A Reluctant Cinderella

by Alison Bond

  She compartmentalized her life. In one box her career, in another her relationship and still another for Liam and her past. This ruthless detachment had kept her in control since the day she’d started working here. And now look – she’d made it all the way to the eleventh floor where the biggest offices were. So she must be doing something right.

  The lift stopped and the doors opened. Jackson let her out before him, but swiftly kissed the soft skin of her neck as she passed by. She flashed him a warning glance. Okay, so the lobby was empty and the receptionist was facing her computer screen, but he was taking too many risks. There was nothing wrong with having secrets. She had got very, very good at it.

  She reached the door of her office, her name etched into the frosted glass. She traced the letters of her name with her fingertips. Something to be proud of.

  Something permanent.

  Today had been a good visit. When it went like that it was easy to think of him just as Liam, her big brother, a bit soppy, easy to tease. And not think of him as a killer.

  But the reality would always get in the way.

  4

  She was surprised and not particularly pleased when Jackson turned up on her doorstep the following Saturday morning.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Charming.’ He wandered through to the kitchen and she stood for a few seconds in the open doorway wondering how long he would be staying and whether or not she would still have time to do all the paperwork that she had planned to complete before this afternoon’s FA Cup games kicked off.

  This isn’t working.

  The sudden realization stunned her. For years she had thought she had the perfect relationship, perfect for her. Mind-blowing sex, no commitment, someone who understood that work always, always took first place. She was in love with him, but her own kind of love. It didn’t mean she had to be with him every second; she didn’t need to know every thought in his head. She only had time for the basics. Sex, good fun, a few laughs. It was more than enough.

  But maybe not for him. Not any more.

  He always said that he didn’t want to hurt her. But it had never really occurred to either of them that hurt goes the other way too.

  In the kitchen he dumped a stack of heavy weekend newspapers on the table and started fussing with the Pavoni coffee machine while he unloaded brown paper bags from the deli on the next street over, full of plump croissants and rounds of French butter and cherry conserve. ‘Do you realize,’ he said, taking milk out of her fridge in a proprietary manner that set her teeth on edge, ‘that you and I have never had a lazy Saturday morning, with the papers, and breakfast in bed?’

  ‘I don’t do lazy,’ she said.

  ‘Today you do,’ he said. ‘Are you going to take your clothes off yourself or do I have to do it for you?’

  ‘I have things to do,’ she protested, feeling her resistance start to crumble in the face of his good humour.

  And it was great. Of course it was. They went to bed, had sex and afterwards it was so comfortable to lie back against the pillows and peruse the newspapers, all of them, not just the sport and business sections. His hand was on her thigh and for a brief while they were just like any other couple. Which was his point.

  He reached over to brush a flake of croissant from the corner of her mouth and held her gaze. ‘Let’s move in together,’ he said. ‘We could do this every weekend.’

  She froze. ‘Don’t spoil it,’ she whispered.

  ‘Damn it, Sam, what is it with you? We can’t stagnate. You of all people know that if you’re not moving forward then you’re not going anywhere. It’s been ten years.’

  ‘Four,’ she said, quick as a flash. ‘Four years.’

  ‘Four since you let me get close, but I’ve been in love with you for many more than that and you bloody well know it.’

  ‘Where do you expect us to go exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but marriage, kids … at the very least I think you should allow yourself to stay over every once in a while, maybe go out in public. What about that? Imagine, dinner out.’

  ‘Kids?’ she said, genuinely aghast. ‘Since when do you want to have kids?’

  ‘Baby steps, Samantha. It’ll be okay.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can. You’ve made it, Sam. Don’t you get it? The fight’s over. You won. You’ve made it now; you’ve nothing left to prove.’

  Then why did she still feel like she was fighting?

  ‘I think you’re trying to save me, Jackson,’ she said. ‘I don’t need saving.’

