Page 25 of Playing By Ear

“Of course.”

For the decade before this week he’d seen Belinda but four times a year—on their birthdays, at Christmas, and on their mother’s death-iversary—and the rest of his family, never.

Jamie pictured being with them all: the uncles, aunties, cousins, and now his six-year-old niece. The imaginary tableau looked cozy to his mind’s eye and rang merry in his mind’s ear. To have a real connection again with people whose history he shared, people who knew his whole self…

But then his father entered the mental picture, making Jamie’s stomach churn like a storm across a radar map. How could he spend a single hour with that cold-blooded killer, much less look after him in his dying days?

“I’m curious,” Belinda said. “Why’d you never correct me when I called you Jimmy? All these years, I never knew it bothered you.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me when you do it.”

She gave him a brilliant smile, one he’d rarely glimpsed on her adult face. It was the same smile he saw in the mirror, and in photos of their mother.

He would do anything to get that smile back into his everyday life.

Chapter 5

Jamie had never needed to lose himself in football as much as he did Tuesday night. Racing down the touchline instead of second-, third-, and fourth-guessing himself for cutting Perry loose. Executing blocks and tackles instead of working out how to stand up to his dad without getting killed. Here, he could just be in his body, in the moment, and let the rest of the world fall away.

Best of all, the Warriors were having a rare indoor training session, rather than stumbling round their usual rain-soaked, poorly lit practice pitch. Competition was fierce for evening slots here at the Woodside Football Complex.

Jamie would make sure he was well clear of the place before the blind football match started at eight. He had to avoid Perry to keep him safe, and he knew one glimpse of that man would melt his resolve.

Near the end of training session, the Warriors manager, Charlotte Atchison, gathered them for one final drill.

“We’ve got the quarterfinal of the Scottish Amateur Cup a week on Saturday,” she said, her calm tone belying the tournament’s looming menace in the team’s psyche. “That means, among other things, team-wide penalty practice.”

A ripple of groans passed through the crowd of players, echoing off the walls. Usually at training session, only the best penalty takers—Fergus, Evan, Colin, and Duncan—practiced their craft. Any of them might be called into action during a typical league match in the event of a penalty.

But unlike league matches, cup tournament competitions couldn’t end in a draw. If the score was equal at the end of extra time, the match would be decided in a penalty shoot-out between five players on each side. If it wasn’t decided after that, the shoot-out went to “sudden death,” with the less experienced penalty takers having a go. Which meant every Warrior had to be ready to catapult their team to instant victory—or plunge them into swift defeat.

“Jamie, you first,” Charlotte called out.

Of course. His manager knew of his singular dread of penalties.

At least there was no time to get nervous. Jamie picked up the nearest ball and headed toward the goal. The other players stood far behind him on the halfway line, just as they would during a real shoot-out—the better to make a penalty taker feel totally alone.

He placed the ball on the painted spot twelve yards in front of the goal. The Warriors starting goalkeeper, Heather Wek, paced back and forth on her line, windmilling her long arms to limber up and to make herself look bigger to the penalty takers.

Jamie backed up several steps, then regarded his manager.

“Let her see you looking at both posts,” Charlotte said, “so she won’t know which way you plan to shoot.”

He didn’t know which way he planned to shoot, so there was no danger he’d telegraph it to Heather.

The goalkeeper stretched out her limbs in an X, showing how much space she could cover without moving an inch.

“Pick a corner,” Charlotte told Jamie. “And mind, when you shoot, pretend you’re passing the ball. It just happens to be going into the net instead of to another player.”

Right. Pass the ball. He was good at passing. Everyone said so. That, along with his dribbling, was why he was still in the starting eleven, despite his lack of pace.

Okay. Picking a corner.

Lower left.

But was that too obvious, with him being right-footed?

Lower right, then.