Two other men came out. ‘Is it true that—’ one began, and then saw me. ‘Oh. It is.’
‘These gentlemen are Edwards and Fung-On,’ Martin said, although his eyes didn’t leave my face. ‘I’m deciding which of them I think should be Player of the Night.’ Then: ‘I’ll help you get back to the road,’ he said suddenly, marching me off towards the entrance lane.
‘Bye!’ called PAGLIERO, and Edwards and Fung-On, one of whom would be Player of the Night, gave a salute. I could hear their laughter as they went back into the container.
When they were gone, Martin stopped and faced me. ‘He’s not here tonight,’ he said eventually. ‘He doesn’t play for us every week. He’s in the West Country most of the time.’
‘Who? Sorry, I . . .’
Martin looked sympathetic, but I could see he knew exactly who I was. And that he knew exactly why Eddie hadn’t called.
‘Is he in Gloucestershire, then?’ I blurted. Hot tears of humiliation built in my eyes.
Martin nodded. ‘He—’ He stopped abruptly, as if remembering his responsibility to his teammate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t talk about Eddie.’
‘It’s OK.’ I stood there, slumped with shame. I wanted to leave, but self-loathing and shock had immobilized my legs.
‘Look, it’s none of my business,’ he said slowly, running a hand over his face. ‘But Eddie’s been a friend for years, and he . . . Stop trying to find him, OK? I’m sure you’re very nice, and if it helps, I don’t think you’re mad, and neither does he, but . . . stop,’
‘He said that? He doesn’t think I’m mad? What else did he say about me?’ Tears rolled down my face and fell to the cooling concrete below. It defied belief that I was in this situation. Here, with this man. This total stranger, begging for scraps.
‘You don’t want to find him,’ Martin said eventually. ‘Please trust me. You do not want to find Eddie David.’
And he turned round and walked back to the container, calling over his shoulder that it was nice to have met me, and he hoped what I’d seen in there hadn’t scarred me for life.
A train hammered along the viaduct bordering the pitches and I shivered. I had to go home.
The problem was, I didn’t know where home was anymore. I didn’t really know anything, other than that I had to find Eddie David. No matter what this man said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I pulled running shorts over my legs. It was 3.09 a.m., precisely seven hours since I’d stumbled away from the football pitch. My room was pungent with sleeplessness.
Sports bra, running top. My hands shook. Adrenaline was still collecting in fizzy pools around my body, dancing over the sickening exhaustion that must lie underneath. Tommy had barred the door when I’d emerged in my running gear after getting back from the football. He’d made me a hot drink and had then ordered me off to bed. ‘I don’t even want to think about what happened at that football pitch,’ he’d told me severely, but within five minutes he’d cracked and knocked at my door, begging me to tell him what had happened at that football pitch.
‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said softly, when I finished. ‘But well done for admitting something’s gone . . . well, a bit wrong with you. That takes courage.’
‘The letters, Tommy, all those letters I sent him via Facebook. Calling his workshop, writing to his friend Alan. What was Ithinking?’
‘A silent phone brings out the very worst in us,’ he said. ‘All of us.’
We sat together on my bed for a long time. Neither of us said much, but his presence calmed me sufficiently to try sleeping.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I’d said, before he went off to his own bed. ‘I’ve become a burden on you again. You shouldn’t have to spend your life rescuing me.’
Tommy had smiled. ‘I didn’t rescue you back then, and I’m not rescuing you now,’ he’d said. ‘I’m here for you, Harrington – you know I am – but I’m also certain you can sort this out. You’re a survivor. One of life’s cockroaches.’
I’d just about managed a smile of my own.
Now, three hours later, I was trying again and again to knot my laces, but my hands wouldn’t coordinate. Everything was wrong.
My airport taxi was at five. I had not slept and I wouldn’t. There was plenty of time for a run, a shower, to gift wrap the little lemon tree I’d bought for Tommy and Zoe to say thank you. And I’d only go for a short jog; just enough to help me sleep on the plane.
I slid out of my bedroom door, grateful that Zoe was away. When Tommy went up to bed, that was where he stayed, but Zoe often got up very early to answer emails from Asia, wrapped in an elegant grey silk kimono. More than once she had caught me sneaking out for a run before the sun had risen.
Although this, I knew, glancing at my watch – 3.13 a.m. – was not a run. This was a problem.
I glanced at myself in Zoe’s big mirror in the hallway, framed by wood from a tree from her late parents’ Berkshire garden. Zoe was right: I had lost weight. My arms looked stringy, and my face looked narrower, as if I’d taken out a plug and allowed some of it to drain.
