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In fact, she suspected it was worse than that.
That he hadn’t randomly decided to take up flower arranging.
He had simply stepped behind this plant the second she had glanced his way.
And then panicked when it did a poor job of hiding him.
Even thougheverythingwould have done a poor job of hiding him. There was hardly anything on earth that could have obscured him from view. He’d been retired for about five years now, but he was still as massive as ever. Heck, if anything, he was even more massive now. His thighs had spread a little bit, and were now roughly the size of carvery roasts. Thick, admittedlydelicious-looking carvery roasts, which peeked out from around every bit of greenery. Oh, and then there were those meaty shoulders, named Best of All Time on at least three occasions byMoremagazine, practically framing the quivering fronds. And the sporadic glimpses of his gigantic hands, trying to pretend they weren’t doing a bad job of holding the whole thing still.
Though even if she’d somehow missed all that, she couldn’t have possibly avoided those eyes of his. They were like spilled ink. Really furious spilled ink.
And there was just no way to mistake that.
A fact that was proven even further, a moment later.
Because despite his best efforts to blend into the scenery, people other than her had also noticed him. She could see the old couple behind him, prodding each other. And the table by the fire exit, with the kids who wouldn’t stop throwing spaghetti? They had clocked him, too. In fact, the dad was getting up. With what looked like a pen and a napkin in his hand. Then to her mingled horror and amusement, he sidled up to Alfie Harding.
And asked him for his autograph.
“My kids would be stoked,” she heard him say.
Alfie gave him a look best described as rueful resignation.
Well, I ballsed that whole hiding lark up, his face seemed to say as he signed his name. Then she sort of wanted to laugh. But she couldn’t, because her brain was currently bursting with about seven different unfathomable things about all this.
Starting with what he was doing right now.
And ending with the fact that he was here at all. Because seriously, this could not be a coincidence. He had to be in this restaurant for her, somehow. But then if he was, why had he hidden behind the plant?
There couldn’t be a good reason for that. There couldn’t be a good reason foranyof this. It felt too close to something very weird, like being stalked by an incredibly famous ex-footballer.Probably for the crime of forcing him to confess he wore glasses, she thought. Which seemed utterly bananas, it did. But no more so than all the rest of this was, she had to admit.
Then had the most appalling urge.
She wanted to go over there. To ask him what on earth everything he had done meant.
And the only reason she didn’t was down to one very important detail:
When she looked again, he had gone.
Alfie HardingGQUK Profile, March 2016
For a man who looms so large in the public consciousness—both in terms of his intimidating presence on the pitch, and his hilariously surly demeanor off it—Alfie Harding appears unassuming in person at first. When we arrive at his local pub, the Fox and Hound, it takes a moment to find him amidst the rabble you’d expect him to be a part of. And then the realization sets in: he’s the bloke nursing a beer in the deepest, darkest corner of a place where smoke still lingers in the seat cushions. Drag your gaze across the over-varnished tables and the stained-glass-separated booths too quickly, and you’ll miss him.
But once he settles that piercing gaze on you, it’s a different story.
Suddenly, the intensity and charisma that captivated football fans and ordinary folk alike is incredibly apparent, and it’s easy to see how this has propelled him to an entirely different level of stardom. Whether that stardom sits easy with a man who once listed his hobbies asnot being spoken to, however, is another matter altogether.
“Enough money to be comfortable, and whatever my manager thought would make me enough money to be comfortable,” is his abrupt answer when I ask him why he took the role in the movie—Lionsgate’sPutting the Boot In, out April 15th—he’s currently on a press tour for.
At which point, it becomes very clear why this press tour is, in the words of his publicist,driving them to drink. You can count on Alfie Harding to turn up and do the hard graft, but when asked to talk about everything surrounding the hard graft, the man is by turns taciturn, churlish, and often downright annoyed. And though it seems foolish to expect anything else from a man once voted Most Likely to Punch You for Asking Them a Personal Question, it’s still quite a shock when he abruptly leaves after we ask him where he got his hair done.
FourBeing Followed by a Bearded Michael Myers
She tried to tell herself that she was not being followed by an incredibly famous ex-footballer. But the problem with telling herself this? She was almostdefinitelybeing followed by an incredibly famous ex-footballer. It was obvious she was. Because that was him, over there, pretending to like being in the same Starbucks she had decided to try doing some of her own writing in today.
Even though she could tell he hated it.
Oh god, she’d never seen a man loathe sitting in a coffee shop more than he quite clearly did. He looked like he was being attacked by absolutely everything in the place. Starting with the small water bottle he’d obviously been forced to order, because you couldn’t be in here without something. And quite obviously followed by the barista who kept coming over and asking if he was okay, and the man at the table next to him loudly talking about his NFTs, and the toddler who kept running by and standing on Alfie’s foot every time he did so.
