Chapter 7 #3
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 or something.
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, but we’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.