Page 12 of How To Tackle A Crush
I run a hand through my hair. More grey than there used to be. I don’t mind. Grey suggests experience. Experience suggests control. Control keeps rooms quiet.
I switch off the light and step into the corridor. Conversations dip slightly as I pass. Not fear. Just awareness. The samereaction everywhere. Players measuring you. Staff watching your mood.
Manager mode.
Why Carlisle?
I reach the door and rest my hand briefly on the handle.
Because my son knows which nights I’m home now.
Because my parents get to walk him to school.
Because for the first time in years I know where I’ll be on a Tuesday evening.
Because sometimes the right move isn’t up.
It’s closer.
I open the door.
Time to perform.
Chapter 3
Ava
Iarrive ten minutesearly because arriving exactly on time feels risky and arriving late would require confidence.
Brunton Park is larger than I expect.
Football stadiums always look enormous on television but in person they feel even bigger. Like they have opinions about you.
I stand outside the entrance for a moment longer than necessary, adjusting the strap of my bag and rereading the email Marie-Louise sent as if it might suddenly contain an escape clause.
Press entrance – Media Suite
Right.
I show my pass to a man who looks like he could bench press me without warming up. He checks it, nods, and waves me through without a word.
Inside smells faintly of coffee and new carpet. The kind of neutral corporate smell designed to reassure people important things happen here.
I follow the signs and find the media room.
It is already filling up.
Laptops open. Phones out. Confident voices greeting each other like regulars in a pub. People who clearly belong here. People who know where to stand and where to put their bags and how loudly they are allowed to exist.
I pause just inside the doorway, doing what I always do in unfamiliar rooms.
Observe first. Move second.
Two journalists arguing quietly about transfer budgets like they are discussing military strategy. One photographer testing light levels. Someone already eating biscuits with the focus of a man who has made breakfast mistakes and is now correcting them.
No one looks at me.
Excellent.
