Chapter Text
Here’s a secret: it was Jamie’s fault his dad came back.
*
When Jamie was seven years old, he broke a plant. It happened on a Monday evening when usually he’d be at football training, only it’d been cancelled because of the storm: thunder and lightning and a downpour of rain that rebounded off the pavement and soaked through his threadbare jacket, freezing his fingers to clumsy, shaking lumps that could hardly fit the key in the lock. He wished his mum were home. He wished that all the time when she was away — which was most of the time, ‘cause she worked three jobs and sometimes they didn’t see each other all day, no matter how hard Jamie tried to wake up before she left in the morning or stay up ‘til she got home at night — but he wished it especially now, with the crash of thunder that vibrated through his whole body and the rain so loud it drowned out his shaky breathing.
It took a very long time to peel out of his soaked clothes and into new ones, and even then the cold stayed with him, burrowed into his bones like those ants that made their nests in trees. Him and mummy had watched a documentary about it from the library, ‘cause mummy said insects were neat and Jamie said they were scary and she said he only thought so ‘cause he didn’t know enough about them. The cold was inside him, was the point, and the fear. Mum said not to turn on the lights until it was proper dark out so they didn’t have to spend so much on power, but the shadows were leering at him. He flicked the light switch; nothing happened. He’d have to tell mum the power company cut them off again, and then her eyebrows would pinch in that way that meant she was worried but trying not to let him see, and she’d say, it’s okay, baby. You let me worry about all that.
In the kitchen, he climbed up on the counter to peer in the cupboards. They had three cans of chili and a tin of biscuits, so he took one of the cans and ate half without pouring it into a bowl, perched on the counter with his arms and legs curled in tight for warmth. As he ate, he examined Sunflower Roy. Sunflower Roy was a seed he’d planted in science class at school, but after a week they all took their seedlings home so now he lived in a glass in the windowsill. He was only ten centimeters tall and had four leaves, but Jamie’d named him after Roy Kent — who was his favourite footballer even though he played for Chelsea and not City — so he knew Sunflower Roy would grow up big and strong. Then he spotted his football tucked away in the corner and forgot all about dinner, and Sunflower Roy, and the storm.
Jamie’s limbs wanted to move, always: the teachers at school snapped at him to sit still and he promised he would, for real this time, only after thirty seconds of that his skin felt like it was going to crawl right off his body and the next thing he knew they were snapping at him again ‘cause he’d gone right back to wriggling and bouncing and sticking things in his mouth without even noticing it. But out on the pitch, running as fast as his legs would take him, it all went quiet. No more thoughts crawling over each other like ants, no more disappointed teachers and words that won’t stay still on the page, just wind on his face and the thump of feet on grass, and for once he was properly settled in his body.
He started out doing keepie-uppies in the sitting room ‘cause mum said not to run indoors, only the ball bounced off his foot at the wrong angle and he skidded after it, leapt over his school bag abandoned in the middle of the floor, nudged the ball between the feet of an imaginary opponent while the crowd in his mind cheered. A tap with the side of his foot and the ball soared across the room, rebounded off the window. And then he watched for a long, frozen moment as Sunflower Roy tumbled through the air and struck the ground with a resounding crash.
Mummy found him there later, curled up sobbing into his knees in a field of scatted dirt and glass, sunflower sprout clutched against his chest, palm bleeding into the dish towel.
“I killed him, mummy,” he choked out between sobs.
She kissed the top of his head, then set her bag on the floor and lifted him up onto the counter. “He’s not dead, baby, he just needs a new home. Why don’t you choose one while I get all this cleaned up?” So he picked out a wide, shallow mug shaped like half a football from their collection of mismatched charity shop mugs while mummy swept up. She took Sunflower Roy from him gently in her long, slender fingers, the blue nail polish a touch lumpy where she’d let Jamie do the top coat and just beginning to chip. She tucked him into the mug with as much soil as they could scoop up from the floor and a bit of water, and then he was back on the windowsill like nothing had happened.
“All better, see? Now let’s take a look at that hand.” The scrape wasn’t so bad, just a shallow cut that stopped bleeding sometime while he cried. Mummy washed it out with disinfectant and covered it in a plaster and didn’t even scold him much for ruining the dish towel, though she did take the football away to hide it upstairs. He curled up in her lap afterwards, tucked into the corner of the sofa while she ate the rest of the chili and Jamie told her all about his day at school, and she told him about her shit manager Derek who wouldn’t let her dye her hair and made her shift partner Moira cry.
Later, after mummy fell asleep on the sofa still in her work clothes, Jamie wandered off to find his football. That’s when he found it: balanced on his toes on the third shelf of the linen closet, sharp edges digging into the fresh cut on his palm where he clutched on, he spotted a dusty shoebox tucked way far back on the top shelf. Momentarily distracted from his quest, he coaxed it out with the tips of his outstretched fingertips and leveraged open the lid.
Inside was a stack of pictures. His mum loved photography; whenever they scraped together enough money to go to out to the charity shops when Jamie’s shoes started peeling off at the soles and his clothes rode up so far at the wrists and ankles they started getting funny looks on the street, she’d take whatever they had left over and go poking around the broken-down monitors and keyboards missing half the keys ‘til she found the cheapest camera on offer. She took pictures of everything: flowers growing through cracks in the pavement, a stranger in an interesting hat, all the cats she met on the way to work. Most of all she took pictures of Jamie — sorting out the spoons from best to worst on the kitchen floor, kicking a football around in the street, curled up on the sofa with the flu. When the memory card filled up, they’d go through it together and pick the best ones to print out on glossy paper and stick up on the walls.
These pictures, he’d never seen before. He didn’t even recognize mummy at first, dressed in a blue polka dot gown with her hair falling all in her face, longer than he’d ever seen it and half obscuring the red-faced, scrunched up blob clutched in her arms. A man stood at her side. A short, stocky man with short dark hair and a hint of stubble and a face that looked like Jamie’s. Jamie’d never met his dad, and he knew better than to ask after him, ‘cause mummy’s face got all strange and pinched and then she’d start talking about something else entirely instead of answering. He brought his finger up to the man’s face, not quite touching. His dad was smiling in the picture, a great, joyful thing even bigger than mummy’s, who mostly looked tired.
Downstairs, he heard the shuffle of his mum’s footsteps as she cleaned up. He shut the door to the linen closet delicately and retreated to his room, where he sat cross-legged on his bed long after he was supposed to be asleep, studying the picture under the lamp light. It became something of a ritual: get home from school or from football, water Sunflower Roy, pull the shoebox out from under his bed and study the details of his father’s face. Which was why, when he saw James Tartt Sr. across the park three months later, he recognized him right away.
*
Jamie stalked off the pitch with the echo of Roy’s hands on his chest and a hollow ringing between his ears. Lasso smiled that stupid fucking mind games smile, said, “Way to get us back in!” like he hadn’t decided Jamie was some half-feral mutt to toss against their opponents — God knew no one else was competent enough to do it — and yank back the second he refused to heel. Fuck that.
In the dressing room he stripped off his shirt with frantic, trembling hands, crammed everything from his locker into his bag. If he listened hard he’d hear the announcers calling halftime and he could not be here when the rest of the team came streaming in, could not be around this useless fucking excuse of a team and their useless fucking excuse of a coach a second longer. The zipper caught on something; he yanked at it with a vicious stream of curses ‘til it snapped off in his hand. Footsteps in the tunnel, now. He swung the bag over his shoulder and stormed out, head ducked, still in his kit shorts and boots. Gnawed his lip ‘til it bled coppery on his tongue.
Fuck Richmond, and fuck Ted Lasso, and fuck Sam fucking Obisanya, trailing after him like a particularly stupid puppy, acting all surprised and hurt when he showed his underbelly for the world to see and got bit for his trouble. And fuck Roy Kent for deciding after two decades of dirty tackles and shouting down refs to coddle him for it, like that kind of softness wouldn’t have got Jamie killed before he hit twenty. He tossed his bag into the boot so hard it rebounded, slammed it shut, then slammed his door, too, for good measure, though his whole body jerked at the noise. He felt half outside of himself, a ghost possessing his own shambling corpse.
