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  In the treatment room after the match, Clarke’s voice resonating violently down the corridor, the foot was already bruising. The physio sponged it clean, dressed it and told him to get home and put it straight onto ice.

  The hotel receptionist misunderstood him. She went away for a few minutes and came back with a steel champagne bucket rustling with ice and a folded white cloth.

  “It’s for my foot.”

  “Oh, I see, sorry.” She smiled. “Do you need some more?”

  “No, thanks.” And then, “I’ll get champagne if we ever win a match.”

  She smiled again. “All right. I’ll remind you about that.”

  He limped away with the bucket, grinning with unexpected elation.

  —

  “That is a superb cock, mate.”

  Foley stood, plainly assessing the scholar next to him in the showers. The boy, who had trained with the firsts that morning, angled his body marginally away and carried on washing himself, affecting not to have heard. Foley, though, stood motionless, water collecting on the large plateau of his head, looking down at him. “Hey, Yatesy,” he shouted through to the dressing room. “You remember Davo’s cock?”

  Yates, from the bench, looked up briefly from lacing his trainers. “I do.”

  “That was some cock.”

  All around the dressing room the younger players waited cautiously for the right moment to laugh, but Foley and Yates continued to behave as though nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, showering, changing as normal, so the players turned automatically to the young boy hastening from the showers towards his space along the bench, wrapping a towel about his middle. Tom kept his eyes to the floor, anxious somebody might see him looking and bring the room’s attention on him.

  Prohibited from running or kicking a ball for at least a week, he was nevertheless required to come in daily for training. Like the other injured players, he had to get there an hour early and leave after the rest of the squad had departed. There were two others—Fleming and Boyn—both with minor knocks and bruises. All were kept, deliberately it seemed to them, out of the final preparations for the first match of the season. If they were not in the treatment room, being entertained by the physio’s military fitness stories, they were traveling over to the stadium to use the gym for long sessions on the treadmills and weight machines to a constant backdrop of loud music and Sky Sports News. Or they were sitting on the bench against the wall of the clubhouse, looking across the field at the team going through their drills and shape preparations.

  “It’s a joke,” Boyn said as the sound of Clarke shouting and clapping wafted across the pitches to them. “He thinks we’re going to contaminate them or something.”

  “No, Boyney,” Fleming said, without moving his eyes from the squad. “It’s a warning. To the lot of us. Don’t get injured.”

  Clarke came into the treatment room a couple of days before the game to tell all three that they would not be included in the party traveling to Cheltenham. They were to stay at home. Focus on their rehabilitation.

  On the morning of the match Tom drove to the launderette. There was a laundry service at the hotel, he knew from his welcome folder, but he did not like the idea of somebody else handling his clothes, his underwear, so he returned each week to the same quiet place that he had found on the outskirts of town. He went inside and saw there were no other customers. Unhurriedly he bought some washing powder from the dispenser, loaded the machine, and went into the cafe next door to get some breakfast to eat in the car.

  He put on the radio for the match buildups. He sipped his tea, unwrapped the warm sweating paper from his bacon and egg roll, Saturday excitement rising and tugging at his gut as the coverage skipped from voice to voice, ground to ground, deflating when he looked down at his injured foot. Forty minutes later he went back into the launderette, hauled his sodden mound of clothes into one of the dryers—noticing as he did so one of his sister’s socks melded inside the sleeve of a sweater he rarely wore—and went out once more to his car.

  When he reentered at the end of the drying cycle there was another customer, a man in gym gear sitting on one of the benches. The man looked up as he walked past, but Tom did not acknowledge him and headed towards his dryer. Some of the clothes did not feel fully dry. He pulled them out anyway, bundling everything into his Ikea sack, aware, through the glass of the dryer door, of the man watching him. He concentrated on his task, blocking the man out, his senses beginning to pulse with the echoed scrabble of his fingers against the drum, the thump of a washing machine behind him, until his clothes were all in the sack and he made his way down the thin aisle, certain that the man was about to speak or stand up and face him.

