9 May 2000
She makes me stronger.
Is it the way she looks at me? Like I’m the old Joel, the one with all the strength and the talent? When I see myself through her eyes, I can believe I haven’t lost everything.
‘What will we do to celebrate on Friday?’ she asks.
We’re in the den – we spend most of our time here, because Kerry gets jittery when we’re out in case we’re spotted together – and we’re trying not to have sex, because it’s my physical tomorrow.
If we manage it, it’ll be the first time since we got together on her birthday.
One of Dad’s mates gets him pirate videos, so we’ve tried to distract ourselves watching Final Destination, though every time someone dies, Kerry gives me a weird look like she’s expecting me to burst into tears.
But keeping my hands off her is so tough. Maybe we should do it, get it out of our systems, because I like how we are afterwards, too. Listening to her talking about her dreams, telling her mine. They couldn’t be more different, but she tries to imagine how it feels to be on the pitch, and I try to get my head round the fact she likes gore so much she wants to make a career out of it.
‘What would you do with that?’ I ask her, every time one of the actors loses a limb or ends up with a gatepost through their skull.
‘A tourniquet.’ She slaps my hand, which I swear has started creeping up her top without me knowing. ‘Not till the weekend, OK?’ She wants to focus on revision for her first exam on Thursday.
I sigh. ‘The weekend. Might as well be ten years away.’ But I sit on my hands to stop them misbehaving. ‘How about I take you to . . . I dunno, Concorde, to show you off? The lads always take their girlfriends there on Fridays; we’ll get into the VIP lounge, show I’m back in the game?’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘When the exams are over.’
‘Are you sure you’re not ashamed of being with a knucklehead who didn’t scrape a single C-grade GCSE?’
‘You’re as smart as me.’
‘Bollocks, Kerry, if I didn’t have football, I’d struggle to get a job pulling pints or sweeping up on the seafront.’
‘Well, if you had to, you could do resits.’
If you had to. The implication behind those words sends chills through me: if the football doesn’t work out, I could sit in a classroom again, with all the other losers.
‘I’d rather die than go back to school.’
She frowns and I feel shit. ‘You don’t mean that, Joel.’
I do. ‘You’re right. I’m nervous about tomorrow. I tell you what would take my mind off it, though.’
She gives me a look. Not the fake pout that my other girlfriends have copied from Page 3 pin-ups, but a steady gaze that makes me want to see inside her head, though it’d probably terrify me, because she’s so clever and she understands me more than anyone ever has, more than I understand myself.
Now I’m kissing her and I stop caring about tomorrow, and so does she.
The next day Dad drives me to the training ground. Funny he never had time to do this when I was a kid.
‘Stop here,’ I say, before we turn the corner. I’ve had to surrender my driving licence for six months because of my heart but I don’t want anyone on the team to know that.
Cold rain drips down my collar as I walk the last stretch, and I try not to shiver. The beta blockers mean I feel the cold like I never did before, but once I’ve warmed up in the gym with Coach Coley, I won’t notice it as much.
Today’s a half-day so the field is empty, but I wonder if any of my teammates will have hung around to welcome me home. I’m picturing piss-taking in the locker rooms, like I’m a New York cop getting my badge back.
The green plastic cones are stacked tall next to the goals. I know every centimetre of that field: the swampy parts where Coley makes us do push-ups if he thinks we’re not trying hard enough. The spots where I’ve scored some of my most dazzling practice goals.
I’m ready for my trial. That field will tell them if I’m still Joel Greenaway, the home-grown Dolphins hotshot.
Or a nobody.
As I walk into the drab building, Coley comes out of nowhere.
‘Let me look at you, Millennium Miracle! How are the ribs, Joel?’
Joel. I wish he hadn’t used my first name.
‘All healed up, Coach. Dying to get back to it. Even the chores. My pros will have the shiniest boots, and the bogs will never have been so clean.’
He leads me into the boardroom. I’m expecting to see the physio, or a medic, but instead Lance Rossiter stands next to the trophy cabinet. No one likes the chairman, but the money he made from telecoms is helping us climb steadily back up the league. I’ve never so much as spoken to him before.
‘Mr Rossiter!’
He shakes my hand, his skin cool and shiny, like leatherette. ‘Good to see you back, kid. Had us all worried for a bit. And you might have come across Diane from Public Relations?’
A skinny blonde woman reaches across the table to shake my hand. ‘Sit yourself down,’ Rossiter says, pulling out a chair. ‘Biscuit?’ The plate is piled high with the posh kind, wrapped in gold foil.
‘Not for me. I’m upping the protein at the moment, to build my muscles ready for training again.’
When I turn to Coley, he gives me a weak smile.
Rossiter slaps his hands together. ‘So, now, Joel, we wanted to talk to you about something a bit special. Coley’s idea, so I’ll hand over to him.’ He gestures with one hand towards the coach.
