January Window

33

Sonja didn’t much care for football and tended to spend most weekends alone, at her own flat in Kensington. This was just as well as Saturdays and Sundays are always the busiest times at a football club. If we played on Saturday she would come around on Sunday morning; and if we played on a Sunday she would arrive on Sunday night. It was an arrangement that seemed to suit us both very well.

I was especially looking forward to seeing Sonja after her shrinks’ weekend in Paris. As a leading authority on eating disorders she was much in demand as a speaker at practitioners’ conferences. But whenever she was away I felt a definite lack of equilibrium in my life, as if something important was missing from what kept me going; you might say that without her I had too much football, that she was the vital ingredient in the Gestalt that made me a complete man. But to put it much more simply, she made me happy. We always talked a lot, mostly about books and art, and we joked a lot, too — we shared a sense of humour, although sometimes it did seem that I had the lion’s share of it. We were also very attracted to each other, which meant that we always had great sex. I never knew a woman who enjoyed sex with me as much as she did. She was keen on games and on trying to find ways of pleasing me in the bedroom. Not that this was very difficult but for a number of reasons — the affair I’d had when I was married, the fact that I’m in a very physical profession and because I am very fit being the most important ones — she thought that I was also highly sexed, when in fact I don’t think I am. I was just as happy with what you might call main course sex as I was with the many sauces and pickles she was fond of devising. Frankly I think that if anyone was highly sexed it was her. She couldn’t get enough of it but, like a lot of blokes in football, I was often too knackered to have sex every night of the week — which she’d have liked, I think. In fact I’m sure of it.

Before she’d gone to Paris she’d told me that she was going to visit a lingerie shop called Fifi Chachnil in the rue St Honoré to buy something seductive to wear for me just as soon as she was back in London. She was always doing things like that and while I never asked her to, I have to confess I never tired of seeing Sonja in sexy underwear. In fact I had come to appreciate it very much. I suppose I liked her wearing it because it was the absolute antithesis of my own very masculine world of liniment and sweat, jock straps and shin pads, muddy boots and Vaseline, dubbin and compression shorts. The lingerie she bought and wore was improbably, impossibly small and delicate and lacy and utterly feminine, or at least so it seemed to me. And of course she had the most fabulous figure. Her bottom was quite perfect and she had a stomach like a washboard. For a woman who spent a lot of time in an office she was very fit indeed. Whenever she dressed up — as she usually did when she returned from a weekend away — she would light lots of tea lights and scented candles and answer the door wearing something diaphanous and wispy. After the weekend I needed a bit of that, but more importantly I needed a lot of love from the woman I loved; the death of Zarco, and the revelations about Drenno’s friend Mackie — not to mention the crisis with the UKAD people and the pressure I was getting from everyone — had left me feeling very raw indeed.

I turned into Manresa Road and saw the lights on in my flat, which lifted my spirits. In my mind’s eye I was already stepping out of a hot bath into a large towel to be dried carefully by her. At the same time I saw that the press had gone from outside my building. Now that Ronan Reilly had been arrested they had other fish to fry. I breathed a sigh of relief, parked the Range Rover in the underground car park and already happy to be home, I rode the lift eagerly up to my floor. My only regret was that I’d not bought flowers — a white orchid, perhaps; she was very fond of orchids — or some sort of present. I loved buying her presents.

But as I opened the front door I knew immediately something was wrong. For one thing there was no scented candle on the hall table; and for another the Louis Vuitton Bisten 70 suitcase I’d bought her for Christmas was standing on the floor, next to the matching beauty case I’d got for her birthday. I’d joked that I was planning on turning her into a proper WAG, which she thought was very funny, but in truth there was never any danger of that happening; Sonja was much too clever to be something as pejorative as that. I picked the Bisten up by the handle to check the weight; it was heavy, too heavy for a weekend in Paris. Besides, I knew she’d been home to her own flat already.

Another reason I knew something was wrong was that the television was on; she seldom ever watched television and certainly not the news, which she said was mostly disasters and sport. Sonja only watched television when she was trying to take her mind off something at work. A patient. Or a paper she was preparing for a journal. She was wearing a rather businesslike two-piece suit with a pencil skirt, and a white shirt, which was the very opposite of what I’d thought she’d be wearing. She got up when I came into the sitting room — that was another bad sign, I thought; it was as if something formal was about to happen. Which of course it was. Nobody ever sits down to give you bad news.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I said, warily. ‘But since this time last night it’s just been one thing after another. But all that can wait, I think. It looks as if you’ve got something important to tell me.’

‘I suppose I should congratulate you,’ she said, ‘on your new job.’

I hesitated. ‘Thanks, but I’ve got a feeling that in about five minutes congratulations are going to seem like the wrong word. I’m looking at you, baby, and I can tell that I’m about to see a card come out of your pocket. So say what’s on your mind, eh? Before you lose your nerve for whatever this is about.’

‘Okay, I will.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now that you’ve been given this job, Scott, I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to see even less of each other than we do already. And, well, the fact is, I want a bit more than that during the weekend. The fact is, I want a lot more than that.’

‘Such as?’

