by Dan Freedman
“Right,” replied Jamie. “I’ll be down in a sec.”
Jamie zipped up his suitcase and took a final look around his hotel room. Still no sign of the ring. He wondered if whoever had it knew how much pain they had caused to Jamie. No matter how much money they had sold it for, he would have given them double – anything they wanted – just to put it on his finger again. Just to feel close to Mike once more.
But the ring was gone and so too was Jamie’s World Cup dream. True, he’d still only be twenty-two when the next World Cup came around, but what state would his body be in by then?
Jamie knew there was no way he could have argued with Archie. That vision of his mum pushing him around in a wheelchair was too haunting to ignore. Not to mention the fact that he’d be throwing away a potential move to Barcelona. If there was one club in the world that he was desperate to play for apart from Hawkstone, it was Barca.
So, for once in his life, he was going to listen to the advice he was given. Take the sensible option. Follow his head and not his heart.
He took one last look around his room. The World Cup wall chart was only half complete. And that was how it would remain.
So this was it. Three games, two goals and one Man of the Match award…
Not bad, Jamie thought to himself. At least I can always say I’ve played in the World Cup. No one can ever take that away from me.
Jamie knocked on the door of the manager’s office. His taxi would be here soon but he had one last person to say goodbye to first.
There was no answer, so Jamie opened the door to find that only Tommy the kit man was in there, putting all his effort into shining up Sir Brian’s boots.
“All right, Tom? Where’s the gaffer?” asked Jamie. “I need to say goodbye.”
Jamie wished he could have had more games under Sir Brian. He respected him so much. For his honesty, for his belief in his players and for the way he’d always stood up for Jamie – even when other people had doubted him. It made Jamie’s stomach lurch with regret to think that he’d now be leaving Robertson and the rest of the squad to carry on the fight without him.
Without interrupting his polishing, Tommy simply pointed a remote control at the TV screen and turned it up.
Sir Brian was in the press tent, which was over on the other side of the hotel grounds, giving a press conference, which was being televised live.
“I mean, it was always going to be an uphill struggle for Scotland and now, if the rumours are to be believed, your best player has just told his teammates he’s out of the World Cup. Johnson is the one that has taken this team to the next level so, without him, how do you plan to take on and beat a football superpower like Brazil, Sir Brian?”
Brian Robertson smiled and took the question in his stride.
“This World Cup has thrown up some unpredictable results, though, hasn’t it?” he purred. “Who would have thought that Japan would have beaten Switzerland seven nil? Look at how well Turkey and Norway have both done. Who knows? England might even win a penalty shoot-out!”
While the press room enjoyed Robertson’s humour, he carried on.
“My point is, football doesn’t always go the way you think it’s going to – there’s always a twist around the corner. Yes, Brazil are a fantastic side with some exceptional players, but in my humble opinion they haven’t been quite at their best so far this tournament… And anyway, you know what? Sometimes, it’s just more fun being David rather than Goliath. There’s no pressure on us to beat Brazil, so we can just go out there and enjoy it.”
“OK, Sir Brian, on another subject, I don’t know if you’ve heard this yet – but it’s being reported by the Argentinian press that Mattheus Bertorelli has just had his suspension reduced from three matches to one match on appeal. Do you have any comment on that?”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” growled Robertson, immediately losing the smile from his face.
“No. It’s just been confirmed. A statement has gone up on the website.”
“You want my comment? You want to know what I think?” said Robertson, slamming his fist down hard on to the table. “Disgrace. That’s what it is. An absolute disgrace. That tackle he made on Jamie Johnson was barbaric. He was a snake in the grass; he’d been waiting all game for his opportunity to attack Johnson. And then he did it. So now my player’s out of the entire tournament and that animal misses one match. One match! How’s that fair? Where’s the justice in that? The people who made that decision should hang their heads in shame. That’s what I think.”
“Do you not think you’re going a little bit over the top about the tackle, Sir Brian? Those kind of words can get you in trouble.”
“Not in the slightest. What he did wasn’t a tackle. It was a violent assault. If the authorities can’t see that, then they know even less about the game than I thought.”
Jamie could not believe what he was hearing.
“Why’s he saying all this, Tommy?” asked Jamie. “He’s slaughtering them. They’ll definitely ban him for this.”
“Aye,” smiled Tommy, continuing to scrub away at the boots. “They probably will and all but I guess sometimes you’ve just got to do what you believe in – otherwise, what’s the point?”
“Yeah,” said Jamie, subconsciously rubbing his finger in the spot where his ring should have been. It occurred to him that Tommy might be more right than he could ever know.
At that moment, there was a brisk knock at the door.
“Someone order a taxi up to Hawkstone?” asked a burly man, jangling a set of keys in his hand.
“Yeah, that’s me,” said Jamie, walking slowly and regretfully towards him.
So, this was it. The end of the road. The final whistle—
“But listen, mate, I’d better give you a big tip because I’m going to need to cancel that cab,” smiled Jamie.
“Really?” asked both the cab driver and a stunned Tommy, who had even paused in his polishing to look up at Jamie.
