‘No, sweetheart. It’s in Dublin. I’ll be training in the day time for a few weeks, but I’ll be home every night to tuck you into bed.’
I shoot Shelly a warning glance. She shouldn’t make promises she can’t keep. On Saturday nights, she definitely won’t be home to tuck any of us in. A prospect I’m really not looking forward to, despite giving her my blessing. Funny how the roles have reversed. It used to be me promising to be home, and her giving the warning glances.
‘I must buy a copy of the paper to check out who the competition actually is,’ Shelly muses. I can’t believe she’s taking this so seriously.
‘My copy is in there.’ Callum nods to the glove compartment. ‘I bought it to pass the time at the airport.’
Shelly is rooting in the glove compartment before the words have finished falling from his mouth. She opens it on the double-page spread of herself. Peering over her shoulder from my position in the backseat, I can clearly see a half-page picture of my wife wearing my favourite neon-yellow bikini, displaying way more of her body than I’d like to see in the Sunday paper. It must have been taken by a sly paparazzi last week. They’re fucking everywhere.
‘Jesus Christ, Shelly. Is anything sacred anymore?’ The groan slips out before I can overthink it.
‘You’ve got to be joking me, Marcus! What do you want me to wear on the beach? How was I supposed to know we were being papped?’ She doesn’t sound too upset about it either way.
‘It’s a great shot,’ Callum says in a gleeful tone, which makes me want to clip him round the head. I don’t, but only because he’s driving. He’s probably loving this. In fairness, I teased him relentlessly for years when we were teammates, but this is different. It’s serious.
‘Thanks.’ Shelly seems genuinely flattered with his compliment. ‘Not bad for an old lady,’ she jokes.
‘I’d prefer it if they’d used a picture of you with more clothes on.’ I sound like a moody teenager, I can’t help myself.
‘Ha! That’s rich coming from the man who not only streaked naked across a Croatian beach, but was captured doing so in a video that went viral!’
She has a point. Hell, the show hasn’t even begun yet and we’re already bickering. It doesn’t bode well.
‘Flick over a page and you’ll see the other contestants.’ Callum’s eyes remain on the road ahead while the pages of the newspaper ruffle next to him. The girls are sitting quietly, a sure sign they’re tired.
‘Oh, Aisling Duffy! I used to love her breakfast chat show on Channel Three. I hope she’s as nice in real life! And PJ Maguire, isn’t he like some sort of rapper?’ Shelly can hardly scan through the other contestant names quick enough.
‘He’s a wannabe rapper,’ I interject. His success has been pretty limited so far, which is probably why he’s agreed to do a show like this. God, I really do sound bitter, but I can’t help it.
‘Wow, Sonny Smith has confirmed too.’ Shelly’s words are enough to breathe energy back into our sleepy daughters.
‘Sonny Smith? Oh my god, Mam!’ Emily shrieks.
I’m beginning to feel really fucking old. ‘Who the fuck is Sonny Smith when he’s at home?’
‘He is the hottest country singer that ever lived.’ Emily says, mustering as much conviction as an eight year old can.
‘A country singer? What age is he?’ I had no idea my daughters knew anything about country singers, or who’s hot or not.
‘It says here he’s twenty-eight,’ Shelly says, still scanning the paper for every detail available.
For fuck’s sake. Please don’t let my wife be paired up with some twenty-eight-year-old pelvic-thrusting crooner, sporting a baby face and come-to-bed eyes! My heart won’t be able to take watching that on national television every week. And that’s without the inevitable rumours it will likely start.
Shelly continues listing her competition, blatantly unaware that I’m miserably contemplating mine. ‘Natalie Moore is doing it, she’s some TikTok sensation from Cork. She’s had loads of success following a video that went viral. And Michael Murray, he’s like the best soccer player this country has ever seen, right? Those twin boys that were in the Eurovision. Donal Dunn from thatBest Homeprogramme. That model, Lucinda. And Frankie Egan, the golfer.’
‘Look at the bottom of the list.’ Callum’s tone is suddenly serious and his eyes flick up to his rear-view mirror to meet mine.
‘Ben Battle, holy shit! I haven’t seen him for years!’ Shelly’s hand flies to her mouth. My stomach feels like it’s been flipped and is about to drop out of my arse.
‘None of us have,’ Callum says with a shrug.
Ben’s a former teammate of ours from seven years ago. We were fierce rivals. He refused to play for a team that I led. It says what a prick he is when he’s blessed with the honour of playing for his country, yet throws the toys out of the pram when he isn’t named captain.
He always was a spoilt brat though. We’d played together since we were fifteen. His parents are ridiculously wealthy. They come from old money. Rugby was nothing but a pastime for him and a way of rebelling against them. Since he left, he’s founded an up-and-coming clothing company and none of us have seen or heard from him since.
Ben had designs on Shelly, even when we were kids. Though I spotted her first, he tried to sweep in on her underneath my very nose, resulting in us both asking her out the same week. Later, he claimed he’d only done it to wind me up, but the truth was plain to see. He was as infatuated with her as I was.
For reasons still unknown to me, she picked me.
