Chapter 4 #2
Maggie: It was totally my fault. I’d let the thing slip, and when I called the company, they said they’d been trying to get in touch to say there’d been a delay.
They had a digit wrong in my number or something.
I said that we needed those showers and toilets, and the man I was talking to said there was nothing he could do.
I was freaking out about it when Zak arrived.
He was always so level-headed. He was just a kid but he was great at calming me down.
He said maybe we could ask John and Cathy if we could use their facilities for a couple of days.
I said no way. We couldn’t all be traipsing in and out of their house like that.
That’s when Zak looked like he’d had the best idea in the world and said, ‘The park! There are toilets in the park!’ I made a face.
The thought of using portable toilets and showers for six weeks was bad enough without shitting where half the kids in England had left puddles of piss.
Perhaps I could ask Cathy about cleaning one of the toilet blocks myself.
I could bleach it to fuck and then maybe it would be just about acceptable.
But what about showers? I felt grimy from the plane and my hair would be in need of a wash by the next day. I told him to keep thinking.
Zak: I didn’t tell AJ. He could be volatile.
By which I mean, he could be a dick. I didn’t want him going off at Maggie over a mistake anyone could have made.
We went for a walk around the park. There were five zones and we went through them, one by one.
He didn’t say much. He was soaking it all up.
I couldn’t tell whether he’d changed his opinion of the place, and mostly I didn’t care.
I kept looking at my watch. Pea would be back from school in an hour.
Then in fifty minutes. Then in a half hour.
AJ noticed what I was doing, of course. He said, ‘You know you can’t warp time to make your girl get here faster.
’ I didn’t reply. Sometimes, I wanted to ask if he saw what all this madness was doing to him.
He’d been a pretty regular kid before it all kicked off.
And now, a few years in, he was cocky as hell, like he’d bought in to his own hype.
I remember reading once that it’s not good for anyone to be surrounded by people who never say no to them, and I thought about that a lot with AJ.
I mean, who gets to demand a theme park and then walk around it deciding whether or not it’s good enough?
I wanted to change the subject. I asked how rehearsals had been going.
He shrugged, said he was ready. Where did that attitude come from?
I remember him being a little kid at football try-outs, nervous and hopeful.
Sometimes it felt like this big, bad AJ had swallowed up my little brother.
Maggie: I thought about booking a few hotel rooms for those two days, so we could shower there, but there were no hotels that close by and we didn’t want to take the buses in and out.
Plus, we were trying to keep a low profile.
Staying in the park, other than when we were travelling to the concerts, was part of the deal.
When I thought I’d exhausted all other options, I went up to the house and knocked on the door.
Cathy: Maggie came to the door, told us about the problem with the showers. I said they could use the one in the house, no problem. John was pissed off, said afterwards that we should have held out for some extra money for the inconvenience and the hot water, but I told him he was being silly.
John: Cathy liked fixing problems. If someone came to her with an issue, whether it was a playground spat or a long-lost family member, she would wade in there and try to help.
If I’d answered the door to Maggie, I would have held out a bit, seen what she was offering.
These people had money, more money than we could ever dream of, and that’s the bit I think Cathy never fully grasped.
The money they were paying us for the park was a drop in the ocean to them, and a life-changer for us, so why not try for a bit more?
Maggie: Cathy was kind, said we could use the shower in the house.
We agreed some timings, because there were going to be a lot of us trying to use one bathroom.
We wouldn’t go in until they were all up and ready for the day, that kind of thing.
I was embarrassed about having to ask. It was unprofessional, but I didn’t see a way around it.
I knew John wasn’t happy, but I didn’t care all that much.
Danny: So this is pretty mad, isn’t it? The world’s most famous pop star and his entourage all sharing a bathroom with a lower-middle-class English family inside a theme park. You honestly couldn’t make it up.
Zak: When Maggie came to find me and AJ to tell us about the situation, we were lying on the grass near this lake with pedal boats.