And then his phone rang. Plenty of people called him — his agent, Ms. Preston from next door to tell him off for not getting his lawn trimmed often enough, Keeley if she had something to say before she put her makeup on — but only one called him after he’d been benched in the middle of a match.
Here’s the thing about talking to his dad: it wasn’t always bad. He picked up the phone and his dad said, “I saw it on the telly, Jamie, that American wanker fucked you,” and he was so relieved to hear it in someone else’s voice he nearly cried, except crying would turn it from a good talk to a bad talk, so instead he said, “Lasso don’t know shit. Rest of the lads play like they’re in fucking juniors.” He felt guilty as soon as he said it. Old and broken down as he was, the Greyhounds still had Roy fucking Kent, one of the greatest players of his generation and the man whose poster still hung in Jamie’s childhood room, unless his mum had scrubbed him from her life and thoroughly as he’d scrubbed her from his. Sam, Isaac, Moe, even Colin — they’d all make decent players if they ever got someone partway competent to coach them.
“Now if only you could play a proper seniors match, eh? Wouldn’t be stuck all the way out there in Richmond, would you?”
“Lots’ve players go on loan,” Jamie mumbled. “Get more minutes, like.”
“Speak up, you’re not a fucking child,” his dad said. “And not at twenty-two, they don’t.” And no, they didn’t, was the thing. Truth was, Jamie had been on thin ice with Pep for a long time before the loan. Just barely skating by on acceptable behaviour, one of his youth coaches had told him, but he never seemed to be able to stop digging the hole deeper.
“Listen, Jamie,” his father cut in. “Come down and help us out, won’t you? Put all that footballer money to good use.” He chuckled, a crackly wheeze that set Jamie’s hair on end. But his dad was familiar where Lasso was strange, with his nonsensical references and weird American sayings and his perpetual smile. Better get fucked over by the devil you know, or whatever the fuck.
“Yeah, dad. ‘Course. I’ll be right there.”
*
“How come you and mum split up?” Even at eight years old and having only seen his dad over a scattered handful of meetings, Jamie knew this was a dangerous question: there were lots of rules with his dad, except they weren’t like the rules he had with mummy about when to get home and doing his part of the chores and finishing his schoolwork on time, which she kept stuck to the fridge with a magnet ‘cause he always meant to be a good lad and do what she said but sometimes instructions fell right out of his brain as soon as he heard them. With dad, rules were like one of those fields with the bombs in ‘em left over from the war where you didn’t know where they were until you stepped on one and it blew your face off, except if the bombs moved around.
Sometimes he’d see dad in the distance and run over and dad’s face would break into a wide grin and he’d say, “Little James!” all excited and sweep Jamie up in the air. Then they’d play football together in the park and dad would buy him presents as long as he didn’t tell mum where they came from, or that they’d seen each other. Jamie didn’t like lying to mummy, but he wanted to keep seeing dad, so he always promised. But sometimes instead dad scowled and told him piss off, can’t you see I’m busy, here? So Jamie learned to hover around the edge of his vision and let dad decide if he wanted to talk or not. He learned other stuff, too, like not to call his mum “mummy” when they were together, or cry, or complain about anything his dad didn’t start complaining about first, or admit he liked any players who weren’t with City.
Today was one of the good days. He ran into dad on one of the park benches on his way back from football training, one of the ones right by the path like dad was waiting for Jamie to come past.
“Show me what you got, then,” dad said, gesturing at the football. And even though Jamie’d just been running around all training, being around dad in one of his good moods charged him right back up. He took off across the field, weaving around imaginary defenders. When he came back, red-cheeked and panting, dad had a strange look on his face — strange, but pleased.
“Knew you’d be great, being a Tartt and all,” he said. He tugged Jamie closer with a wide, callused hand wrapped around his wrist and ruffled his hair.
“Coach said I might get scouted by City.”
Dad’s smile widened. “Really? ‘Course you will, be stupid to pass up this kind of talent, right, son?” He swatted at Jamie’s shoulder, but playfully. “Hey, how about I come to one of your matches, make sure you’re not slacking when the scouts come ‘round? Bet there’s plenty when your mum’s busy.”
There were, no matter how much she tried to swap shifts around. The reminder made Jamie’s stomach clench painfully. But now his dad would be there so when Jamie scored he could look up at the stands and see him cheering, same as the other kids with their dads. He threw himself forwards and wrapped his arms around his dad’s middle, forgetting the landmine rules entirely. They hardly ever touched, him and dad, except the occasional slap on the head or when dad grabbed him by the shoulder to steer him someplace. He smelled of cigarette smoke and something sour, but he was warm and solid, and after a moment, his arms closed around Jamie’s body in return.
Which was why, when he pulled away, Jamie felt brave enough to ask. For a moment he was certain he’d tripped one of the mines, but his dad just laughed that deep, chesty laugh and scrubbed a hand through Jamie’s hair again.
“Right firecracker, your mum. She had her opinions, that woman, and she weren’t shy about sharing ‘em, no matter how much you wanted her to shut up. But, fuck, if I didn’t love her.”
He went quiet, then, and Jamie nodded, though he’d never once wanted his mum to shut up. That was one of the rules, too — agreeing with whatever dad said, even when he didn’t mean it. “Well, this happened when you were… dunno, eight months, a year — hung on past the stage where all you did was lay about like a useless lump and scream your head off the whole damn night and shit yourself every five seconds, didn’t I? So I’m babysitting while your mum’s off at work, says she’ll be home at 9:00. Well, 9:00 comes and goes, she’s nowhere in sight. Now, I’d promised my mates I’d meet up with them, figured you’d manage fine on your own a couple of minutes, big strong lad like you. Well, turns out your mum’d got sick of all the crying and shitting and that, fucked off with her own mates for the night. At some point the neighbour called her ‘cause you’d started screaming your fucking head off, and when I got home she lost her head at me, made out like the whole thing were my fault.”
Mummy loved him. Jamie knew she did; she told him nearly every day, sometimes more than once, usually while squeezing him against her body and kissing him on the face, and on the rest of the days — the ones where they didn’t see each other ‘cause she was at work — she left pink sticky notes scrawled with hearts on the counter for him to find. But sometimes, when she scraped together enough money to buy him a new school uniform and he started crying in the shop ‘cause the seams felt like steel wool on his skin, or when she got home from work and told him for the twelfth time to please, please sit still and be quiet ‘cause he couldn’t get his body to stop moving or his mouth to stop talking, she’d slouch in on herself, bury her face in her hands, and start, very quietly, to weep. Jamie knew he wasn’t an easy kid, was the point.
A few weeks after his talk with dad, mummy got the day off work to watch him play, which meant dad wouldn’t be there. Jamie spent the whole morning bouncing around with excitement while mum told him slow down, save some energy for tonight. He told himself it was ‘cause mummy would be there and not ‘cause dad wouldn’t be — he loved spending time with dad, really, it was just he spent the whole match shouting and then after he spent a long time talking about what Jamie did wrong and what he should be doing instead, and how if he kept on like that the Man City scouts would never look twice at him. Once he cuffed Jamie so hard on the head it left a bruise, but he hadn’t done it on purpose and they went for ice cream afterwards, so that was okay. But still, he thought it might be nice to play without the shouting.
Except he got out on the pitch and there was dad, sat right in the front row as always. He looked different than usual, put together in a pressed button-down shirt, hair combed and slicked back. The whole time he acted the way Jamie imagined his dad would act, back before he met him: he waved from the stands whenever their eyes met and cheered when Jamie scored and didn’t shout at him or the ref even once. When he went up to talk to him and mummy after the match, he seemed almost nervous, bouncing on his toes.
“Hey, Georgie. Been a while, hasn’t it?”
Mummy’s whole body tensed where she was pressed at Jamie’s side, and there was a strange undercurrent to her voice when she spoke. “Sure has.”
Dad cleared his throat, rocked back on his toes again. “Look, Georgie, I know I f- I know I messed up, yeah? Regretted it as soon as it happened and every day since then, but I couldn’t exactly say sorry, could I?” Mummy said nothing. “Right. Well, I ran into this one the other day—” he gestured at Jamie— “Got to talking a bit. I just want to see my son, Georgie. Be as much a part of his life as you’ll let me.”
