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Some of the lads are going to get Nandos after training, but when they ask if he wants to come, Jamie begs off. He wants to talk to Roy before tomorrow’s match, see if he can get permission to be a prick for at least part of the game. Because Arsenal’s left winger had recently broken up with his girlfriend after three years, and as of last night, Jamie knows her very well, and it just seems a shame to let that kind of ammo go to waste.
He wanders into the coaches office to find them all gone. Ted and Beard’s jackets are both draped over the backs of their chairs, and there’s a book of football tactics open facedown on Beard’s desk, so they must still be in the building, but he can’t hear any folksy Americanisms or that weird chanty music Beard listens to. He pokes his head into the adjoining office and sees that Roy’s gone too, but there’s a little blond girl sitting at his desk with a lollipop in her mouth, watching something intently on a pink bedazzled iPad. He’s seen her around quite a few times, but he doesn’t remember her name.
He knocks on the doorframe, because it’d be rude not to, and says “Oi, is your dad around?”
She blinks up at him, baffled and uncomprehending, looking the way Jamie feels whenever someone uses phrases like Pavlovian or charcuterie board. She pulls the lolly out of her mouth with a pop and says flatly, “What.”
“Your dad?” he repeats. “Roy? Is he around?”
Her eyebrows come together and she says with a disdain that feels very Kent-ish, “Uncle Roy isn’t my dad.”
“He’s not?” News to Jamie.
“No. That’s why I just called him Uncle Roy.”
“Huh. I always just assumed.” He leans a shoulder against the doorframe. “Either way, you’re in his office, so I figured you’d know. Is he around?”
“He and Coach Ted and Coach Beard had to meet with Ms. Welton and Mr. Higgins about something. I don’t remember what it was. Sounded boring.”
Jamie nods in agreement, thinking anything having to do with Higgins is probably bound to be boring. Although Sam and Dani and Richard and everyone made it seem like his Christmas party was absolutely lit, so who knows. “He say when he’d be back?”
The little girl shrugs her shoulders. “He said it wouldn’t be long. I’m supposed to work on my maths homework while I wait.” Then she holds out a bag of lollipops she’s clearly pilfered from the open drawer of Roy’s desk. Jamie files the location away for later. “Do you want one?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” he says, pushing away from the doorframe and crossing over to her in two quick strides. As he digs through, he glances at her zipped backpack and then to the tablet she was clearly using to watch YouTube videos. “Hard at work on that maths, I can see.”
“It’s maths,” she says, like that explains everything, which it absolutely does. Jamie pulls out a blue raspberry lolly and points it at her in agreement before flopping down into the chair that used to be Nate’s and kicking his feet up on the desk. He crumples the wrapper up and tosses it across the room into the bin. He could have played basketball.
Roy’s niece, not his daughter, swivels in her chair to look at him, clearly finding him more interesting than YouTube. “I’m Phoebe, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Jamie.”
“I know that,” she says and there’s that disdain again. “I watch all the games. And Uncle Roy talks about you all the time.”
“Yeah? What does he say?”
“He mostly just complains and calls you lots of names.” When Jamie raises an eyebrow at that, she elaborates. “Like ‘the Prince Prick of All Pricks’ or ‘the Mancunian Manchild’ or a lot of other names that I’m not supposed to say anymore.” She looks distinctly put out by this fact. “Also, once, when my mum had to work and Uncle Roy was at yoga, Keeley and I watched an episode of Lust Conquers All, and she told me that you were her boyfriend before she started dating Uncle Roy.”
“Aren’t you a little young for that show?” He asks, ignoring the little pang in his heart at the mention of Keeley. Phoebe shrugs, but before she can answer, a more important part of that sentence sinks into Jamie’s brain. “Wait–yoga?”
A devious little smile makes its way onto Phoebe’s face, but she refuses to elaborate. She simply digs out another lolly and tucks it into her cheek so she looks like a lopsided chipmunk.
Jamie is staring up at the ceiling, still contemplating the idea of Roy doing yoga, which sounds absolutely hysterical, when Phoebe pipes up in a voice smaller and more unsure than the voice she was using just a moment ago, “Why did you think Uncle Roy was my dad?”
Jamie looks over at her, surprised. She’s staring very intently at the floor, and her cheeks have turned the slightest bit pink, like she’s embarrassed. “I dunno,” he says, truthfully. “You’re always hangin’ around. Just assumed.”
She scuffs her toe against the ground and doesn’t look up at him. If they weren’t the only two down here, he might not have heard her when she says, “Sometimes I wish Uncle Roy was my dad.”
