Zak: She asked me the same question, and I didn’t want to lie, so I told her about Bonnie. That we’d been together for almost a year but we didn’t live together. She kept looking at me, waiting for more, so I said, ‘No kids.’ We’d talked about kids, that summer, me and Pea. We hadn’t questioned whether we might want them. It was like it was a given. Pea had said she wanted three, all close together in age. That she wanted a chaotic, messy family home. I’d said that three sounded good. And here we were, no longer those innocent kids, and neither of us had had a family. I wanted to ask her why she hadn’t. I wanted to tell her why I hadn’t – because I’d never met anyone who fit together with me the way she did.
Pea: It was tough to hear that he was with someone, I won’t lie. Which is ridiculous. I still thought about him a lot but that morning if you’d told me I would be sitting here with him, Iwould have laughed. I had no claim on him. He was my first love. Hardly anyone gets to keep that first love forever, do they?
Zak: Long after the coffee she’d made me had gone cold, I asked her about her family. I’d gathered that her parents were no longer together, but I was shocked when she said they’d split up immediately after the accident. She told me about John’s battles with alcohol, about his homelessness. It was a lot to take in. I’d thought so much about her, but I hadn’t given much thought to the rest of them. It was good to hear that they’d sort of found a way back to each other, in the past few years. She said even Sebastian and her dad were on fairly good terms.
And then finally, we got onto the story. Did she know where it had come from? She said straight away that she thought Nicole Waddington was behind it. That name brought back a host of memories. That night of the Manchester show, the last show, that thrown milkshake. That afternoon by the river when AJ had taken her off into the long grass and I’d thought things with Pea were falling apart. It fitted, that she would have done something like this. Probably sleeping with my brother was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in her life, and now she was bored and restless and trying to bring it back, in a way. I asked Pea if she knew where I could find her, and miraculously, she did. She said she worked in a fish and chip shop in West Wilding. That I’d probably find her there the next day, if I went to look. I realised then that I didn’t know about her, about Pea. What she did. So I asked her, and she looked down and I saw it was a mistake, that she was sad or somehow ashamed of how her life had turned out, and I wished I could unask the question.
Pea: I didn’t want to say that I ran a dog shelter. I don’t know why. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t judge me for it. It’s just, we’d shared our dreams when we were teenagers.His had been to become a journalist, and he’d done it. Mine had been to run Wildworld.
Zak: The dog shelter thing seemed perfect to me. Once she said it, I couldn’t imagine her doing anything else. Other than being at Wildworld, of course. I asked her what had happened to it, hoping it wasn’t too sore a subject.
Pea: I told him it was still there, that by some miracle the land hadn’t been bought by developers. He looked pretty shocked. Over the years, it had nearly been sold a couple of times but the deal had never quite come off. It was the location – not close enough to the town centre. And perhaps it was down to what had happened there, too. Some of the rides had been sold off to pay Dad’s debts, but a lot of them hadn’t. The 360 hadn’t. It was like it was tainted by what had happened. I said I could take him there if he wanted, and he nodded eagerly, and I wondered how much of it was about the story and how much was about going back in time. He asked when I finished work the next day, and we arranged it – I’d pick him up shortly after five in the afternoon, and we’d drive to Wildworld. I’d driven past it plenty of times but I hadn’t stopped for many years. I wasn’t anxious about it. It felt right, to go there with Zak.
Zak: The next morning, I woke up with a smile on my face. I looked up the fish and chip shop where Pea had said Nicole worked and found that it wasn’t open until lunchtime, so I spent the morning drinking coffee and dealing with work emails on my laptop in the hotel room. At twelve, I walked over there. It was less than five minutes from where I was staying. I recognised her immediately. She was heavier, her dark hair a little greasy and scraped back into a ponytail. She asked what I wanted without looking up, but when she heard my accent, she froze. I asked if she had five minutes to talk to me, and she looked at the guystanding beside her who was obviously her boss. He looked from her to me and back again, then eventually said, ‘Five minutes. No more.’
We went outside, but standing in front of the shop felt weird so she suggested we start walking. I got it. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone when you’re walking beside them or next to them in a car. I asked her straight out if the story had come from her, and she crumbled. Said she’d needed the money, that she was a single mum.
I asked if there was any truth to it, the story about John threatening to kill AJ. She was quiet. I reckoned we were probably two minutes into our five. I didn’t want to push her, but I also didn’t want to go back to my boss and say I had nothing. In the end, she spoke just as I was about to prod her.
‘Look, you don’t know what it’s like for me, living here. Just me and my son and a crappy job and bills that there’s never quite enough money to cover. Things were really hard last month. And my friend Fay, remember her? She said that she thought the press would still lap up any story I went to them with about AJ Silver. We laugh about it sometimes, about how that was the peak and everything since has been downhill. Why didn’t I cash it in, she asked? So I found a phone number forThe Scoop, called and asked who I could speak to if I had a story. It was so easy; they were so hungry for it. It’s mad, isn’t it, after all these years? No one gives a shit about me, despite me still living and breathing, but they’re all dying for a new piece of gossip about him.’
