He feels more human after he’s rinsed off, with a glass of water in one hand and a much-needed carton of chocolate milk in the other. Not quite human enough to recover his phone from his bag and see what’s awaiting him there, but enough to know it’s time to do it anyway. Oliver’s a dutiful person, on and off the pitch.
The team WhatsApp is conciliatory about his leg and jubilant about the win. He’s been strongly encouraged to meet them out or let them come to his place.Just left seeing Anna. Can’t drink on painkillers,he lies in response. Georgie and Noah, predictably, each react with a thumbs-down almost as soon as he hits send.
There are other texts and calls, an email from his agent, queries blinking up at him from the iPhone, but he shrinks from the lit-up screen as if the afternoon’s injury was a concussion. In the guest suite, he flops face-first onto the bed and allows himself a groan, pouring his hurt and exhaustion and frustration into the down-alternative, handspun linen pillow sham.
When he’d bought the house, he’d still felt like Maggie’sboyfriend in most of the ways that mattered, and she’d delighted in having an unlimited budget for a decorator. Oliver had let her loose, wild and spendy, and she’d gone on to commission an army of well-dressed designers to bring him local artisan pieces that were properly Feng Shuied for the space. Two years ago, barely twenty-four, it felt surreal enough to own a home, let alone a massive one next to the park, sillier still to care about the thread count on the spare sheets (seven hundred) and whether or not there should be stems on the wineglasses (there are). Now, he can appreciate that Maggie, bless her, knew exactly what kind of place would feel like home to him, so she’d spent his money and given it to him. Even this room, rarely occupied, emulates his favorite sort of off-season boutique hotel, all dark woods and warm beiges, an amber glass sconce on the wall and a weathered photo floating above the bed of his grandparents minding the bookstall.
From within the nest of pillows, Oliver asks Siri to call his mother. Nicola Harris answers on the fifth ring, sounding harried.
“Ollie?”
“Mum, hi. You on shift?” he asks, already knowing she is.
“I’m due for a break, they can cover. I didn’t think I’d hear from you until late.”
Without the senior Oliver Harris, Mum and Oliver the younger have both developed the tendency to conduct life squarely within the bounds of their work and their responsibilities, which makes them equally hard to reach. As a child without a father and a wife without a husband, this clarity of focus has kept them both afloat: Nicola cares for Camden’s bodies; Oliver is meant to feed their souls. It also means that grief still thickens the air between them, catching Oliver unawares when it rears its head. He can’t blame either of them for it; they’ve both just tried to survive,with every pressure heightened and only half of themselves free to meet it. He doesn’t think he’d know how to safeguard his heart and his place in the starting eleven if he hadn’t learned from watching her. Still, he hopes her bedside manner might give her care to spare for him tonight.
“Sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt at work. It’s just…” He trails off. “I’m not sure if you caught the match highlights or not? But I had a fall earlier. I…I tore a muscle in my hamstring,” he rambles, knowing she hasn’t watched anything if she’s been at work, probably hadn’t even known the kickoff time if she’d left before the crowds materialized.
“My love,” she murmurs, just as he’d wished she might. Then she hops into crisis mode. He can see her transforming into who she really is: someone who handles injuries far greater than this every night without blinking an eye. “What happened? Where are you? Why don’t you come round to the hospital right now?”
“No, no,” he says. Oliver hates the hospital and the memories it evokes; hates any helpless, sick, or injured feeling. Instead, he rolls over to lie on his back and assess his leg, which looks the same as it has for hours, hurts the same too. “I slipped in the rain, it was my own fault. Daft, clumsy move. I’ve been with the doctor and now I’m home. She’s got me sorted for now. I just wanted you to know.”
“You’ve always been so lucky, so healthy…” she frets. Oliver has been lucky, his whole career, but he’s also been careful, to the degree of paranoia, and he’s been secretive, to the point of untruth, about anything that could slow him down or take him off the pitch. “I suppose everyone trips sometimes, but not everyone’s legs are worth as much as yours. This is the last thing you needed. Goodness. How are you now?”
“Like you’d expect—I mean, it’s fine. I’m relieved it’s not worse,” he says. “I just thought you ought to hear from me and not on TV.”
She hums down the line, the swirl of the hospital playing out in the background. Oliver regrets giving her another thing to worry about, but her concern feels good, even as he hates causing it.
“You were right to ring me,” she says firmly, hearing him without words. Any distance he’s ever felt from her is always swallowed up in moments like this, when he tries to let the space open up and she chases him down. “Ollie. You know I wish I could be there now. Are you sure you don’t want to stay at home with me? I could nip down and pick you up when I finish, as soon as I can.”
Nicola lives just up the road, essentially, in the same flat on Hawley Road where Oliver grew up, where his parents did too. Despite his offering to get her a proper house or cut back her hours at work, she refuses anything extravagant. He owns the flat now, and he’d convinced her to let it be remodeled within an inch of its life—no builder grade left to speak of, fitting right in with the shiny new Camden they’re both bewildered by—but Nicola still wakes up in the same place where she and Oliver Senior first lived and takes the number 1 bus to the Royal Free Hospital in her scrubs. Oliver could take her up on it, sleep in his childhood room and have breakfast brought in on a tray, but he doesn’t feel he’s earned it.
“I think you do enough nursing as it is, Mum. I should only be on crutches for a few days. I promise you, it’s not a big deal.”
She sighs, knowingly and a bit sadly. He wouldn’t have called her if that was the truth.
“You’ll get some rest?”
“I already am,” he promises, meaning this one.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she says, half a warning. He can hear she’s on her way back into the thick of it as she hangs up. His phone screen stays lit up after the call ends. When he cranes his neck, he sees the opening line of an email from Sebastian.
He audibly grumbles as he swipes to read the whole missive.
Oliver,
Hope you’re getting some rest and feeling as well as you can. Anna assures me we’ve got a plan in place and will be making progress before we know it. I’ve passed along some info from her to Willem, and he likewise is relieved to hear things are well in hand.
He’d like to speak with you about the rest of the season. I know you’re meant to start rehab in the next few days, but if you could come to the Crossing tomorrow and meet with him for tea, we’d be grateful. He’ll be in his office from noon onward. Let me know if there’s anything you need from me, recovery-wise. Here to help.
All best,
Sebastian
Oliver rolls his eyes at the insipid, formal business-speak and chucks the phone back on the side table without replying, rolling over again, for the long haul.
For the last six weeks, after Willem de Boer arrived from the Netherlands with his extended stares and his inscrutable advice, everything in Oliver’s life has felt tenuous, right at the edge of shattering.
