Golden Goal

by Dan Freedman

  Then Mike’s voice came on. He sounded a bit down but he was making an effort to be cheerful for Jamie:

  “Hiya, JJ, only me. I was just wondering if you wanted to come and watch the Hawks game with me tomorrow. It’s a big one! They need our support! If we lose tomorrow, I reckon they should just give the job to Harry Armstrong; he couldn’t do any worse than this lot!

  “Maybe see you tomorrow, then. But don’t worry if you can’t… I’m sure you’ve got lots on.

  “I’ll stop rambling on now, but give me a call sometime when you’ve got a second, JJ… You’ve been so quiet since you got back… I miss you, mate…”

  And that was the end of the message.

  Jamie took in a massive gulp of air. The woman on voicemail was asking Jamie whether he wanted to delete the message. Jamie would never do that. He pressed save. He would keep it for ever.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jamie saw his mum walk past his room. Then she stopped and came in, slowly putting something down on his bookshelf. Neither of them said a word.

  “Mum … can I have a hug?” Jamie suddenly asked.

  “Of course,” she said, opening her arms wide.

  Jamie clasped his arms around her and hugged as hard as he could.

  “I love you, Mum,” he mumbled, almost nervously. He wondered why it took such a bad thing to happen for him to be able to say it.

  “I love you too, Jamie. You know you’re the most important thing in the whole world to me, don’t you?”

  Jamie nodded. His heart was throbbing in his throat.

  “And I’m not the only one who adored you,” she said, turning to pick up the book that she had laid on top of the bookshelf when she came in.

  “Mike wanted you to have this,” she said, handing it to Jamie.

  “What is it?” asked Jamie.

  “It’s his diary.”

  Jamie sat down on his bed and opened the diary at the beginning.

  Jamie shut his eyes to try and hold in his emotions. Then he turned the page.

  Jamie touched the pages of the diary as softly, as tenderly as he could. He wanted the tips of his fingers to connect with the ink that had come from the pen that Mike had once held in his hand.

  As he read and touched Mike’s words, for the briefest of moments, Jamie felt Mike’s presence surround him.

  Jamie slowly closed the diary. Then, for the first time in months, for the first time since the accident, he did what he most needed to do. He cried.

  It had been so long that Jamie almost couldn’t find it. But then he spotted it, beneath the huge oak tree that looked naked now, without its leaves.

  Jamie sat down on his favourite bench in Sunningdale Park. He looked at the football pitches in front of him. Then he closed his eyes and allowed all the memories of the games he’d played here crash like a tidal wave around his mind.

  “Thought I might find you here,” called a familiar voice.

  Jamie looked up and he couldn’t believe his eyes. He couldn’t believe who it was.

  Jack looked even prettier than the last time he’d seen her. She was just wearing jeans and a T-shirt but she still looked better than any of the supermodels on TV.

  “Can I sit down?” she asked.

  “Course,” said Jamie, shifting up to make space. “It’s as much your bench as it is mine.”

  They both smiled as they looked at the engraving they’d made years before on the bench, using Jack’s keys:

  J & J 4ever

  They sat in silence for a few moments before Jack said, “I’m so sorry about Mike, Jamie.”

  “Cheers,” said Jamie. “Mike always liked you, you know. He said I should make sure that I hung on to you.”

  Then Jamie tried to begin the speech he’d rehearsed in his mind so many times over the last few weeks.

  “Jack, listen, I’m sorry about … what happened when I was at Foxborough,” he began. “I was an idiot. I—”

  “Oh, forget about it,” she said nonchalantly.

  Jamie couldn’t believe his luck. He couldn’t believe she was making things so easy for him.

  “Really?” he beamed.

  “Yeah, forget about it,” she repeated. “I forgot about it months ago.”

  “OK, cool … great, so we can be…”

  “Friends. Yeah, we’ll always be friends, Jamie.”

  “Friends? Oh, yeah … right… It’s just I thought … friends. Yeah … friends.”

  When they were younger, Jamie and Jack had always sprinted down to Sunningdale from their houses. They’d had races to see who could get there first. Of course Jamie had always won. He had natural pace.

  He could have been a professional sprinter if he hadn’t loved football so much.

  But now they were just walking. Slowly. The doctor had said it would be at least another few weeks before Jamie might be able to start running again.

  The sky was a dense white sheet, smothering the sun that lay buried above. Jamie felt as though he hadn’t seen the sun in years.

  “What am I going to do, Jack?” he suddenly asked. He’d stopped walking.

  “What do you mean, JJ?”

  Jamie smiled. Jack and Mike were the only people who’d ever called him JJ.

  “I mean: what am I going to do without football? Football was my life. Without it, I’ve got … nothing.”

  Jamie looked at the ground. His emotions were all jumbled up. He didn’t even know if he was making sense.

  Then Jack took Jamie’s hand softly but firmly into hers. Their hands fitted together as neatly as they always had done.

  “So get back into football, then,” she said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  The rain was beating down so violently on the groundsman’s decrepit old shed that Jamie could hardly hear the knock of his fist against the weathered wooden door.