And, boy doesn’t Jamie know that feeling. Not necessarily wishing Roy specifically was his dad, although after Wembley the thought had crossed his mind, but wishing he had any other dad in the world other than the one he’s stuck with.
He looks curiously at Phoebe, and recognizes the kind of embarrassed honesty with which eight-year-old Jamie Tartt once admitted to a teammate that he sometimes wished he could live with his coach, because he was always banging on about how he took his kids on a weekend trip to London to visit Harry Potter Studios, or how his whole family would go to the cinema the first Saturday of every month. Because if you said you wanted someone else to be your dad, it was just admitting to everyone that your dad didn’t like you enough to do those kinds of things with you, and how lame did that make you look?
So he leans back in his chair and turns his attention back to the ceiling and acts like Phoebe didn’t just admit something painful and embarrassing to someone that, until today, she only knew from reality TV and her uncle’s profanity-filled rants. “Can’t imagine what your real dad must be like if you’d rather have the grumpy geezer instead.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her look up at him and then back down to the toes of her Sketchers. “Uncle Roy says my dad is a piece of shit.”
“Oh, hey, mine too,” Jamie says, forcing lightness into his voice that he doesn’t quite feel. He pulls his feet off the desk and swivels to look at her. “We should start a club.”
She looks up at him and gives him a shy smile. “Do you know your dad?”
“Unfortunately.” He pulls the cuffs of his jacket up over his hands. “Wish I didn’t, sometimes.”
“Why?” Phoebe asks, like she can’t quite wrap her brain around that idea. Jamie gets that, too. When he was little, before he got noticed for his football skills, before his admission into the Academy system brought James Tartt Snr. back into the picture, he would have given anything to have him around. He’d file away any scrap of information he could get on the man, cherish every moment he had with him, no matter how few and far between they were, and any time his friends from school or football would complain about their dads being strict or embarrassing or over-protective, he’d think Yeah, but at least you know him. That’s gotta count for something, right?
Because when you’ve never had something you so desperately want, it’s impossible to understand why someone else would rather be without it. He could explain to Phoebe that there are worse things than an absent dad, but Jamie’s not about to unload on this child about all his dad’s…stuff. His drinking and his expectations for Jamie’s career and the A-word that Dr. Sharon was always trying to get him to apply to the situation but that Jamie could never bring himself to say.
“I know it sounds crazy, but it was better for me when he wasn’t around. Didn’t realize it at the time, though.”
Phoebe’s silent for a long time, and then she says meekly, “It was my birthday last week.”
“Happy birthday.”
“He said he was going to come to my party. But he never showed up.”
The familiarity hits Jamie like a punch to the gut. Every time he’d ask Mum to delay lighting the candles on his cake for just a few more minutes, every excuse the two of them would make to each other about traffic or getting the time wrong or car trouble, even in the years when his driver’s license was taken away for drink-driving. Every time his mum would brush the hair off his forehead and say, I’m sorry, Duck, I don’t think he’s coming. Birthdays, Christmases, visitation days missed, and always with some shoddy excuse that all boiled down to the same thing–couldn’t be bothered.
Phoebe looks him in the eye, and she must see the recognition there, because she reaches into her backpack with a fury and shoves something into his hands. “This came in the post yesterday.”
It’s a birthday card. There’s a unicorn on the front, and the glitter is already all over Jamie’s hands. He opens it up, and there’s some kitschy poem printed there about getting bigger every day, but it’s the handwritten addition that catches Jamie’s attention.
Phoebe, it says, happy birthday. Dad.
No, sorry I missed your party, no I’ll make it up to you soon, no I love you.
Piece of shit.
Jamie looks up from the card at a little girl who is desperate for someone to understand exactly how much this hurts. Because Jamie can imagine the kind of responses she’s gotten so far, from people who mean well and love her, but who could never really understand, because they’ve never been hit this way in this exact place. Guilt, pity, misguided optimism. Those are all well and good, but he knows she just wants someone to make all this make sense. Jamie doesn’t know if he can do that, but he can sure as hell try.
“When I was a kid,” he says, because if there’s one thing Jamie knows how to do, it’s talk about himself, “me dad was supposed to have visitation on the third Saturday of every month. That was the custody agreement that got worked out in the divorce. But my mum worked two jobs, and she worked almost every Saturday, and she couldn’t drop me off at his place. So he was supposed to meet me in the park across the street from our flat. Mrs. Winsham–she was this old lady who lived across the hall–she’d keep an eye on me from her window, you know, to make sure I didn’t get kidnapped or anything. And I’d head over a few minutes early to wait for him. Ten minutes go by, fifteen, half hour. And I’d always say to meself, just go back inside, he’s not coming, but there was this voice in my head that was always louder, makin’ excuses for him.” He can feel the old shame welling up in him, that he could be so stupid, so soft. He shoves it down and continues.
