Chapter 7 #4
Anyway, you know what happened, how it all came crashing down.
When I saw Grace at the funeral, for the first time in more than a year, there was a part of me that wanted to say I told you so.
But it would have been cruel. We’d both wanted the best for him, we just hadn’t been able to see eye to eye on what that was.
So when Zak turned up shortly after, I was pleased to see him, though I did wonder how Grace was getting on without either of her sons.
I let Zak wallow for a while, because we were all grieving, weren’t we?
And he was just a kid, really. Just trying to work out what life’s all about.
I gave him ten weeks. And then I got him up and out of bed and on the building site, where I could keep an eye on him.
Zak: I worked with Dad for a year. It went by so fast. I’d intended to take stock after a couple of months, but before I knew it, fall was there again.
I sat Dad down over dinner. This time I grilled the steaks.
We were learning how to live without him.
I guess Dad had already learned it, when we’d moved away from him.
But now it was different, now it was permanent.
I said I was going to go to college. They’d chased me for a while the year before, and when I’d explained the situation, and they’d made the connection with AJ, they’d offered to defer my place.
I’d been weighing it up for months, while I was learning to lay bricks and mixing cement and carrying window frames.
Ken: Grace and I had saved up over the years in case they wanted to go to college. I told him there was money for him, and I saw his eyes fill with tears.
Zak: Money had kind of lost its meaning in those final years with AJ.
When you can buy anything you want, you sort of lose interest after a while.
Working with Dad had brought me back to reality, taught me about an honest day’s work.
Part of my decision-making process about going to college had been about the debt I’d have to get myself into, but now here was Dad, telling me he’d put some money aside for exactly this purpose.
But I guess you’re probably wondering what had happened to AJ’s money.
Danny: I’m so glad he brought this up without me having to ask.
Zak: He’d had a will drawn up with Lou. The fact that he’d done it made me think a lot about whether he was really considering suicide.
Anyway, he asked for a fair chunk of money to go to Mom and Dad and me and the rest to go to this company him and Lou had set up for charitable causes.
I was pretty surprised when I heard that, I can tell you.
But it reminded me that he wasn’t a bad person, not really, not deep down.
And the money he’d left for me, I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to touch it.
At least not at that point. I think Dad understood that without me having to tell him.
I wanted to make my own way in the world.
It was something I’d been grappling with in the last few weeks of his life and that crystallised for me in the months after his death.
I didn’t want to be carried. I swore to Dad that any money of his I used for college, I would pay back. And I did.
I went to college to study Journalism. I worked with Dad in the holidays, and again when I graduated for a while, sending out résumés for anything remotely writing-related.
After a little less than a year, I got a job at the local newspaper I’d grown up stuffing through people’s letterboxes.
It felt like a nice cycle. Long days, some shitty tasks, but I learned my trade there over the next few years.
I worked my way up from coffee boy to respected reporter.
Nobody at work knew I was AJ Silver’s brother.
I had a different name, because Silver was a stage name, and our likeness wasn’t enough for people to make the connection, especially since fashions and haircuts had changed along the way.
So when that news story broke in 2009, nobody pussyfooted around me. They didn’t know they had to.
Ken: I think that news story, all those years down the line, wasn’t helpful to anyone.
It dragged it all back up again. And I felt for Zak.
He’d really fought to make a life for himself after such a blow.
He was working hard, had just bought his own apartment, and he had a girlfriend who he seemed like he was getting serious about.
I remember thinking, no more than a week before it broke, that despite what had happened to AJ, I was blessed to have a son who was doing so well for himself.
Zak: The story was that someone had come out of the woodwork and claimed they’d heard John Hunter threatening to kill AJ shortly before the accident.
Now, there’d been an investigation at the time and the outcome was that the owners of Wildworld had been negligent.
There was a fault with the rollercoaster and it should have been sorted properly after the first accident.
But this was something different again. Could John have caused the crash deliberately?
I felt sick. I went to the office bathroom and locked myself in a cubicle.
Lowered the lid of the toilet and sat on it for a full five minutes, taking deep breaths.
I still thought about AJ every day, but I had a life now.
A life I’d built, bit by bit. When I went back into the newsroom, my editor called me over.
He said, ‘I want you to go over there, to England. Find out what’s going on with this whole AJ Silver thing.
He was from round here originally, you know? ’
Maggie: I hadn’t talked to anyone connected to AJ Silver for a long time when Zak called me.
I’d seen the news story and it had brought it all back, but I hadn’t given it a huge amount of thought.
But one evening, when I was clearing up the kitchen after dinner, my work cell phone rang and Zak said, ‘It’s me, Zak.
They want me to go back there.’ I had to get him to go back to the beginning.
I didn’t even know he’d become a journalist. The irony of it, of him of all people being asked to cover this story.
I asked how he felt about it. I was still wondering why I was the one he’d called.
He said, ‘I don’t know, Maggie. It was bad enough when it was an accident.
I’m not sure I can face finding out that it wasn’t.
’ I thought about him back then, him and Pea.
That was love, I thought. That thing they had, it wasn’t just kids’ stuff.
It was real love. I’d lost and found it myself over the years in between, and I knew a thing or two I hadn’t known then.
Zak: That evening, after I’d talked it all through with Maggie, who was always such a calming influence, I booked a flight for the following afternoon.
I packed my things and I tried to get some sleep.
The next morning, I wheeled my case into the office and I asked my editor if I could speak to him and went into his office and closed the door behind me.
He looked surprised. His door was always open unless he was in there with one of the interns or doing lines of coke off his desk.
He was a dick, and I didn’t feel like I owed him anything, but I was ready to come clean about who I was.
When I told him, his eyes went so wide I thought they were going to fall out.
He said, ‘No fucking way.’ Then he smiled, and it looked insincere.
He said, ‘Surely this means you’re the perfect person to cover it?
’ I felt like punching him in the face. I’d basically just told him that my brother had died, and he was reacting like this?
I turned to leave his office, but he grabbed my arm.
Said, ‘Wait, weren’t you there when it happened?
Didn’t I read that?’ I said I was. He said I should do a huge feature, four pages, with all the background and then an update based on what was happening now.
Asked me to get it to him in two days’ time.
I said, ‘You understand what I’m saying, right?
That AJ was my brother?’ He still didn’t seem to get why I was upset, so I just walked out of there without looking back.
I grabbed my case as I went by my desk and wheeled it on out.
Jumped in a cab to the airport. I could hear him calling my name as I walked away, and it felt so good to ignore him.
I’d never dared before. But what was he going to do now, fire his reporter who had an inside scoop on the biggest celebrity news story of the year?
I was at the airport way too early for my flight, on account of having walked out of my office, so I grabbed a coffee and started jotting down notes.
Just words at first. Wildworld. John Hunter.
Rollercoaster. AJ. It was a thing I did, sometimes, to get my brain working.
I found it helped me to make associations, to link things together, but I’d never worked on a story about someone I loved before, someone I’d lost. When I wrote ‘Pea’, I had to jam my teeth together to stop myself from letting out a sob.
Ken: Zak messaged me from the airport, said he was going to England for a few days for work. I asked him straight out if he was working on the story about AJ, and he said he was.
Zak: I had this urge, when we were talking, to ask him if he’d come with me.
Ken: I almost asked if he wanted me to come.
Zak: He told me to take care of myself, which is something he always said when I travelled anywhere, but it was different that day. I knew he wasn’t only saying that I should keep myself safe. I knew he was talking about my heart.