. Part of my decision-making process about going to college had been about the debt I’d have to get myself into, but now here was Dad, telling me he’d put some money aside for exactly this purpose. But I guess you’re probably wondering what had happened to AJ’s money.
Danny: I’m so glad he brought this up without me having to ask.
Zak: He’d had a will drawn up with Lou. The fact that he’d done it made me think a lot about whether he was really considering suicide. Anyway, he asked for a fair chunk of money to go to Mom and Dad and me and the rest to go to this company him and Lou had set up for charitable causes. I was pretty surprised when I heard that, I can tell you. But it reminded me that he wasn’t a bad person, not really, not deep down. And the money he’d left for me, I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to touch it. At least not at that point. I think Dad understood that without me having to tell him. I wanted to make my own way in the world. It was something I’d been grappling with in the last few weeks of his life and that crystallised for me in the months after his death. I didn’t want to be carried. I swore to Dad that any money of his I used for college, I would pay back. And I did.
I went to college to study Journalism. I worked with Dad in the holidays, and again when I graduated for a while, sending out résumés for anything remotely writing-related. After a littleless than a year, I got a job at the local newspaper I’d grown up stuffing through people’s letterboxes. It felt like a nice cycle. Long days, some shitty tasks, but I learned my trade there over the next few years. I worked my way up from coffee boy to respected reporter. Nobody at work knew I was AJ Silver’s brother. I had a different name, because Silver was a stage name, and our likeness wasn’t enough for people to make the connection, especially since fashions and haircuts had changed along the way. So when that news story broke in 2009, nobody pussyfooted around me. They didn’t know they had to.
Ken: I think that news story, all those years down the line, wasn’t helpful to anyone. It dragged it all back up again. And I felt for Zak. He’d really fought to make a life for himself after such a blow. He was working hard, had just bought his own apartment, and he had a girlfriend who he seemed like he was getting serious about. I remember thinking, no more than a week before it broke, that despite what had happened to AJ, I was blessed to have a son who was doing so well for himself.
