After a mere four days with my parents in Gloucestershire, I returned to London. I was to lunch in Richmond with Charles, our trustee; then I would speak at the palliative care conference he had helped organize. I would stay the night with Tommy and begin my five-and-a-half-thousand-mile journey back to Los Angeles early the next morning.
I sat on the train up to London in quiet stillness, unable to tell if I was numb, or simply resigned. I said the right things to Charles over lunch, and at the conference I spoke with precision but no passion. Charles, as I left, asked if I was all right. His concern brought me to the edge of tears, so I told him about my separation from Reuben.
‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ I begged. ‘We want to announce it properly at our next board meeting . . .’
‘Of course,’ Charles had said quietly. ‘I’m so very sorry, Sarah.’
I felt a terrible fraud.
Tomorrow, I promised myself, as I headed back to Central London on the train. Tomorrow I would regain control. Tomorrow I would get on a plane and I would fly back to LA, where I’d rediscover the numb of the sunshine, confidence and my best self. Tomorrow.
My train pulled into Battersea Park Station and I rested my head against the greasy window, watching the scrum on the opposite platform. People were squeezing themselves onto a train before those on board had had a chance to get out. Shoulders were braced, mouths compressed, eyes were down. All of them looked angry.
I watched a man in a red-and-white football kit fight his way off the train, a suit folded over his arm. He walked towards the empty benches outside my own train, and I stared blankly as he folded his suit carefully into a satchel. After a while he straightened out and checked his watch, glanced briefly at me and then away, then hauled the satchel over his shoulder.
And then, as my own train began to pull away from the platform, I turned my head to follow his back as it walked off towards the exit steps, because I suddenly registered what it said on his football strip. Old Robsonians. Est. 1996.
In the hope of having another Google route to Eddie, I had tried many times to remember the name of his football team. Beyond the word ‘Old’, though, nothing had materialized. My train began to accelerate and I closed my eyes, concentrating hard on the memory of Eddie’s football trophies. Old Robsonians? Is that what they’d said?
I remembered Eddie’s finger, sliding a snake of dust off the top of one of them. Yes! Old Robsonians, The Elms, Battersea Monday. I was certain of it!
I looked back out of the window, even though the station had long since fallen away. Behind an old gasworks, the skeleton of a huge construction block was being fussed over by dizzying cranes.
That man plays in Eddie’s football team.
Old Robinson footnalk, I typed, but Google knew what I was looking for. A website was offered. Pictures of men I didn’t know. Links to fixtures; match reports; an article about their US tour. (Is that where he’d been? The States?)
In the corner of the page, I scrolled through their Twitter feed: match results, banter, more pictures of men I didn’t know. And then, a picture of a man I did know. It was dated a week ago. Eddie, in the background of a post-match pub photo, drinking a pint and talking to a man in a suit. Eddie.
After staring at the photo for a long time, I selected ‘About Us’.
Old Robsonians played on an AstroTurf pitch right by Battersea Park Railway Station on Monday nights. Their kick-off was at 8 p.m.
I checked my watch. It wasn’t yet seven. Why had the other man been there so early?
At Vauxhall, I teetered at the door of the train, unsure as to what I should do. There was no guarantee that Eddie was in London, or playing tonight. And according to the website, the football pitch was in the grounds of a school: I either marched right up to the perimeter to brazenly confront him or I didn’t go at all. It wasn’t like I could casually stroll by.
The train doors rolled shut and I remained on board.
At Victoria, I got off and stood, paralysed, on the crowded concourse. People bulleted and ricocheted off me; a woman told me outright not to ‘stand there like a fucking idiot’. I didn’t move. I scarcely even noticed: all I could think about was the possibility that Eddie, in less than an hour, might be playing football a few minutes from where I was standing.