Mum took a deep breath. Her face was pinched up, pleading like in the store with the school shirt. And being with dad weren’t so bad, really, even if the thought of having him in their home made Jamie’s insides squirm in a way he couldn’t quite explain. He wouldn’t be alone so much, and mummy wouldn’t have to work so much, and he could be like all the other kids at school with two parents.
So he said, “Please, mum? He were really nice,” and it wasn’t until years later that he thought maybe she’d been pleading for him to say no instead of yes.
*
Trouble, with his dad, meant police. Hospital less often, if he fell over and cracked something or drank so much he needed his stomach pumped, but usually it meant police. Back before his loan Jamie’d get the calls once a week, sometimes more. Nowadays, it happened maybe once a month, his dad yanking on the noose he’d started tying ‘round Jamie’s neck when he were a kid. A reminder: no matter how far you run, you’ll always answer to me. Slouched in an uncomfortable grey plastic chair in the police department waiting room, he might have been sixteen or nineteen or twenty, waiting for someone to fetch his dad while the officer at the desk scowled at him — not much turnover at this station, so some of ‘em still remembered him as a little shit of a teenager. Or maybe they just knew he weren’t much better as an adult. (On the TV screen in the corner, Roy Kent shoved him in the chest. Check on your fucking teammate. Like he hadn’t spent a lifetime curled around his own hurts, desperate for someone to check and equally desperate to be left alone.)
Time passed; he couldn’t have said how much. The TV switched to show a circle of pundits; George Cartrick was saying how talent like Jamie, they didn’t need to concern themselves with lesser players. Jamie buried his face in his knees so he wouldn’t have to see it, then unburied it in case his dad came out and saw him like that. If he’d just fucking checked on Sam, he’d’ve still been in the match when dad called, then out celebrating the win with the rest of the lads; too drunk to come down, sorry, dad. (He never claimed to be a good son).
Dad crashed into the waiting room like a hurricane, unsteady on his feet and snarling at the officer who held him by the arm. When he caught sight of Jamie, his eyes lit up.
“Would you look at that? My boy, in such a hurry to get his old man he didn’t even bother to get changed! Got you proper trained up, haven’t I?” Jamie glanced down in confusion to find he still had on his match boots and shorts, a shock of pink against the linoleum.
“’Course, dad. Let’s get you home, yeah?”
“Get me home? What am I, a fucking invalid?” dad said. He gripped onto Jamie’s shoulder hard, and even now, when he’d been taller and stronger than the man for years, it made him feel two feet tall. “After all I’ve done for you, can’t even come help your old man without treating me like a chore. Would never have gotten away with it with my own da, let me tell you.”
“Sorry, dad.”
They made it outside in an awkward hobble, his father drunk and Jamie unsteadier in his boots than he’d been since he was a child — the world swooped and dipped strangely around him like the whiskey in his father’s blood had seeped into his own. Or like he played half a match then drove four hours without pause to eat or rehydrate.
“Fancy fucking car, ain’t it?” his dad said. “All that footballer money.” Like Jamie hadn’t bought him a fancy fucking car of his own, and a flat, and then another when he lost that one, and another after that, again and again countless times. The neighbours were all cunts, he’d say, or he lost it gambling, sold it ‘cause he wanted the money more than the place.
Dad spilled into the leather seat and that, coupled with the touchscreen and Jamie’s driving, provided him enough material to last back to his latest place — a pleasant little third-story walk up in a nicer part of town than he’d be able to afford on his own, but not so nice the neighbours were likely to call the cops when they caught him stumbling home drunk or he got in a punch up in the middle of the street. Neat inside, too, not in the way that he cleaned much but that he didn’t own enough to be truly untidy.
“Fix us something to eat, will you? Fucking famished, four hours in the tank ‘cause my son’s gone and fucked off to London,” dad said, sneering on the last word.
“You know I didn’t ask to get loaned, da,” Jamie said, instead of, don’t get plastered at four in the afternoon, then, but it came out spikier than he’d meant all the same. He turned to take plates from the cupboards before his dad could see it written on his face — he’d gotten out of practice, since coming to Richmond. Got in the habit of fighting back from all his dressing room spats with Roy.
“Didn’t ask to go anywhere closer either, did you?”
“Dad—”
“Too fucking good to help your own da, are you? Come down here all simpering, yes, da, of course, da, let’s get you home, da, with your fancy fucking car and your fancy fucking clothes and you think I can’t tell you’re trying to get rid of me? Me, Jamie!” He slammed his fist down on the table, making the plates rattle and jump. “Me, who made you what you are! You’d be waiting tables like your whore of a mum if I hadn’t shown up!”
The mention of mum ripped him open like it always did, her white-knuckle grip on the countertop as they shouted at each other. She’d told him she was getting married to her creepy fucking boyfriend, Simon, with his weird placid smiles and his collection of aprons and his resolute politeness, the kind of person where the cops dig up corpses in the yard and all the neighbours say, oh, but he seemed so nice and normal. And Jamie, seventeen years old and seized by furious panic, said, if you’re so eager to get slapped around again, why don’t you just get back with da? For a split second, his mum’s face crumpled into open devastation like he’d never seen before, not even when he were little and the cupboards were empty and the bills were all due at once. Just because you’ve grown into your father doesn’t mean every man is like him, mummy said, and maybe she said more after that but Jamie didn’t hear it; he turned on his heel and stormed out of the house without stopping to collect any of his things. Hadn’t seen or spoken to her since, hadn’t even gone to the wedding though he’d probably paid for it, sending her half his paycheque as he did. For the last six years, it had just been him and dad.
The plate struck him above the eyebrow. Jamie stumbled back over his feet; overbalanced, twenty-odd years of landing falls on the pitch knocked from his head as he caught himself with his full weight on his wrist. Something twisted but did not break.
“So much for those footballer reflexes, eh?” dad said, but he lifted him almost gently to his feet. “Go on, get yourself sorted. I’ll handle this.”
“Thanks, da.” Jamie stumbled off to the bathroom, hoodie sleeve pressed against his forehead so the blood didn’t drip on the carpet. It weren’t so bad, really: they’d got it over with early, and his dad seemed to have come out the other side benevolent and maybe even a little regretful instead of irritated at the mess and his own loss of control, as he sometimes did. When Jamie was younger, that meant tickets to a match or a new shirt or ice cream for dinner, when usually dad didn’t allow him sweets at all, said it would fuck his diet plan and then where would he be? This time, hopefully, it meant he’d stay sober long enough to drive Jamie back up to Richmond in time for training.
*
When Jamie was ten years old, him and mum moved into dad’s cramped little council flat. That way, she said, they could make some extra money subletting their place, so she wouldn’t have to work so much and they could keep all their things that didn’t fit into dad’s place. She asked if he wanted to bring anything with him, like his football-pattern blanket or his nightlight, also shaped like a football. He’d said no, even though sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the sitting room those first weeks he missed his room so much he nearly cried — but crying was for babies, and so were nightlights and patterned blankets. The only thing he brought with him was his Roy Kent poster, rolled up and hidden in with his clothes, until mum and dad broke up for good when he was thirteen. Then Roy went right back up on the wall at their old place, where everything he’d missed suddenly seemed so small and childish. We can replace it when we have the money, baby, mummy kept telling him, but they never did.
And then he came back from Amsterdam after his fourteenth birthday feeling like his skin had been coated in oil that wouldn’t come off no matter how much he scrubbed, like somewhere in the blurred haze of his memories he’d been irreparably stained and if he spent too long with mummy she’d see right through him, she’d know what he was and be just as disgusted with him as he was with himself. So he lived with dad after that, mostly; and when he stayed with his mum or came by to hang his posters — he told himself there was no point having them at dad’s with how much they moved, but really he didn’t like the way his father leered at the models and griped about the footballers — they fought.
She’d say, “Are you sure your father’s not being too hard on you, baby?” or, “You know hardly anyone makes it into the premier league, baby, you need to have a backup plan,” or, “Could you at least try to finish your school work?”
And Jamie would tell her fuck off, if dad’s hard on me it’s only ‘cause he believes in me, not like you. Lying in bed at his father’s house at fourteen, at seventeen, at twenty-three, he missed her so badly it ached. Wanted so desperately to crawl into her arms the way he had as a child, let her crack open his ribcage so it all came spilling out of him on the sitting room floor. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t.