  When Tom stepped outside into the cool street his chest and lungs loosened, expelling the stifling air of the launderette in long even breaths as he made for his car.

  It was obvious, sitting next to the steaming sack on the passenger seat, that his clothes were still more than a little damp. On getting back to his room he decided that he would drape them over the radiators, but after a short search he realized there were no radiators in the room, only a climate control vent in one of the walls, quite high up. He thought about phoning his mum, but straightaway ruled it out. It would make her worry; make her believe that he was not coping. Besides which, he reasoned, she would be in a baby clinic, busy. He unthreaded the lace from a trainer and tied it to one handle of the Ikea sack. Then he pulled a chair over to the wall beneath the vent and stood on it to reach up and attach the lace to a bar of the grille so that the sack hung just below it. After tugging on it to see the lace held, he turned up the heating on the control panel and went to sit down on the bed with his back against the headboard.

  He had fallen asleep in the warm smog of fuming clothes when his dad called at the regular time, ten minutes before Football Focus.

  “Feeling good?”

  “Fine, yeah, I suppose.”

  His dad laughed. “No point getting down about it. You’re a footballer. Sometimes you’re going to be injured. It’s how you pick yourself back up that counts.”

  “I’m not in his plans.”

  “You’re not in his plans today.”

  “Maybe.” There was the buzzing of a vacuum out in the corridor. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Talking of plans, I want to come down and see you.”

  “It’s all right, Dad,” Tom said as brightly as he could, annoyed with himself for sounding like a sulky child. “I’m doing fine. You’re right. Another week of rehab and I’ll be back training.”

  “I’ve spoken to the sorting office and they’ve said I can have the afternoon off to drive down on Friday.”

  “What, this Friday?”

  “Busy, are you?” his dad said, tickled.

  “No, no, that’s fine, Dad,” he said quickly. “That’s fine.”

  He looked up at the bag of washing shackled to the vent and he had a powerful conviction that his dad knew what he had done. That he could see it all. The daft contraption of his moldering clothes on the wall. Tom dozing on the bed. The man in the launderette. A flickering perception came to Tom of the boy that his dad probably brought to mind when he thought about him, which he suppressed, pulling himself upright on the bed.

  “I’ll come straight down after work Friday, then. Might as well book a room in your hotel, keep things simple. Go to the first home match next day. We could watch it together, if the foot’s still bad. Or would you need to be with the squad?”

  “No. He doesn’t like injured players in with the others.”

  “Right then. Sorted.”

  —

  After they said goodbye, Tom thought that he probably should have offered to book the room for him, and he wondered if his dad had been expecting him to.

  He put on the television for Football Focus and pictured his dad at home, watching it too. On the sofa, tray on his lap. Mug of tea. Fry-up. His sister upstairs, keeping out of the way until John from the sorting of
fice arrived to pick up their dad. The drive to Uncle Kenny’s, and the short chat in the kitchen with Jeanette before the three men went into the city to take up their positions at the bar in the pre-match pub. Everything normal, ongoing.

  There was a knock on his door. The housekeeper, wanting to make up his room.

  “No, thank you,” he called out.

  He moved to the wall and took down his clothes. They were no drier than before. Wetter, somehow. He tipped them all into the bottom of his wardrobe to sort out later and brought the sack over to the desk to collect up his takeaway boxes.

  He went for a walk around the car park. He dumped his rubbish into the bulk bins at the back of the kitchens, something that he had taken to doing rather than leave his cartons and boxes around the tiny pedal bin in his room. He felt a bit weird at the thought of the housekeepers seeing them, dealing with them, just as he felt weird about putting up his posters or his speakers; leaving out his dumbbells, his cactus collection. He kept these things underneath the bed and when he returned each afternoon took them out, putting the cacti on the windowsill and a limited, alternating selection of his posters up on the walls until it was time to take them down again in the morning.

