I’d refused to give any further information, so she’d somehow managed to get it out of Ryan. It’d been some of the younger players who’d mentioned how they’d crushed on her, and how one had tried flirting with her once and she’d shot him down. I also shot him down afterwards, grabbing him on his own for the twenty seconds it took to make him shit himself.
After that, whenever I pissed her off, which was daily or more, she’d mention how a certain player had given her a compliment or mentioned having a coffee. Some days I ignored her. Other days I found another punishment, usually involving withholding her orgasm until she’d apologised or told me that she’d never let another man touch her apart from me.
So yeah, life was good.
JULY
I still had no idea how such a tiny woman could carry such a massive bump of a baby. Neva hadn’t seen her toes for two weeks, and there was at least another two months to go before she saw them again.
I’d taken to painting her toenails and cutting them, finding the activity something I could hyper focus on, which was good for us all. She’d started maternity leave already, taking a full season away from the day-to-day duties that she had at the club, but still being on the phone to give advice to the man who was covering her leave.
This had given her time to start to put together a recipe book for pregnancy, and her newfound love for social media. Neva had wanted to chart the baby’s growth and her own journey, and we’d agreed that it made sense to own our story rather than the media pulling it out of thin air.
She’d posted about technically being a geriatric mum, disputing the term, and she’d blogged about how she was looking after herself. There was stuff about me in there too, and how we managed to eat differently at times. A few of the players and their girlfriends or partners reposted it or commented, so Neva had amassed a large following without intending to.
One of the most liked pictures was of me painting her toes. The other was me kissing her bump when we were in France, the chateau behind us. It’d been Rowan who’d taken the photo, and he’d taken it the same night he’d announced that Dee was pregnant too, which we’d all guessed because she wasn’t drinking the champagne Genny had decided to buy in bulk.
Pre-season training had started already. The summer had been a hot one, more of a sweaty-ball summer than a hot girl summer. And my house was full of baby paraphernalia.
We had a designated nursery, a room that adjoined to another bedroom, with a decent sized bathroom between the two as well, which had lots of light and seemed right for baby stuff. This made it seem sensible to decamp out of my room and into that bedroom, so when one of us wanted undisturbed sleep, we could go to our original bedroom. When it was time, the baby would start to sleep in the nursery, then eventually, that would become their bedroom.
No one had mentioned Neva moving out.
No one had brought up that this wasn’t a real relationship.
No one had said the three little words – not to each other yet. I’d said them plenty to the bump.
And those words were ready to be said to Neva when the time was right. I just didn’t know when that time would be.
My mother had found me one day when I was sat in the garden, working out how we were going to child proof the swimming pool. The contractor had just finished, leaving me with the plan, which on paper seemed to be enough to do the job.
I’d been musing whether I needed something else to make sure that when our baby was toddling, they didn’t toddle into the pool, because if they were anything like me, they would be Houdini incarnate.
“So are you and Neva official now?” My mother tried to put her arms around my shoulders. “You seem very comfortable together.”
“We haven’t put a label on anything.” Which I’d figured had made things easier because there hadn’t been any pressure to be the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend.
“Do you want to? Me and your father adore her and we couldn’t wish for a better person to be the mother for our grandbaby. I told Neva that yesterday.” My mum switched to squeezing my bicep. She couldn’t get her hand around that.
I nodded. “I do.” I folded the plans for the swimming pool into a small rectangle and pocketed it. “We said we’d talk about what we were going to do as anuswhen the baby was six months old.”
“Don’t leave it that long. She’s carrying your child and I know this was all about her wanting a baby and you wanting that too, but it’s obvious to everyone that it’s more than that. I think everyone’s assumed that you’re just together.” She paused, folding her arms. “Is she still worried about the age difference between you?”
I shrugged. “I try to avoid bringing it up unless I’m teasing her. And there is an age difference. It doesn’t matter and it won’t matter in the future.”
“It won’t. Maybe you need to check that’s where her head’s at too. I hope I’ve managed to reassure her a bit though. I think she was worried that we thought you should be with someone the same age as you.”
“And you don’t think that?” I knew if my parents had any concerns they’d have voiced them. I also know that if they didn’t have any concerns they’d support my choices in anything.
“No. I think she grounds you and you lighten her up. You’re opposites in some ways, in good ways. A bit like me and your dad. He was the serious one and I was the one who’d make him laugh and relax. We were friends first too.” She smiled so happily. “That’s important. It wasn’t all about where we wanted to be, it was about where we were. We lived in the moment but he did make me think about how that moment could make our futures. I think she does for you. I think this baby will be amazing for you both too and they’ll be so lucky to have you as parents.”
I didn’t know what to say, so instead I grabbed her in a big hug, standing right next to the swimming pool.
“Mum, you’re amazing and I love you, but - ”
I side stepped, taking us both straight into the water, the previously calm and peaceful pool now disrupted by my six feet something and my mother’s flailing arms.
She swam straight over to me, shouting obscenities, and then trying her best to drown me, which was difficult as we were in the shallow end by now and she was a foot shorter than me.
