I think the really big winner that season was probably my cell phone company. I knew straight away I was crazy about Victoria. I found myself thinking about how and when I could be with her during most of every day we were apart. No sooner had we met, she’d had to jet off to America with the Spice Girls. We spent hour after hour talking and the bills got scarier and scarier. But they were the best investment I’ve ever made. The couple of times we’d actually been face to face, I’d felt so nervous it took my breath away. It’s strange how different it was on the phone. It seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to be telling this amazing woman all about my life—and my feelings—and listening to her do the same. By the time she got back to England, it felt like we really knew each other. We started to find out, as well, what we were going to mean to each other. Whatever the phone company had made out of it seemed like a bargain.
The florists didn’t do too badly by me, either. I sent flowers to each new hotel Victoria booked into and a single red rose every day for the best part of a month. I couldn’t wait for her to come home. I think perhaps people have this idea that our life together must always have been about glamorous parties: stars, luxuries, photo opportunities. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Having the time together was all that mattered. The first date had been about driving around, getting thrown out of a Chinese restaurant, and sitting on a friend’s sofa. Our second evening out was just as low-key as the first. We arranged to meet up outside another pub—that’s how stylish we were—this one called City Limits. A strange thing happened on the way there. I stopped at a petrol station and went in to buy some chewing gum. Just as I was pulling out of the lot, I saw Victoria arrive, jump out and do the same thing. Fresh breath, or something to steady the nerves? Both probably. I drove on to City Limits and parked.
When Victoria arrived, I jumped out, went over to her MG and got in beside her. For such a little car, I remember there was a big gap between the driver’s and front passenger’s seats. We didn’t go anywhere. We talked. And we kissed, for the first time. I had a cut on my finger from training. Victoria reached across me to the glove compartment and pulled out this sprig of a plant, Aloe Vera.
‘It’ll heal you.’
She rubbed it on the cut and then gave it to me. I must have told her about getting hurt on the phone and she’d brought it along. I remember, a week or two later, looking in my fridge and seeing this Aloe Vera plant, starting to decompose in a bag on the shelf. By then, whatever magic it contained had already done its job. At the end of that evening in the parking lot at City Limits, I felt like at least a year’s worth of dreams had come true.
I went mad the next day and had roses and a Prada handbag delivered to Victoria at her mum’s house. It’s amazing what you find out in a Smash Hits ‘Likes and Dislikes’ feature. I still try and send gifts like that now: it’s a natural thing to me. If you love someone, you want to treat them, surprise them, remind them how you feel, whether that means a weekend away somewhere, or a bowl of fruit in the morning laid out in the shape of a heart. I know Victoria thinks I’m romantic like that. Some people reading about it might call it soft. But that’s me. I get a good feeling now, when I see Brooklyn with his baby brother or with other children at school, looking after them, being gentle, making sure they’re okay. I think I know the parts of my character that I’ve inherited from my mum. Some of what a person grows up to be comes from what they see and learn. There are other things, deeper things, that are already with you and all you have to do is pass them on.
The next time Victoria and I met, we decided I would do the driving. Not that we had any better idea as to where to go. Victoria’s mum and her brother, Christian, dropped her off at our favorite dodgy rendezvous, the City Limits parking lot. As she got out of her mum’s BMW, Christian leant over and whispered to his mum:
‘Well, at least he’s got a decent car.’
I read somewhere that Victoria liked Aston Martins, so I managed to borrow this brand new silver DB7 from a showroom, telling the salesman that I was thinking about buying one. Of course, if it was going to make a difference with Victoria, I would have done just that. After a minute or two of our ‘I don’t know, where do you want to go?’ routine, we settled on a run down to Southend: I’d gone to the seaside there so often with Mum and Dad and Lynne and Joanne when I was a kid. Who cared about the state of the beach or the sea back then? We’d always splashed straight in and loved every minute of it. Now, as we headed off round the North Circular, I suddenly realized this spanking new car didn’t have a map in it. Worse still, I couldn’t remember the way: Dad had always driven us down there and I’d probably been too busy messing about in the back with Joanne to take much notice of where we were going.
I couldn’t tell Victoria I was already lost before we’d even left London, could I? So I just drove: all the way to Cambridge, as it turned out. We stopped and had a pizza in a restaurant in the middle of town, never mind that one or two of the other people in there were turning round and having to take a second look. It felt to me like Victoria and I had the place to ourselves. We drove back to London and I dropped her home at her mum and dad’s. Finally it had been like a proper date: dinner for two, even if we had ended up about seventy miles north of where we’d been planning to go.
Next time out was lovely, too: the back row at the movies down in Chelsea. We saw Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, but all I cared about was whose hand I was holding. The big deal that evening was going back to Victoria’s parents’ house afterwards and meeting Tony and Jackie for the first time. We walked in and I was so embarrassed. I remember sitting down on the settee, a big brown leather thing, the material gathered and pinned down with those little buttons, worrying about what noise I might make if I moved on it to get comfortable.
Victoria’s mum came down and introduced herself. When you first meet Jackie, she can seem a little prickly. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like that evening. It was probably as much to do with me, jumping to a new boyfriend’s conclusion and imagining that the mother was being a bit sharp with me even though she wasn’t meaning to be:
‘You’re the soccer player then, are you?’