  Jackson got out of bed and started dressing, his mouth set in a firm, angry line. ‘I’m going home. I need more. I need more than a woman who is only ever relaxed for about seven minutes after sex and the rest of the time is wound so tight she’ll snap if you touch her. I need more.’

  She didn’t say anything. Nothing lasts for ever. She’d always known it would end one day. Jackson deserved someone who could give him what he wanted. All this time she’d been fooling herself that what was perfect for her was perfect for him. The truth was that he thought he could change her.

  She wasn’t the changing type.

  ‘This could be so good, Samantha. And I think you know it. You’re scared, and that’s okay; it’s scary stuff. But give us a chance.’

  Scared? He didn’t know what he was talking about. She wasn’t scared of anything. Why must everyone assume that a woman longs to be settled? She didn’t need a relationship to feel complete – she was Sam Sharp: Superagent – she was a success; she didn’t need a man to validate her.

  ‘I know you, Sam,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  ‘There’s plenty you don’t know about me,’ she said. Jackson liked everything to be simple. So she kept things simple for him. What would he say if he knew she had a brother in prison, locked up for being a killer? Liam was a hidden complication that she’d never been able to acknowledge.

  ‘I know you,’ he repeated. ‘I’m at home all afternoon. When you realize I’m right about us come on over.’ But when he bent over to kiss her cheek he couldn’t resist adding, ‘Come over anyway.’

  She waited until she heard the front door close then she dressed quickly, went downstairs and switched on the plasma screen in the living room. She went to fix herself an espresso, gathering some paperwork from her home office as the Pavoni hissed in the background.

  Back to business.

  With a steaming cup of coffee in her hand and her laptop on the coffee table in front of her, she settled down to give her full attention to the match. Well, most of it. She could catch up on some correspondence at the same time; she was a woman after all – multitasking was what she did best.

  She would figure out what to do about Jackson another time. Maybe later she’d convince him to leave things the way they were. Or perhaps it was time to get out before it got too complicated.

  But first she had to get her Saturday back on track. She shut out all thoughts of romance and focused on football. Not unlike, she considered with slight amusement, many thousands of men around the country about now.

  FA Cup fourth round. A small non-league team had made it this far and been drawn against Premiership stalwarts Tottenham Hotspur. One of her clients was a star at Spurs. She watched the screen with shredded nerves, hoping that he didn’t get injured and wincing at every hard tackle. There was nothing a player feared more than a career-threatening injury. And nothing that an agent feared more than a threatened career.

  Compared with losing a player to a shattered kneecap or a broken femur, her boyfriend picking a minor fight was nothing serious.

  Nil–nil with thirty minutes played. She wondered if Spurs were getting nervous yet. People imagine that these uneven draws, the nobodies versus one of the giants of the game, end in total annihilation, but the truth was that the teams balanced out much closer on the day. The minnows would be playing as hard as they ever had, reaching for the elusive fifth gear, trying everyt
hing, running after every ball and hoping – against all the odds – to get a result. Whereas the millionaire professionals on the other side would have dropped down into third, coasting through the same, more worried about avoiding injury than the goals which they were certain would come eventually. And if they didn’t? Well, then they’d turn it up a notch. And if that didn’t work, then and only then, they could always start playing properly.

  Tottenham had been drawn away, which meant travelling to the suburbs and leaving behind their multi-million-pound stadium and all the luxuries that came with it, like groundsmen, and seats. It was a terrible pitch, bumpy as hell and surely not helped by the wind and the rain that was lashing the players and the overexcited fans that were huddled in the shabby stands cheering lustily for a local team they probably didn’t have much faith in until this day.

  But now they believed.

  You could see it in every face. They truly believed it could be done, that their little David of a team could knock out the Goliath.

  She had half an eye on her emails, but a change in the tone of the commentary drew her attention back to the screen a minute or so before half time.

  ‘And it’s Gabe Muswell. Still Muswell. Smartly done. Still Muswell. MUSWELL!!!’