She sounded so bitter. And that was it, I guessed. I’d flown over to chase a story that didn’t exist. A story that had been fabricated by this woman whose life hadn’t gone the way she planned, and who was holding on for dear life to the fact that, as a teenager, she’d slept with a celebrity. I wanted to be angryabout it, but it was more sad than anything. And, if I hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have seen Pea.
We walked back to the shop in quiet contemplation. At the door, she asked whether I lived here in England, and I realised that I hadn’t even told her I was there in my capacity as a reporter. That she didn’t know I was. She just thought I was there as his brother. I said no, that I lived in Atlanta. It meant nothing to her. I added that it was in Georgia, and she nodded. We were from different worlds. We always had been, but it had never been so stark as it was then. I thanked her for her time. As I was walking away, she called after me. ‘How long are you going to be around?’ It was a good question, one I didn’t know the answer to. I said probably a few more days. And then she said, ‘I might see you around.’
I went back to my hotel room and called my boss, told him the story was dead. That there was nothing in it. He was frustrated but not angry. It went like that, sometimes. He told me to get a flight back the next day, if I could. I thought about going back, about going into my office and having dinner with Bonnie, and it just felt like a different life. I’d been away for two days, and I felt sure that I didn’t fit there any more. But I booked a return flight all the same. I had about twenty hours of my visit left.
Pea picked me up as promised and we drove the mile or so to Wildworld. As she pulled into the car park, there was so much stuff coming back to me and I didn’t know what to do with the emotions. It looked shabby, which wasn’t surprising given that it had been abandoned for so long, but I wondered whether it had ever been the way I’d remembered it. Shiny and special. I couldn’t ask Pea. We stood side by side in front of the gates, her old house to our left. We didn’t say anything for the longest time.
Pea: It was some weird shit, standing there with Zak after all that time had passed. It was almost too painful to look at thehouse, so I focused on the turnstiles and what I knew was beyond them. Then, without even knowing I was going to do it, I turned to Zak and asked if he remembered that smaller gate we’d gone through that day AJ had wanted an adventure, and found one with Nicole. He followed me there and we just pushed the gate open. It was kind of hidden away so I guess no one had ever thought to lock it. And just like that, we were back inside. I felt like Alex should be with us, but I hadn’t seen or heard from him for a long time. It was deathly quiet. We just made our way around the five cities, saying very little, avoiding the 360 by silent mutual consent.
Zak: It was like being in a dream. It was like being young again. We couldn’t go on any of the rides, of course, but just being there was almost magical. And at the same time, it was where we’d lost AJ, so it was as painful as it was nostalgic. When we looped back around to the gate where we’d come in, I told her I was flying back the next day. I didn’t say home. I didn’t say I was going home. She nodded, said nothing.
Pea: It wasn’t until we were back in the car that he said, ‘I could come back.’ I didn’t know what he meant by it. Did he mean he could visit again, so we could rake over old ground? Or was he hinting at something more, something bigger? It had knocked me off my feet, seeing him. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get back to normal.
Zak: It was hard to know what she felt, and I didn’t want to push anything, so when I got out of the car at the hotel, I just thanked her. I meant for everything. I said she was right about the story coming from Nicole. That there was no substance to it. I asked her to tell her dad it was over, that I didn’t think anyone would be coming to hassle him again. And she thanked me. We left it like that.
Danny: This should be the end of this episode, the end of the series. I started to trawl through all the interviews with a view to putting some final words in from everyone involved, but then, as I was finishing off the edits, something struck me. It was about those secret chats AJ and Sebastian and sometimes Lou had in the Hunters’ kitchen, one of which Pea walked in on. There had to be something more to them, didn’t there? I’d heard about them from Sebastian, but Lou didn’t want to be involved in the podcast. However, I emailed him one more time, just on the off-chance that he’d let something slip.
Lou replied within twenty-four hours, and his reply was three words long.Talk to Sebastian. So I gave Sebastian a call, told him I’d been talking to Lou. And he went really quiet, and then he sighed, and he came out with the absolute last thing I would have expected him to say.
Sebastian: It’s hard to know how to say this, after all this time. But AJ Silver didn’t die on that rollercoaster. I know because I helped him stage it. And as far as I know, he’s still alive.
Danny: How’s that for a bombshell? There’s only one thing for it. Bonus episode, out next week. Thanks for listening today.
SeanySean
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? #WhatHappenedThatSummer
LisaintheClouds
No way. It’s got to be a ploy to get people listening. #WhatHappenedThatSummer
OntheCasey
I mean, if it is, it’s going to work! #WhatHappenedThatSummer
Mark48Edmunds
