Mabel pulls out a hair tie and puts her long hair up in a ponytail. “OK.”
I don’t want to bring down the mood so don’t comment. “How did you find this place?” I ask.
As Theo gets out of the car and opens the boot to grab a sports bag, he tells us that while he was in the café, he did some research online, saw there was a pitch on the outskirts of Camaiore, and reserved it for an hour.
“Brill,” I force out. But I’m feeling anything but. The prospect of spending a whole sixty minutes playing football is grim.
I slope after Theo, onto the pitch. It’s not full size—I expect it’s meant for five-a-side—and is surrounded by a tall wire fence, beyond that a bland, modern housing estate. It’s covered in Astroturf so feels divorced from nature. There aren’t even any trees around, just a ring of mountains in the distance that from here look like cardboard cutouts. Theo opens his sports bag and produces a ball he tosses to the boys. They start kicking it around and soon Mabel joins in.
I hang back.
“What’s the matter, Ads?” asks Theo, holding onto the fence to stretch out his glutes. “Is everything alright?”
My face thickens. “You know I’m not into football.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, but I thought it’d be different with the kids. Come on, it’ll be fun.”
Can I do this?
“Dad, are we sorting teams?” breaks in Callum.
Theo switches to stretching his calves. “I thought it could be you and Adam versus me, Mabel and Archie.”
Callum looks as if Theo’s just suggested he eat a plateful of spinach topped with herbs. “I don’t want Adam on my side. I bet he’s crap.”
In a flash, I’m back at school at the start of a PE lesson. Whenever we played football, none of the other boys wanted me on their side.
“Adam’s gay,” they’d moan to the teacher. “He can’t play.”
They’d do impressions of me kicking like a girl, squealing with fear when the ball came towards me, or running around with a limp wrist. They’d sometimes lift me into the bin that was used to store the balls and the teacher would join in their laughter. If he did call them out for bullying, they’d insist they weren’t bullying—they were just “clearing up litter.” Eventually, the teacher would help me out of the bin, but I’d sense his relief when I offered to sit at the side.
“Cal, don’t be like that,” Theo says, sternly.
“It’s OK,” I say, sitting on the Astroturf and leaning back on the fence. “Iamcrap. I’m happy to just sit here and watch.”
“Please play,” says Archie, tugging at my hand and trying to lift me up. “You can be on my team!”
I let go. “No, thanks. I really don’t fancy it.”
Theo massages his elbow, then gives a firm nod. “OK, so it’s me and Archie versus Cal and Mabel.”
He splits the pitch in half and creates a second net from some towels he produces from his bag.
“Right,” he says, throwing the ball in the air, “game on!”
As I watch the four of them running up and down the pitch, kicking and chasing the ball, I feel shut out and excluded, just like I did at school. But I can tell they’re having fun: their faces are flushed, there’s hollering and cheering, and Callum and Mabel even let out the odd giggle. Now and then Theo provides a commentary in the style of a passionate TV pundit. And when I look at him, I see my dad.
My whole body deflates.
When I was a boy, Dad was always trying to get me into football.It was obvious he wanted a son who shared his love of the game. But after countless hours attempting to teach me the basic skills, after enrolling me in a junior club for a course of training, and after several trips to Old Trafford to watch Manchester United—with no sign of the slightest stirring of love, or even anything that came close to like—he abandoned it.
Then he married Debbie and they took me on holiday with her sons, Trevor and Keith. We stayed on a campsite somewhere in northern France and Dad was keen that I get on with my new stepbrothers. As they were both obsessed with football, on the first day he organized a game on the beach. It was him and Keith versus me and Trevor, and the three of them got all fired up about it. For me, though, it was a miserable, demoralizing experience. Trevor and Keith made fun of my ineptitude and did impressions, just like the boys at school. Dad ended up getting angry with them and we had to abandon the game. But I couldn’t help wondering if he was angry with me, too. And I hated myself for it.
All these years later, I tug in an unsteady breath and let it out slowly.
Dad knew I didn’t like football. Why did he make me play?
When the game pauses so Callum can fasten his shoelaces, Theo trots over. “Ads, are you sure you don’t want to play?”