  When it finally opened, a man stood in front of him, holding a steaming mug of tea in his huge, rough hands. He had an aggressive expression on his face.

  “Hi,” smiled Jamie, attempting to hold his nerve. “I’m here about the job.”

  “What job?” snapped the man impatiently. “We haven’t advertised a job.”

  “I know,” nodded Jamie. “But I want one.”

  As the heavy storm continued to pelt down, a fat drop of water snaked its way down Jamie’s soaked scalp, tickling his neck as it trickled along its journey.

  Jamie didn’t flick it away; he was focusing all his attention on the man standing in front of him.

  Meanwhile, Archie Fairclough, Hawkstone United’s Head Groundsman and Kit Manager, looked the young lad up and down. What had brought him here on a Thursday morning in the pouring rain? Didn’t he go to school?

  The kid seemed keen enough, and Archie knew that, now more than ever, he could do with an extra pair of hands around the place… But he was always wary of people who came asking for a job at Hawkstone. What were their real motives?

  Archie pulled his thumb and his fingers across his chin as his mind edged towards a decision. Strange, he thought to himself, I could have sworn I’d seen this kid somewhere before.

  “There ain’t no money in it, if that’s what you’re after,” he grunted. “We’re not on footballers’ wages, you know… And we might all be out of a job come May anyway, if we end up going down.”

  “I don’t care,” the boy responded. “I’m not here for the money. I just want to help.”

  And what’s more, Archie Fairclough could have sworn he was telling the truth.

  “A constructive way to generate an income until he goes back to school” was Jeremy’s view of Jamie’s new job at Hawkstone.

  Although Jamie had no intention of ever going back to school, he’d decided to save that argument for another day.
r />   Now, because Jamie was earning his own money, Jeremy couldn’t have a go at him any more. In fact, he was even giving Jamie a lift into the Hawks training ground for his first day at work.

  Jamie stared at Jeremy as he drove. He was wearing his leather driving gloves, checking his rear-view mirror every forty-five seconds. He had the news on the radio. He never ever listened to music in the car. And he always stayed exactly on the speed limit.

  Straight, Jamie decided. Straight was the ideal word to describe Jeremy. Everything about him was uniform, in order and unsurprising: his hair, his tie, his neatly polished shoes. Even his voice was boring. Jamie hadn’t realized that Jeremy had been talking for the last two minutes. He’d just tuned in for the end of the sermon.

  “…and that is why punctuality is so important,” Jeremy was saying. “It shows an organized mind.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. He wondered if the man had ever taken a risk in his life.

  Archie Fairclough probably looked older than he actually was. When Jamie had first seen him, he’d thought that he must have been about seventy. But, having worked with him for just a few hours, Jamie soon realized that the wrinkles he’d taken for age were actually just lines – evidence of the countless days he’d spent out in the open air.

  The other feature that struck Jamie about Archie was his strength. With his huge hands, he’d clasp a set of five-a-side goals, raise them above his head and walk the length of the pitch with them. His tattooed biceps bulged through the Hawkstone T-shirt that was his daily uniform.

  “All right, Cloughie!” all the Hawkstone First Teamers shouted whenever they saw Archie.

  He was pretty much a legend within the club. He’d been the Hawks groundsman for twenty years, and when veteran midfielder Harry Armstrong had been appointed Hawkstone player-manager a few days before, one of the first decisions he’d made was to give Archie a promotion and ask him to sit in the dugout during First Team games.

  So now Archie’s grand title was Head Groundsman and Kit Manager. Jamie’s title was simply Archie Fairclough’s Assistant.

  “What’s your second name, by the way?” asked Archie as he led Jamie out to the pitches. “I need to let the finance people know all your details so that you get your huge pay packet at the end of the month!”

  For some reason this made Archie laugh almost uncontrollably. He was properly cracking up. His mug was shaking so much that the tea was beginning to spill down the side.

  “Johnson,” said Jamie.

  “Johnson, eh?” Archie repeated, studying Jamie closely as he spoke. “You know, there was a great young player at this club once called Mike Johnson – he was playing when I first started supporting Hawkstone. Centre back, he was. As hard as nails. If it hadn’t been for his injury, he could have done anything in the game. Tell you what, we could do with a player like him now…”

  “Yeah,” said Jamie. He could feel the slight salty prickle of a tear in the corner of his eye. “I’ve heard about Mike Johnson.”

  “OK,” said Archie, changing the subject. “The first thing you can do is take these over to the academy boys.”

  He was pointing to a crate of energy drinks. “They’ll come over and drink them at half-time in their game. And make sure you bring back all the empty cartons.”

  Jamie nodded and started to lug the crate over towards the academy players. He could feel the hot sweat dripping down inside his tracksuit top. He realized that he had hardly done any exercise at all in the last eight months. He was so unfit.

  As soon as he arrived, all the academy players gathered quickly around him, snatching the drinks like a group of prisoners that had been starved of water.

  They downed the drinks and then chucked the cartons on the ground beneath them. Not one of them bothered to hand their carton back to Jamie. Or say thanks.

  Jamie was just bending down to pick them up when he heard the voice that immediately brought back a torrent of bad memories.

