Glory Of The Football Manager System

The phone did not stop the whole way home and for once I let it.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

Green light up the inside of the car every couple of seconds. I gave in at the lights on the South Circular, looked, and laughed out loud in a parked car like a madman. The country had lost its mind over two words on a black screen and I had done it on purpose.

The box was still in my coat.

I kept the hand drifting up to it at every red, just to check. Small heavy weight against my chest. Only thing keeping my feet on the ground all the way home. Without it I would have been ten feet over the rooftops, the lot of me, whoosh, gone.

I pulled up under the building. Cut the engine. Tink, tink, tink off the bonnet as it cooled.

Some ex-Arsenal lad gone pundit had been on the radio inside the hour. Emma had clipped it and sent it across. No message, just the link, which was how I knew it was good. Forty seconds of a professional adult genuinely upset about two words on a screen.

”It’s disrespectful. It’s classless. And frankly it tells you everything about the man.”

Bloody hell, I loved it. I watched it twice. Would have gone again, but a Gunners fan account had quote-tweeted my video with enjoy it while it lasts, you’ll be mid-table next year, and got ratioed by my own lot into the sea, whoof, and that was better than the radio clip, so I watched that instead.

I got out. Slam. Up the lift in the back of the lobby. Ding.

Then I remembered Jessica.

I leant against the back wall of the lift and rang her. She picked up on the first brrr. She always does. Twelve months I’d been with her now and I had never once heard the second ring.

”Walsh.”

”You free?”

”For you, on tonight of all nights, what do you think?”

”Sunday night. Dinner at mine. Just us two. Do the lot.”

A pause down the line. I could hear her writing.

”The proper one.”

”The proper one.”

”About bloody time, Daniel.”

”You said that in March.”

”Aye, well, I were right in March and I’m still right. Caterer in at half four, you out the building till half five, I’ll handle the door. Candles you said in November, you still want candles, or has the European Cup changed your mind.”

”Candles. Same as November.”

”Flowers.”

”Nothing weddingy. She’ll clock it.”

”I know what she’ll clock. I’ve been clocking her for you for a year. Leave it.” Another pause. The scratch of her pen. ”Food off her column last May. The Cornish lad and the salt-bake. Wine she had the second glass of at the Ivy in March, do not pretend you don’t remember which one, you texted me from the table.”

”You’ve got it.”

”I’ve had it since June, Daniel. I bought the bottles when you bought the ring. I’ve been waiting for the call.”

”Cheers, Jess.”

”One more thing.”

”Mm.”

”Your mother.”

I closed my eyes against the back wall of the lift.

”What about her.”

”You’ll see.”

Click. Gone.

That was Jess. She never said goodbye, never explained the last sentence, and was always right about both. A year of her now and I still did not know what colour her front door was. She had walked into my life at the back end of the Carabao run, told me I was being mismanaged by a man called Phillip who was a friend of a friend, and started managing me properly inside a week. Three trophies in thirteen months. She would say it was the football. I would say it was that she had the diary and the diary had the calm in it.

Ding. The lift opened on our floor.

Emma was on the sofa with her laptop and a glass of red and the telly muted, and the face of a woman who had been refereeing a war for two hours and intended to make me pay for starting it.

”Oh, here he is.” She did not look up. ”Sir Daniel of the Cheap Shot. Croydon’s own war criminal.”

”You loved it.”

”I think it is the most arrogant thing I have ever seen a human being do and I have covered three World Cups.”

Now she looked at me, fighting a grin and losing. ”You beat them in the final. You took their cup. Then eighteen hours later, while the poor souls are still in bed crying, you posted we told you. Danny. That is not confidence. That is a man kicking a fella who’s already on the floor and filming it for likes.”

”Two words.”

”Two words and the worst two words. You couldn’t have left it. You had a parade. Half a million people. You’ve got the lot. And you looked at all of it and thought, no, what this needs is for me to be a little bit evil about it.”

”Show us the angry clip again,” I said, dropping onto the sofa next to her.

”You’re not watching it again.”

”Once more.”

”You have watched it four times. I can see your history. You absolute child.”

But she put it on. ”It’s disrespectful. It’s classless,” the angry man started, and we sat there shoulder to shoulder watching a man be furious about us, and she was laughing now, the wine going dangerous in the glass.

That is the thing about Emma. She will tell you off for the very thing she is enjoying the most. You have to learn to hear the difference.

”He says you have no class.”

”I have three cups and his old club has none. He can keep his class.”

”Oh, that is vile. Put that on a T-shirt as well.” She wiped her eye. The wine wobbled. ”They’ll come for the kid now, you know that. Olise. A summer of this and somebody’s putting a hundred million on the table just to wipe the smile off you.”

”They can put two hundred. He’s not for sale. I’ll say we told you about that an’ all.”

Thump. She threw a cushion at me. Square in the chest.

I caught it, grinning, and then I remembered the coat.

It hit me three beats late.

The coat was over the back of the kitchen chair. I had slung it there in the lift-doors blur of Jessica and lights and Emma already going. Twelve feet from where I sat. The box was in the left pocket, arm’s length from the kitchen island, and I had not registered it for ten minutes because the angry pundit was funny and I had been laughing.

Emma got up to refill her wine.

She went past the coat.

My whole body went to wood.

She stopped at the side of the chair. Reached out.

I made a noise. ”Hk.” An actual noise out loud, a strangled cough from the chest, because her hand was a foot from the most important object I have ever owned.

She turned round slowly.

”What,” she said, ”was that?”

”What was what?”

”You just made a sound like a dog stood on.”

She had the bottle in her hand.

She had only ever been after the bottle. But she was looking at me now the way she looks at a press release with a lie in it. Head tilted. Green eyes doing the thing. Three years of being read by this woman went off in my chest like an alarm, beep beep beep.

”You’ve been peculiar all day. You were peculiar this morning. You are sweating, Danny. It’s half eleven at night in May. Why are you sweating?”

”Because there is an angry man on the radio about me and it is the best day of my life.”

She held it. One second. The whole thing balanced on it.

Then she decided to believe me, because she does. Glug, glug into her glass. She went back to the sofa.

God.

I have never been more relieved and more guilty about anything. I had to go and run the tap, shhhh, and pretend to wash up so she could not see my face.

I moved the coat on the way back. Did it casual. Picked it up off the chair, hung it in the hall, jangle of the buckle on the wall hook, and zipped the box into the side pocket of the boot bag by the door. Zzzip. The one she never goes near. That had been the plan since the car.

I dropped back onto the sofa.

She had refilled, laptop open, the country still tearing itself in half about me on the screen. Bare feet pulled up under her. Long T-shirt over her knees. Hair up off her neck in the loose twist she does at the end of the day. The lamp behind her lighting one side of her face the warm way it lights one side of her face in May at eleven at night.

I had been looking at her, on and off, for three years.

I was about to ask her to marry me in nine and a half hours.

She had no idea.

She had no idea, and she was sat there wrecking my concentration just by existing, which is a thing she has done to me since the bench.