*
Roy showed up to training in a foul mood, the elation of winning against Watford without Tartt faded now that the deep, inescapable ache in his knee had set in and he was faced with the prospect of a full day dealing with the prince prick of all pricks in what was sure to be particularly hellish form.
Or maybe not — by the time the team finished their warmups, he still hadn’t shown his face. They boys had noticed his absence, too; they kept drifting out of their stretches to gossip about it until Roy glared them back into place while Ted finished up his phone call at the far end of the field, pacing back and forth with his fingers pinched between his eyebrows. Finally, he pocketed his phone and jogged over.
“Well, fellas, I dunno if Jamie will be joining us today, but there is one special guest I know for certain we’ve got — if special guests stuck around as part of the main cast, which I sure hope this one will. Y’all know Dani Rojas?”
Roy did not. Rojas had come during the transfer window while he was on holiday with Mara and Phoebe and then, from what he’d heard, got injured on his third day in the country. Tough break, but Roy couldn’t help the swell of bitterness at the fact that Rojas could bounce back so fully, come running out of the tunnel shouting his own name while Roy was stuck with his shit knee that would only get shitter. Still, he was a brilliant striker and, more importantly, not an unmitigated fucking asshole while he did it, and the exhilaration of not having to deal with Jamie fucking Tartt for one fucking day kept it at a low simmer instead of a full boil.
Except the fucking prick kept worming his way into Roy’s mind, no matter how hard he tried to push him out. For all his many, many, many flaws, the little shit worked hard. And asides from that, he was dramatic — he would’ve expected him to come to training where he could throw his little bitch fit in front of everyone, not retreat into a silent sulk. Roy growled to himself as he ran through the drills, determined not to waste his one Tartt-free day thinking about the prick.
Ted ruined his plan almost immediately. Roy had ducked out of training for his scheduled physio session shortly before lunch and come back to find the manager pacing around the empty dressing room with his phone pressed to his ear, sounding as irritable as he’d had ever heard him.
“Now, look Jamie, we’ve all got our off days and I’m happy to give you time off if you need it, but you gotta let me or Beard know, and you gotta pick up the phone when we call you.” He hung up with a sigh that was halfway to a groan. Then he caught sight of Roy. “Jamie hasn’t contacted you at all, has he?” he asked, like that was something that would reasonably happen.
“Fuck no.”
“You mind reaching out to him, captain to player? Let him know you’re ready to make like Colonel Nicholson and build some bridges if he’s willing to meet you halfway.”
“Fuck no,” Roy repeated, and stormed away to the cafeteria, where hopefully the conversation would revolve around anything other than Jamie Tartt.
It did not. The lads all clustered around Isaac at one of the tables, hanging off each other’s shoulders and speaking over each other in an excited babble; he strode past them with an intensity that hopefully conveyed his complete disinterest in the topic at hand, whatever it was.
“Captain,” Isaac called. “Captain, look at this.” He extracted himself from the huddle and shoved his phone in Roy’s face. It was open to a Twitter post timestamped to the previous day, which read: picked my cousin up from manchester pd last night (long story) but it took forever bc this drunk guy spent 4 full hours shouting at everyone while his son drove down from london to get him. and then the son showed up and istg it was jamie tartt. The picture underneath was blurry enough that Tartt would probably be spared the media circus — most of the commenters were unconvinced, at the very least — but it was unmistakably him, if one spent as much time with him as Roy unfortunately did. He sprawled across a row of non-descript grey chairs, allergic to sitting properly in a way that would fuck his spine by the time he got to Roy’s age, hood up and hands tucked into the front of his jumper. He still seemed to be wearing his kit shorts and match boots, though he might’ve just owned street shoes in the same blinding shade of neon pink.
And, look. Roy had grown up on a council estate before he grew up billeting at Sunderland; he knew as much as anyone the criminal justice system was a fucking joke. Just because Tartt had gone to fetch someone from the police — even someone drunk and belligerent — didn’t mean he was in any danger. Probably just too embarrassed about his precious fucking image to call in about it. The little prick was fucking fine.
*
Tartt didn’t show up the next day, either. Roy had texted him, in the end, in a fit of probably misplaced former council estate-kid solidarity — Either get your ass back here or ask for time off. No one gives a shit about your personal life — but apparently that had been a waste of his fucking time, seeing as he couldn’t even be bothered to reply. The lads were distracted, only made worse when Rojas tripped over nothing and sprained his ankle because no one bothered to warn him away from the treatment room, and try as he might, Roy was no better. He’d spent the past decade and change of his career as captain even if he’d done a pretty shit job of it at Richmond, and not knowing where one of his boys had gone set his teeth on edge no matter how much he wanted to kill the boy in question when he was there.
And so, when Tartt failed to appear at training the next day, or otherwise give any sign he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere despite the dozen text messages and voicemails he and Ted had left between them, Roy found himself in Higgins’ office once the rest of the team had gone home. After he stood in the doorway for a full twenty seconds without speaking, Higgins cleared his throat.
“Did you need help with anything?”
“Who’s Jamie’s emergency contact,” Roy ground out. He felt the immediate need to backpedal, to insist he didn’t actually care about the prick, but if it turned out Tartt was in real trouble he’d be fucking miserable about it for the rest of his days, and that was enough to turn the words sour in his mouth.
“Still no word, then?” Higgins asked, rummaging around in a filing cabinet. He brandished a sheet of paper. “There you are. You’ll be trying that tonight?” Roy got the sense it was more a request than a question. It occurred to him that Tartt must be near the same age as the Higgins’ eldest, the twiggy one who’d become a priest.
“Sure.”
And he did, almost as soon as he got home. The contact was for Jamie’s father, another James Tartt. The line rang out until an automated voice informed him the number he was trying to reach had been disconnected. Of fucking course Tartt didn’t understand the point of an emergency contact was to actually be able to contact them in the event of an emergency, say if their son mysteriously vanished off the face of the fucking planet after picking them up from the police station in the middle of the night. A quick search revealed the address printed below the defunct phone number to belong to a flat in some high rise in downtown Manchester; it also revealed the flat to be for sale. Which either meant that James Tartt Sr. had changed both his phone number and his address in the past year, or that his son had lied on the form. Fine. If Tartt didn’t want to be found, that was his own problem. No one could say Roy hadn’t tried.
And then it fucking… haunted him, all through making dinner and eating dinner and watching re-runs of Bake Off and his final round of physio stretches before he went off to bed. Here’s the thing: in the final years of her marriage to her shitty fucking ex, Mara had been secretive, closed off, dodging phone calls and weaseling out of family events like she hadn’t been the one to brute force Roy into some semblance of a regular sibling relationship through sheer fucking persistence the whole time he’d been at Sunderland.
And so somehow, against his will, he found himself searching how long a person had to be gone before they could be reported missing. Which was utterly ridiculous — Tartt wasn’t missing, he was off somewhere having a sulk like the little bitch prima donna he was because someone finally bothered to hold him accountable for his atrocious fucking behaviour. Roy threw down his phone in disgust and picked up his novel. He got through three pages before he realized he hadn’t registered a word. Closed the book, shut off the light, and lowered himself determinedly onto the bed. And then spent the next hour tossing and turning, completely unable to sleep. With a growl of frustration, he pushed himself up on his elbow, fumbled around in the dark until he found his phone, and stabbed at Tartt’s number in his recent calls.
“Listen here, you little shit,” he snarled as soon as the ringing stopped. “I don’t give a fuck if your fucking feelings are hurt. Get the fuck over yourself and get back here before we have to file a fucking missing person report over whatever immature fucking—”
“Roy?”
He shot bolt upright in bed. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Roy,” Jamie repeated. He sounded odd, breathy, like he was whispering.
“Jamie, where are you? What happened?” A long pause, punctuated by choppy breathing. Then,
“I want to go home.” He sounded so much like Mara, then, after she kicked her shitty ex out for the last time. Or like Phoebe after a nightmare.
