by Dan Freedman
Jamie collapsed on to the bed. Almost immediately he understood what the doctor had been trying to tell him in Spain. This was not a normal injury. This was not about his playing football again. Right now, it was nowhere near that.
This was about whether his brain could ever recapture control of his body.
There were five minutes to go until kick-off and, led slowly by Archie Fairclough, Jamie Johnson made his way on to the Hawkstone United pitch for the first time in five months.
He was not here to play, however. Just to show his support for his club.
Archie had invited him along, thinking that watching a game live – seeing the action close up – might help Jamie to access his football brain. They had tried to kick a football together for the first time this week but it had gone terribly; Jamie had fallen over twice.
That was when Archie had suggested coming along to the game.
“It might just make something click,” he’d said. “And anyway, the players are all desperate to see you.”
Jamie had quickly agreed and had been massively excited about the prospect but, when he heard the PA announcer pipe up just as he was about to take his seat behind the dugout, Jamie knew he’d made an awful mistake.
“Ladies and gentleman.” The announcement had come in a loud, booming voice and with far too much drama for Jamie’s liking. “If you were watching the match between Barcelona and Real Madrid some four weeks ago, you will no doubt have seen the awful accident involving Jamie Johnson, the hugely popular former Hawkstone United player…”
Suddenly Jamie’s face appeared on the big screen and a hush descended on the crowd, followed by the sound of thirty-five thousand people all whispering and gossiping at the same time:
I thought his head had actually come off.
What a tragedy … I hope he’s going to be OK.
I heard he still can’t speak properly.
What a player – we could do with him now!
“…Well, we’re very pleased to say that Jamie is recovering well and is back with us for today’s game … and we’d like to invite him on to the pitch now to receive your applause!”
A terrific roar reverberated around the ground. Fans stood up and clapped. Fathers put their arms around their sons and pointed proudly in Jamie’s direction. If only they were clapping me scoring a goal, Jamie thought to himself, rather than just feeling sorry for me.
Initially Jamie thought he might be able to get away with just a wave, but the applause was too much. The fans wanted to see him.
So here Jamie was: slowly, painfully, shuffling his way on to the pitch. He could now walk without the crutches but he knew his body well enough to be certain that he couldn’t clap and walk at the same time, so he had to wait until he’d made his way fully into the centre circle before he could in any way acknowledge the stunning ovation he was receiving.
The last time he had stood on this pitch, he had been parading the Premier League trophy in front of the fans – sprinting around the ground in pure joy.
Today was different. Jamie knew he was collecting the fans’ sympathy rather than their admiration.
Finally, he raised his hands and clapped the fans back, trying to be the returning hero they so wanted him to be.
But for Jamie, this was not a thrill. It was torture. This pitch, this canvas of dreams, was the only place he wanted to be. But not like this. Not as a shadow of himself.
Within five minutes of the game starting, he’d gone, slipping quietly out of one of the exits and making his way home.
Jamie understood why Archie had thought that watching the game might help. The hope was that, as Jamie watched the action, his brain would finally click into gear and neatly present Jamie with all the abilities that he’d lost.
But life wasn’t that perfect. Instead, it had felt more like a form of torment: Jamie being forced to watch other people do what he so desperately wanted to do.
He’d had to walk home from the ground because he couldn’t even run properly. It was as though his body would not receive his brain’s commands and there was nothing he could do to change it.
“You’re early!” Jamie’s mum said as he trudged through the brand-new door of their brand-new house, slamming it shut behind him. “How did it go? Any good kicks?”
“I hate myself,” was all he could offer, before dragging himself upstairs to his room.
Slowly but surely, not being able to play football was killing Jamie.
“So tell me about some of the stuff we got up to,” said Jamie.
Even though he and Archie had started to make some progress with throwing and catching a ball, Jamie had still been in something of a depression for the last few days. But when Jack reminded him that Stonefish had been living with him out in Barcelona, he knew there would be some funny stories to cheer him up.
“Ah! Where do I start?” said Stonefish. He was still living in Jamie’s apartment out in Spain, waiting for him to come back. “Well, a couple of days after I arrived, you fell asleep on the beach so I put factor 40 suncream lotion on your forehead spelling the word BUM but left the rest of you to burn. So, when you woke up, you were bright red all over, except for the word BUM, which was written in big white letters on your head!”
“NOOOO!” laughed Jamie. “You’ve got to be kidding me! What did the Barça players say?”
“They were just happy to learn a new, rude word in English!”
“So did I get you back, Stonefish? Please tell me I got you back!”
“Oh, you got me back all right. One night, we decided to go out to the disco and when we were getting ready, without me knowing it, you replaced the shampoo in my bathroom with hair remover. So I wash my hair with this stuff and by the time we get to the disco, I am chatting to this girl and my hair is falling out in clumps. I’m literally going bald in front of her eyes!”
“You serious?! Well, I guess we’re even then!”
“Oh, there’s loads more, Jamie, I’m just getting started. Wait till you hear about the rollercoaster story! I ended up being sick and the people behind me had their mouths open!”