  He followed the scores on his laptop while he watched the television. With a few minutes of their match remaining, Town were 2–1 down and Tom realized that he wanted them to lose. For his absence to be taken notice of, spoken about. When full time confirmed the defeat he refreshed the page, to be certain.

  —

  His dad arrived early in the evening. They went for a drink, then a meal in a pizza restaurant. He was doing well, his dad told him before the food arrived. Adapting, young as he was. He was proud of him. Tom did not know what to say. He looked across the table and saw his dad’s determination to say these words to him, that he had planned them. Tom avoided his gaze and looked down at the tough broken knuckles of his dad’s hands on the table, calculating how much this time off work would be costing him.

  From the top of the main stand, with the high August sun on their faces, the formation and movement of the teams was starkly outlined. After half an hour Tom was too ashamed to watch. His view moved over the opposite stand towards the black flashing river and the plain of fields and houses and roads stretching away towards a range of hills—beyond which, although he had not seen it yet, was the sea. His dad, however, was watching the contest intently. He always watched football like this: hunched forward, elbows on his knees, studying the play. He spoke very little during the game, and Tom could not bring himself to look round and see his inevitable disappointment—at each broken-down move or misplaced pass, each booted clearance disappearing over the top of the Riverside Stand to the sarcastic cheers of the away supporters—that this, after all those years of outlay and sacrifice, was what Tom had amounted to.

  After the defeat they went back to the hotel. Before his dad set off up north they sat in the cafe-bar and spoke about the match. His dad was not impressed with Clarke.

  “It’s big-man hoofball,” he said. “It doesn’t suit your game.”

  “It’s League Two, Dad.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Football’s football. But a proper player will always shine through, even in a side like that.”

  “Not if he’s in the stand.”

  “Come on, Tom. Don’t be soft.” He regarded Tom for a moment. “There’s no use feeling sorry for yourself, son. You’re at a bottom-division club. And you’re injured. It’s an education, is how to think about being here, on your way back up. There are plenty of others who’ve done it that route. You’ve just got to work that bit harder, is all.” He looked past Tom towards the bar. “Tell you what, fancy a hot chocolate before I go?”

  “All right,” Tom said, smiling, secretly comforted by the childishness of the suggestion. “Thanks.”

  His dad got up to go to the bar, and Tom watched the Premier League results coming through on a television. His old club had lost, 2–0.

  “You just need to be patient,” his dad said when he returned with the hot chocolates. “You’re only two matches in. Nine months of the season ahead of you. Plenty of time to crack on now the foot’s on the mend. Just roll your sleeves up. Wait for your chance.”

  2

  PLAYED 5 WON 0 DRAWN 1 LOST 4

  DEFENSE = IMPROVE

  ATTACK = IMPROVE

  KEEPER = JOKE

  RELEGATION. NON-LEAGUE. SCRAPHEAP.

  was written on the whiteboard of the training ground dressing room, like an aide-mémoire. Clarke stood directly in front of the board, his number two off to one side. He was confused. He didn’t know what the fuck their problem was. He was tearing his hair out. He was in at seven every morning, at his desk, wondering where their bollocks were. The number two remained silent throughout the whole of this speech. The players sat in a defeated semicircle, itching to get out onto the field. From them there was no noise either, except for the quiet grinding, like teeth, of their studs on the floor.

  “You are a disgrace, every single one of you.”

  Those who had not played in the last game, or at any other point during the opening month, stared down at the floor with the rest.

  “What’s it going to take? Docking your wages? A bollocking?” Here he moved forward so that he stood in the center of them, and looked around from face to face.