  “Johnson – is that you?”

  Jamie didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. He’d recognize that voice anywhere. It was Dillon Simmonds.

  Dillon was by far the worst enemy that Jamie had ever had. They had hated each other since the day Jamie had started at Kingfield School. It was Dillon who had started it – having a go at Jamie for being small and always saying how rubbish Jamie was at football.

  Dillon had done some really evil things to Jamie, but Jamie had never let it show that he was upset. He didn’t want to give Dillon the satisfaction.

  Even when Dillon had pulled one of his worst tricks – stealing Jamie’s phone and sending a text to Jamie’s mum which simply read: I want 2 kiss u – Jamie had still tried to laugh it off. Not that his mum and Jeremy had been too amused…

  And now here they were, together again at Hawkstone. Except this time all the chips were stacked in Dillon’s favour.

  Jamie realized he had to at least pretend to be friendly.

  “All right, Dil—”

  “Ha ha! I knew it was you! So what happened at Foxborough, then? I thought you were supposed to be the next big thing?!”

  “I got—”

  “Man, how sad are you?! You’re like nothing now. And I almost didn’t recognize you ’cos you’re so fat! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  He still had that same high-pitched hyena laugh that had tormented Jamie when they were at school.

  Dillon jogged back towards his teammates, turning only to chuck his drink carton as far away as possible. He knew Jamie would be the one to have to go and pick it up.

  As soon as Jamie got home that night, he went straight into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. He couldn’t get Dillon’s insults out of his mind.

  He struggled to pull his clinging wet tracksuit top over his shoulders and head. When he finally managed it, he tossed the sodden top on to the floor.

  As Jamie looked up, his reflection in the mirror gave him a shock. He hadn’t studied his body in the mirror for months.

  He twisted his white, freckled form from side to side, eyeing every inch of himself in the glass.

  He softly patted his belly. Gone was the taut, hard stomach that he’d gained by doing hundreds of sit-ups during his Foxborough days. Instead, here was the flabby result of all the ice cream and chips that he’d tucked away mindlessly during his months as a couch potato.

  Jamie traced his hands up his body, towards his chest. He squeezed the loose flesh. He couldn’t believe it. He even had the beginning of man boobs!

  Dillon was right. Jamie was fat.

  He ran his fingers through his thick, spiky hair.

  “Right! Time for a change!” he said to himself, with a new determination in his voice.

  Then he picked up Jeremy’s clippers and began that change.

  “Someone’s had a haircut!” said Archie when Jamie got to work on Monday. “But if you wanted to borrow the mower, you only had to ask!”

  “What d’you mean?” asked Jamie.

  “Oh, doesn’t matter,” chuckled Archie, his laughter slowly subsiding. “Gaffer says they’re playing five-a-side today, so we need to move these goalposts over to that field. Follow me.”

  Jamie watched as Archie hauled the set of goals above his head and began the arduous trek to the other side of the training ground.

  Jamie tried to lift his goals. But they were seriously heavy; Jamie pulled, but he couldn’t get them off the ground.

  Archie looked around and waved him on impatiently. Jamie didn’t know what to do. There was no way he could say he was too weak. This was his job. Somehow, he had to lift these goals.

  He bent his knees and crouched down beneath the crossbar. He exhaled a few times, as he’d seen weightlifters do. Then, with a huge push of his lungs and a rush of power through his arms and shoulders, he raised the goals high above his head. A little unstead
y at first, he soon found his balance and followed in the direction Archie was heading.

  Jamie’s whole body ached by the time they reached the training pitch and he and Archie carefully laid the goals down at either end. His thighs, which had taken the brunt of the carrying, were throbbing so hard, it felt as though they might burst through Jamie’s tracksuit bottoms.

  Jamie breathed out and wrung his wrists to try and get the blood flowing again.

  “What?” teased Archie. “You’re not out of puff, are you? That was nothing!”

  Jamie shook his head. He didn’t want Archie to know that that was one of the most gruelling physical tasks he’d ever completed.

  “Thanks for that, Cloughie,” said a man in a tracksuit, striding purposefully on to the pitch. Jamie instantly knew who the man was. It was Harry Armstrong, the new player-manager of Hawkstone United. Harry had been one of Jamie’s favourite players when Jamie was younger.

  “No problem, gaffer,” said Archie, more cheerful than Jamie had ever seen him before. “We’ll come and collect them when training’s finished.”

  “Nice one,” said Harry. Then he turned to look at Jamie.

  “And I take it this is the new member of staff you’ve been telling me about, Cloughie?”

  “Sure is, gaffer,” replied Archie. “He’s been with us a couple of weeks now. It’s good to have an extra pair of hands around the place.”

  “Yup – we need all the help we can get at the moment,” Harry Armstrong said, stretching out his hand for Jamie to shake. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Jamie, sir … I mean gaffer… I’m Jamie.”

  They shook hands.

  “Welcome to Hawkstone, Jamie,” said Armstrong, smiling widely. “Good to have you on board.”

  Sometimes, on a Friday, as a treat, Archie would let Jamie go and watch the Hawkstone team train ahead of their weekend match.