‘We want a campaign to roll out defibrillators at grounds. When you got . . . sick, I looked it up and I couldn’t believe the survival rates were so low. Only five in a hundred people make it in some parts of the country.’
‘That’s why I’m the Millennium Miracle,’ I say.
‘But more defibrillators could change everything,’ Coley says, like this is news to me. Yeah, that’s why I’ve got my own personal one.
Rossiter and the PR woman nod like the Muppets.
‘We thought we could start by installing one at the ground here, with you as our figurehead. How does that sound?’ Coley smiles expectantly, as though I should be reacting like I’ve been picked for the main squad.
‘Great. Yeah, I mean, anything to save lives, right?’
Rossiter stands up. ‘Excellent. I’ll leave you guys to thrash out the details. Diane will do a press release, how thrilled you are to stay involved with the club you love, etc. We’ll cover all expenses . . .’
His voice seems to fade out as my brain processes the previous sentence. Stay involved.
‘Mr Rossiter, I’ll be happy to be part of that, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of getting my fitness back.’
‘Sure, sure. It needn’t clash with hospital visits, and whatever it is you do next. Do you have plans? We could chip in for a course or something . . .?’
He’s putting on his coat. I stand up, too. ‘I’m coming back to join the team. That’s what I’m doing next.’
People are let go all the time; ninety-nine per cent of apprentices don’t make the grade because of injuries or attitude or lack of talent. But not me. I am the one per cent. Everyone knows it.
Rossiter stares at me for a moment. ‘With a metal box in your belly? Even if we wanted to get you back out there, our insurers wouldn’t allow it.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m indestructible now. I’ll outlive the rest of you.’ A doctor told me that when I’m ninety and at death’s door, someone will have to turn the thing off, or it’d keep shocking me back to life. I’m about to explain when Rossiter sighs and puts his hand on my arm.
‘Son, do you know the average speed a football travels at? Over seventy miles per hour. The top speed recorded is one hundred and fourteen miles per hour. David Hirst, four years ago. That’d catapult your bloody pacemaker through your ribcage and halfway across the stadium.’
‘The doctors must have told you, Joel,’ Coley says.
I feel something hot as lava building inside me. Rage. Rage at what they’ve said, rage at the decision being made without me, rage at this whole thing that’s happened to me . . .
‘Told me what?’
‘That this thing you’ve had put in is not compatible with professional sport.’
‘No. I wouldn’t have had the operation if they had.’
‘Maybe you’ve forgotten,’ Coley adds. ‘Your dad told us you were having help with your memory.’
I want to rip the stitches apart and yank the fucking ICD out. I’ll do anything for one last chance.
Rossiter pulls on his leather gloves, the wanky kind with holes on top. ‘Joel, I’m as disappointed as you are. You were one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen. But chin up, lad. Give the campaign some thought. You don’t have to be playing to keep football in your life.’
I don’t move as he leaves, and Coley follows him out of the room.
‘They never told me, I swear,’ I say to Diane. ‘Nobody told me.’
She shrugs. ‘The doctors never told my aunty she was dying, either. Nobody wanted to be the one to say it out loud.’
My scar burns, my head throbs. Am I really the only person who didn’t understand? My life did end in 1999. Tim and Kerry should have walked away and let me die on the Lawns . . .
That would be better than this.
I see Kerry’s face, hear her voice, that afternoon in the chippie when we talked about the operation. I can almost smell stale fat and feel the vinegar stinging my fingers as she says, It’s got to be your best shot.
Did she know it was a lie?
Would she have done that to me?
Whether she did or she didn’t, she must know now, but she’s not said a fucking word. She must understand, after all the time we’ve spent together: for me, this life feels more like death without football in it.
No one else would understand. I can hear them: You’re so lucky to be here, focus on that.
But they can’t know what it’s like to have a gift that makes sense of your whole existence. When I was on the pitch, I shone. I was better than good – I was a star. I was alive. What am I if you take the football away? A nobody.
Last night, Kerry said I could do resits. Resits. She must have been trying to prepare me, but instead it’s another bloody betrayal, thinking I could settle for a life like everyone else’s. I thought she knew me.
They must have called my dad, because he comes to pick me up, lifting my head off the table, taking my hands, walking me across the car park. I can’t look at Coley as we leave. When I get home, I don’t go to the den, but my old bedroom, with my squad posters and signed programmes Blu-tacked to the wall.
Kerry comes round but I tell Dad not to let her in. ‘Tell her I’m tired. Tell her I’ll call her in the morning.’
I hear them on the doorstep, her protesting, him repeating the same lines in the voice he uses on the phone with girlfriends he’s tired of.
When he finally shuts the door, I am almost relieved. She wasn’t who I thought she was, and I will never be Joel Greenaway again.