Jamie and Allie both cracked up for a good two minutes. “So we had a good time, you and me?” asked Jamie between the laughter.
“The best,” said Stonefish. “I was going nowhere before you asked me to come out to join you. I’d retired. My dad had died and I wasn’t looking after myself. I honestly don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t got in contact…”
Suddenly the line went quiet.
“Stonefish?” said Jamie. “Stonefish, are you crying?”
“No,” came the response between the sniffles.
“Come on, Stonefish,” laughed Jamie. “I called you so you could cheer me up and now you’re the one crying!”
“I can’t help it, man,” said the big goalkeeper through his sobs. “You saved me, man. I’ll never forget that.”
Jamie had spent so long on the phone trying to get Stonefish to stop crying that he hadn’t even heard Archie arrive for today’s fitness session.
He was halfway down the stairs when he heard the conversation that was taking place in the kitchen.
Something about the tone of the voices made Jamie stop, slowly crouch down and continue to listen.
“What do you mean, they don’t have to pay him anything?” Jamie’s mum was saying.
“They don’t owe Jamie anything,” said Archie flatly. “He’s on a pay-as-you-play deal. If he’s not fit enough to play, he doesn’t get paid.”
“Now, hang on a minute,” Jeremy interjected. “I read through that contract several times. There was never any mention of ‘pay-as-you-play’. I would never have allowed him to sign something like that. This is ludicrous. Let me speak to Barcelona.”
“The contract you saw wasn’t the one that Jamie signed,” revealed Archie. “Turn
s out he failed the medical because of his knee but, instead of letting the deal break down, he told Godal that he would sign for them on a pay-as-you-play deal… I guess that was how much Jamie wanted to sign for Barcelona. Apparently it was his suggest—”
And then, as Jamie appeared in the room, Archie’s voice tailed off.
“I don’t remember doing it,” said Jamie, “but you know how desperate I was to play for Barcelona. I would have done anything to make it happen. And … it sounds like I did.”
“I’m so sorry, Karen,” Archie offered, seeing Jamie’s mum slump into a chair as she took in the news that Jamie had been left with nothing. “I’ve been in football for fifty years and I can honestly tell you that your son is the most naturally gifted player that I have ever had the privilege of working with. I don’t mind saying that in front of him because he knows what I think of him anyway. I have a theory that the way people play football tells you a lot about their character. Not only is your son one of the best players I have ever seen, he’s also the bravest.”
“So what happens now?” asked Jamie’s mum.
“I can only tell you one thing for sure,” stated Archie. “We will not give up on his football career without one hell of a fight.”
Dillon Simmonds. Dillon Jay Simmonds.
Of all the people who had wished Jamie a speedy recovery or started being nice to him, this was not one he was expecting.
Over the last few weeks, Jamie had been stunned by the amount of people who had got in touch or wished him well. Señor Godal called him every few days, always with the same message: there is no rush, we are here waiting for you. But in some ways, it was the letter that Jamie had received from Fernando Nemisar, the Real Madrid manager, that had made more of an impression – just because it was so unexpected.
The letter had arrived very quickly after the injury, on the fantastic-looking headed notepaper of Real Madrid, and Nemisar had even taken the time to hand-write it. In the letter he’d said how sorry he was about what had happened and that his club and all its supporters wished Jamie a full and speedy recovery.
Jamie still couldn’t remember the accident or ever having come into contact with Nemisar personally, but he was fully aware of his reputation as being a man with only ego and no heart. His letter proved that the reality was different to the reputation.
First Nemisar and now Dillon Simmonds. Jamie’s condition was affecting other people almost as much as him.
Since the first time they had met, aged eleven – when Dillon had asked Jamie to help him find a nonexistent contact lens on the ground and then promptly kneed Jamie up the bum – their relationship had been a negative one.
All the way through school, Dillon had made Jamie’s life a misery. “Ginge”, “Muppet”, “Egg”, and “Worm” were among the nicest names that Dillon had given to Jamie. Meanwhile, the fact that he had always been twice Jamie’s size had also given him a considerable advantage whenever Jamie had cracked and challenged Dillon to a fight.
Which made it all the more surprising that, today, Dillon was being mysteriously, ridiculously, unfathomably nice.
They had run into each other at the local gym – Archie had told Jamie that he should lift some weights to build up his muscle strength – and Dillon had been nothing but smiles.
“I’ve given up football,” Dillon announced, entirely unprompted, as he yanked hard on the rowing machine. He’d turned pro at the same time as Jamie but had been nowhere near Jamie’s league.
“Right,” replied Jamie, unsure whether he was supposed to act as if he cared.
“It was going nowhere, so I’m a builder now,” Dillon continued, unperturbed. “I’ve set up my own company and it’s going seriously well. Cash, mate. Serious amounts of cash. And with all the heavy lifting, you get these!”
Dillon pulled up a sleeve of his T-shirt to reveal a huge, bulging bicep.
