The chairman, the three executive directors and the operations manager stepped out from their glassed-in box shortly before kick-off to sit at the top of the main stand. There was some surprise among the nearby supporters but, with the general mood lightened by the team’s form—undefeated at home, second in the table, through to the third round of the League Cup—the picture of the five men uncomfortably shuffling along the top row caused a ripple of good humor to filter through the stand. A season ticket holder ten rows down stood and yelled up, “First game you’ve watched in a year, isn’t it, Mr. Chairman?” There was a smattering of laughter. Other supporters, who had not noticed the board members behind them, turned round. Some clapped. The chairman smiled and gave a slight, pope-like wave.
Five days earlier these same men had gathered around the chairman’s table for a meeting which Mr. Davey and, for the appearance of evenhandedness, the other associate directors, had not been made party to.
“Get Saturday out of the way, that’s all we can do,” the chairman had said from one end of the table.
“Agreed. Don’t give it any oxygen and people will lose interest.”
“As long as it doesn’t happen again.”
“Calm down, David. It’s a rumor. And not one any of us believes for a second either.”
“What about the players?”
“The players aren’t the problem.”
“The players are always the problem.”
There was hummed agreement then a tentative knock at the door. “Yes,” the chairman called out, and the club secretary came in with a tray of coffee. They went quiet, their eyes following her around the table.
“Ban them from social media,” the operations manager said once she had left. “For a couple of weeks. Warn them they’ll be fined, heavily fined, if they go on Twitter.”
“And the groundsman?”
There was a pause. A circle of heavy forearms bore down on the table. They waited for the chairman to speak.
“Nothing we can do. Not yet. Steer clear, let him get on with his job, don’t give him any attention.”
“But we keep him away from the ground on Saturday, yes?”
“Obviously. Tell the assistant he’s in charge.”
When the Tannoy sputtered out the loud music that signaled the entry of the teams, the main stand turned its interest to the pitch and the appearance of the newly adored players. Michael Grant, despite pre-match speculation, was fit to start. The board watched him shuttling back and forth, stretching his torn back with the fitness coach. They admired his physique, his athleticism; they noted the camaraderie of the team too, as the players grouped together in a nest of huddled temples, before the referee walked to the center circle and the warm beery anticipation of the stands closed around the pitch.
If in some enclave of the Kop or the Riverside Stand there was any shout or chant about the groundsman, it did not break through—and certainly nothing came to the attention of the board members, jammed together on their plastic seats, as time went on more and more content at how the whole problematic episode appeared to be petering out. Their cause was aided by the award of a contentious penalty to Yeovil early in the match, which incited the crowd to fill any lull with outraged abuse of the referee, the linesman, the cheating Yeovil winger. Gundi equalized with a softly flicked header. Five minutes later Mark Munro scored a second, and a charge of righteous solidarity electrified the place. Even when Grant rose from a challenge clutching the small of his back and hobbled through the closing minutes of the half, the crowd remained happy, distracted.
In the dressing room, Wilko, the fitness coach and the physio crowded over the body of Grant, rubbing and fingering at the shining flesh above his coccyx, assessing whether to strap or inject or replace him. They were in agreement: with the team ahead and an important away match in three days, there was no value in risking further injury.
Wilko walked over to Tom, sitting on the bench under his peg.
“What did I tell you, Tommy? Shirt’s there to be won.”
After forty-five minutes inside the hot clamp of the dugout, withering at the outbreak of every chant outside, Tom crossed the touchline and lost himself inside the match.
He ran his wing with unloosed energy. When he had the ball at his feet he could disappear—the pure release of the crowd’s standing, growling mass propelling him onwards, through and beyond the stupid green legs of his opponents—unsuspected, safe. His adrenaline carried him each time a pace too far, sometimes to the irritation of his teammates, but he nonetheless came off the field to the acclaim of the Riverside Stand when he went with Beverley to acknowledge them, and he received from Wilko—as he passed the exhausted referee leaning against the wall of the tunnel with his head beneath his forearm—a single nod, followed a second later by a wink.
He drove home desperate to hold on to the uncomplicated joy of victory, hungering for the next match, to be again part of the unit, distanced from everything else. He turned into his street, the dying sun penetrating the dusty glass panels above the line of front doors, annoyed that somebody had parked in his usual space outside the house, realizing, his stomach hollowing, that it was Liam.