  As Clarke’s small demented eyes flicked closer to him, a charge of anger moved inside Tom’s chest. They had lied to him. To his dad. The manager, the chairman, they had both said that he was an important part of the club’s plans, but he had been match fit for a fortnight and had not yet played other than a brief substitute appearance. The eyes took him in for an instant, then moved on. Earlier that same year he had been tipped off by his academy coordinator that he was under consideration to be a sub for a Premier League match. It never came about, but Tom knew, his coaches knew. If they were to look now—if they looked at all—they would see where he was and they would be in no doubt that they had made the correct final judgment on him: that he had not quite been good enough.

  “You’ve got to talk to each other.” He was back at the whiteboard. “Com-mu-ni-cate.” With each syllable he beat the side of his fist against the board, smearing the writing.

  “Easter, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Easter looked up in surprise.

  “You are the fucking captain of this shit heap. Why are you not shouting at them, organizing them? You’re as quiet as a rapist out there.”

  Easter’s heels lifted off the floor as his calf muscles clenched. He said nothing.

  “Go on, then. Get up, all of you. Get out there. I’m going to make you work.”

  They emerged from the clubhouse into dazzling sunshine. On the warm grass they stretched in silence, guided by the number two, until Clarke came out, glaring at his watch.

  “Twelve-minute run. Go.”

  The whole squad got to their feet and began sprinting around the nearest pitch. There was some bumping and hustling at the back, as no one wanted to be last. Tom, wary of getting trapped in the pack, kept to the outside. He ran hard, resolute that he would not be singled out. Already, these runs had become an accustomed part of Monday and Tuesday mornings. Any player who was seen to be running at less than full pace or who did not complete eight circuits of the pitch within the time would be made to go and train with the scholars. The side that ran alongside the clubhouse, where there was no relief from the sun and the touchline was baked hard, was the worst stretch, before the turn onto the goal line, past the taunting mist of the sprinkler watering the penalty area, and then the grateful turn onto the far touchline along the chain-link fence, shaded by the trees and scrubland that separated the four pitches from a thundering A road.

  When they had finished they stood bent over with their hands on their knees, breathing, waiting to hear if he was satisfied.

  “Good,” he said. “Now go again.”

  By the end of the session, an hour and a half later, sev
eral of the players were nauseous with fatigue. As Clarke went ahead to the car park, still in his tracksuit, to go and attend to his van hire company, some put their arms around the strugglers’ waists or shouldered their armpits, helping them inside.

  In the dressing room, where they sat in silence along the benches or undressed stiffly for the showers, Tom went into his bag for his towel and saw that he had a text message. It was from the club secretary, letting him know that his digs had been confirmed.

  —

  The Daveys lived in a tall thin end terrace about twenty minutes’ walk from the stadium. On match days Mr. Davey, the owner of a steel-wire manufacturing company and an associate director at the club, would drive to and from the ground, but if he was required for some vote or function during the week he made the journey on foot, enjoying, as he passed through the streets of hushed pubs and takeaways and ethnic shops on his way home from the stadium, the gradual easing of traffic and people, the transition into quiet, wide streets, trees growing up out of the pavements, postboxes, plant-tangled fences and the familiar old buildings lived in by families he had known for most of his life, until he reached his own house.

  When the last of their three children moved out, the Daveys had spent a difficult six months contemplating whether the house had become too big for them. But then, with Town progressing up the non-league pyramid and recruiting more young players from outside the area, the board had announced that they were looking for willing families to lodge these boys. Mr. Davey put himself and his wife forward without hesitation. It was a decision that they almost never regretted. The dozen boys they welcomed over the intervening three years had provided the house with a continual flow of laughter and activity, tantrums, anecdotes, broken curfews, not to mention the ninety pounds a week bed and board that the club paid out for each of them. Some stayed for a month or two, others for a whole season. There were sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, joining the youth setup, and there were older boys who had failed to get senior contracts at other clubs, or were out on loan gaining experience; boys from the north, from Scotland, Ireland, as well as one silent Hungarian who barely spoke a word of English and made cheese and cabbage scones in the middle of the night which he kept at the top of his wardrobe.