It was a gorgeous early summer afternoon, no clouds.
I knew from the way Maggie said AJ’s name that she hadn’t found a solution she was confident about.
She filled us in, about using Pea’s family’s bathroom, and AJ just laughed.
Said she’d better be joking. It was awkward, silent.
Maggie asked what he suggested. He said she should get back to the company that were supplying the facilities and tell them they had an hour to get them to us or the whole deal was off.
It was Maggie’s turn to laugh. She said, ‘But then we’ll just have nothing for the whole time we’re here.
How will that help, exactly?’ She knew how to handle AJ.
Where his weak spots were and when you could get away with teasing versus when you had to leave him the fuck alone.
It was coming up for four so I left them arguing about it.
I wanted to be at the entrance when Pea got home from school.
I’d said in my last letter that I would be.
Pea: Honestly, the day was the length of five, but when it was finally over, I shoved everything in my school bag.
All I cared about was getting home and seeing Zak.
I was curious about AJ, too, of course. Alex caught up with me when I was just going out of the gates.
He asked if he could come with me. I hesitated.
I didn’t want him to, truthfully. I wanted to be alone with Zak.
It had been months since I’d seen him. Surely he could understand that?
I thought my silence probably spoke volumes, but he just laughed and said, ‘Earth to Pea? Are you in there?’ I was never very good at saying what I meant if I knew it would upset someone, so I just said yes, and he fell into step beside me.
Alex: I knew Pea didn’t want me getting in the way of her and Zak, but I’m sorry, this was an opportunity I was not going to miss.
Zak: When I saw her approaching, I broke out in a grin, but then I saw Alex was with her and I was pissed with myself for not anticipating this.
In my head, it had just been the two of us, walking around the park, sneaking off behind some trees to kiss and kiss and kiss.
But this friend of hers was like an extra limb or something. Always around.
Pea: I said hello. I felt so shy. In our letters, we’d talked about all kinds of things.
It was so much easier, when you were writing it down, to say what you really felt.
But now he was in front of me and he looked even better than I remembered, his hair a little longer so that he kept having to brush it out of his eyes, and his skin tanned a golden brown.
He said hi, and then went in for a hug, and it was amazing to feel his hard body against mine, but it was too chaste, like the kind of hug you’d give a grandparent.
I felt it all slipping away. It might sound dramatic, but I’d put so much onto this.
My expectations were sky high. I’d thought I would lose my virginity to this guy, and I’d been counting the days until his arrival, and now he was here and it was all wrong.
Alex stood next to me, silent. I asked how their journey was and Zak said it was good.
Then someone called his name and we all turned to look, and there was AJ Silver, this boy I’d seen on my TV screen and on magazine covers, and now he was walking over to where I was standing, a grimace on his pretty face.
Alex: AJ looked like a fucking angel or something.
He had this aura, this glow. What was it?
Fame? The weight of all that adoration? I watched him lumber over, couldn’t have spoken if I’d wanted to.
And I’m not known for keeping quiet. Zak introduced us and AJ said, ‘So this is the famous Pea?’ and Zak punched him playfully on the arm and I wanted to say, You can’t hit AJ Silver!
You might bruise his perfect skin! But of course I didn’t.
I stood there like a lemon, forgetting what words were and how conversation worked.
Pea: AJ was cute. He was. I mean, I knew what he looked like already, didn’t I?
But he definitely had something that drew you to him.
Or maybe it just seemed like that, because we all knew he was this big star.
I saw Zak noticing me noticing his brother.
The thought of him being jealous made me smile this secret smile, because that would mean him thinking that something might actually happen between me and AJ Silver.
Zak: I hated it when girls I liked met AJ. For obvious reasons.
Pea: I hoped we’d get some time alone later. Alex would have to go home at some point. I would tell Zak that he was the only one I was interested in, and then hopefully he would kiss me, because I felt like if he didn’t, I would go insane.
Zak: AJ started in on the shower situation, and Pea looked confused, so we filled her in.