Normal sounds.
Safe sounds.
I used to think the big moments were the ones that mattered. The matches. The wins. The decisions everyone else could see.
Turns out it’s this.
A woman who stayed.
A woman who didn’t make it complicated.
A woman my son trusts without even realising he’s doing it.
I brush a strand of hair away from her face and she stirs slightly but doesn’t wake.
She’s it for me.
Not a maybe.
Not a see-how-it-goes.
Not something temporary while life figures itself out.
Her.
If she wants this… it’s her. For as long as she’ll have me.
I press a soft kiss into her hair and close my eyes again with a smile on my face, because somehow, against all odds, I got it right. She’s my kind of happy.
Epilogue
Ava
Six months ago Iwas sitting in a press room trying very hard not to be noticed.
Now I am standing in the Natural History Museum after closing time, holding a paper cup of coffee while four five-year-old boys sit cross-legged at the foot of an Iguanodon skeleton like it is the most normal classroom in the world.
Life is strange.
Jack had somehow managed to hire part of the museum for a private family sleepover. Apparently, football managers who keep teams in the Premier League earn access to odd privileges. Alfie had invited three friends from school and their parents. Sleeping bags are already lined up in bright colours between the exhibits.
Alfie’s arm has healed perfectly. No cast anymore. Just a faint scar at his hairline and a story he has no intention of ever retiring.
“…and then I saw my bones,” he is currently explaining.
“They showed me on the screen. Like a dinosaur but smaller.”
One of the boys looks impressed.
“Was it gross?”
“No,” Alfie says seriously. “It was science.”
The museum guide smiles. “X-rays are very useful for that. They help doctors see how bones heal. A bit like how we study fossils to understand dinosaurs.”
That immediately redirects Alfie.
“Do you think my bone looked like a dinosaur bone?”
