Libbie stamped her foot and stropped off, almost slamming the kitchen door behind her. Nate was going to have fun with her when she got to her mid-teens. She was going to be a pretty girl too, which would make life more interesting for Nate when she started dating. He was as protective of his net as he was his daughters.
“Good luck in ten years’ time.” I sipped at the smoothie he’d conjured up for us when I got there.
He gave a brief nod and looked over at Zara, who was back to happily playing. She was the calmer of the two sisters, very laid back and easy going. I’d had the pleasure of babysitting the pair of them a couple of evenings ago, when Nate had needed to interview nannies. It had been a decent evening, and I never wanted to watch a Disney film again in the next decade, something I’d message Otter about.
Of course, she’d been hysterical about it, then I’d had a long lecture about Disney princesses and which ones the girls should’ve been allowed to watch. I’d copied and pasted it and sent it Nate.
Nate's life was about to get a little easier. He'd hired a nanny – a lady in her fifties who had just finished working for a family with twins. The twins had turned sixteen and didn't need her anymore, but Nate definitely did.
“How’re things with Otter? I read an article about her this week.” He sat down on a kitchen stool and checked his phone.
I shrugged. “We message each other a couple of times a day.”
“Sounds like a relationship.”
He probably wasn’t wrong. “We haven’t had that conversation.”
“You sleeping with anyone else?” Nate’s eyes flicked over at Zara, who was oblivious to our conversation, in her own little world with her dolls.
“No.” I didn’t have time or the inclination to find one of the club’s fans after a game, particularly one looking for a chance to add to their own score card.
“Is she?”
“I don’t think so.” I also doubted it. She was in the wilds of Norfolk still, an extra week added on to their filming there as the director wasn’t happy with some of the scenes. Her schedule was gruelling, and I knew she wasn’t interested in any one from the cast or the crew. She’d told me that much about each of them by now, I felt I knew them all like I worked with them.
“I’d say that was a relationship.” He put down his smoothie. “Flipping disgusting concoction.”
He was right. It was. Neva’s recipes were getting worse.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I think it’s past the hook-up stage.” I wasn’t a fool who was going to kid myself that we were only meeting for sex, because we weren’t. I knew her better than any of the women I’d had no-strings relationships with when I’d played in London, and I’d found myself checking my phone for messages from her. She had become part of my day.
The door swung open and Libbie shot through, dressed in what looked like Nate’s training top and a pair of heels that suggested she was one fall away from twisting her ankle.
“Holy shit.” He muttered the words under his breath. She’s going to be the death of me.” He got off his stool. “Lib, the shoes are fab, but how about we look online for some in your size? They make your feet look huge.” He knelt down in front of his daughter and helped her take them off her feet, then picking her up. She wrapped her arms and legs around him like a koala, looking tiny being held by her six-foot four father.
“Can we go shoe shopping at the Trafford Centre?”
I wasn’t sure that five-year olds were meant to know about the Trafford Centre, or shopping malls in general, but Nate didn’t seem surprised by the suggestion.
He looked at me wearily. “How about I buy you dinner and you come with us. I can’t handle a trolley and stop this one from shoplifting at the same time. The security guard nearly called the police last time.”
I wasn’t sure he was joking.
I had nothing else to do, except log onto my laptop and go through the to-do list Lotte had sent me, join in a COD competition with some of my teammates, go home and listen to Rowan and Dee horizontal tangoing around his bedroom and shower, or go to the gym for the second time today.
“Yeah, but I’m ordering steak.”
“Me too, man. Me too.”
Taking a five-year-old and a two-year-old around a huge, hot shopping mall was a damn-sight harder than tearing through Aston Villa’s defence. I had no idea how Nate managed this on his own, apart from he must usually buy Libbie everything she asked for rather than just the five items he made her chose today.
She was shopping-drunk, picking at a child’s meal and a large strawberry milkshake to sip delicately at, her eyelids half closed and surrounded by her five chosen purchases. Nate had just about managed to get Zara to eat before she’d fallen asleep, even though a table with a big family on it had just had five people sing happy birthday, which included a lot of clapping.
“That was some good endurance work. I think you should suggest the club use that as a training exercise.” I couldn’t remember feeling more exhausted.
Nate laughed, then savoured a bite of his steak before replying. “Ryan, the SAS turned down the idea. Said it was too hard.” He impaled a thick cut chip on his fork. “I don’t care what Neva says about this. I must’ve burned off about the same as a week’s training plus two games getting round there.” He was eating like a man about to be starved for the next two weeks.
“I’m not going to tell.” I was inhaling my own surf and turf, with extra whisky-barbecue sauce. Neva was the devil in the disguise of a petite, brown-eyed elf, to be avoided at all costs. We’d pretty much worked out ways to cheat her diets and shared them under a haze of secrecy, almost making people sign non-disclosure agreements before allowing them into our group. One of the younger players, Jude, was banned. He’d almost given us away a few weeks ago when Neva was lecturing him about a cheat meal she’d found out about. He was blackballed from ever joining again. “You know too much about me.”