He pulled up half a dozen houses short and stared at the dark shape above the driver’s headrest inside Liam’s car. He checked his phone, but there was no message. He stayed there, watching Liam’s silhouette, and the thought came to him that it was not possible for two people to truly know each other. A gap would always be there, however strong the pull between them.
The brief satisfaction of the afternoon had vanished. He got out of his car, walked quickly down the pavement past Liam and went into his house, closing the door. A minute or so later Liam was knocking.
Tom opened the door. “Fuck’s sake, why were you waiting out there? Get inside.”
Liam slipped past Tom into the living room and stood at the window, next to the undrawn curtain. Tom rushed to pull it closed, and Liam, wrongly guessing Tom’s intention, moved towards him. For a split second Tom was powerless, yearning to be touched. Then he stepped back and wrenched the curtain across the window.
“We said it wasn’t time yet.”
“I wasn’t going to come. I haven’t been there long.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Liam, looking at the carpet, gave a faint sigh. “I listened to the match.”
“There was nothing. I didn’t hear anything.”
“No. Me neither. None of the players said anything? Yeovil?”
“No. But I was on the bench first half.”
Outside, a large vehicle was coming down the street. Its shadow traveled slowly across the curtain.
“You played well. Possessed, they said on the radio.”
“Something like that.”
There was a look on Liam’s face, the beginnings of a smile, which Tom retreated from, going into the kitchen. It assumed that it was to do with him, with them, how Tom played; that everything was connected to them. But as he stood by the fridge and Liam came to stand behind him he felt himself letting go, knowing that he should resist yet unable to prevent Liam from kissing the back of his neck, placing his large deliberate hands on his sides.
“No.” But Tom’s own hands were on the fridge door, and he heard one of his protein shake bottles tumble from its shelf as he allowed himself to be pushed against it, closing his eyes in expectation, and again he had the sense of unfurling—of being released, for a time, from himself.
Liam’s fingers closed around his trachea, then let go, and when Tom after some time opened his eyes again they were on the other side of the kitchen and he did not know how that had happened.
They went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa. After a few minutes sitting silently together, Tom put on the television. The normality of it all made him want to laugh. “We should eat,” he said.
“You got anything in?”
“Not really. Bag of apples. Protein shakes.”
They agreed on fish and chips. Tom left Liam on the sofa and went to get it.
The shop was empty. He ordered two cod and chips from the young Chinese girl and watched her getting it together, the quick skillful action of her hands with the chip shovel and the curry sauce, her sister and her mother talking in the back room, the father behind them in a filthy bib, reading a newspaper spread on a table.
“Tom Pearman?”
He turned around, panicked.
“It is. Bugger me. It’s Tom Pearman.”
Three men his dad’s age stood gawking at him from the doorway.
“Fish and chips, mate? That Wilko’s secret, is it? Pints and takeaways?”
The men laughed, looking at him.
“Tell you what, boy, you’ve improved some. Month of non-league and you’ve come back a new player.”
They were all agreeing. The straightforward familiarity with which they were talking about him was unnerving, weird.
The girl called over to him from the counter: “Fish and chips twice, two curry sauce.”
He took the carrier bag, feeling precisely the weight of his two portions. The men were studying him, and he was struck with the conviction—that came, fleetingly, as respite—that they knew: the bag made it as obvious as Liam standing there with him.
“Good luck, Bristol, Tuesday. We’ll be there. Proper fans, us.”
He hurried, almost running, home, looking back frequently to make sure that the men were not behind him. When he arrived at his street there was nobody about anywhere but he was still unable to shake the sensation of being followed. In each of the front windows lights and televisions were on, families congregated on sofas eating and staring, and he wanted right then to be with his own family, to be in their wordless company, not having to think. He let himself in, submitting as he sat down beside Liam to the knowledge that the pieces of his life were never going to fit. He watched the big hands tear into the paper, popping the little lids of the curry sauce pots, and it was all so clear, Liam smiling at him and passing a pot, the impossibility of being one person, instead of all these different people running and hiding from themselves.
Liam left at midnight, after Match of the Day. They kissed for a long time in the hall and Tom thought for a moment that they were going to have sex again, but Liam pulled away, moving to the door. “You’re right,” Liam said. “No chances.”
Tom looked through the spyhole at him trying to be inconspicuous, his dark bulk stepping softly past the bins, head down, teasing open the gate, checking the street, and a surge of hopeless devotion bled through him, making him stay there, shaking against the door, long after Liam had got into his car and driven away.