John: We had a couple of pretty great rollercoasters, but we didn’t have one that fully inverted and I’d known for a while that we were going to have to get one if we wanted business to pick up. Alton Towers had had the Corkscrew for more than a decade and had fairly recently added the Thunder Looper, and there was talk in the industry of Thorpe Park coming up with something new and big. We’d never been able to compete with those parks, not really, but I was always keen to keep the distance between us as small as possible. I’d looked into the cost of getting a new, big rollercoaster designed and built, and we just couldn’t afford it. Simple as that. I took them to Canyon. It was a few years old but it was a good rollercoaster.
Maggie: He asked whether we wanted a ride, but he was looking at Zak. I think I surprised him when I said I would. There were a handful of people in the queue and he led us to the front and ushered us into a carriage.
Pea: Dad went in after Maggie, which left me to sit next to Zak. I knew Mum wouldn’t come on. She never went on the rides. I couldn’t look at Zak. I felt like my face would catch on fire if Idid. I’d been riding Canyon since the day we got it and I knew that near the end of the circuit, we’d be tipped on our sides and I would be pressed against his body for a second or two. I was dreading it and I couldn’t wait.
Zak: Canyon was a pretty decent ride. It didn’t loop but I knew AJ would like it. It was fast and smooth. Better than I expected.
Pea: It honestly felt like time stopped when we were coming up to that last bit of the ride. I held the bar tight and tried to stop myself from sliding against Zak, but it didn’t work, of course. I could feel the heat of his body through our T-shirts.
Maggie: The minute the ride finished, John turned to me and asked what I thought. I said it was pretty good. But I was thinking if this was the best they had, then maybe we were done here.
Danny: This, from Maggie, is so telling. It could all so easily not have happened, or happened completely differently.
John: I wanted to keep the momentum going, so I took them straight from Canyon to the Wonder Wheel. You could see the whole park from the top, and whenever I went on there, I couldn’t help but be impressed, looking down at all the people and the rides. This time, the four of us were in a carriage together. I remember my knees kept knocking against Zak’s. We shouldn’t have sat opposite each other. I don’t think he said anything the whole time we were on there, but I kept Maggie chatting with questions about whether they were planning to see anything else while they were over in the UK. I wanted to know whether they had any other parks lined up to visit, and if so, who our competition was, but she kept her answers pretty vague.Said they only had a couple of nights and they’d see how well they got on today before deciding how to spend tomorrow.
Pea: I’d always had this dream of being kissed on the Wonder Wheel. I’d been thinking about it for years, since Alex had asked me about my ideal first kiss. Neither of us had kissed anyone at that point, which is funny to think of now, given how well known Alex is. We were misfits, weren’t we? He rarely met anyone else who was gay, and I wasn’t on anyone’s radar. That ride on the Wonder Wheel with Zak, Maggie and Dad, I closed my eyes and tried to shut out Dad’s ramblings, tried to imagine it was just me and Zak. It was a tight fit, four of us in one carriage, so my leg was up against his. It felt like my heart was beating a little too fast, and a little irregularly, and I thought everyone would know. But if they did, no one said anything.
Zak: It’s so hard to remember when I first noticed that Pea was cute. But I do know that when we were on that wheel, I made eye contact with her for a second, and she smiled, kind of shy, and I just felt all the irritation I had inside me falling away. Like she released me from it or something.
Danny: So glad Zak’s on the same page, or at least getting there.
Maggie: It was useful to get an overview of the whole site. It was a bit bigger than I’d thought. I tried to imagine what AJ would think, but it’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of a sixteen-year-old boy when you’re a thirty-eight-year-old woman. But that’s where Zak came in. I’d quiz him later, in the hotel.
John: After that, I handed them a map and let them go where they wanted. I asked whether they’d like a guided tour of the whole place or to just explore on their own, and it was clear that they preferred the latter suggestion. So Cathy, Pea and I wentback to the house and waited. Sebastian was up in his room, probably working. He was doing his A levels. When he came down for some lunch, he didn’t ask how it had gone.