  The minnows were beating the sharks by a goal to nil. Stranger things had happened. After all, this was the FA Cup, the one tournament where anything could occur. If they won it would be an enormous upset. But it was also an enormous ‘if’. Nevertheless Samantha pushed her paperwork aside to concentrate on the game. She found herself willing on the underdogs despite loyalty to her client. Samantha liked stories of success against all the odds. She’d lived to tell that kind of tale.

  But the Premiership team came out much stronger in the second half, as she had guessed they probably would. It didn’t take long before they were two–one up and the glory of the minnows’ lead was nothing but a memory. Nice goal though.

  She googled Gabe Muswell and found a few items of local press.

  Used to be a goalie, then called upon to play up front in an emergency a couple of seasons ago. Never looked back. A good scoring record, nothing unusual in a club of that size where they didn’t have a massive squad to rotate. Handsome, in a rough-diamond kind of way.

  She noted with a pang somewhere between amusement and pity that he worked in a supermarket by day.

  And today you scored against Spurs. Good for you.

  Thirty-five. Married to Christine, thirty-four. No kids. See? Samantha wasn’t the only one to reach that age and be childless. And she had a career as her excuse – what was Christine’s?

  Not that you need an excuse.

  She drummed her nails on the table top, thoughts of having Jackson’s children distracting her. Maybe she should just go for it. She was a partner now, or would be soon, what was the worst they could do? Jackson was hardly in a position to get snippy about maternity leave. Besides, it was only childbirth; she could be back in the office after – what? – three weeks or so? If she timed it right so that she wasn’t missing the valuable transfer window, or the run-in, or the start of the season, or the Welstead boys’ Chelsea debut, when they’d still need so much support. So not this year then. Maybe next year?

  But she could imagine the looks on the other Legends’ faces when she announced her pregnancy.

  You see, those faces would say, we always said this was no job for a woman.

  Thirty millions pounds didn’t change what really mattered. Asking for maternity leave would be like complaining about period pains. As long as she didn’t have a despotic penis and a big set of balls hanging between her legs it would always be her and them, them and her, never just us. If she was the boss’s wife it would be even worse.

  But for all her thoughts of scheduling and maternity leave and child care she just wasn’t sure. It wasn’t just about Jackson. She wasn’t sure she wanted children. She’d never felt that burning desire she had heard other women speak of, a longing to be a mother. Did that make her a freak of nature? It was one more thing she could blame on her own mother; secretly she was terrified that miserable parenting might be a genetic weakness.

  She didn’t even know if she wanted a relationship with Jackson any more. Or anyone for that matter. She had lost sight of the point. Sex? Not hard to pick someone up in a club if that’s all you wanted. Companionship? Wasn’t that just another word for being needy?

  More action on the football pitch pulled her back to the FA Cup. There was pandemonium in the home crowd. Unbelievably St Ashton had drawn level. And it was that good-looking Gabe Muswell again.

  5

  It was the biggest day of his life. No question. Gabe had felt anxious all week long, sick on adrenalin. He wanted to kick out at something, but didn’t want to risk breaking a toe. Not this week. Not today.

  As a little boy he remembered feeling like this before every match, but as an adult never. Gabe Muswell had been a Tottenham Hotspur fan ever since he saw Ricky Villa score the winning goal in the 1981 FA Cup final replay. It was a Thursday night in the middle of May when his heart went to White Hart Lane for ever.

  From that day on he dreamed of playing for Spurs and, even more, he used to worry about how he would perform on his debut. He had long, involved daydreams about missing a penalty or getting injured in the first few minutes of play, his knee getting smashed to pieces, being out for three seasons and returning as a pale pretender to the player he once was.

  As it turned out he had no need to worry. These dreams began before his seventh birthday and faded with increasing speed after his twenty-first. He never got to play for Tottenham, and now, at thirty-five, he never would. But today was the next best thing.

  Today he was playing against them.

  Today he was competing with heroes.