“I’ll come get you,” he promised, already on his feet, tugging on a pair of trousers with his free hand. “Tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.” And, miracle of miracles, Jamie mumbled out an address. An address in fucking Manchester, because the little prick couldn’t make anything easy. “I’ll be right there, okay? Soon as I can.”
*
Roy was long past the time in his life where he stayed up ‘til two in the morning. Most days, he was perfectly content to get home from work and speak to precisely no one — besides Phoebe and Mara, on his days with his niece — until the following morning. He certainly didn’t make a habit of driving around at night, now that his ability to see in the dark had gone to shit. And yet.
He pulled up to the brick walk-up tense and jittery and without any real sort of plan despite turning what little information he had over and over in his mind the whole drive. Jamie’s car was parked in the street, at least, and he had access to his phone, but he’d wanted to leave and he couldn’t. I’m outside, Roy texted after a moment’s consideration. Waited five minutes, ten. Jamie’d probably just fallen asleep. Probably assumed as soon as I can meant as some reasonable hour the next day and when this was all over — whatever this was — he’d be insufferable about how Richmond needed their star player so bad Roy drove down in the middle of the night to get him. He could get a hotel for the night, try again first thing in the morning.
Except. Except I want to go home kept playing over and over again in his mind, soft and desperate and on the edge of tears in a way Roy only detected from all the time he spent watching Phoebe. Before he even properly registered what he was doing, he was up the stairs and pounding on the flat’s door. A light flicked on behind the curtains, and a moment later the door opened just a crack to reveal a short, stocky man maybe a decade Roy’s senior. He had Jamie’s face but not much else; a wild head of curling grey hair and a beard to match, mean eyes and a belligerent scowl that outmatched his son even at his worst.
“Is Jamie here?” Roy asked without preamble.
James Tartt cackled. “Here that, son?” he called over his shoulder. “You’ve been loaned to such a useless bunch of amateurs, the great Roy Kent’s come to beg you back.” The door swung the rest of the way open to reveal the flat beyond — a decent enough place, one bedroom from the look of it, sparsely decorated with a threadbare carpet, a coffee table, and a black leather sofa that sagged on one side and had Jamie Tartt curled up on the other. Jamie climbed unsteadily to his feet, one hand braced against the arm of the sofa for balance, the other covered by his hoodie sleeve and tucked up protectively against his chest. His eyes bounced nervously between Roy and his father.
“What are you standing about like a halfwit for? Go on, I’ve had enough of you laying around here like a moody bitch.”
Roy took a fortifying breath. He just needed to get Jamie out of here and somewhere safe for the night. The rest — he had a feeling he’d only glimpsed one small part of the whole ugly mass of it — could be dealt with later. A different emergency contact, for one, and strict orders that if this piece of shit ever ended up in jail again, to leave him there.
Across the room, Jamie fumbled with his bag, struggling to lift it with his left arm without overbalancing, but he caught Roy’s eye and shook his head minutely when he stepped forward to help. He hadn’t been injured at the match and he hadn’t looked injured in the picture of him at the police station, but he certainly was now — not just the arm but an angry red gash through his eyebrow that suggested the instability in his step was the result of a concussion, not alcohol. Beneath the dingy yellow light, his skin looked clammy pale under his mop of stringy dark hair, for once free of product and seemingly unwashed, his lips dry and cracked. He still wore his mud-streaked kit shorts and his match boots were lined neat at entrance.
As soon as he’d struggled his way into the latter, Roy swept him outside with an arm around his shoulder, relieved him of the bag, and slammed the door shut, heedless of the neighbours. In the dim glow of the streetlights, they stared into each other’s faces. Then, slowly, laboriously, they began to make their way down the stairs.
Much more laboriously than was strictly necessary, in Roy’s opinion: Jamie smacked aside his proffered arm, snarled, “I’m not a fucking grandad like you, I can walk down a flight of stairs,” in a voice that cracked from disuse, and shuffled downwards at a glacial pace, concentrating hard on each step while Roy waited on the one below it like he’d done for Phoebe when she was just learning to walk. Every so often, he shot an abrupt, skittish glance back at his father’s flat though the movement seemed to disorient him and he swayed dangerously forward. By the time they reached the ground, he looked close to tears and allowed Roy to bundle him into his G-Wagon without complaint, just tugged his hood low over his face and tucked himself against the door like he was trying to melt into it.
*
The thing about being fuck-off rich, Roy had learned in his twenty-odd years of being a professional footballer, was that it solved a truly criminal amount of problems. Which is to say that when he needed a hotel room at half past two in the morning, he found the nicest one in Manchester and paid an obscene amount of money to make it happen.
Roy’d left Jamie in the car while he went in to book their room, and by the time he returned, Jamie had revived enough to be a contrarian little dickhead. He grumbled when he found out they’d be sharing a room — “I’m trying to make sure you don’t die of a concussion, you idiot,” Roy said — and snatched up his bag as soon as Roy lifted it out of the boot, nearly overbalancing in the process, then overbalanced worse when Roy reached for his arm to steady him and he flinched back.
“Jamie,” he sighed, striving for patience. “You’ve clearly had a shit time. No one is judging you for needing help. Now would you please just let me carry the fucking bag so we can go to sleep at some point this century?” Finally, after a long, agonizing moment, he handed it over and allowed Roy to wedge his shoulder beneath his arm for balance. Pressed together like that, he could feel the faint tremors running through Jamie’s body.
It did not occur to him until he had maneuvered them both up to the room and poured Jamie onto the bed, where he lay face-down with his right arm stuck out to the side, that they maybe should have gone straight to the A&E.
“Oi, are you fucking dying, or some shit?” He’d said it as a joke but as soon as it was out of his mouth he was seized by a sudden fear, not helped at all by the lack of immediate response. “Jamie.”
“Fuck off, grandad, I’m fine. Just didn’t rehydrate and all that after the match.”
“After the match,” Roy repeated slowly. “The match we played three days ago.”
Jamie turned his face just enough to fix him with a judgemental stare. “Dementia getting to you already, old man?”
Of fucking course the little prima donna couldn’t grasp such basics as you need to hydrate after running around for forty-five minutes, a concept even Phoebe had mastered at the ripe old age of six. (But that couldn’t be it. Of course it fucking couldn’t; Jamie had probably been playing since he was a toddler, spent as much time with the nutritionists and physios and team doctors as any of them. Roy pushed the thought out of his mind). “You fucking idiot,” he said, and went into the bathroom to fill a glass of water, which he placed on the bedside table along with an armful of overpriced snacks from the mini-fridge. “What about your arm?”
“Just sprained.” Jamie wiggled his fingers in demonstration.
“All right. You drink that; I’m gonna find somewhere open to buy you some sports drink and a brace for that. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Sure, grandad.”
*
Alone in the hotel room, Jamie propped himself upright against the pillows and contemplated the glass of water. He felt dizzy and sick, hazy like he’d fallen asleep and never quite woken up. Maybe that explained Roy’s sudden appearance at the door, come to take him away from his dad like he used to dream of as a kid after that phone call he’d been half convinced was a dream. Hoped was a dream, with the humiliating way he’d begged to come home like the pathetic, snivelling little nine-year-old who still lived inside him had taken control of his mouth.
His dad’s regret, and with it his patience, had lasted the rest of their first evening together and part of the next day: he’d heated up frozen meals for them both without getting on Jamie’s case about being a freeloader — never mind he’d been the one to cook all their meals back when they lived together —, or eating something that wasn’t approved by his nutritionist, or only picking at his food on account of the nausea from getting his face bashed in with a plate. That night, he dug up a couple of musty blankets and a pillow to make up a bed on the sofa, and the next morning he left a cup of tea and a couple of slices of plain toast on the table before he left for work.
Determined to get himself safely back to Richmond before his dad came home from work, Jamie forced both down despite the lingering nausea — he’d spent enough time hungry as a kid to know it was a vicious cycle, that the hunger made him feel sick and feeling sick made him not want to eat when there finally was food — but the thought of his dad walking around the flat while he slept defenseless and unawares freaked him out so bad he threw it right back up, and then the thought of his dad coming back in while he was busy being sick freaked him out even worse.