Cathy: I remember they were gone for hours. I couldn’t settle to anything. John went back out to oversee things. He’d told all the staff about the visit, of course, and everyone knew to be on their best behaviour. So I was surprised when I heard about the incident on the Spinning Plates.
Pea: The Spinning Plates was like a high-tech roundabout, I suppose. There were three big plates, with space for ten people to sit in a circle on each one. The whole thing rotated and then each individual plate rotated in the opposite direction. It wasn’t one of my favourites.
John: I was furious when I found out what had happened.
Pea: Kyle Lambert had been a couple of years above Sebastian at school and everyone knew who he was. The Lamberts were one of those families – four boys, all a few years apart. His brother Shane was in my year. Kyle had been working at the park for a few months – it was a common post-school or gap year job. He was operating the Spinning Plates when Maggie and Zak arrived, apparently. He must have realised who they were, given Zak’s resemblance to his brother, and Maggie said later that he did a less than flattering rendition of one of AJ’s songs – ‘Baby Let’s Go’, I think – with accompanying dance moves while they were on the ride.
Zak: Yeah, some jumped-up kid was singing ‘Baby Let’s Go’ and dancing. I kept sneaking looks at Maggie and the tension was radiating off her. I knew she’d get him fired.
John: Yes, I fired Kyle Lambert on the spot. And I made an example of him, too, by gathering all the staff who were onsite at closing time and doing it in front of them.
Pea: I knew Dad would fire Kyle over it, and I also knew it would cause me problems at school.
Maggie: John told us he’d fired the kid, and I was impressed by that. I’d started to think this wasn’t our place, but that showed me he was serious.
Cathy: They finally returned to the house in the middle of the afternoon.
Maggie: My jetlag was catching up with me. I was desperate to lock myself in my room and have a bubble bath with a large glass of red. Zak didn’t seem to be showing any signs of being tired, though, and I thought he’d probably want to go somewhere to eat. That’s why I suggested Pea show him around.
Pea: There we were, all in the kitchen, which was too small for that many people, and Maggie said why didn’t Zak and I go out for an early dinner. I didn’t know what to say.
Zak: Yeah, it was Maggie’s suggestion. I don’t think it was a matchmaking thing, I think she was just tired and wanted to spend the evening by herself. I wanted a burger and I didn’t have any objections to getting one with this pretty girl, so I shrugged and said it was fine by me, and we ended up agreeing to meet up at a diner near our hotel.
Danny: Clearly a matchmaking thing, I’d say.
Cathy: Pea didn’t know what to do with herself after they’d gone. She’d never been out with a boy, other than Alex. I was abit unsure about it, with him being three years older. I dragged John into the kitchen, but he said she was nearly sixteen and I had to stop being overprotective. Looking back, I’m pretty sure he just didn’t want anything to get in the way of the deal being done.
Pea: I spent ages getting ready, choosing what to wear. Then Alex called to ask how it had all gone and I took the upstairs phone into my bedroom and lay on my back on the bed, filling him in.
Alex: I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me. She sounded all distracted, and then she said she had to go and she’d tell me the rest at school. I asked her to wait, and she went quiet. Then I asked what the brother looked like and she did this sort of giggle that I’d never heard from her before. And I thought, ‘Ah, so that’s it. Pea fancies the brother.’ I didn’t think anything would actually come of it.
Pea: You have to understand, I’d never been on a date. Never had a coffee, let alone a dinner, with a boy other than Alex. The place we’d arranged to meet was somewhere I’d been with my parents and Sebastian once or twice, and once for Alex’s birthday. As I approached it, I could see him standing outside, smoking a cigarette. He was leaning back against the building, wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing earlier that day. Baggy jeans, layered T-shirts with a faded band logo on. I couldn’t quite make it out. Had I gone to too much effort, and would he know? I was wearing a short denim skirt and a fitted Blur T-shirt with Converse. He had Converse on too. When he saw me, he threw his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it, gave me a lazy sort of smile. It took all the concentration I could muster to keep putting one foot in front of the other and give him a smile.
