Chapter 7 #5
I flew into Birmingham, just like we had before.
First for the visit with Maggie and then with the whole crew.
But this time, it was quieter. Nobody staring as I made my way through passport control.
It was a long time since I’d been AJ Silver’s brother.
For years by then, I’d just been Zak. But that day I felt the loss of it, and I thought about what my life might be like if he’d lived.
I wouldn’t be doing this job, probably. Would I still have been following my kid brother around the world?
Would he still have been travelling the world, singing his songs to those girls who loved him?
I freshened up at the hotel I’d booked. It was the one I’d stayed in before, the Ace, but it was unrecognisable.
The whole place had had a refurb. Still, while I was in the shower, I thought about lying on a bed in this very building with Pea Hunter, one earphone in my ear and one in hers, swapping songs we liked. It almost brought me to my knees.
I had never looked her up. Never dared to, in case I found what I didn’t want to.
That she was married, settled. A mother.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want those things for her, it was just too painful to imagine her having them with someone else.
I realised with a jolt. Bonnie, my girlfriend.
I hadn’t told her I was going away. I sent her a text saying I was in England and she replied immediately with a string of question marks, then followed that up with another message that read ‘What the fuck?’ It wasn’t like I’d never travelled for work before, but a trip this fast and this far was quite unusual, and me forgetting to tell her until I’d arrived was unheard of.
But I couldn’t face explaining it to her then. I needed to find John Hunter.
John: The story came out of nowhere and it knocked me for six, if I’m being honest with you.
I’d put it all behind me, what had happened, and I never thought I’d have to see my face on the front cover of a newspaper again.
But I suppose there’s always someone who’ll say something for a bit of money or attention, and those gutter tabloids will always listen and try to make something sordid out of it.
My money was on Alex. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in years, but it seemed like the kind of thing he might do.
And he wasn’t yet a TV star by this point.
My reaction to it was to lay low, so I called in sick at work – I’d trained as a drugs counsellor – and spent a couple of days in my flat, just waiting for it to blow over.
I didn’t turn on the radio or the TV. I didn’t want to hear anything about the bloody story.
How could I know it had been reported on both sides of the Atlantic?
Zak: John Hunter was fairly easy to find. He hadn’t travelled far from Wildworld. He was in the next town over in a dingy apartment. I took a deep breath before knocking on the door.
John: I thought about not answering, but I was waiting on a parcel and I thought it might be that.
You could have knocked me down with a bloody feather when I saw Zak standing there.
I recognised him straight off. He was older, of course, like we all were, but I’d have known him anywhere.
Those weeks in 1996 were crystal clear to me, much clearer than some of the years since.
He opened his mouth to speak and I closed the door in his face.
Zak: Yeah, he opened the door, took one look at me and slammed it shut.
I knocked again, waited. I was used to having to talk people round.
I said his name, knowing he was on the other side of the door, listening.
I said I was a reporter now, and I’d come to find out whether there was any truth in what people were saying about him.
I said I wanted to hear his side. I knew he’d open up eventually.
People like him never pass up the opportunity to get their story out there.
By the time he did, though, I was sitting with my back against his door, and I pretty much fell inside. He said, ‘You’d better come in, then.’
John: He told me he liked his coffee strong and I made it weak. It was childish, but I wanted to have some form of control over this situation. And that was all I had.
Zak: I don’t know whether English coffee is shit or whether that family just made shit coffee.
I should have asked for water. I got straight down to it, asked if he knew who’d said they’d heard him threaten to kill AJ.
He looked at me long and hard. Said he thought I was the reporter.
I laughed at that. The last time we’d seen each other, I’d still been a kid.
But now we were two men, going back over something that had shaped both of our lives.
And I found that I sort of liked him. I sort of admired the way he held himself, all ease and confidence.
He was a different man to the one I’d met before.
I wondered what had changed, other than him losing his livelihood.
John: Neither of us knew where the story had come from.
I didn’t say anything about suspecting Alex.
I needed to keep my wits about me. There was no telling what he’d say in that paper of his.
I asked which one it was, and he said a name I didn’t recognise.
It wasn’t the New York Times, I’ll tell you that much.
Zak: He told me a bit about what he’d been through.
How he’d lost the business, and Cathy and the kids, how he’d ended up on the streets.
And all I could think was, There but for the grace of God.
It could have wrecked all of our lives, that accident.
It was a miracle, in a way, that the two of us were still there, still standing.
Danny: I’m waiting for him to ask about Pea.
John: I was waiting for him to ask about Pea.
When he did, his voice was casual but he kept touching his hair and his face, like he couldn’t quite work out what he needed to do.
I said Pea was well, that she was living nearby.
He said he would like to see her, to ask her about the story, and I said I would call her to ask whether it was okay to give him her address.
Pea: When Dad called, I was giving the dog a bath.
Our relationship was pretty good by then, probably better than it had been when I was a teenager.
He was sober and we talked roughly every week, so the call itself didn’t come as a surprise.
I put him on speaker, said it wasn’t a good time but I could call him back later if that was any good.
Then he dropped it, like a bomb. Said he was with Zak, and he was asking about me.
Now, I didn’t know any other Zak. Never had.
And I was pretty sure Dad didn’t either.
I tried to keep my voice level when I said, ‘Zak Campbell?’ He confirmed it.
I felt dizzy, let go of the shower attachment and let it spray up to the ceiling, Sidney jumping up to try to catch the water as if it was all part of some elaborate game.
Zak. After all these years. In my dad’s flat.
Danny: This is quite a moment, huh?
John: She said I could give him the address, so I did.
And then he left, promising me he’d do what he could to get to the bottom of this whole thing.
I thought about Pea after he’d gone, knowing how much my call had thrown her.
Right then, I was sure she’d be getting changed and trying to sort her hair out while that stupid dog of hers dripped onto the carpets.
Pea: It sounds so silly, but while I waited for him to come, I felt like I was sixteen again.
I hadn’t seen Zak for thirteen years, but I felt like I’d sloughed off all that time, all those disappointments, all those men who were not him.
I stood by the door, my heart jumping, and when he knocked, I reached out and touched it, knowing I was inches away from him.
Knowing that even that distance was perhaps too much to bear.
I opened the door and he said my name, soft and sweet, like he always had when we’d lain beside one another that summer, and I burst into tears.
Zak: Yeah, she cried, man. I wasn’t expecting that.
That was some reaction. I just stood there for a minute or so, not knowing whether it was okay to hug her, but then she reached out and pulled me inside and we were standing there in her hallway, inches apart, and I knew in that instant that I would end things with Bonnie the next time we spoke because all my life I’d been chasing this feeling, and I hadn’t felt it since the last time I’d been in the same room as this girl in front of me.
Pea: He held out a battered CD case, and I saw that it was the Blur album I’d given him all those years ago.
I took it from him, pulled out the sleeve notes.
Because part of me thought he’d just picked up a new copy of it somewhere, which would have been sweet enough, but no, it was mine.
I’d put a star next to my favourite songs.
‘To the End’ and ‘End of a Century’. And I thought, he’s kept this for years and years. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?
I made him a coffee and we sat down and he started filling me in.
Not only on what he was doing here, but on the years I’d missed, and I did the same, like we’d planned in advance to plug those gaps.
When he said he was a journalist, I felt tears prick my eyes.
He’d done it. Despite everything. And then I realised that he was here to poke around, to cover that new story that had come out of the woodwork, and I felt hurt. He wasn’t here for me at all.