And so he huddled between the toilet and the shower, eyes fixed on the locked door and wrist crammed in his mouth to hide the sound of his hysterical, sobbing breaths for what felt like years before something in his brain hit the emergency off switch and he spent the following days in a detached sort of haze, mind hovering above his body as it lay perfectly still on the sofa like a mouse convinced it could hide from the circling hawks if it just lay still enough.
The flat was quiet, now. He should stand, force some food and drink into his body, find his keys and get out. He’d driven sick before, driven hurt and terrified and half out of his head. Maybe he could go see mummy, tell her everything he’d kept hidden even if some days he was convinced she already knew and was just waiting for him to tell her — but he couldn’t do that to her, show up hurt after all this time. Some day, he’d gather his courage and finally be the son she deserved. But for now, as the door opened — strangely quiet, without the usual creak — he retreated back into his protective shell.
*
Roy stalled in front of the wrist braces longer than he was proud to admit, jittery with nerves and a lack of sleep. He’d spent the full four hours of the drive alternating between worst-case scenarios — career-ending injuries like the one that loomed inevitably in his own future, elaborate hostage situations that in hindsight probably came from reading too many thrillers, even that he’d get to Manchester and find out that the little prick had up and fucking died — and irritation, convinced Jamie was fucking with him as some sort of petty revenge, never mind that would have required him to know Roy would drop everything to come pick him up, which Roy himself wouldn’t have called before that evening.
The reality of it was better than he’d feared, at least physically; nothing that time and proper medical attention couldn’t fix, nothing bad enough to deal with the media fallout of the hospital, though they would be heading straight for the clinic the minute they got back to Richmond. In any other circumstance, he’d brush off Jamie’s strange behaviour as dramatics — they were professional athletes, they’d all had sprained wrists and concussions before, even forgot to rehydrate properly after training or a match, on occasion.
But he'd heard all the vile shit Jamie’s father was spewing, and it didn’t exactly leave a whole lot of questions about where those injuries came from. Even if the man himself hadn’t had a hand in them, which Roy severely fucking doubted, he’d still left his son to languish for days without medical care or altering anyone who might actually give a shit about his wellbeing as to where he was. Those wounds ran too deep to be fixed by a single visit to the physios. They’d probably follow Jamie for the rest of his life.
“Can I help you sir?”
Roy jolted, suddenly aware he’d been staring blankly at the rack of wrist braces for the past… however long. He grabbed the first one that seemed like it would be the right size. “Fuck. No, I’m done.” Paid for that and an armload of sports drinks and energy bars. Fiddled with the SatNav until it gave him a route back to the hotel that stuck to enough main roads to avoid crashing into anything with his shitty night vision. Set off with the uncomfortable feeling that he now knew something about Jamie that Jamie would never, ever have wanted him to know, that he’d never have the chance to decide for himself if he wanted to share.
The light in the hotel room was on when he returned, the glass of water and snacks untouched. Jamie must have fallen asleep as soon as Roy left; he still lay on his stomach, arms tucked up to his chest and eyes closed.
“Course you can’t follow basic instructions, you muppet,” Roy sighed, more affectionate than he’d meant, and jostled his shoulder to wake him — lightly at first, then harder when he got no reaction. Pushed Jamie over onto his back, all floppy deadweight. Under the stark hotel lighting he looked half dead, skin a kaleidoscope of dark bruised violent and garish red and sickly greyish white instead of the usual tan.
“Jamie.” He tapped him hard on the face. No response. Fuck. Fuck. Of course he wasn’t fine. Of course this wasn’t the kind of injury that could be put off until the next day, after a four hour drive. What kind of fucking idiot even thought that? What kind of captain left their player traumatized and dehydrated and probably concussed to look after himself while he ran errands — while he lingered over errands because he didn’t want to deal with some snide remarks and the fact he’d spent the past year snarling in the face of someone whose father had been doing the same his whole life? God, what a fucking coward.
“Are you having a stroke?” And there was Jamie, sat up in bed with that annoying little smirk, alive and cogent and not plunged into a fucking… coma, or something. All at once, the adrenaline drained from his body and Roy dropped onto the bed next to him.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Jamie.”
“Seriously, man, what—” Roy jerked him into a hug. Jamie didn’t relax, exactly, but he didn’t try to free himself, either. Just stayed there, warm and solid, tense muscles wracked by the occasional shiver as Roy rubbed circles into his spine. With his other hand, he fumbled for the shopping bag and, after a brief struggle, managed to find one of the bottles of sports drink and wrestle the top off. Jamie uncurled enough to accept it but made no move to drink, staring down at the ripples on the surface.
“Come on, drink up,” Roy said gently, falling back on the instincts which had seen him through Phoebe’s yearly bouts of flu. “Not gonna absorb itself through your eyes if you keep staring at it.” Jamie took a miniscule sip. “Your electrolytes are all fucked up, that’s why you feel so shit.” Well, and whatever traumatic bullshit had him catatonic when Roy had come back in, but that was a discussion for another day. They made it through half the bottle and an energy bar like that. Slowly, the tremors subsided and the tension leeched out of Jamie’s muscles.
“I wanna shower,” he whispered.
“Yeah, you do. You’re fucking greasy,” Roy said, ruffling a hand through his hair as Jamie squawked indignantly, squirming out of his arms. “Go on, then. Door cracked so I can hear if you fall.”
“Fuck off, I’m not a grandad like you,” Jamie said, but he kept the door cracked.
Once the water started, Roy sank back against the pillows, palms pressed against his eyes. His whole body ached, not the way it did after he played a full match but like it had after Mara left her shit husband and Phoebe stayed up the whole night sobbing the first time she worked a night shift afterwards, terrified her mom would leave her, too. Tired in his soul.
Eventually he pried himself off the mattress. Tidied the room a bit, changed into his pajamas, tucked himself under the covers with the novel he’d brought out of habit but hadn’t expected to read. Jamie came out some time later, dressed in a complementary bathrobe and clutching his damp clothes in a ball — he must have washed them in the shower — which he placed on the radiator to dry. Then he just… stood there looking young and lost and miserable with his bruised eyes and his hair plastered flat on his head. Roy took pity on him.
“There’s a wrist brace for you in the bag. Grab that and get the fuck over here.” He did; sat nervously on the edge of the bed while Roy adjusted it for him. Then, taking a chance, he flipped down the covers and patted the empty space next to him. After a moment’s hesitation, Jamie climbed in. His good arm shot out, quick like he thought he’d get in trouble and was trying to do it before anyone noticed, and wrapped tight around Roy’s torso, then, when Roy did nothing but set aside his book and squeeze him back, flicking off the lamp as he went, Jamie lay his head on his chest.
“I got you, Jay,” he whispered into the dark. “Everything’s going to be all right.” And so they lay like that together, and when Jamie started to cry, neither of them mentioned it.
*
Jamie woke with a pounding in his head and the sick burn of humiliation in his gut. God, he’d fucking cried, needed a cuddle to get to sleep like the child Roy always accused him of being. How could he face the man he’d idolized — the man he’d never quite managed to stop idolizing — after that? He buried his face in the pillow with a groan just as Roy’s voice drifted over from somewhere in the suite.
“…Found him at his piece of shit dad’s place in fucking Manchester, all fucking beat up and dehydrated.” A pause, then, “Are you fucking serious, Lasso? He spent three days there with an untreated concussion and sprained wrist, it’s not exactly the mystery of the century.” Another pause, then, “Yes, okay, fine. See you later. Probably 1:00 to 2:00; we’re about to head out now.” He said this last bit pointedly, and in response Jamie leveraged himself off the pillow. Roy chucked a shirt at his head, but lightly. “Come on, Tartt, let’s get a move on.”
By the time he dressed and gathered his things, Jamie had burned through whatever energy he managed to store up overnight — sleep had put him firmly back in his own flesh, with all the aches and pains that came with it. He ended up sat on the edge of the bed, lightheaded and on the verge of tears for what felt like the thousandth time in three days while Roy rubbed his back and pressed yet another bottle of sports drink into his hands.
“I got your car while you were asleep, bribed the hotel people to keep it here until you can come back for it,” he said. “Also got you sunglasses for the drive. For the concussion, and all.”
“These are fucking hideous, mate.”