“It was Jack Marshall who helped me, actually. She was wicked. I went to see her ‘cos she’s like the cleverest girl from our school and I just asked for her help. I was like: ‘Football’s giving me no money and I’ve got both me and Robbie to worry about, what should I do?’ And she sat there with me for a couple of hours asking what I was interested in, what I was good at, and she said ‘cos I liked working with my hands I should think about building. Then she introduced me to her dad, who owns some houses he rents out, and it all kind of went from there.
“Top girl, she is. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s as hot as anything either. It ought to be illegal how good-looking that girl is! What’s happening with you and her, anyway? You’re always together, but—”
“We’re friends,” said Jamie sharply. This was none of Dillon’s business. And the mention of Jack’s name also pricked Jamie’s feelings. She hadn’t been round in a while and Jamie couldn’t quite work out why.
“Fine, you don’t want to talk about it. I get it,” smiled Dillon, with a hint of his old schoolboy malice. “Well, anyway, I owe her one and, seeing as you and her are ‘friends’, I thought I would offer you a hand.”
Dillon suddenly turned and looked at Jamie. His expression was so overly serious it was as if he were reading the news on TV.
“So, if you wanted to earn a bit of dosh, you should come and work for me. I can always do with an extra pair of hands.”
Jamie looked at Dillon. He might have taken a potentially life-threatening blow to the head but he was not a charity case.
“Thanks for the offer, but if I need your help, I’ll ask for it,” snapped Jamie, allowing the weights to clank back down. “Remember, mate – I’m a footballer, not a builder.”
It had been a good line, which had managed to shut Dillon up.
Jamie just hoped it was still true.
Jamie stood by the window. It was 4.29 p.m. Normally she was like clockwork every Wednesday evening.
Sure enough, just after 4.31 p.m., Jack Marshall rode down the street with her rucksack on her back and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder. She was on her way to coach her girls’ football team, and later she would head back to the newspaper office for the night shift.
Jamie watched her go. Just as he did at the same time every Wednesday. When he’d first come home from Spain, Jack had always looked up at his window and waved at him, but she’d stopped doing that now.
Had he done something wrong? He just couldn’t work out why she was being so distant. Then again, perhaps she was just busy. While Jamie was still trying to piece his life back together, other people were getting on with theirs.
Jamie turned, opened his wardrobe and started to take off his running clothes. His balance was improving enough now that he could do it standing up.
In fact, the training sessions were starting to get much better. He was now kicking a ball against the wall quite hard, and Archie had even said that Jamie might be able to take part in some light training with the Hawkstone Youth Team in a month or two’s time – if Godal agreed.
However, two months seemed a lifetime away, and if there was one quality that Jamie did not possess in abundance, it was patience. He was desperate to play again, desperate to feel like the player he knew he’d been.
As he pulled off his sweaty top, Jamie looked at himself in the mirror and analysed his features. The hair, previously ginger, now a darker auburn – that was from his nan. The lips, nose and chin were from his mum. But the eyes – their shape and their misty blue colour – were they from his dad?
Turning sideways on, Jamie tried a smile and a scowl. And there it was, in the scowl, just a hint, just a shadow of his dad.
Since Jeremy had told him a couple of days ago that his dad was now in prison, Jamie had been doing a lot of thinking about that man, and the role he had played, or rather not played, in Jamie’s life…
The slamming of a car door outside brought Jamie back to reality. It was his mum. She was arriving back from work and
struggling to carry five bags of shopping to the door. It was a dreary afternoon and Jamie could suddenly see the years of work and stress etched into the lines on her face as she struggled through the clawing winds to the front door.
Suddenly, Jamie felt a dagger of guilt cut into him. When he’d become a professional footballer, he’d promised his mum that she could stop work; that he would look after the money from now on. But in signing that stupid contract, he’d left himself with no protection, and she’d had to go back out to find a new job.
A hideous question inserted itself into Jamie’s mind. Had he done exactly the same thing as his dad had done all those years before? Had he promised everything and given nothing?
Jamie looked at himself in the mirror one final time.
Who was he?
Was he slowly becoming the one person he could not bear to be?
Jamie still had the number in his Spanish phone, so he dialled it.
It rang five times before he answered it.
“Señor Godal!” said Jamie, his voice thick with excitement and apprehension. “It’s Jamie Johnson here… I just wanted to wish you luck for the game against Rosenborg on Wednesday… Yes, I’m starting to feel a lot better now… I think I might be ready to come back. In fact, no. I am ready to come back.”
Yes, it was wrong. Jamie had only just started kicking a ball again with Archie and had not yet showed anything like his old prowess.
Yes, it was too soon. The injury itself had been only just under two months ago. Medically speaking – psychologically, even – he was nowhere near ready.
And yes, it was a gamble. But at the same time, it had been a gamble that had got him into this situation in the first place, so it might just be a gamble that was required to get him out of it.
Not that Archie had been happy.
“Are you mad?” he’d responded when Jamie told him. “You realize this is completely the wrong decision?”