Page 20 of How To Tackle A Crush
She writes that down like she intends to check it later.
Then she looks up again.
“And if you don’t?”
That almost makes me laugh.
“Then you spend a lot of time fixing problems that shouldn’t exist.”
That earns a small smile from her. Quick. Unplanned. Gone again just as fast.
Like she forgot she was allowed one.
“That sounds inefficient,” she says.
There’s a beat of silence.
Then someone in the front row snorts.
I have to look down for a second to hide my own reaction.
“That’s one way of putting it,” I say.
She gives a small nod, satisfied, then seems to remember she is not supposed to be part of this conversation at all.
“That was all,” she says quickly, already looking back down at her notebook like she can disappear into it if she tries hard enough.
Most journalists leave the door open in case there’s more.
She closes it herself.
And for reasons I don’t entirely examine, I find myself watching her for a second longer before I move on.
The next few questions feel routine again after that.
Formations. Injury depth. Transfer windows. The safe territory. The kind of questions where everyone already knows the acceptable answers.
I reply without much thought. Years of this mean I can do it while part of my attention is somewhere else.
She writes a few more things. Listens. Observes. Then closes her notebook with the quiet decisiveness of someone who knows when they’re done.
That, more than anything else, makes me want to speak to her afterwards.
I don’t usually feel that pull. Curiosity, maybe. Professional interest sometimes. But this is different. Not dramatic. Just a quiet sense that there is something there I haven’t quite worked out yet.
Something about the way she listened.
Something about the way she asked exactly what she wanted to know and nothing more.
Something about the fact she clearly hadn’t come here looking for anything.
I answer a question for Owen from the BBC and Martin steps forward to close things down.
“Last one.”
Someone asks about pre-season expectations. I give them something sensible and uncontroversial.
“Right, thank you everyone,” Martin says. Chairs scrape immediately. Conversations restart. The familiar post-conference shuffle begins.