“Yeah,” Jamie nodded, immediately feeling the weight of a thousand future regrets lift from his shoulders. “I’m not ready to leave yet. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t be silly, Mum!” said Jamie. “We trained today and I was absolutely fine!”
“Well, all I know is what happened with Dad,” said Jamie’s mum. She was calling from the cruise that Jeremy had booked for her birthday. Who would want to go on a cruise while the World Cup was being held in your own country?! It always amazed Jamie how he could live with two people who had such little interest in football! Still, it was reassuring for Jamie to hear her voice because it reminded him that life still went on outside of all the hysteria surrounding the World Cup.
“After his injury, Dad tried to play on when the doctors told him not to – that’s how he ended up with his arthritis. You know what he was like, Jamie. He could hardly walk when he got older and I’m sure that’s why his heart…”
Jamie’s mum didn’t finish her sentence. Her voice just trailed off as it always did when she talked about Mike and what happened. Even though it was a couple of years ago now, it still haunted them both… Those horrible, unanswerable questions about whether there was anything they could have done to prevent it. Certainly, Jamie’s mum, who was a nurse at the local hospital, had her own theories about why Mike’s heart had given out.
“Look,” said Jamie, trying to find some brightness to balance out the sadness he could hear on the other end of the line. “I understand what you’re saying, but just because that happened to Mike doesn’t mean it has to happen to me. Mike’s injury was yonks ago. Things have changed completely. They have different ways of dealing with injuries now. You know that. I mean, you should see this freezing ice chamber they’ve put me in. It’s amazing. It gets the blood flowing more quickly to make me heal faster. Actually – no, I’ve just realized you wouldn’t like it, Mum; way too col
d for you!”
There was a pause. Jamie was glad he’d left out the fact that he’d been getting daily painkilling injections too. Although his mum dealt with gory stuff all the time at hospital, she was still extra sensitive whenever anything happened to Jamie.
“Just make sure my boy comes back to me in one piece,” she said finally.
“I will,” Jamie smiled. “And remember, if we’re losing against Brazil, can you make sure you go to the toilet, please? You know that’s the only sure-fire way to guarantee me scoring a goal!”
Jamie used his new mobile to log on to the net. He was so happy to have a phone again – being without one for these few days had felt as if he was missing an arm. But now it had arrived, it seemed as though the wait had been worth it – the apps were fantastic and the internet speed unbelievable.
Besides, there was not a lot else for Jamie to do. He’d already listened to all his music and watched South Korea knock out Portugal in a stunning second-round match, which had instantly been called one of the games of the tournament.
Apart from training and meals, the only other time he’d even been out of his room today was for the four o’clock team meeting in which Sir Brian Robertson had confirmed to the squad that, following his press conference outburst, he had been banned from the match against Brazil. Completely. He was not to sit in the dugout, go into the dressing room or have any kind of contact with his players during the match.
It was a massive blow but Robertson had played it down.
“You’ll be fine,” he’d said. “I’ve drummed everything into you so much that you’ll know what I would have said anyway! Just make sure you all get a good night’s sleep this evening. That’s as important as anything else.”
But Jamie knew he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep for hours yet. That was why he was surfing the net.
Once he’d checked the football gossip, he immediately did the one thing he shouldn’t have done. He went straight to Jack’s blog.
He knew it! She’d updated her home page with a really hot new photo. He wondered whether she’d done it just to annoy him because she thought he was with Loretta Martin now. She must have been angry with him because she hadn’t even called to see if he was all right after his injury.
Jamie felt sick. They hadn’t spoken for days and yet she still seemed like the happiest person on earth. She obviously wasn’t missing him at all.
Right! Jamie thought to himself. I’m going to accept all the friendship requests that I’ve got from any girls! I’ll even accept one from Loretta Martin if it’s there. But when he went on to his own website there were none. Typical!
The only message in his inbox was from Robbie Simmonds.
Jamie scrolled straight back to Jack’s page. How did she manage to look so fine in every single photo? She looked way better than the models in magazines because her smile was real and she’d had none of that plastic surgery.
What was she doing now? While Jamie was stuck here, pacing the floor of his hotel room prison, she was probably out somewhere partying—
There was a loud knock on the door. So loud and powerful, in fact, that Jamie was not altogether surprised to see the huge figure of Duncan Farrell standing there when he opened it.
“All right!” said Duncan Farrell, smiling in the hallway outside Jamie’s door. He was so tall he had to duck slightly to keep his head below the ceiling.
Jamie recognized this smile. It was Farrell’s mischievous one. The same one he’d had at dinner last night, just before he’d slipped a fake cockroach into Allie Stone’s bean soup.
“All right,” offered Jamie, a little warily, wondering what exactly Farrell was up to.
“Fancy popping out?” Farrell enquired from behind his ever-widening grin.
Jamie had heard about this. Faz – as the team called him – was notorious for getting bored, so it was not unusual, especially in the run-up to a big game, for him to try to recruit a teammate for a little adventure as a way of breaking up the monotony of endless days in the hotel.
