Page 46 of The Man Who Didn't Call
Dear You,
Today is 11 July – your birthday! Thirty-two years since you forced your way out into the bright starkness of the world, stunned fists moving in the air like little tentacles.
Out you came, into the warm, blurred glow of love. ‘She’s too small,’ I cried, when they let me visit you. I could feel your ribs, a hopelessly fragile palisade around your tiny beating heart. ‘She’s too small. How can she survive?’
But you did, Hedgehog. I remember now as then the fantastical brimming of love for which I was so wholly unprepared. I didn’t mind Mum and Dad spending all their time with you. I wanted them to. I wanted your ribs to grow stronger, to strengthen and thicken around that tiny lamp of life in your chest. I wanted you to stay in hospital for months, not days. ‘She’s fine,’ Mum and Dad told me, again and again. Dad made me a banoffee pie because I was so afraid for you I cried. And yet you were fine. That heartbeat went on and on, through the day and through the night, on and on as seasons changed and you grew and grew.
Did you know it was your birthday today, Hedgehog? Has anyone told you? Did someone make you a cake, covered in chocolate stars, just how you liked it? Did anyone sing for you?
Well, if not, I did. Maybe you heard me. Maybe you’re with me now, while I write this letter. Giggling about how much neater your handwriting is than mine, even though you’re younger than me. Maybe you’re outside, playing in your tree house, or reading girls’ magazines in your den up on Broad Ride.
Maybe you’re everywhere. I like that idea most. Up there in the pink-flushed clouds. Down here in the dampness of daybreak.
Wherever I go, I look for you. And wherever I am, I see you.
Me xxxxx
Chapter Twenty-Five
On my last night in London I turned up at a six-a-side football game in Battersea in the hope of finding a man I’d met once, a man who’d never called.
What I did that night would lie way beyond the splintered edges of sanity. But as I stood on the concourse at Victoria Station earlier on, trying to reason with myself, I had realized that I wanted to see Eddie more than I cared about the consequences.
And now here I was, crammed into a hot corner of the 7.52 to London Bridge via Crystal Palace, first stop Battersea Park. Less than two minutes’ walk from the station I would find an AstroTurf pitch, and on it – my stomach flipped like a February pancake – Eddie David. In a football kit, warming up for his eight-o’clock match.Right now.Passing to a teammate. Stretching his quads.
His body. His actual, physical body. I closed my eyes and crushed a surge of longing.
The train was slowing down already. The squeal of brakes, a pulsing wave of commuters forcing me down the steps, and then – suddenly, shockingly – I was standing on Battersea Park Road. Behind me, the amplified bark of ticket-sellers’ voices, an echoing busker’s guitar. Above me, the heave and groan of the train viaducts and thickset white clouds likebeaten meringues. And ahead of me, somewhere up an unpaved lane, Eddie David.
I stood there for some time, breathing slowly. Two further waves of passengers poured out around me. One of them, wearing a red-and-white football shirt with ‘PAGLIERO’ written in black on the back, sprinted up the lane towards the pitches, trying as he ran to send a text message and affix shin pads to his legs. His green satchel swung round and hit him in the face, but he carried on running.
That man knows Eddie, I thought.He’s probably known him for years.
As the pitches slid into view, everything that I’d seen online was confirmed. The pitches were surrounded on all sides by high wire fences, train viaducts, buildings. There would be nowhere to hide. And yet here I was, all five foot nine of me, striding ever closer in my smart conference blouse.
This is the most appalling thing I will ever do.
But my legs kept on walking.
The players on the pitch closest to me were warming up. A referee jogged towards the centre with a whistle in his mouth. Everything moved slowly, like an old VHS tape starting to jam. The air smelled of greasy rubber and exhaust fumes.
My legs kept on walking.
‘Turn round and run,’ I instructed myself in a loud whisper. ‘Turn round and run, and we’ll forget this ever happened.’
My legs kept on walking.
It was at that moment I realized that, apart from the PAGLIERO man, there were no other players in the Old Robsonians’ red-and-white strip. There was a team in blue and a team in orange on the pitch nearest me, and on the other one, black-and-white versus green.
PAGLIERO was putting his shin pads back in his bag. After a moment he straightened up, noticing me.
‘Are you an Old Robsonian?’ I asked him.
‘I am. A very late one. Are you looking for someone?’
‘Well, all of them, I guess.’
PAGLIERO had the mischievous smile of a boy. ‘The game got moved to seven p.m. I forgot. They’ve already played.’