‘You remember that Nike ad we saw in the cinema? With all the famous footballers and the Elvis Presley song?’

‘A little less conversation, a little more action?’

She nodded. ‘That’s the very opposite of what I want in life. And what I need from a man. My man.’

‘I see. At least I think I do.’

‘And it has to be said that in the bedroom things aren’t very good, either. At least not for me. You’re always tired, Scott.’

I nodded. ‘I can’t deny that.’

I went to my cigar humidor and took out a cigarette. Once a week — usually it was a Sunday night — I smoked a single cigarette, which always felt like a real pleasure. Used like that — just a couple of puffs, the way South American Indians had smoked the stuff — tobacco seemed to have almost medicinal qualities. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ I asked, lighting up. ‘But, under the circumstances...’ I let out a sigh that was one third smoke and two thirds disappointment. ‘You know how to pick your moments, Sonja, I’ll say that for you.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Scott. It really doesn’t suit you. You’re not the type.’

‘No, you’re right. I’m just tired, that’s all. As per usual. But actually, to be honest I don’t understand, Sonja. Really, I don’t. I thought we made a pretty good couple. At least I did when I looked at you. I even managed to like myself when I was with you, which, believe me, takes some doing.’

But what I was actually thinking was this: I couldn’t believe I was never again going to see her naked, or get the chance to marry her, even, and that seemed too much to bear.

‘Listen, this won’t help at all, but I’ll try to explain it to you, Scott. I owe you that much. I love you, and maybe you love me, but I can’t ever be part of the most important thing in your life, which of course is football. I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried my best to like it, but a while ago I realised it just wasn’t going to happen, no matter how hard I tried. The fact is I can’t be interested in the very thing that’s about to take even more of your time than it does already, if such a thing were possible. You do see that, don’t you? I used to think it was just a game but it’s not, it’s much more than that, with you and with a lot of other men like you. It’s a way of thinking about the world. A philosophy of a kind. And why not? It seems to work for a lot of people. It’s no accident that the Premier League is like a mini-FTSE of successful companies. It’s pure capitalism. The strong survive and the weak get relegated.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You make it sound almost Darwinist.’

‘Oh, but it is. You’re just a kind of selfish gene, that’s all. Yours is a football-centred view of evolution. Because football is what everything comes down to with you, Scott; results, the team, the next match, the January window, a good cup run, the closed season, the top four, relegation, three points, a penalty not given, a red card that should have been. It’s never ending and unrelenting and I can’t take part in it because I feel nothing at all for it except the wish that the last match really could be the last match. And if what I’ve said doesn’t make any sense to you, then forget it and we’ll make it just this: even though a large part of me wants to stay with you, Scott, I can’t stay because I won’t be a football widow like the rest of those women you call the WAGs.’

‘No one’s asking you to be like that, Sonja.’

‘Maybe you’re not. But the imperatives of your job certainly are. And have you ever wondered why the WAGs are the way they are? Why they occupy themselves with shopping and fashion and hair extensions and manicures and boob jobs? Of course you haven’t. But I have. Those women are desperately trying to make their stupid boyfriends and husbands pay some attention to them, that’s why. They’re trying in vain to compete with the most jealous mistress or wife of them all, which is football itself. Well, I won’t be a part of that. I have my own life, my own interests, my own ambitions — and they don’t include a good run in the FA Cup. We’ll both have some bad nights for a while but we’re both grown-up enough to know that will pass.’

Some fucking Sherlock I was, I told myself. What chance did I have of spotting Zarco’s killer when I hadn’t even been able to spot the disappointments felt by the woman I loved.

‘Jesus, baby, it sounds like you’ve been saving this up for a while.’

‘Maybe I have. Maybe I was just waiting for the best time to say it. The best time for me, that is. You see, I met someone in Paris. He’s just a businessman. Don’t worry, nothing happened between us. I wouldn’t ever do that to you. But I will be seeing him again. Maybe nothing will come of it. Who knows? But on Saturday he goes to the theatre and on Sunday he likes going to Tate Britain. And he’s never been to a football match in his life.’

‘So he’s the guy.’

‘Make a joke of it, if it makes you feel better.’

‘It doesn’t. But I thought it was worth a shot. I would try to persuade you to change your mind, Sonja, but after a speech like that I can see it would be pointless. You’ve thought this out. Which is more than I have. Perhaps I should have done. So, I’m sorry.’

‘You’ll be fine, Scott. You’re strong. Very strong.’

‘Am I?’ I took a last puff of my cigarette and then stubbed it out. ‘Right now I don’t feel very strong.’

‘Of course you are. Just look at the way you smoke. Two or three puffs off one cigarette a week. Your strength astonishes me, sometimes. You know, if it was anyone else but you I wouldn’t be leaving you right now; not after the twenty-four hours you’ve just had.’

I smiled. ‘You noticed that.’

‘I read the newspapers.’

‘Do you now?’ I pulled a face.

‘At least I do when you’re not around to look disapproving. Is there a law against reading the Mail on Sunday?’

‘No, but perhaps there ought to be. There’s a law against everything else that’s unwholesome in this country.’