“Popping out? Like where?” Jamie asked. He was intrigued. Farrell was a loose cannon and Jamie couldn’t help being drawn to people like that. One of the best stories he’d heard so far about Farrell was the time he’d excused himself from a team meeting before a big League game in Scotland, saying he needed to go to the toilet. He was then found seven days later, sitting in a bed in a hotel room in Paris, nonchalantly playing a guitar. The story had made Jamie laugh so much, and the best part was that Farrell couldn’t even play the guitar!
“Reckon we should take a trip down to the river. Get out of this hotel.”
The River Thames was easily accessible from the bottom of the hotel’s gardens and Jamie could see it clearly from his room. Sometimes just knowing it was there had soothed Jamie when his mind had become blocked by the hugeness of what was going on around him. Every TV channel, every radio station and every newspaper was wall-to-wall with the World Cup. It seemed as if it was the only event happening on earth. So, just taking a minute to watch the water twisting and meandering, as it had for centuries on its inevitable passage to the sea, reminded Jamie that some things would continue long after this World Cup was a distant memory.
“Erm,” said Jamie, taking a sneaky look at his watch. 10.20 p.m. He also recalled the fact that Farrell’s little adventures generally ended up in unmitigated disaster. “Yup, definitely. Let’s go down to the river tomorrow. A walk before lunch sounds good—”
“Forget tomorrow,” said Farrell, verbally cornering Jamie. “I’m talking about now. Come on, what are you scared of?”
“I’m not scared of anything. It’s just we’re playing against Brazil tomor—”
“Right then,” said Farrell. “Meet you outside the fire exit in five minutes.”
“Well, to be fair to you, Faz, that was actually a pretty good idea,” said Jamie as they arrived back at the little jetty just below the hotel gardens. “You were right, we needed to escape from the prison for a bit.”
They had walked for about twenty minutes, and although they hadn’t talked much – Faz was more of a doer than a thinker – stretching his legs on a warm summer night had done Jamie a world of good. He would have only been stuck up in his room by himself otherwise.
“See you in the morning,” said Jamie heading back up to the hotel.
“Oh, we ain’t done yet,” replied Farrell, who, by the time Jamie had turned around, had already undone the ropes which attached a tiny rowing boat to the jetty.
“Hop in,” said Farrell, as he jumped in and took a hold of the oars. “We’ll row across to town. See if there’s any life over there.”
Jamie didn’t move. He could see the bright lights, shining like distant stars on the other side of the river, but he wasn’t the greatest of sailors and it was already getting pretty late.
“Or shall I tell the rest of the squad that you’re a p—”
“OK! I’m coming!” said Jamie, leaping down into the little boat, which rocked from side to side in the water as it took account of the weighty presence of the two international footballers which it now carried. “I suppose this is one way to take your mind off the game.”
It didn’t take Jamie or Farrell very much time at all to work out that they were never going to make it to the other side.
Almost as soon as they pushed themselves away from the jetty, the current took hold of them. The oars were irrelevant as the power of the water dictated their speed and direction. While Farrell seemed to enjoy the danger of the situation, as though he were on some extreme fairground ride, Jamie honestly feared for his life as the tiny vessel flew downriver. The night was pitch-black. What if a big boat was coming the other way? They would never see Jamie and Faz in time. What if they smashed into a bridge? He could tell from the speed with which they were passing riverside cottages that they were travelling seriously fast. And
they were out of control too. It was like being in a speeding car without any brakes.
Finally, after about five minutes, Farrell’s face turned as pale as Jamie’s. By now he had stopped laughing. If they carried on like this, they would end up somewhere near Southend – if they even made it that far alive.
“Right,” said Farrell, standing up in the tiny boat, which by now was starting to leak freezing cold water. “This is my stop.”
“What do you mean?” asked a panicked Jamie, only to see his teammate dive off the boat and attempt to swim to the riverbank.
Jamie quickly calculated the other options in his mind and realized immediately that there were none.
“Oh for God’s sake,” he shouted as he followed Farrell, plunging head-first into the cold and powerful current of the River Thames.
Wearing a very strange combination of striped nightclothes that made them look somewhat older than they were, Scotland’s World Cup stars, Jamie Johnson and Duncan Farrell finally got back to the Riverside Hotel just before 1.30 in the morning.
After initially trying to swim against the current, they had worked out that there was no point in fighting it, instead they allowed the river to carry them to where it wanted. Finally, on one of the bends, they had managed to catch hold of a low-hanging branch from a tree and haul themselves up on to the bank.
Not knowing where they were or how they were going to get back, they had resolved to try and enlist help.
As luck would have it, a kindly-looking old man had opened the first door they had knocked on.
Seeing the two shivering, soaking-wet young men standing on his doorstep, the man had taken pity on them and immediately invited them in and offered assistance.
“I’m afraid all I’ve got is some of my old pyjamas, but they’re nice and warm,” said the man, chuckling to himself as he came down the stairs with some fresh clothes for the pair. “You know, I’ve just realized who you two remind me of… You look like Jamie Johnson and you look like that nutter who plays up front for Scotland. Now what’s his name? Duncan … Duncan…”