Victoria’s mum and dad weren’t interested in soccer, but living in Goff’s Oak, an area where many players live too, meant they knew some socially. After the opener from Jackie, it was Tony’s turn:
‘What team do you play for?’
For whatever reason, I don’t think they liked the idea of their daughter going out with a soccer player. Maybe I got stuck with someone else’s reputation at first, at least until we met and they could judge for themselves. I don’t know if they thought soccer players were all loud and cocky but I just sat there on their sofa and was too nervous to say more than a couple of words. At least they didn’t kick me out of the house and, after a while, they said goodnight and disappeared upstairs. I’m sure every mum and dad feels that no boyfriend is ever good enough for their little girl. That, as well as me being a soccer player, might have had something to do with Tony and Jackie being wary of me at first. They knew Victoria, though, and that meant they were willing to get to know me. I’m glad they were. When you marry a woman, you become part of her family too. However frosty I might have imagined they were that first night, Tony and Jackie have welcomed me in ever since.
I think Victoria and I were so happy to have found each other that we wouldn’t have minded telling complete strangers about it. That’s how it is, being in love: you want the rest of the world to know about it. But our relationship was this big secret. Simon Fuller wanted it that way and I think Victoria understood why, early on at least. Who was I to argue? To be honest, all the ducking and diving, sneaking around and keeping ourselves out of sight, was exciting in a way as well. There was one night when Victoria was in Manchester for a Spice Girls concert. United had a party that same evening to celebrate winning the Premiership. Victoria had traveled up the night before and come to stay with me at the house in Worsley. We arranged tha
t I would try and get to the hotel where she was staying after the club function wound down. All the Girls were around. She couldn’t really have disappeared off to North Manchester after her gig.
I left our party around one in the morning, so it was already late. Victoria was staying at the Midland Hotel and I took a cab across town, and rang on the way to let her know I was coming. I was wearing this trenchcoat, probably looking like a character in a detective movie, and, sticking to the part, I sneaked into the hotel and up the back stairs to the leading lady’s room. Victoria answered the door, half asleep, and then I kept her up half the night talking. At one point, very early the next morning, someone knocked at the door. I dashed into the bathroom to hide: well, I’d seen that particular move in plenty of movies too. I crept out of the Midland the same way I’d crept in, and hailed a cab to take me back to Worsley. It wasn’t until we were on our way that I realized all I had on me was a pocket full of loose change. I had to watch the meter and got out about 200 yards from my front door, which was as far as my money would take me.
I’d never felt this way about anyone before. As soon as I met Victoria, I knew I wanted to marry her, to have children, to be together always. I could have said it to her on that first date, as we drove round the M25 in her MG. I was that sure that quickly. After we first met, Victoria and I spent a lot of time apart: she was on tour, I was in the middle of an amazing season with United. We got used to each other, found out about one another and learned to trust each other during those four-hour telephone conversations. I’m not the world’s best talker, not at least until I know someone well. Maybe being on opposite sides of the world wasn’t the worst thing for us in those early days. When we had our chances to be together, it seemed like we’d already grown close very quickly. And for all that I was shy and would sometimes get a bit embarrassed in company, when it came to telling Victoria how I was feeling, I couldn’t let nerves stop me saying what I needed to. I remember us lying side by side at her mum and dad’s house one evening. It was the simplest, most beautiful conversation two people can ever have with each other:
‘I think I’m in love with you, Victoria.’
‘I think I’m in love with you, too.’
Keeping it all to ourselves wasn’t exactly my choice but I respected the way things had to be for Victoria. I’d stepped into Spiceworld and understood how important the Girls and their management team felt it was to keep everything under control. I didn’t talk to anyone about what was happening between us. My parents were aware something was going on but, at United, I wasn’t going to be a lad who came into the dressing room one morning boasting that he was going out with a pop star. That wasn’t me. I remember turning up for training one Monday after a lovely weekend with Victoria and Ben Thornley asking me why I was in such a good mood.
‘I’ve met this lovely girl.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, just this lovely girl who lives down in London.’
Rumors started anyway. I suppose that was bound to happen. And rumors are something we’ve lived with ever since. It wasn’t long after our relationship became public that Victoria was getting phone calls to say the papers had pictures of me kissing another girl in my car. Those kinds of stories—completely untrue—still turn up now and again. Of course, proving something’s not true is a lot harder than proving it is. We’ve got used to rumors, though, and how and why they happen. We had to almost from the start. Victoria and I trusted each other then, just as we do now. If you’re with someone you love, you know anyway, deep down, what’s real and what isn’t.
With all the gossip doing the rounds, it got to the point where I had half a dozen photographers camped outside my house in Worsley every day, just waiting for Victoria to turn up. I’d never experienced anything like this before, whereas Victoria had, of course. I think she made the decision, really. She phoned to say she was coming up to see me and that she was happy enough to stop all the secrecy. We knew what we meant to each other, didn’t we? It was better that we decided where and when the public found out for sure that we were together. People imagine ours has been a glitzy, showbiz romance. Just remember: the first photos of us together were taken when we were walking down my road to go to the newsstand on the corner.