Roy gave him a reprimanding tap on the shoulder, still oddly gentle. “Oi! I shlepped myself all the way down to Manchester for you, you muppet. Leave off my fashion choices.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” Jamie said, stung — it wasn’t like they had the kind of relationship where he’d expect Roy to fetch him a coffee if he asked, let alone drive four hours in the middle of the night.
Roy sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face. “That’s not what I fucking meant. If you need help, I’ll come get you. All right? Now drink your fucking sports drink so we can get out of here.”
Jamie grinned at him. “I thought you didn't give a fuck about my personal life.”
“Fuck off, Tartt.”
*
If asked to imagine a four-hour road trip with Roy Kent, Jamie would have said that one of them (Roy, obviously, seeing as he was old and decrepit) would end up shoved out of a moving vehicle and get squashed to death by a lorry — Roy had, in fact, threatened exactly that the one and only time Jamie tried to sit next to him on the bus, not long after he got loaned to Richmond.
In actuality, it was kind of nice, or would have been if his brain didn’t feel like it was trying to squeeze out of his head through his eyeballs and his stomach didn’t jolt at every bump in the road. He spent the first hour dozing queasily against the window with Roy’s frankly tragic choice of sunglasses shielding his eyes and Roy’s leather jacket draped over him like a blanket. He’d offered it without prompting, just saw Jamie shivering and shrugged it off at the next red light.
Out on the highway, Roy nudged him back to awareness every so often to ask how he was feeling or press food and drink into his hands. “I’m just gonna puke it back up,” Jamie protested, but Roy just dumped the contents of the shopping bag unceremoniously into the center console and handed him the empty bag.
“Look, I ferry my niece around all the fucking time. It wouldn’t be the first time and it probably won’t be the last. Just try to get it in there and we’re all good.”
Just like that, like the thought of tossing him out on the side of the highway if he got sick in the car hadn’t even occurred to him, the way dad would’ve if he ever had a car in the first place.
Mummy never got mad at him for being sick, either. He’d forgotten ‘cause it were so long since he’d admitted to being sick, knowing nothing would come of it but a long argument on the phone with her supervisor before she smoothed a cool hand over his burning forehead and told him sorry, baby, I can’t get the day off. You call me any time you need, yeah? But they both knew he couldn’t, really; if she wanted to keep her job and he’d have to spend all day at home by himself, crawling out of his skin with boredom.
But there had been this one time, way back at the edges of his memory when he was three or four and his mum brought him everywhere — to work, to parties with her friends, to the club if she could smuggle him in — ‘cause he was too little to stay on his own. In this memory, it’s his mum’s twentieth birthday and she’s bathed in light that shifts from blue to pink to green to purple as she twirls in a skirt and strappy high heels. The air smells thick with something he can’t identify, not at that age, and Jamie wanders underfoot, entranced by the shifting lights and al the strange people.
There’s cake on the kitchen table, too high for him to reach, but Jamie’s nothing if not resourceful. He scrambles up by way of the chair. Gorges himself on it, scooping up icing with his stubby little toddler fingers until he makes himself sick all down his front and the rest of the cake. And mummy just scoops him up into her arms and washes him off in the sink and takes the whole next day off work to lounge around in bed feeding him water and crackers. She hadn’t been angry, is the thing. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be.
‘Course, he’d still chipped away at her, in the end, especially in the years after the first Amsterdam trip when she started peeling herself away from dad for real, going to some group for people with shit exes, or whatever the fuck. Started talking about unhealthy relationships — with his father, which he maybe secretly agreed with, just a little, and with football, which he didn’t. Kept saying he needed to do his school work, stop picking fights with the teachers and the other kids, about having a backup plan and if football was so all-consuming as that maybe he should go back to just playing for fun. That only happened once, not so long before their big fight.
“The fuck are you all up in your head about?” They were on a long, empty stretch of highway and Roy was staring at him, caterpillar eyebrows furrowed.
“Why’d you come get me?”
The eyebrows raised. “Told you already. You needed help.”
“Yeah, but like. You don’t even like me.”
Roy sighed at him like he kept fucking up a particularly simple drill. “It’s not about fucking… liking you, or even about football. It’s about you being a person, Jamie. With this kind of shit, you deserve help. Automatically.” He seemed to struggle with something. “And… it’s about my sister. Her ex-husband was a fucking bastard, too. So.”
“Okay,” Jamie said, feeling oddly small. Automatically. It echoed through his mind long after Roy fell quiet. It’s about you being a person. It’s not about liking you. You deserve help. Automatically. Because he never fucking had, had he? Hadn’t with any of the teachers or the coaches or even mummy, those years they lived with dad and spent all their time pretending not to notice each other’s bruises. Not until today.
*
The Dogtrack’s halls were deserted when they arrived in the middle of the afternoon, the lads and the coaches out on the pitch for training and everyone else at work in their offices. Roy marched him to one of the (non-haunted) treatment rooms with a hand planted firmly on his shoulder — Jamie was steadier on his feet, now, but had spent the final half hour of the drive arguing that he be dropped off at home, and now Roy had apparently decided he couldn’t be trusted on his own. Which was ridiculous, because he was fucking fine.
“All right, so it looks like a mild concussion — you know the drill for that, no phones, books, tv, any cognitive stimulation like that until you’re twenty-four hours without symptoms — sprained wrist; blood pressure’s a bit high from the dehydration and blood sugar’s low from not eating. You might be able to get back to some light training by the end of the week, but you’re not playing this Saturday,” said Natalie, one of the team medics.
“He hasn’t been able to eat or drink much, says he’s too nauseous,” Roy said. He’d stayed in the room for the whole examination, hand warm and solid on Jamie’s shoulder. It was strangely comforting.
“Ah. Might do an IV, then.”
“I don’t need a fucking IV!” Jamie protested, then relented when Roy and Natalie fixed him with twin glares. Not ‘cause he was intimidated, obviously. He just wanted to stop feeling so shit.
“I’ve got a pain killer for you in here,” Natalie told him as she swabbed the inside of his elbow. “With that and the fluids, we should be able to get you feeling well enough to get some nutrients in you pretty quick.” IV in place, she rustled him up a pillow and blanket from one of the cupboards. Warm and tired, the aches fading from his body for the first time in days, with Roy stood sentinel and his side and his father four hours away in Manchester, his eyes drifted shut and he slept.
Not for long, though. He startled awake at the sound of the door opening, jarring the IV line.
“Hey, bud. Sorry ‘bout that, I was trying to sneak in here nice and quiet.” Fucking Lasso. Of course. He dragged over a chair and positioned it so he could look Jamie right in the eye.
“Need something, coach?”
Lasso smiled under that stupid fucking mustache. “Naw, Jamie, I just wanted to see how you were doing. Roy tells me you had a rough couple of days — and boy, let me tell you, it sure is nice to see the pair of you getting along. You know what the two of you remind me of? My neighbour growing up, Ms. Crawford, she had this big scarred old black cat, didn’t like much of anyone. Called him Boris. Well, one day she decides Boris needs a friend, so she goes off to the shelter and comes back with this fluffy little orange rescue kitten, and I tell you, Jamie, he was a fearsome little thing. Just about took off all the skin on my hand when I was cat-sitting, once. Well, Boris and this little guy — his name was Oliver — they hated each other at first, used to get in these big, screeching fights so loud you’d think one of ‘em was dying. Now, Ms. Crawford, she was a real patient lady, had the pair of ‘em sniff at each other under the door, all that. And you know what? They did become friends, in the end. Just latched right onto each other.”
Jamie had the brief mental image of him and Roy slapping at each other through the gap at the base of a locked door while Lasso looked on. He brushed it aside. “Er, I’m alright, yeah.” Then, “Am I still benched? After I’m better, I mean.”
Another illusive smile. “Well, that depends on you, don’t it? You know what you have to do.”
Jamie said nothing. He wasn’t sure he did know, actually, and was equally sure he didn’t want to admit it. Lasso patted him on the shoulder. “You just rest up, bud. And hey, we’re having a little ritual tonight to take care of those pesky spirits in the treatment room. The boys would all sure love to have you there.” Jamie suppressed a snort at that — the lads flocked around him ‘cause he was the best player and they all knew it, but no one ever wanted to hang around him.