  And the boy who had stood in the stands and whooped for joy at Villa’s goal, spinning his black-and-white scarf above his head, would be proud of the way he was playing. What more could he ask?

  He was in peak physical condition, the best shape of his life. He’d taken up the running habit when he ditched the Marlboro Lights. If he had stopped smoking and started running a little earlier who could say where he would be? Maybe, instead of playing football for a sorry little non-league team like St Ashton, he would be playing for his country and married to a pop star or a glamour model or an actress.

  His wife was not a pop star. Nor a glamour model, nor an actress. Christine worked at a call centre in Aylesbury, a job she never stopped complaining about to Gabe, as if it was his fault, and his alone, that she had to work at all. He’d been a supermarket buyer when they met and he’d never promised her a life of luxury, so why was she so bitter?

  It was the biggest day of his life and she wasn’t even here to watch.

  Before he’d left the house that day he’d asked her for an honest answer. ‘Do you think we stand a chance?’ he’d said.

  ‘Against Spurs?’ Christine had replied. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  Before kick-off the most that they could hope for seemed to be that they should lose with a shred of dignity intact.

  But this was the FA Cup. The one tournament where anything could happen, right? They’d already scraped through to the fourth round thanks to a lucky draw and a couple of even luckier goals. And if anything could happen … All week long Gabe had been trying to picture running at the Spurs goal, seeing the ball leave his foot with the perfect strike and slamming into the back of the net. Except every time he saw the strong, assured hands of their goalkeeper ruining his fantasy, saving his attempt on goal with ease. So Gabe would start visualizing it all over again.

  Then, thirty-four minutes into the most important game of football he would ever play, he scored.

  The goalkeeper didn’t stop it. The strike left Gabe’s right foot hard and true and whipped past him before he could even see it. He watched his own goal as if from above. The way the defenders backed off and backed off until they had nowhere left to go. The gaping abys
s that suddenly appeared on the left-hand side of goal, the curl of his foot as he kicked the ball exactly as he wanted to.

  Time slowed and was silent. He swore he could even see the moisture on each blade of grass flick off as the ball tore across the turf, and went where he wanted it to go, where he knew it would go the moment he’d felt the clean perfection of his kick.

  The back of the net billowed like an explosion and he raised his right fist in the air.

  Suddenly blackness as half a dozen players leapt on his back, hugging him with complete and utter joy.

  ‘Mental!’ Loud in his ear. ‘Yeeeees!’

  Someone close by saying, ‘Fuck yeah, fuck yeah,’ over and over again.

  His eyesight narrowed to a single spotlight of vision. The ball in the goal.

  Then he heard the crowd cheering. He saw strangers hug each other, dancing with happiness. Then he saw their goalkeeper disconsolately plucking the ball from the back of the net, wearing a version of the football strip he had idolized since he was a boy. He could have cried then. But he didn’t. He would never have lived it down.

  To score one goal against the club you had followed your whole life was the stuff of dreams. To score two was unheard of, impossible. Except that’s exactly what he’d done. Someone else did all the running up the right wing, and sent over a sexy little sideways pass, which would look great on the telly later, and Gabe was right there to pick it up and tap it in from two yards out. The goalkeeper was utterly foxed by the sudden change of direction. He didn’t stand a chance. He had been made to look like a fool. Gabe felt, rather than heard, him hiss something in his ear as he ran into the goal to pick the ball out of the back of his net himself.

  Two–two. Perhaps they could score another. This was the FA Cup – anything could happen. So while his team chased him with more congratulations Gabe was thundering back up to the centre spot with the ball.

  How much longer did they have? Not long, surely. Not judging by the way his heart felt like it was going to explode and his lungs were screaming for respite. His shirt was clinging to him all over, wet inside and out. In contrast the Tottenham players seemed hardly to be sweating at all. Gabe handed over the ball and wiped his muddy hands across his flat stomach, leaving a wide smear of dirt. He wanted that ball when this match was done. Whatever the result.