“And after a while, I’d get restless, but I figure, I’ll stay at the park, case he shows up. There was this really shitty football pitch, the grass was always overgrown and the ground was uneven, but there was a net. So I’d get a football and I’d practice my free kicks. Every five kicks that I made, I’d take three steps back and go again. And when that got too easy, I’d start calling my shots. You know–left post, right post, crossbar. And I’d do that for hours, just scoring goals against no one until my mum finished her shift and showed up with a takeaway pizza or something. We didn’t have a whole lot of money, but she’d always show up with takeaway.”
Phoebe’s looking at him with big eyes, her lollipop forgotten in her hand. He’s never told anyone this before, always thought it would make him sound pathetic, and yeah, it does a bit, but lately he hasn’t cared so much about sounding soft. He continues, “All that time I spent kicking a football around, waiting for him to show up, it made me good, good enough to get noticed by a lot of the youth teams in the area. And then, when I made those teams, me dad started showin’ up, watching me play. He was finally doing what I always wanted him to do. But Phoebe,” He looks her in the eyes, so that she’ll really understand what he says next. “I shouldn’t have had to wait for him to show up at all. He should have been there even if I landed on my arse every time I took a shot.
“It took me a long time to realize this, so I’m gonna spell it out for you so you don’t have to spend so long waiting. The people that matter are the people who show up no matter what. Like my mum with the takeaway. Or like your Uncle Roy, who brings you around to work and lets you pilfer his lolly stash. And I know that doesn’t make this”–he holds up the birthday card– “hurt any less, but I think that’s gonna hurt no matter what. Wish it didn’t have to, but that’s life, ain’t it?”
There’s tears in her eyes, and all of a sudden she hurls herself off her chair and throws her arms around him, the half-eaten lollipop in her hand leaving a sticky spot on his jacket, but he doesn’t mind that much. He pats her on the head like there, there and she pulls back as quickly as she threw herself at him. She sits back down and wipes her eyes with her fist. Jamie isn’t sure what to do, he knows making little girls cry is generally frowned upon, but he doesn’t think he did anything bad this time.
After a minute Phoebe seems to collect herself. She takes a deep breath and smiles up at him. Then she says, “Do you want to hear about Uncle Roy’s yoga class?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Several minutes and another lollipop each later, as Phoebe is giving Jamie enough blackmail material for a lifetime (yoga with a bunch of women in their sixties, and they regularly get together to watch trashy reality shows together? This is the best thing Jamie’s ever heard in his life), they hear Ted, Beard, and Roy re-enter the locker room. Roy stops short in the doorway when he sees Jamie.
“What are you doing with my niece?”
Jamie gives him a grin, “I had a question to ask you, but you weren’t around, so I thought I’d keep Phoebe company while I waited. She has some fascinating stories, you know.”
Phoebe nods up at her uncle, and Roy looks less than impressed, which, to be fair, is sort of his standard expression. He gives her a once-over as if to check that being around Jamie hasn’t damaged her in any visible way, and then turns his gaze back to him. “What d’you want, then?”
“I’m thinking about taking up yoga, actually,” Jamie says with his best shit-eating grin, and Roy’s eyes narrow. “Was wondering if you had any recommendations where I might find a good class.”
Roy gives Phoebe a glare, and she gives him big innocent eyes. He turns back to Jamie and says, “You’re mouth is blue, you absolute fucking child.”
Jamie sticks his tongue out in response, because he will not be shamed for picking blue raspberry, which everyone knows is the best flavor. Roy gives him a look of absolute disgust, and then reaches out a hand to his niece. “Come on Phoebe, it’s dinner time.”
She hops up and packs her iPad away in her backpack, then takes Roy’s hand, looking up at him. “Can we get takeaway?”
“That depends. What did you tell Jamie about yoga?”
“Me? I didn’t say anything about yoga. We just talked about Minecraft the whole time.”
“It’s true,” Jamie chimes in. “You’re gettin’ paranoid in your old age, Roy-o.”
Roy growls. “We’re leaving. Now.”
“Bye, Jamie!” Phoebe calls as they head out the door, hand in hand.
“Bye, Phoebe,” he says, hauling himself out of his chair, and out into the locker room to get his stuff and leave. He’ll just have to catch Roy before the match to ask permission to be a prick. Or maybe he won’t ask permission at all. He knows himself better, now, after all.
As he leaves, he catches sight of a glittery, unicorn birthday card, torn in two and thrown in the bin.