Pea: I didn’t tell anyone at school when we had the dates for the visit. Didn’t even tell Alex.
Alex: I knew when they were coming, yes. I’m pretty sure Pea told me.
Danny: Now, let’s leave the Hunters there for now and go across the Atlantic to talk to the Campbells.
Grace: We knew AJ was special from the time he was about two years old.
Danny: That’s Grace, AJ’s mum.
Grace: He was always a performer, always lining up his soft toys and dancing or singing to them. It was just in his nature. With Zak, our first son, I had no idea what he’d do as an adult, but with AJ it just seemed really clear from very early on.
Ken: Those early years with Grace and the boys in Atlanta were the happiest of my life.
Danny: And Ken, his dad.
Ken: We’d been together a couple of years when we found out she was pregnant with Zak. It wasn’t planned, butwe were both in our twenties and I had steady work as a builder and we were in love, so I couldn’t have been happier.
Grace: It was hard, adjusting to that first pregnancy. I’d been a dancer as a child and teenager, and I’d never quite made it to the top. By the time I met Ken, I’d stopped training, but I don’t think I’d fully let go of that dream. But with that pregnancy, I was forced to. If I was going to be a mom, I was never going to be a professional dancer. It was a beginning and an ending, for me.
And then Zak was born and he was a hard baby. Or maybe he wasn’t, and it was just that he was my first. But I remember really struggling with the lack of sleep and the fact that he wouldn’t eat sometimes and he had these allergies. There was always something, you know?
Ken: I wanted to have a whole bunch of kids, yeah. Four or five. When Zak turned one, I said I thought we should start trying again and Grace looked at me like I was nuts.
Grace: He had no idea. He was at work all day and I was at home dealing with tantrums and dirty diapers. And it had taken a toll on my body. I’d lost the weight but I was a different shape, somehow. I told him I wasn’t sure about having another.
Ken: I was floored at that. We’d never discussed it but I’d just assumed we’d have at least two or three. I didn’t want Zak to grow up lonely. It was clear that Grace was serious, so I started petitioning for just one more. She said I should give it another six months and then she’d think about it. I marked it on the family calendar.
Grace: I think I told him I wanted to wait another year. But he didn’t.
Ken: Looking back, I think that was maybe the beginning of the end for us. We wanted such different things. So I just kept on working, and at the weekends I’d play with Zak for hours. Take him swimming and chase him around the garden. Sing songs and push buttons and fit puzzle pieces together. He was a joy to be around. And Grace was there but she wasn’t, somehow. She was always in the kitchen fixing lunch or doing a load of washing. It was like she didn’t want to just be with us. It was hard.
Grace: By the time the weekend rolled around, I’d sung the ‘Hokey Pokey’ a hundred times and I needed a break. He had this plastic ball with holes in it and different shapes that you could slot inside through the holes, and I sometimes felt that if I had to pick up those pieces, all wet with slobber, and put them away one more time, I would just start screaming and never stop.
Ken: When six months had passed, I asked her again. I laid it on thick, said I thought Zak needed a little buddy to play with, which was true. And yes, I seduced her. Made dinner, arranged for Zak to be with my parents for the night so we could have some guaranteed privacy.
Grace: You hear about people spending years trying to get pregnant, don’t you? Not us.
Zak: I was two when AJ came along. I don’t remember him being born, obviously. It was like he’d always been in my life.
Danny: That’s AJ’s older brother, Zak.
Grace: AJ was such a different baby. He slept well, he grew at exactly the rate he was supposed to according to all the charts, and he ate everything I put in front of him. Plus Zak adored him. I thought it would be harder with two, and it was in some ways. Getting out of the house was a nightmare, getting anywhere on time was impossible. But the long hours I’d spent with Zak, not knowing how to fill them, that didn’t happen so much the second time. We’d go to playgroups and toddler classes I’d been doing with Zak and AJ would just slot in. And when we were at home, Zak kept AJ entertained because all AJ wanted to do was follow him around the room with his eyes. He started walking before he was one, AJ, because he just wanted to be able to do things with his big brother. And his first word was Zak.
Ken: Grace loosened up a lot that second time. It was a lot of fun, being a family of four. We did trips to the zoo and took them camping. All of that. As Zak got a bit older, I started teaching him practical things, like how to fish and how to swim. Everything my dad had taught me.
Zak: I loved doing stuff with my dad. I think it was just about having his attention, looking back. I think I always had this sense that Mom loved AJ more, and the way I dealt with that was by getting closer to Dad, I guess.
Ken: All the stuff I did with Zak, I thought I’d do with AJ too, when the time came. But he just wasn’t interested in any of it. He was always off in some imaginary game or other, making up songs, putting on shows. He learned how to do magic tricks, loved playing pranks, that sort of thing. Always a performer.
Grace: AJ was born to be a star. He went to this club for kids who were into theatre after school and on Saturdays. They would put on these shows every few months, and AJ was just head and shoulders above everyone else. He had talent to burn.
Zak: I remember going to see AJ’s early shows, yeah. Mom was always super nervous and pretending not to be, and Dad was tapping his legs with his fingers like he was playing an imaginary piano because he hated being still. I loved to see AJ on stage. He was my little brother, and he was awesome.
Ken: I don’t remember when Grace started talking about getting him signed to a talent agency. He was young, I know that much. Maybe first grade? Or second? I wasn’t sure at first, but she was the one who’d taken him to all the classes and spoken to the people who ran them and she said it was essential if he wanted to have a career in show business.
Grace: Yes, I signed him up to an agency young. They wouldn’t have taken him if they couldn’t see the potential, would they?
Zak: Mom was obsessed with AJ’s ‘career’. That’s what she called it, even when he was auditioning for the odd commercial or to model kids’ clothes in catalogues. It was all about him. I wouldn’t say I was jealous, because I never wanted to do that kind of stuff, to be in the spotlight. But I did want my mom to notice me. Doesn’t every kid?