*
Now awake and without full use of either of his arms, the boredom set in quickly. After a solid thirty seconds of staring blankly at the opposite wall, Jamie climbed gingerly to his feet and steered the IV pole into the dressing room where the rest of the team — minus Roy, who had apparently gone home — were changing back into their street clothes. The lads turned as one to stare at him, including number 14, who he didn’t recognize but had a glorious mane of black hair.
“…Hey, bruv,” Isaac said. “Doing alright?”
“Yeah, sound.” He parked himself in front of his stall, legs curled up on the bench and head resting against the wall. The light stung at his eyes and twinged the stubborn remnant of his headache that hadn’t been knocked out by the painkillers, but the sound of the lads shuffling around as they changed, shouting and speaking over each other, soothed the sharp thing inside him that began clawing whenever things got too quiet, whispering in his dad’s voice.
“Were you in a fight?” Richard asked, suddenly very close to his face. “It does not look like you won.” And, yeah, that about summed it up, with his dad.
“Leave off him, Richard, he’ll say if he wants,” Isaac cut in before Jamie could snarl back. It was oddly nice, like Roy offering his jacket and cajoling him to keep hydrated every five seconds, no matter how much Jamie griped about it. Isaac levelled a stern look at the room. “That goes for all of you, hear?” The rest all mumbled their assent — and that was new, Isaac’s easy command of the room.
“Who died and made him captain?” Jamie mumbled without any real heat, not really directed at anyone in particular — his eyes kept sliding closed and a sleepy haze tugged at the edge of his mind.
“Roy did.” And that was Sam, hands laced together in his lap all hesitant like he was waiting to see if Jamie would attack. ‘Cause he had, nearly every time they spoke. ‘Cause the last time they’d seen each other, Jamie had stepped over him on the pitch. “Well, not died, but he left Isaac in charge while he was away.”
“Huh. He’s weirdly good at that,” Jamie said.
“Yes, he is.” And then Sam just sat there, hands clasped, with that same expectant look on his face. He seemed to be debating something with himself. “Do you need help, Jamie?”
Jamie could not think what he would possibly need help with, sitting in front of his stall doing fuck all. He said as much.
Sam leaned forward. “Despite our past differences, I do not want you to be hurt.” God, he looked so fucking earnest; the world would chew him up and spit out his bones. To his utter horror, Jamie felt his eyes prickle. Sam held his hands out in front of him, panic clear on his face. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry, what did I say?”
“Nothing, mate, I’m just being fucking stupid.”
Which was when Isaac hustled over, apparently determined to do right by the final hours of his temporary captaincy. “I said leave off,” he told Sam sternly. Then, to Jamie, “and you should be horizontal. Come on.” He escorted him to the treatment room with a hand between his shoulders, not hurrying at all even though Jamie was moving at about a quarter of his regular speed.
“You don’t gotta do this,” he said after the third time Isaac paused to wait for him to untangle his feet from the base of the IV pole.
“Yeah, bruv, I do. You might be a right cunt sometimes — most of the time, if we’re being honest — but we got your back on this.”
“You don’t even know what this is,” Jamie protested.
“Don’t need to.”
*
After Natalie took out the IV and stood over him while he ate two protein bars, he texted Keeley for a ride home, partly ‘cause she worked insane hours since taking the PR gig so she’d still be around, but mostly ‘cause he missed all the shit they used to do together — not just the sex but the plays (even if they were confusing and he kept getting in trouble for shouting at the actors) and the shopping and eating sweets in front of the latest season of Lust Conquers All on their shared cheat day, though he guessed every day was a cheat day for Keeley now she’d quit modeling.
Keeley squeezed him tight in the car park, tugging him down so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders. “Oh, babe, we were all so worried for you.” Four days ago, he wouldn’t have believed it. But then Roy had driven down to get him and held him while he cried and Isaac walked him back to the treatment room and told him we got your back and Sam turned that gentle look on him, and—
“It’s all fucking mind games,” he blurted, not sure he meant it.
“Not everyone is out to get you, babe,” Keeley said, exasperated like she was the night of the gala, when he didn’t want to wear the suit she’d picked out. “We really were worried. Can’t you tell me what happened, at least?”
But it wasn’t that easy, was it? It couldn’t be, after all the years desperately shoving all the shit with his dad under the carpet the same way his mum packed up all the photos of them together in a shoebox and stuck it in the linen closet, and then he got out the bricks and the mortar and built up a wall around that carpet so no one could ever, ever find out. Sometimes he thought everyone had rooms like that, that really his relationship with his dad was perfectly ordinary and he was just particularly shit at dealing with it. He’d spent fifteen years lying to everyone about his dad, lying to Keeley about his dad, the handful of times she’d asked about his family, and all of a sudden he couldn’t bear to keep doing it. But he couldn’t force the truth past his teeth, either.
“D’you think I ever would have made it off a council estate in north Manchester if I let shit like this stop me?”
“You’re a battler, Jamie,” Keeley conceded. “You just need to stop battling people who are trying to help you.”
*
He told himself he was only doing it so they had two functional treatment rooms again. Kept repeating it as he scoured his house for the boots his mum bought when he was scouted by City Academy, his first ever new pair; as he sat in the back of the Uber to Nelson Road, as he watched the rest of the team dropped in their sacrifices one by one. Jamie felt sick with anticipation, twisting the worn boot laces between his fingers over and over. His feet itched to run, slip out the door and call a ride home and pretend he’d never gone in the first place, but he’d never been one to back down once he made a decision.
“I want to go,” he said, and Lasso fucking smiled at him, all soft and gooey. For once, he allowed himself to believe it was genuine.
“These weren’t my first boots or nothing. My mum got them for me; she’s the one who got me into football in the first place. She and my dad split when I were just a sexy little baby, but when I got good he started coming around again. Pushing me to be the best, calling me soft if I didn’t dominate. And he—” Jamie cut off abruptly, heart thundering. Everyone’s eyes were on him. Not judgemental, just— curious, maybe. He took a deep breath.
“And he hit me. My mum, too, I think, but we never… I know you lot are all wondering why you had to train without your star player, ‘cause what’s the point without me there, yeah?” A smattering of chuckles, at that, a bit strained. “I went down to see him. Went down to get him from the police, really, ‘cause he’d been drinking and all, and he threw a plate at my head and I didn’t dodge it so I got stuck up in Manchester with a concussion ‘til- ‘til Roy came to get me.”
Finally, Jamie gathered up the courage to lift his eyes from where they’d been fixed on the bin. He felt lighter, somehow, like he’d been carrying around a ton of bricks strapped to his back and hadn’t even noticed until suddenly it was gone. “I’m not telling you to excuse how I’ve treated you all — I know I’ve been a shit teammate and a shit person, and I’m sorry for it. But I just got tired of all the fucking hiding, d’you know what I mean?” And when he dropped his boots into the bin, it felt like letting go.
Outside, the night dissolved into a blur of Mezcal and shouted song and bodies pressed against his, of fire hot on his face and the acrid smell of all their burnt sacrifices. As the lads drifted away to their cars or, for the drunker among them, their rideshares, Jamie found Roy stood at the edge of the circle, an uncharacteristically serene look on his face and his hands tucked into his jacket pockets.
“That was fucking brave of you,” he said.
Thrown off balance, Jamie ducked his head, cheeks hot. “Oh, I— I mean, yeah, ‘course it was.” He tugged nervously at the bottom of his shirt. Roy raised his eyebrows, clearly waiting for him to speak. You deserve help. Automatically. But this was a bit outside of that, weren’t it? He could do it himself. But maybe he didn’t have to. “I want to see my mum,” he said all in a rush. “Only I don’t have my car, so I was thinking maybe— only ‘cause you said—”
“Yeah,” Roy cut in. “’Course I will. Whenever you want, Jamie.”
Standing there beneath the stars, surrounded by people who had seen him at his worst and had still chosen to be fundamentally, relentlessly decent, he thought of his father, making a seven-year-old kid swear not to tell his mum they spent time together, smacking him around when he missed a goal or cried or wanted to paint his nails like him and mummy used to do all the time. And somewhere deep inside where his dad’s voice usually lived, another one piped up, faint but there. It said, maybe I didn’t deserve that, actually. Maybe it wasn’t my fault. Maybe it was his.