Once the story was out officially, I couldn’t believe the fuss: flashbulbs popping everywhere we went, stories all over the papers almost every day and everyone having an opinion on us and our lives. I think the attention was as intense as it was because of Victoria; after all, the Spice Girls were making headlines every time they blinked in those days. If I’m honest, all that side of it made being with Victoria even more exciting. It was a daily reminder of just how good she was at what she did. I loved the whole package: her looks, her personality, her energy. Those legs. But I was really turned on, too, by her talent and the recognition in the public eye that came her way because of it. I knew I wasn’t the only person out there who thought she was a star.
I realized what was going to happen. I think Victoria did, too. Before long, we’d started talking about getting engaged. I’d even asked her what sort of ring she might like and, being a woman with a pretty clear idea about her taste in things, Victoria had talked straight away about a particular shape of diamond, the stone longer and thinner at one end than the other, almost like the sail on a boat. She was busy with the Spice Girls, and so we didn’t settle anything at first, but about six months after we’d begun seeing each other, I arranged a weekend away at a lovely old hotel in Cheshire. It was just down the M6 from Manchester and we checked in early one evening after a United home game.
Somehow I knew this was the right time. A week later, Victoria and the Girls would be off on tour; it would be a year before they were back in England for more than a few days at a time. We had a bedroom overlooking a lake and the fields beyond. It was August, so we had dinner in the room while the sun set in the distance. We were both wearing terrycloth robes, which wasn’t exactly the obvious costume for the drama but, after we’d eaten, Victoria sat on the bed and I got down on one knee in front of her and asked her to marry me. I’d always wanted to marry and to have children and now I’d found the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Lucky for me, that night in Cheshire, the woman said yes. For all that I’d hoped she would, it’s difficult to describe the thrill for me when she said that word. It was like an electric charge running up my spine.
I really believe in the traditional way of doing these things, which meant that proposing to Victoria was the easy bit. I had a pretty good idea that she felt the same way as I did. The really hard part was asking Victoria’s dad for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I was nervous before I took the penalty against Argentina at the 2002 World Cup but, for tension, building myself up to ask Tony the big question wasn’t too far off. I knew I had to do it. I just didn’t know how or where or when. We were at their house in Goff’s Oak and no-one was giving me an inch. When I asked Jackie if she’d get Tony to come and talk to me, she wasn’t having any of it:
‘No, David. You have to do it yourself.’
I eventually cornered the prospective father-in-law in the prospective brother-in-law’s old room. I’d asked Tony if we could have a quick word in private and we trudged up the stairs together, me feeling like I was off to an execution. I walked into Christian’s old bedroom and tripped on the leg of the bed and stubbed my toe. At least Tony was behind me and so he didn’t see it happen. I looked at him. He looked at me. I wasn’t doing too well on breathing, never mind getting the words out and the pain in my foot didn’t help.
‘Tony. I’m asking Victoria to marry me. Is that okay?’
Not the best speech a would-be son-in-law ever made. He answered as if I’d just asked him if egg and chips would be all right for tea:
‘Yeah. No problem.’
I suppose I’d been getting wound up about it enough for both of us. I know how much Tony and Jackie love Victoria, so I realized his relaxed attitude about us getting engaged meant they’
d decided I wasn’t the worst sort in the world. In fact, they’d already made me feel part of the family: this was just the next step for us all. Maybe I could have saved myself from a potential heart attack by not posing the big question, but asking Tony—like going down on one knee to Victoria—wasn’t just for show. I was only going to do these things once in my life, which meant they were incredibly important to me: I wanted to make sure I went about them the right way.
I’d like to say that it was because those were the months when I fell in love with Victoria and proposed to her that I don’t remember much of United’s season in 1997/98. The truth is, I’ve probably done my best to forget reaching that May and not having any kind of winners’ medal to show for it. It was new to all of us, the generation who had grown up together during the 1990s. We’d won Youth Cups and Reserve leagues and then, when we stepped up to the United first team, we’d just carried on where we’d left off as kids. The season ended up being a painful one, learning what it felt like to lose. Suddenly, here were Arsenal, doing what we expected to do ourselves: winning the Double. Without wanting to be disrespectful about that Arsenal team, the disappointment didn’t ever undermine our belief in ourselves. They won their games but at United we felt we lost the Premiership by not winning ours. Confidence was still high but maybe our standards had slipped along the way.
We badly missed Roy Keane, who had ruptured his cruciate ligaments in October, and was out for almost the whole season. No team is quite the same without its best players but, when Roy’s not in the United side, there’s something more than just his ability as a player that the rest have to do without. He was and still is a huge influence. For leadership and drive there’s absolutely no one to touch him: he’s a great soccer player, of course, but he also brings out the best in the lads around him. Whoever he’s screaming at during games, his passion and determination always get that player, and the rest of the team, going. People can come in and cover for him but nobody replaces that strength United get from Roy. We didn’t talk about it during the season. The supporters did, the papers did, but we just got on with our games. Maybe it’s only looking back now that I realize how much we missed Keano.
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